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This article focuses on the neighbourhoods and people that have been left behind in the economic transformation of two now-diversified old industrial regions: Geelong (Victoria) in Australia and Oshawa (Ontario) in Canada. Political discontent has found expression in different ways in the two locations. This, we contend, reflects policy frameworks that dampen the extent to which socio-spatial inequality and entrenched disadvantage generate discontent within regions. In assessing the factors producing this outcome, this article clarifies both the who, what and where of 'left behindness' and related regional policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses stated preference experiments to examine labour market preferences of 309 workers retrenched by the Australian automotive industry for non‐pecuniary job attributes denoting job quality and meaningfulness. We find that autonomy and employer reputation for good work policies and practices are the two most important non‐pecuniary job attributes, with compensating wage differentials of roughly $5 per hour for greater autonomy and better employer reputation. Job security and skill utilisation are also important, but less so, with compensating wage differentials between $1 and $3 per hour for greater security and fewer training requirements. Workers' strongest preference is not for a particular type of work, but rather for a particular type of employer, suggesting that labour market policy might pay more attention to regulating the quality of workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The non-bank financial institution Greensill Capital pioneered platform-based supply chain financing and the securitisation of supply chain debt, then controversially extended the business to lending funds to firms in the productive economy based on anticipated future invoices. By rolling over these supposedly short-term and liquid loans, this mechanism provided unsecured long-term funding to risky businesses. The article examines how regulatory and political arbitrage, and the ambiguity of a positioning on the edge of legality, enabled Greensill to challenge the established boundaries between the financial and the productive domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between regional assets and value capture with a focus on knowledge and intellectual property assets. It traces, over an extended time horizon, the upgrading and later downgrading path of a single supplier firm in a peripheral location to illuminate the degree to which value capture trajectories are shaped by the power geometries of regional, network, and macroeconomic forces. The analysis suggests that functional upgrading does not insulate firms from the risk of downgrading and exclusion, but rather that it changes the nature of their vulnerabilities. In this case, functional upgrading was associated with ownership changes, a progressive disassociation of intellectual property assets from their underlying regional knowledge resources, the relocation of production activities to hubs in global networks, and eventually to the redirection of captured value from the region. The analysis contends that regional assets are assets that capture value in the region, and that when knowledge-based regional assets are created by interactions within firms, firms should be considered as regional assets. The conclusion considers the implications for regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do subnational differences in the configurations of formal and informal institutions shape the relative capacities of state and regional agents? This article considers the distribution of capacities and powers among regional actors, as defined by their organizational roles and the power of the state. After comparing the management of economic change in two peripherally located and coal-dependent areas in different States in Australia, the article concludes that accounts of institutional change in regional studies have paid insufficient attention to the limitations on agency arising from organizational positioning and the 'top down' assertion of state power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-5871.2009.00585.x Byline: SALLY WELLER (1) Keywords: internal mobility; migration; Australia; aviation Abstract: Abstract Migration plays an important role in neo-liberal regional adjustment. This paper explores the role of economic shocks in stimulating internal migration within Australia. Drawing on the experiences of retrenched Ansett Airlines employees, it argues that economic crisis impels some households to relocate but traps others in places with restricted employment prospects. For some, the crisis of retrenchment triggers inter-state migration to take up new jobs. For others, it prompts relocation to less expensive housing, often in a geographically proximate location. These opposing responses, which are different outcomes of similar causal processes, exacerbate regional inequalities since they selectively encourage younger skilled workers to enter growing regions. The combination of high housing costs and insecure employment discourages speculative migration. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the policy implications of these findings. Author Affiliation: (1)Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne, Victoria 8001, Australia. Email:sally.weller@vu.edu.au

This article explores the utility of applying the European policy of smart specialisation to tackle spatial divergence in the Australian context. Using a geographical political economy approach and considering a growing literature on innovation in peripheral places, the work explores how smart specialisation is applied in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, a coal‐dependent non‐metropolitan industrial enclave in the Gippsland region. Analysis of the case suggests that market‐based growth processes envisaged by the architects of innovation‐based regional policies such as smart specialisation have been unable to spur development in Australia's disadvantaged non‐metropolitan regions. On the contrary, without more careful appreciation of local contexts, such policies will lead to further spatial divergence and exacerbate divisions between urban and regional communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service Industries and Asia-Pacific Cities: New Development Trajectories. Edited by P. W. Daniels, K. C. Ho, and T. A. Hutton. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. This book adds to [...]

Role of geopolitical conditions in the reassembling of network embeddedness, and in theorizing the network transformation and disconnection circumstances is discussed. Concept of embeddedness is highlighted through the case study of garment production network of Fiji and Australia.