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This paper deals with the relationship between decentralisation, regional economic development, and income inequality within regions. Using multiplicative interaction models and regionally aggregated microeconomic data for more than 100 000 individuals in the European Union (EU), it addresses two main questions. First, whether fiscal and political decentralisation in Western Europe has an effect on within-regional interpersonal inequality. Second, whether this potential relationship is mediated by the level of economic development of the region. The results of the analysis show that greater fiscal decentralisation is associated with lower interpersonal income inequality, but, as regional income rises, further decentralisation is connected to a lower decrease in inequality. This finding is robust to the measurement and definition of income inequality, as well as to the weighting of the spatial units by their population size. Keywords: income inequality, income per capita, fiscal and political decentralisation, interaction, regions, Europe

Despite their apparently pervasive reach and relevance, the geographies of branded commodities and their branding have been unevenly recognised and under-researched. This paper presents a way of conceptualising and analysing brand and branding geographies. Focusing upon goods and services, the notion of geographical entanglements is developed to understand the spatial associations and connotations that unavoidably ensnare brands and branding. Second, it examines how such attachments shape and are shaped by brand and branding agents, including producers, circulators, consumers and regulators. Last, the placing of the geographical entanglements of brands and branding is developed as a means of lifting their ‘mystical veils’ and prompting reflections upon their politics and relationships to uneven development. Situating branding genealogies in geographical context, the empirical analysis comprises a socio-spatial biography of Newcastle Brown Ale (NBA). It explains how NBA’s geographical entanglements have been (re)constructed in its contrasting survival in the UK and growth in the US. As a way of thinking about brand and branding geographies, the paper seeks to broaden the reach of economic geographies at their intersections with cultural economy approaches and to stimulate debate about their politics and alternatives to uneven development.

The collapse of Northern Rock in 2007 was the first major run on a UK retail bank since 1866. The Northern Rock case is exemplary on two fronts. First, described at the time of its collapse as an example of an aggressive business model employed by naive management, it is now clear that Northern Rock marked the beginning of and provides insights into the credit crunch and wider global banking crisis. Second, Northern Rock provides a distinct context-geographically and institutionally-to explore the banking crisis. The article utilizes management interviews, secondary literatures and an investigation of the wider impacts of the restructuring of Northern Rock to produce a reading from the perspective of a peripheral financial region. It contributes to attempts to understand financial geographies that range beyond the major international financial centres that often dominate debates in Economic Geography. © The Author (2011). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Discussions of local and regional development have recently broadened from a preoccupation with growth to one which captures the notion of resilience. This article makes two main contributions to these debates. First, it critiques static equilibrium-based notions of resilience and instead advances a more dynamic evolutionary approach to explain local and regional resilience. Secondly, it seeks to address the widening gap between resilience thinking and its transfer to practical policy prescription. To do this, we explore the notions of adaptability, adaptive capacity and new path creation in developing local and regional resilience. We then focus upon what this might mean for local and regional strategies, and draw on the case study of the renewable energy sector in north-east England to demonstrate the enduring role of policy intervention in stimulating change and building resilience in peripheral regions.

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This article argues that financialization—shorthand for the growing influence of capital markets, their intermediaries, and processes in contemporary economic and political life—generates an analytical opportunity and political economic imperative to move finance into the heart of economic geographic analysis. Drawing upon long-standing concerns about the relatively marginal location of finance in economic geography, we emphasize the integral role of finance in connecting the entangled geographies of the economic to the social, the cultural, and the political. In the wake of various “turns” in the discipline, we develop this integrationist approach to finance in ways that retain political economies of states, markets, and social power in our interpretations of geographically uneven development. In this article, we discuss the plural nature of emergent work on financialization and develop three analytical themes to shape our discussion of financialization. Next, we elaborate our analytical approach...

This paper seeks to elucidate the geographies of brands and branding through interpreting their geographical entanglements. Focusing upon goods and services, it argues, first, that the object of the brand and the process of branding are geographical because they are entangled in inescapable spatial associations. Second, these spatial associations matter because they are geographically differentiated and uneven. Third, geographically entangled brands and branding are closely related to spatially uneven development through the articulation and reinforcement of economic and social inequalities and unequal and competitive sociospatial relations and divisions of labour. Despite their apparent pervasiveness and significance for geographical inquiry, the geographical entanglements of brands and branding have been under-investigated in Geography and hardly recognized and poorly specified in other social science research. A critical account is provided that demonstrates the entangled geographies of brands and branding in their: (1) geographical origins, provenance and sociospatial histories; (2) spatial circuits of value and meaning and uneven development; and (3) territorial and relational spaces and places. Reading the changing forms, extent and nature of the geographical entanglements of brands and branding provides a novel but relatively overlooked window to consider and illustrate the vital spaces at the intersections of economic, social, cultural and political geographies, the tensions between relational and territorial notions of space and place and the politics and limits of brands and branding. Learning from wider social science, the paper demonstrates the importance of geography by projecting more clearly specified and sophisticated treatments of space and place into accounts of brands and branding.

Key themes for evolution in economic geography are identified that clarify and further refine and reinforce our argument for broader conceptions of institutions, social agency, and power and for the situation of the plural and emerging field of evolutionary approaches more fully within geographical political economy. We address the following issues: conceptual and terminological clarity; evolution and institutions within and beyond the firm; agency, bounded determinacy, and power; and research method and design. Our central contention is that geographical political economy provides a coherent and well-structured conceptual and theoretical framework with which to broaden and deepen our understanding, exploration, and practice of evolutionary thinking in economic geography.

Economic geography has, over the past decade or so, drawn upon ideas from evolutionary economics in trying to understand processes of regional growth and change. Recently, some researchers have sought to delimit and develop an “evolutionary economic geography” (EEG), aiming to create a more systematic theoretical framework for research. This article provides a sympathetic critique and elaboration of this emergent EEG but takes issue with some aspects of its characterization in recent programmatic statements. While acknowledging that EEG is an evolving and pluralist project, we are concerned that the reliance on certain theoretical frameworks that are imported from evolutionary economics and complexity science threatens to isolate it from other approaches in economic geography, limiting the opportunities for cross-fertilization. In response, the article seeks to develop a social and pluralist conception of institutions and social agency in EEG, drawing upon the writings of leading institutional eco...

While taking over the Editorial Board of a journal like Regional Studies will never be easy, our start greatly benefited from the excellent shape in which we inherited the journal from the team bas...

In recent years, economic geographers have turned their attention to the growing geographical reach and complexity of economic networks to focus on the increasing integration of economies, the geographical organization of economic activity and the social, economic and political relationships within these networks.Within this work, particular attention has been paid to the corporation, allowing for corporate geographies to be rethought using new approaches and new methodologies. Building on these approaches, we seek to develop a holistic economic geography which embeds the globalizing corporation within a broad array of economic, social, political and cultural settings shaped by multiple social agents.We do this in the context of the European steel industry. We argue that refocusing attention on the steel industry is important for two reasons. First, the industry itself has radically changed in the last decade. Persistent global overcapacity and cycles of profitability, ongoing consolidation and privatization, the emergence of new steel regions and of more `globalized' steel producers have all altered the industry's anatomy. Second, the tools of economic geography have changed. New approaches enable us to look again at the steel industry and to rethink its corporate geographies. This article develops these arguments by using an innovative approach, integrating the narratives of two steel corporations and two European steel regions, and focusing on issues of corporate geography, financialization, government and governance, labour and community. In this way, we seek to continue the strong tradition within economic geography of conceptualizing the spatial contexts and consequences of economic change through accounts of the continuous remaking of steel geographies.

This paper draws upon territorial and relational approaches as well as work on the economics and politics of devolution to argue that a geographically sensitive political economy of the 'qualitative state' can interpret the roles, structures, strategies and practices of states in attempting to resolve the governance of uneven development. An empirical analysis of the UK state's governance of economic development within England reveals the construction of enabling frameworks at the national level and, in the wake of regionalization and regionalism, the encouragement of new 'spatial imaginaries' (cities and/or city-regions, localisms and pan-regionalisms). The result has been complexity, experimentation, fragmentation and incoherence with largely negative implications for territorial equity and justice. We conclude by reflecting upon the limits of projects of state decentralization and spatial policy under a strong national economic growth orientation in addressing the governance of uneven development. © The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved.

The Local Nexus Network is addressing the intersection of two important emerging research areas, re-distributed manufacturing and the food-energy-water nexus. It is an on-going initiative which aims to develop an evidence-based comprehensive research agenda and foster an inclusive community of researchers and stakeholders for sustainable local food-energy-water nexuses. This paper presents the conceptual framing for understanding the challenges of local nexus, reports empirical findings around a particular case study, and makes initial reflections on the research and practical challenges and opportunities.

1. Introduction: Whither Regional Studies? Andy Pike 2. Regions and Regional Uneven Development Forever? Some Reflective Comments upon Theory and Practice Ray Hudson 3. Beyond the Territorial Fix: Regional Assemblages, Politics and Power John Allen and Allan Cochrane 4. Territorial, Scalar, Networked, Connected: In What Sense a 'Regional World'? Gordon MacLeod and Martin Jones 5. The Accident of the Region: A Strategic Relational Perspective on the Construction of the Region's Significance Arnoud Lagendijk 6. Observational Equivalence? Regional Studies and Regional Science Philip McCann 7. Power in Firm Networks: What it Means for Regional Innovation Systems Susan Christopherson and Jennifer Clark 8. The Polycentric State: New Spaces of Empowerment and Engagement? Kevin Morgan 9. What Kind of Local and Regional Development and for Whom? Andy Pike, Andres Rodriguez-Pose and John Tomaney

This paper asks the question what kind of local and regional development and for whom? First, definitions are examined to understand what is meant by local and regional development, to establish its historical context and to explore the ‘where’ of local and regional development in space, territory, place and scale. Second, the nature, character and forms of local and regional development are examined to reveal its different varieties, principles and values in different places and time periods. Third, the objects, subjects and social welfare dimensions are addressed to explain the often socially uneven and geographically differentiated distribution of who and where benefits and loses from particular forms of local and regional development. Last, a holistic, progressive and sustainable version is outlined and reflections offered upon the limits and political renewal of local and regional development. Our argument is, first, that we need to consider the basic principles to get a better analytical purchase on the question of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, and, second, locally and regionally determined models of development should not be developed independently of more foundational and universal principles and values such as democracy, equity, internationalism, justice and solidarity. The specific local and regional forms and articulations of such principles and values are normative questions and subject to social determination and political choices in particular national and international contexts.

At the 40th anniversary of Regional Studies, we seek to reflect on the establishment, evolution and progress of the journal over its first 40 years. The current context is especially timely and app...

Hyperspectral imaging has been providing vital information on the Earth landscape in response to the changing environment, land use and natural phenomena. While conventional hyperspectral imaging instruments have typically used rows of linescan CCDs, CMOS image sensors (CIS) have been slowly penetrating space instrumentation for the past decade, and Earth observation (EO) is no exception. CIS provide distinct advantages over CCDs that are relevant to EO hyperspectral imaging. The lack of charge transfer through the array allows the reduction of cross talk usually present in CCDs due to imperfect charge transfer efficiency, and random pixel addressing makes variable integration time possible, and thus improves the camera sensitivity and dynamic range. We have developed a 10T pixel design that integrates a pinned photodiode with global shutter and in-pixel correlated double sampling (CDS) to increase the signal to noise ratio in less intense spectral regimes, allowing for both high resolution and low noise hyperspectral imaging for EO. This paper details the characterization of a test device, providing baseline performance measurements of the array such as noise, responsivity, dark current and global shutter efficiency, and also discussing benchmark hyperspectral imaging requirements such as dynamic range, pixel crosstalk, and image lag.

The governance of infrastructure financing at the city and city-region scales is critical to the search for new and innovative funding mechanisms for infrastructure systems. The global financial crisis and economic downturn have focused attention on the role of infrastructure renewal and development in economic recovery and stimulus. Austerity and the fiscal consolidation of public finances have reinforced government efforts to reduce expenditure and debt, and secure private sector engagement and resources. Local actors in cities and city-regions have been compelled into finding new sources of private and even international capital, developing innovative business models for infrastructure provision and establishing new institutional and governance arrangements. This article analyses the context and emergent infrastructure funding and financing approaches, models and practices being formulated as part of a review of the City Deals in the UK. The experience of the City Deals raises critical questions about the emergent and recombinant forms of urban leadership and governance in cities and city-regions and the nature of centre-local relationships in the austerity state.

'Financialization' and 'shareholder value' loom large in the closure of the Vaux Brewery in Sunderland. They are necessarily intertwined with the geographies of space and place. Geography inevitably enters into assessments of shareholder value by social agents. A geographical political economy approach argues that generalized pressures created by financialization and shareholder value are mediated and contested by specific and particular configurations of spatialized social relations, social agency, and socio-institutional contexts over time, across space, and in place. Geographical political economy frames the analysis of the Vaux Brewery closure in Sunderland. A more spatially sensitive, place aware, and locally and regionally rooted financial infrastructure may be necessary but not sufficient to underpin local and regional development. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

ParentCompany's decision to close R&DCo in North East England caused the loss of highly skilled scientific and technical jobs. R&DCo was a “white-collar” R&D operation and supplier of services to ParentCompany's lead factories in the East Midlands and South West regions. The economic and social costs of closure were acute for the North East with its relatively weak growth, high unemployment and limited R&D activity. This paper argues that a clearer understanding and progressive response to such closures may benefit from a conceptualisation founded upon spatialised social relations and characterised by a social process of production that unfolds over time, across space and in place. Periodised in episodic socio-spatial “moments”, a historically evolving social process of closure reveals differential potential—contingent upon specific conjunctures of structural forces, social agency and the particularities of places—to enable and/or inhibit intervention through public policy and institutional action and political mobilisation and resistance.

From a position of relative isolation, trade unions have become increasingly important agents in local and regional development and governance in the UK since the election of the New Labour government in 1997. Analysis of the experience of the Northern Trades Union Congress (NTUC) suggests that devolution and regionalisation are exerting increasing pressures upon trade union federations to adopt a multi-level approach to organisation across a range of scales—local, sub-regional, regional, sub-national, national and international—to connect with the evolving multi-layered governance structures of the UK political economy. Strategic multi-level organisation suggests the decentralisation of power, authority and resources within the labour movement—challenging the national and centralised legacy of its collective bargaining history—and a division of labour and set of priorities at the different scales to build the links between local and regional engagement and trade union renewal.

The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions––including trade unions––in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC––in contrast to its national organisation––is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres––such as the NTUC––risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures.

An emergent heterodox approach is challenging the prevailing orthodoxy of thinking, doing, and governing economic development, particularly at the subnational, regional, and local levels. Looking at underlying debates concerning institutionalism and a ‘new centrism’, the author draws together the theoretical and conceptual threads of the heterodox agenda. Several critical issues are outlined: the historical evolution of economic development approaches; the lack of coherency and consensus in conceptual, theoretical, and policy terms; the underdeveloped empirical base and; the translation into policy and institutional practice. This discussion informs an analytical framework based upon the central dimensions of heterodoxy, experimentation, context specificity, and governance. Empirical analysis of the substance of the new heterodoxy is undertaken by focusing upon a new institutional experiment for organising economic development—the task force—and drawing upon evidence from the national (UK), regional (North East of England), and local (South Tyneside) levels. The argument is that there is a mixed picture with patchy evidence of the emergence of the heterodox agenda, comprising genuine experimentation and innovation, coexisting and interrelating with substantial continuities and the extension and reinforcement of established practices. It is concluded that the currently dominant narrative and technocratic mode of ‘quasi-governance’ of economic development requires a renewed and democratised politics to open up discussion of alternative responses to the fundamental questions of what kind of economic development is desired and for whom. Strengthened democratic structures as part of the devolution process in the UK nations and regions may offer the potential to begin this debate.

In sum, this theme issue develops the literature on subnational government and governance and economic and social development. Some accepted wisdom has been challenged and qualified, and new insights have been provided. Collectively, the papers point towards a rich future research agenda. Such endeavour might include consideration of-inter alia-the following questions: to what extent can devolved territories and institutions convert the opportunities that devolution presents into more effective public policies? How can territorial justice and equity be combined with potential diversity in a devolving nation-state (Morgan, 2001)? What kinds of supporting interterritorial fiscal equalisation systems and regional policies at the supranational and national levels can support the subnational governance of economic and social development? What kinds of territorial politics can deliver progressive economic and social development under subnational governance? How can representative and participatory democracy be reconciled within subnational government and governance? As devolution continues to unfold internationally, the character, form, and substance of the evolution of subnational governance and its relations to economic and social development require close attention to interpret their enduring importance and significance.

Previous research has suggested that after 1996 devolution caused a reduction in regional disparities in Italy. However the analysis presented here suggests that the decline in regional disparities in Italy between 1996 and 2006 was driven by population dynamics and, to some extent, by the loss of competitiveness and consequent poor relative performance of northern regions. We conclude that links between devolution and the reduction of spatial disparities is unproven and its benefits are temporally and geographically uneven.

Pike A. (2002) Post-devolution blues? Economic development in the Anglo-Scottish Borders, Reg. Studies 36, 1069–1084. Uneven regional development on each side of the Anglo-Scottish Border has underpinned a ‘post-devolution blues’ in North East England. The situation has been compounded by the economic development crisis in the Anglo-Scottish Borders region in the late 1990s. Rather than being a simplistic outcome of devolution, the ‘post-devolution blues’ are complicated by the particular nature of border(s) regions, the pre-devolution history of cross-border differences and the as yet inconclusive evidence of the impact of devolution on the Anglo-Scottish Borders. Future development and an antidote to the ‘post-devolution blues’ may require both a needs-based reform of the territorial distribution of public expenditure and a political settlement for the English regions at the national (UK) level.

The task force has emerged as a mechanism for coordinating economic development activity in the context of the current New Labour government's emphasis upon including ‘stakeholders’ in ‘joined-up’ approaches to ‘crosscutting’ issues. In this paper I examine the use of task forces to organise economic development at employer, sectoral, and territorial levels at the local and regional scales in the North East region of England. It is argued that New Labour's experimental use of task forces reflects a particular mediation of more general tendencies in the historical evolution of state modernisation, which varies in particular and contingent ways at the local and regional levels. The research reveals the continued importance of the existing public-sector and public—private-sector institutions, the less significant and contingent role of the private sector, and the contribution of the task force to the ‘quasi-governance’ of the United Kingdom, with its problems of coordination, transparency, and accountability. A renewed politics of economic development governance is required to establish the accountability and legitimacy of such bodies in the context of the emergent multilayered governance system of the UK political economy.

We report the testing result of e2v CIS 107 CMOS sensor for temperature from 300K to 170K. The CIS 107 sensor is a prototype device with 10 different variations of pixel designs. The sensor has 1500 × 2000, 7 μm pixels with 4 outputs. Each variation covers 1500 × 200 pixels. These are 4T pixels with high resistivity epitaxial silicon and back thinned to 11μm. At room temperature, the several variants of pixels show peak QE higher than 90%, readout noise around 5e- and dark current around 50e-/s/pix. The full well is about 15000 e- due to the limitation of the transfer gate capacitor. The CIS 107 device was further characterized at different device temperatures from 170K to 300K. The readout noise decreases and the full well increases as the device is operated at lower temperature.

The task force has re-emerged as a mechanism for co-ordinating economic development activity in the con text of the current New Labour administration's emphasis upon including ‘stakeholders’ in ‘joined-up’ approaches to ‘crosscutting’ issues. Recent experience in the North East region of England reveals both prospects an d problems in the way task forces have been utilised at employer, sectoral an d territorial levels to organize economic development. Improvements are suggested to the task force model that involve integrating it more closely within a strategic and proactive region al economic development framework and ensuring its accountability within the multi-level governance structures for economic development emerging in the UK.

Recently in this journal Hooper and Butler (1996) drew attention to the scale of job loss associated with restructuring in the defence sector in the aftermath of the Cold War. They noted that there is comparatively little knowledge of the experiences of workers following the closure of defence plants. This research communication attempts to shed further light on this issue by reporting the results of a survey of the experiences of former Swan Hunter shipyard workers who were made redundant after the firm went into receivership. The results confirm the complex but generally negative effect of redundancy on the workers involved.

(1999). The politics of factory closures and task forces in the north east region of England. Regional Studies: Vol. 33, No. 6, pp. 567-575.

TOMANEY J., PIKE A. and CORNFORD J. (1999) Plant closure and the local economy: the case of Swan Hunter on Tyneside, Reg. Studies 33, 401-411. This paper seeks to describe and account for the closure of a Tyneside shipyard and to illuminate the wider issues concerning plant closure and the local economy. It begins by reviewing the relevant literature and suggests the need for a political economy of plant closure and its aftermath, informed by insights from economic sociology and institutional economics. The paper attempts to integrate an understanding of the political and economic context of the demise of the shipyard with a study of the labour market impact of its closure. The argument is that the complexities of the yard's closure and its local economic consequences can be better understood when the political and economic context of the sociological production and institutionally framed character of redundancy are revealed. TOMANEY J., PIKE A. et CORNFORD J. (1999) La fermeture d'usine et l'economie loc...

Regions in Europe P. Le Galès and C. Lequesne (eds) 1998: REGIONS IN EUROPE London: Routledge, £15.99 paper Exclusion from workLEPU INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE REPORT, NOV. 1996: EXCLUSION FROM WORK; WHO? WHY? AND WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? London: LEPU, South Bank University, £10.00 paper Prioritising Regeneration Funds Turok, I. and Hopkins, N. 1997: PICKING WINNERS OR PASSING THE BUCK? COMPETITION AND AREA SELECTION IN SCOTLAND'S NEW URBAN POLICY Glasgow: Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, £10.00 paper Competitiveness through localised learning Maskell, P., Eskelinen, H., Hannibalsson, I., Malmberg, A. and Vatne, E. 1998: COMPETITIVENESS, LOCALISED LEARNING AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT. SPECIALISATION AND PROSPERITY IN SMALL OPEN ECONOMIES London: Routledge, £50.00 cased Research and technology development Howells, J. 1997: RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH EAST BRITAIN Harlow: South East Economic Development Strategy, £29.00 + £3.50 p&p, paper SEEDS 10th anniversary report Newman, I., Geddes, M. and Atkinson, A. 1997: REMAKING THE REGIONAL ECONOMY: CELEBRATING ACHIEVEMENT, SHAPING NEW POLICIES FOR THE SOUTH EAST Harlow: SEEDS, £35.00 + £3.50 p&p, paper Labour market policy and evaluation O'Reilly, J., Schmid, G. and Schömann, K. (eds) cased 1996, paper 1997: INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF LABOUR MARKET POLICY AND EVALUATION Abingdon: Edward Elgar, £160 cased, £35 paper The competitive city Oatley, N. (ed) 1998: CITIES, ECONOMIC COMPETITION AND URBAN POLICY London: Paul Chapman Publishing, £15.95 paper