Natural Amenities and Rural Development: Understanding Spatial and Distributional Attributes

ABSTRACT Contemporary resource management practice and rural development planning increasingly emphasize the integration of resource extractive industries with non‐market‐based recreational and amenity values. There is a growing empirical literature which suggests that natural amenities impact regional economies through aggregate measures of economic performance such as population, income, and/or employment growth, and housing development. We maintain that assessing the developmental aspects of amenity‐led regional change requires a more thorough focus on alternative measures of economic performance such as income distribution and spatial organization. In the applied research presented here we investigate relationships between amenities and regional economic development indicators. Results suggest mixed and generally insignificant amenity‐based associations which highlight the need for appropriate regional economic modeling techniques that account for often dramatic spatial autocorrelation of natural amenity attributes. We conclude that with respect to amenity driven economic growth and development “place in space” matters.     

Vacancy Dynamics and Labor Market Efficiency in the Dutch Labor Market

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on cyclical and regional variations in vacancy dynamics in labor markets with persistent imbalances between demand and supply. In particular the so-called matching approach is used to investigate labor market efficiency across regions and over the business cycle. In this matching approach the relationship between the flow of filled vacancies and regional stocks of unemployed job seekers and vacant jobs is specified in a “search production” function. The matching approach is applied to the Dutch labor market, which is characterized by strong disequilibria and persistent regional differences in unemployment and vacancy rates. To explore the development of these regional imbalances from a demand side perspective, the dynamic structure of regional data on vacancies is analyzed over the business cycle. The movements of vacancy duration and the change in the vacancy stock over time appear to be similar across Dutch regions. Moreover, an investigation of the structural causes of regional variations in vacancy duration via shift-share analysis makes clear that regional differences in sectoral composition of unfilled vacancies do not contribute to regional differences in vacancy duration in the period 1989–93. Estimation results of a matching model reveal that there are no region-specific differences in labor market efficiency to produce filled vacancies. The ratio of vacancies to unemployment appears to be the critical determinant of the matching process in the Dutch regions. Another general (non region-specific) finding is that the estimated labor market efficiency increases during recessionary and recovery periods while it decreases during an economic boom.     

Regional inflation persistence in Turkey

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the degree of inflation persistence, its geographical variation, sources of cross‐regional variation, and presence of geographical/sectoral aggregation bias in national monetary policy. Our data set covers 26 NUTS‐2 level Turkish regions and monthly CPI inflation over the period 2003–2019. We first estimate the degree of regional inflation persistence by autoregressive regressions, check its robustness against the presence of structural breaks (by Bai–Perron's algorithm) and nonlinearities (by Markovian Regime Switching regressions). Second, we examine the possibility of geographical and sectoral aggregation bias. Third, we investigate the cross‐regional determinants of inflation persistence by panel data analysis, employing hybrid‐effects spatial panel regressions. We analyze the direct and indirect effects of the determinants and test for regional spillover effects. Three main results are obtained. First, estimated persistence degrees are heterogeneous across regions. The geographical pattern is empirically robust against structural breaks and nonlinearities. We find that inflation persistence is distributed in a spatially correlated manner. Second, when sectoral and regional aggregation bias is tested, only sectoral aggregation indicates a considerable level of bias. Third, we find that the presence of large firms in the region and a higher share of agricultural output in GDP leads to lower persistence, while an increased share of industrial output, and increased trade volume leads to higher inflation persistence. Moreover, we find spatial spillovers of price variability evident in regression analysis. From a policy standpoint, it is required that structural policy programs are targeted to maintain flexibility in the regions where persistence is high (i.e., providing market entry/exit, institutional quality, policy credibility, stimulation of SMEs). Moreover, sectors that have high persistence, such as Hotels and Restaurants (persistence degree 0.55) and Health Services (0.39) should be weighted more in CPI calculations.     

Repatriation or Reshoring of Manufacturing to the U.S. and UK: Dynamics and Global Production Networks or from Here to There and Back Again

There are three contrasting approaches to understanding the geography of production. The first approach emphasizes the importance of local agglomerations, the second intrafirm mechanisms, while the third highlights global relationships or global production networks (GPN) or global value chains. These explanations are partial, but complementary. This paper explores the restructuring of global production with a focus on the reshoring or repatriation of manufacturing production to the U.S. and UK. Our intention is to identify the drivers behind reshoring as the first stage toward developing a dynamic conceptual framework for understanding the global organization of production. Reshoring needs to be conceptualized by drawing on and combining approaches developed in GPN with micro‐approaches to understanding firms including the development of a geography of production tasks. The study is based on a theoretical mapping to inform an empirical analysis of reshoring in both countries to identify and conceptualize the quantitative and qualitative causal drivers behind this process. The evidence suggests that reshoring is sector‐dependent and is mainly driven by manufacturers’ cost‐management and quality strategies combined with the importance of manufacturing products close to market. This involves a “total manufacturing cost analysis” in which access to a set of tangible and intangible inputs are key drivers behind dynamics of GPN.     

The Spatial Dimension of Trade‐ and FDI‐driven Productivity Growth in Chinese Provinces: A Global Cointegration Approach

This paper analyses the major determinants of long‐ and short‐run labour productivity evolution for Chinese provinces between 1978 and 2010. The role played by openness to trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) constitutes the main focus of this analysis. From a methodological perspective, our main contribution is the inclusion of spatial effects into a dynamic error correction modelling framework. The results show that, in addition to domestic factors such as investment intensity and infrastructure use, trade openness and inward FDI also exert a direct impact on labour productivity. Furthermore, the geographical environment has a strong indirect influence on productivity: The more a region is surrounded by high‐productive regions with good infrastructure and linkages to the world economy, the higher are its productivity level and growth rate. The magnitude of these impacts varies by spatial regime (coastal, interior provinces) and time period in focus. Especially in the recent past, trade and FDI activity appear to be increasingly important drivers of regional productivity evolution, both for coastal and interior regions. These findings have important policy implications: In order to fully exploit the benefits from such spillovers, coordinated industrial policies which foster regional complementarities and support the free movement of production factors across regional borders are crucial.     

Growth and Location of Economic Activity: The Spatial Dynamics of Industries in Canada 1971–2001

ABSTRACT A growing literature has accumulated that points to the stability of industrial location patterns. Can this be reconciled with spatial dynamics? This article starts with the premise that demonstrable regularities exist in the manner in which individual industries locate (and relocate) over space. For Canada, spatial distributions of employment are examined for seventy‐one industries over a thirty‐year period (1971–2001). Industry data is organized by “synthetic regions” based on urban size and distance criteria. “Typical” location patterns are identified for industry groupings. Industrial spatial concentrations are then compared over time using correlation analysis, showing a high degree of stability. Stable industrial location patterns are not, the article finds, incompatible with differential regional growth. Five spatial processes are identified, driving change. The chief driving force is the propensity of dynamic industries to start up in large metro areas, setting off a process of diffusion (for services) and crowding out (for manufacturing), offset by the centralizing impact of greater consumer mobility and falling transport costs. These changes do not, however, significantly alter the relative spatial distribution of most industries over time.     

Entrepreneurship and Extraregional Trade in the Producer Services

Traditional explanations of interaction (trade) in city systems fail to capture the breadth and complexity of extraregional markets in the producer services. Building on market-process theory, which argues that markets are adaptive and rarely in equilibrium, the development of extraregional trade in the producer services was investigated as a form of firm-level entrepreneurship. While firms' entrepreneurial behaviors are influenced by a variety of internal characteristics, such as entrepreneurial spirit, size, age, and ownership, it is argued that a firm's location is an important conditioning factor on the degree of success it achieves with market expansion. The hypothesis is evaluated using spatial market extent data developed from a survey of 615 producer service firms located in 16 Midwest cities. A firm's degree of entrepreneurship is indexed by a qualitative assessment of its marketing activities, ranging from “aggressive” to “none.” Cox proportional hazards models, in a spatial-analog of survival analysis, were used to examine the influence of entrepreneurship on the spatial extents of firms' markets. The results confirm that location, more so than firm size or age, has a significant influence on the spatial extent of a firm's extraregional trade. The influence of location is generally complex: surfacing directly as a market scale effect, and indirectly as a conditioning factor on the success of a firm's entrepreneurial behavior. The results suggest that extraregional trade in producers services is predicated on more than just production cost (i.e., internal or external scale economies) or distribution cost (i.e., distance) factors, and that behavioral theories of the market can provide meaningful insight into the geography of market interaction.     

云南高原特色农业比较优势研究

为找到云南高原特色农业凸显优势和发展空间,采用定性与定量相结合的方法,定性以毗邻云南的四川、重庆、贵州、广西以及“桥头堡”开放重点的东南亚国家为参比对象,定量以除香港、澳门外的全国32个省份为参比对象,共选取4类定性和6类含44项具体定量指标,对云南省高原特色农业比较优势进行综合评价。结果表明：云南省高原特色农业综合比较优势系数为1.55,具有多样性、生态安全性、时差互补性3个综合比较优势。研究结果为云南以及其他高原地区农业发展提供参考。     

Do Entrepreneurs Enhance Economic Growth in Lagging Regions?

Because support for entrepreneurship is often a core part of economic development strategies, we investigate whether it is important for growth in lagging, rural U.S. regions by focusing on Appalachia. While entrepreneurship has the advantage of being endogenous and “home grown,” previous research suggests that remote rural regions may lack the agglomeration economies to benefit greatly from entrepreneurship. Using county‐level data, we explore the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth, employing self‐employment and small business data as proxies for entrepreneurship. We look at the results for the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) region, using its immediate Appalachian neighbors outside the ARC region as a control group. Moreover, we also account for self‐sorting by proprietors to locate in expanding regions. Despite strong barriers to growth in Appalachia, our empirical results suggest that self‐employment is positively associated with employment and income growth, and that efforts to promote entrepreneurial capacity may be among the few economic development strategies with positive payoffs in remote regions.     

Spatial (Im)mobility and Accessibility in Ireland: Implications for Transport Policy

Recent social research that links people's position in society to their ability to access employment has shown the centrality of spatial mobility in the (re)production of patterns of inequality. This is particularly evident in regions where economic activity is unevenly distributed and concentrated in an urban centre and where daily travel patterns reflect a spatial segregation between places of work and residential areas. This paper presents a spatial analysis of accessibility to employment for Galway City and its environs, a predominantly rural region in the West of Ireland dominated by its urban centre. Travel‐to‐work data from the 2006 Census of Population of Ireland were used to present a comparison of district‐specific accessibility levels across three socio‐economic groups. Network analysis and Geographic Information System visualisation tools are used to map existing socio‐spatial topographies of (in)accessibility. This is done to test two contrasting sets of theoretical proposals in the social science literature regarding the relationship between spatial mobility and social status. Advocates of the first position conceptualise spatial mobility as a form of capital that helps to maintain many existing social hierarchies. This contrasts with the views of those who anticipate the dissolution of established social boundaries (“fluidification”) as a result of increased spatial mobility of people, goods, and ideas. It is argued that these contrasting positions are highly relevant to current transport policy debates, including discussions around the impacts of recession‐related cuts in transport infrastructure investment on patterns of accessibility. In addition, they encourage reflection on the impacts of sustainable transport initiatives on different social groups that are more or less mobility disadvantaged, a fact that has hitherto received little attention in policy research and practice.     

Creative Industries and Regional Productivity Growth in the Developing Economy: Evidence from Indonesia

This paper examines the degree to which creative industries stimulate regional productivity growth in a developing country, Indonesia. The Indonesian government promotes long‐established “traditional” craft businesses as creative industries, but they pay less attention to new knowledge creation and focus on highlighting heritage values as selling points. Our findings show that the “real” creative industries are still scarce and found mostly in fairly advanced urban regions. These industries are more likely to be an indicator than a driver of regional economic development. Meanwhile, those traditional businesses are much larger than creative industries and potentially contribute to regional productivity through consumption activities, thereby requiring different policy strategies.     

中印罗非鱼产品出口竞争力的比较——基于美国市场的分析

为了对中国和印度尼西亚罗非鱼产品在美国市场的出口竞争力进行比较分析,以1994-2014年的相关贸易数据为基础,实证分析了中印两国的产品竞争力。竞争力的评价方法主要包括国际市场占有率、显示性比较优势指数和恒定市场份额模型。结果表明：中国罗非鱼产品对美国出口总额不断增长,增长速度快于印尼,但印尼罗非鱼产品拥有自己的品牌的外销渠道,市场价格较中国高很多。中国罗非鱼逐步占领了美国大部分市场,印尼的市场占有率则相对稳定。中国罗非鱼产品在美国市场上已经逐步由比较劣势转变为比较优势,但印尼在罗非鱼产品出口上更加具有比较优势;从恒定市场份额模型的分析来看,竞争力效应对中国罗非鱼产品在美国市场出口额的增长的贡献率较高,中国罗非鱼产品的竞争力在不断增强,但罗非鱼产品结构的合理化程度以及在本国出口增长中的贡献率仍低于印尼。     

Beyond “Global Production Networks”: Australian Fashion Week's Trans‐Sectoral Synergies

ABSTRACT When studies of industrial organisation are informed by commodity chain, actor network, or global production network theories and focus on tracing commodity flows, social networks, or a combination of the two, they can easily overlook the less routine trans‐sectoral associations that are crucial to the creation and realisation of value. This paper shifts attention to identifying the sites at which diverse specialisations meet to concentrate and amplify mutually reinforcing circuits of value. These valorisation processes are demonstrated in the case of Australian Fashion Week, an event in which multiple interests converge to synchronize different expressions of fashion ideas, actively construct fashion markets and enhance the value of a diverse range of fashionable commodities. Conceptualising these interconnected industries as components of a trans‐sectoral fashion complex has implications for understanding regional development, world cities, production location, and the manner in which production systems “touch down” in different places.     

Shift‐Share Analysis and Changes in Japanese Manufacturing Employment

Shift‐share analysis is used to examine the role of spatial structure on changes in regional manufacturing employment, in contrast to the traditional focus of shift‐share studies on the role of industrial structure. It is argued that changes in a region's space‐economy can be understood not only in terms of the economic subdivisions of the region but also in terms of the contribution of its spatial subdivisions. The latter is illustrated by means of a case study of the contribution of different types of local area to changes in regional manufacturing employment in Japan. Each region was subdivided into four types of local area based on population density. The analysis covered the period from 1981 to 1995, a time of major transformation in Japan's space‐economy. The shift‐share model was also used to estimate the impact of local area output and productivity on changes in regional employment. In general, the results show that there was a progressive underdevelopment of the core regions, associated with falling output and productivity. The country's peripheral regions were characterized by development, associated with rising output and productivity. Atthe local scale, however, the picture is far more complex. Types of local area contributed to regional employment change in very different ways, with respect to both time, region, and output/productivity. The contribution of local spatial structure to the regional space‐economy of Japan is fundamentally fragmented and uneven.     

The Influence of Agglomeration Externalities on Manufacturing Growth Within Indonesian Locations

Differences in agglomeration externalities and industrial regimes between locations generate performance differentials for their localized economic activities. For more than two decades, scholars have debated which externality is dominant for growth and under which regime. This study aims to resolve this debate by analyzing the influence of agglomeration economies on the growth of five‐digit manufacturing sectors and firms for Indonesian cities and regencies between 2000 and 2009. This is investigated employing the recent reconceptualization of variety based on sectoral linkages distinguishing related and unrelated varieties, which allow assessing their idiosyncratic economic roles. The findings support that economic relatedness is the dominant source for expansion of sectors and firms within Indonesian locations. Specialized clusters and competition are inversely related to manufacturing growth, although the latter fosters sectoral employment within Indonesian regencies. Population density and human capital show antithetic effects between cities and regencies due to their distinctive urbanization trajectories and industrial compositions.     

Community College Growth Opportunities: Untapped Potential in America's Heartland?

ABSTRACT Over 1,100 two‐year public institutions have been established in the U.S. which enroll almost two‐fifths of all students in postsecondary education. However, some parts of the country may not be adequately served by these educational institutions despite demand and supply indicators that indicate future growth potential in the sub‐baccalaureate educational market. This paper examines the geographical, demographic, and economic characteristics of counties that host community colleges. It finds that community college access is uneven. A multiple regression analysis reveals several correlates with community college location and identifies counties where opportunities may exist to “seed” additional community colleges.     

Drivers of Regional Efficiency Differentials in Italy: Technical Inefficiency or Allocative Distortions?

This paper estimates regional economic efficiency differentials at the firm level for the Italian manufacturing sector in the period 1998–2003. We implement an input distance‐function approach providing measures of both technical inefficiency and allocative distortions in the choice of input mixes. Our results confirm the substantial technical efficiency gap suffered by firms located in Southern regions, thus providing empirical support for the “structural and technological gap” interpretation of Italian dualism. On the other hand, the allocative distortions in the use of inputs show less‐remarkable regional differences. In terms of policy, our results suggest the need for a reallocation of public resources for development policies from business incentives to public investment.     

Who leads regional industrial dynamics? “New industry creators” in Chinese regions

Recent evolutionary economic geography studies have argued that regional diversification emerges as a path‐dependent process, as regions often branch into industries that are related to its industrial structure. However, it is less clear who are creating new industries and under what regional conditions. This research seeks to fill this gap and identify “new industry creators” in regional industrial diversification. We differentiate two types of new industry formation—path‐breaking and path‐dependent—and examine whether some new industry creators are more path‐breaking than others, by incorporating two factors that have been largely overlooked in recent literature on technological relatedness—firm heterogeneity and regional institutions. Based on a firm‐level data set of China’s manufacturing industries, this paper shows that path‐breaking and path‐dependence coexist. Empirical results confirm that firm heterogeneity and regional institutions not only affect the firms’ capabilities in creating new industries, but also encourage/discourage firms to be adventurous and path‐breaking. This research implies that lagging regions can catch up with developed regions by coordinating regional resources and adjusting local institutional arrangements to attract more path‐breaking firms.     

Agglomeration Potential: The Spatial Scale of Industry Linkages in the Southern California Economy

ABSTRACT Targeting industry clusters for economic development has become popular despite the lack of empirical evidence about the spatial scales over which various clusters agglomerate. This paper identifies twenty manufacturing industry clusters from a principal components analysis of interindustry patterns of trade and measures the spatial employment concentration of each cluster's plants within a polycentric framework. Two to eight centers of employment concentration are detected within the Southern California region for each set of trade linkages. Our spatial half‐life measure reveals that half of a cluster's employment in associated establishments is located within a typical range of eight to twelve kilometers (about 5–7.5 miles) to the nearest employment center or subcenter for the particular cluster. Furthermore, employment in seventeen of the twenty clusters is found to be more spatially concentrated than manufacturing employment as a whole, suggesting that geographic proximity is important to interindustry linkages in the Southern California economy. More important, the spatial concentration across industry clusters varies considerably within the metropolitan area, implying that economic development practitioners should consider local context and adapt industry cluster theories to the specific advantages and disadvantages of their immediate locality.