Regional Economic Development Policy Research Articles

Spatial and interindustry interactions in labour productivity convergence: An Industrial Journey via Galician Shires, 2010–2018

Regions and industries are not isolated islands; so, when evaluating productivity growth, regional and sectoral growth paths should not be expected to generate independently. Moreover, accounting for spatial interactions via econometric models has become normal practice; but modelling interindustry dependencies has not. Thus, we expand labour productivity econometric convergence models by introducing interindustry spillovers in addition to spillovers that are spatial in nature. To illustrate our findings, we present an empirical application predicated upon Galicia (extreme northwest Spain), a region posing major challenges to such modelling. Our results point to the relevance of interindustry spillovers in explaining productivity growth. Furthermore, the approach allows us to better interpret covariates that explain the different growth paths across regions and industries, thus enabling more reliable policy recommendations. We find that interindustry dependencies transmit productivity shocks across regions. In addition, our results suggest that spatial and interindustry dependencies should be considered when formulating (sub)regional economic development policies. Finally, our approach corrects possible misspecification problems that arise from data scarcity. This makes it a viable alternative for multiregional econometric tests in which some sectoral detail is needed. It is particularly useful for sets of regions where data needed to populate such models is scarce.

The spatial effect of integrated economy on carbon emissions in the era of big data: a case study of China

The digital economy has the characteristics of resource conservation, which can solve China’s high carbon emissions problems. The digital economy can quickly integrate with the real economy, forming an integrated economy. However, it is still unclear whether an integrated economy can effectively reduce carbon emissions and achieve China’s ‘dual carbon goals’. Therefore, this study takes 30 provinces in China as the research object, constructs the integration economy index system through the statistical data from 2011-2021, and explores the spatial effect of the impact of the integration economy on carbon emissions by using principal component analysis, coupled coordination model and spatial econometric model. The research results are as follows. (1) From 2011 to 2021, the comprehensive economy showed a trend of increasing yearly (from 0.667 to 0.828), and carbon emissions showed a slow decrease (from 0.026 to 0.017). (2) Due to the infiltration of China’s economic development from the eastern to the western, the spatial distribution of the integrated economy shows a decreasing trend from east to west. The spatial distribution of carbon emissions may be related to China’s industrial layout of heavy industry in the northern, and light industry in the southern, showing a trend of low in the south and high in the north. (3) The integrated economy can significantly reduce carbon emissions (the coefficients of influence, -0.146), and the reduction effect will be more obvious if spatial spillover effects are taken into account (-0.305). (4) The eastern coast, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the middle reaches of the Yellow River economic zones all increase carbon emissions at a certain level of significance (0.065, 0.148, and 3.890). The Northeast, South Coastal and Southwest economic zones significantly reduce carbon emissions (-0.220, -0.092, and -0.308). The results of the Northern Coast and Northwest are not significant (-0.022 and 0.095). (5) China should tailor regional economic development policies, such as strengthening investment in digital infrastructure in the Northwest Economic Zone and fully leveraging the spatial spillover effects of integrated economy in the Northeast, Southern Coastal, and Southwest Economic Zones to reduce carbon emissions.

Environmental and Regional Economic Development Policy: Evidence from the Rise of Central China Program

Environmental and Regional Economic Development Policy: Evidence from the Rise of Central China Program

Europe’s semiconductor industry at a crossroads: Industrial policy and regional clusters

The European Union has agreed to provide significant investment to the semiconductor industry in order to address issues of self-sufficiency and digital sovereignty. This comes on the back of the long-term decline in the competitiveness and size of the industry in Europe. These issues are of considerable significance to urban and regional economic development agendas as the industry is clustered around several European regions. This commentary seeks to examine the extent to which European policy intervention is likely to positively influence Europe’s semiconductor industry. It is argued that the European semiconductor industry is at a crossroads. While it has some competitive advantages and is home to several significant clusters, it faces incessant competition from producers in Asia and the United States. It is argued that European policy should not be space neutral and aim to encourage innovation and enterprise within the sector in conjunction with existing European regional economic development policy measures. Within this approach, supporting key existing clusters through triple helix models of development are likely to be the most effective modes of intervention.

Spaces of the forest-based bioeconomy in Finnish Lapland and Catalonia: practitioners, narratives and forgotten spatialities

Over the last decade, the bioeconomy has been increasingly promoted as a strategy able to shift our economies away from fossil fuels and boost local economic growth, especially of rural areas in Europe. The bioeconomy is an important part of the European Union agenda, it is promoted through European wide strategies that are translated into local and regional policies. However, the bioeconomy does not unfold equally across regions; it has different implications influenced by the spaces and the narratives with which the policies are created and implemented. Amongst all the actors participating in the bioeconomy strategies, local practitioners play a crucial role in interpreting the narratives and implementing the policies in a way that makes sense for their local contexts. Hence, there is a need to understand how local and regional practitioners apply bioeconomy strategies to grasp how those are expressed in different regional contexts. Through the case studies of the forest-based bioeconomy in Catalonia and Finnish Lapland, this paper explains why economic narratives prevail in the local bioeconomy and how regional spatialities are affected by it. The cases show that the bioeconomy remains close to economic growth and is applied through regional economic development policies, thus focusing on specific economic sectors and hindering the role of the bioeconomy in a wider regional transformation. Understanding the narratives and how these reflect the spatialities help us to advance a spatially sensitive approach to the bioeconomy, this is, a bioeconomy practised according to the socio-spatial conditions, closer to ideas of inclusivity, plurality and justice, and with a greater role in a wider regional transformation, rather than the greening of specific economic sectors.

Unintended environmental consequences of place‐based economic policies

AbstractWe examine the environmental consequences of two regional economic development (RED) policies that aimed to develop the economy of the relatively underdeveloped upper Pearl River (UPR) regions in Guangdong Province, China. Applying the triple‐difference analysis to annual county‐industry‐level data, we find that the two RED policies caused higher growth in industries with high water pollution than in industries with less water pollution in the UPR regions. The second RED policy with environmental regulations was effective in restraining the new entry of firms in high‐pollution industries into the UPR regions but failed to drive existing high‐pollution firms out of the UPR regions. Firms' location decisions were driven by the more favorable tax regimes and less stringent pollution regulations in the UPR regions.

Does the Running Variable Matter? A Second Look at Discontinuity Designs for Evaluating Regional Economic Development and Business Incentive Policies.

In recent years, a growing number of studies have applied regression discontinuity designs (RDDs) to the analysis of prominent regional economic development and business incentive policies. As a result, impact evaluations of these policy interventions are being increasingly commissioned under the assumption that local linear regressions have superior impact identification properties in the cases in which an eligibility boundary, geographical border or application cutoff is identifiable as a source of treatment assignment. This paper shows that in a number of frequently encountered cases, however, economic development and business incentive programs pose peculiar impact identification conditions in terms of violations of main assumptions for the validity of RDDs and of running variables that have little or no influence of the outcome variable. Under these circumstances, that bear generalizable relevance also for the analysis of other public programs at large, no adequate testing to support the internal validity of the applied discontinuity design is often performed in the literature and the use of local linear/polynomial regressions, or cross-border comparisons, becomes an inadequate choice. When these conditions apply, adopting instead other quasi-experimental methods to achieve an actual adequate treatment-control balance of the relevant baseline characteristic will often be a better approach.JEL classification; O1; R5; C23.

Regional and sectoral structures of the Chinese economy: A network perspective from multi-regional input–output tables

A multi-regional input–output table (MRIOT) containing the transactions among the region-sectors in an economy defines a weighted and directed network. Using network analysis tools, we analyze the regional and sectoral structure of the Chinese economy with the province-sector MRIOTs of China in 2007 and 2012. Global analyses are done with network topology measures. Growth-driving province-sector clusters are identified with community detection methods. Influential province-sectors are ranked by weighted PageRank scores. The results have revealed a few interesting and telling insights. The level of inter-province activities increased with the rapid growth of the national economy, but not as fast as that of intra-province economic activities. Regional community structures were deeply associated with geographical factors. The community heterogeneity across the regions was high and the regional fragmentation increased during the study period. Quantified metrics assessing the relative importance of the province-sectors in the national economy echo the national and regional economic development policies to a certain extent.

Equilibrium Relationship between Ecosystem Service Supply and Consumption Driven by Economic Development and Ecological Restoration

Economic development and ecological restoration guided by policies has had a profound impact on the relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption in the past few decades. Exploring the relationship in specific study areas is necessary to support regional planning for sustainability. In this study, we analyzed the equilibrium relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption driven by economic development and ecological restoration from 1995 to 2018 in Northeast China. We quantified the supply and consumption of three critical ecosystem services, food production, water yield and atmospheric regulation, and identified the main areas for supply and consumption of ecosystem services. We measured the quantity and spatial equilibrium relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption driven by economic development and ecological restoration at economic megaregion scale. We found the new industrial structure shaped by regional economic development policies formed the new ecosystem service consumer demand. The development of agricultural industry not only resulted in the increase of water consumption, but also the scope of water consumption was expanded in Northeast China. The development of tertiary industry causes the change of atmospheric regulation consumption in urban agglomeration. What’s more, economic development exacerbated imbalances in the supply and consumption of ecosystem services. The unbalanced areas where food supply was less than consumption were in the clusters of Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, and coastal cities. Since food products can circulate freely through the market, this imbalance will not fundamentally affect regional food security, but will improve the level of agricultural industrialization and scale. The implementation of the grain economic policy caused the rapid expansion of unbalanced areas where water supply was less than consumption. The incredible space mismatch between the supply and consumption of ecosystem services still exists for a long time. However, the implementation of the ecological restoration didn’t effectively solve the problem of insatiable ecosystem service consumption. The ecosystem service consumption brought by economic development need to be given the utmost attention when formulating ecological restoration policies and economic development policies. The results can provide insights for enhancing economic sustainability in northeast china, as well other economic megaregion with similar characteristics throughout the world.

Кореляція основних показників економічного розвитку регіонів

The stability of dynamics of economic phenomena in the regional economy is associated with the general level of economic development of the country. The most important studies are based on the results of the analyses of the economy of developed countries. The article formulates conclusions on the relationship between economic differentiation and economic stability, as well as between instability and economic growth. Research of regional development should be based on a comprehensive and comprehensive definition of the management object – the region. Therefore, the authors emphasize that studying the economic development of regions is of particular relevance in modern economic conditions, when decentralization processes are taking place in Ukraine. To study the status of Ukraine’s economy at the regional level, it is proposed to implement a methodology based on the methods of synthesis and gradual specifying. To formalize the results of the practical application of the proposed research methodology, generally accepted indicators of the dynamics of certain directions of the country’s economy development were used. The use of dynamics indicators allowed to identify, on the one hand, long-term tendencies and trends of individual elements, and on the other hand, short-term changes in the processes of economic growth and development. The use of the built regression model can be used in forecasting GDP values per capita within the framework of the regional economic development policy. The authors demonstrate that an analysis of the similarity of dynamics of indicators of the economy of regions (correlation) and the dynamics of results of their economic activity, calculated according to the GRP indicator per capita, should be applied when substantiating the provisions of the regional economic development policy. It is recommended to build the policy of economic development of the regions taking into account the experience of the above-mentioned regions in the sphere of economic development. An interdependence is identified, which indicates an increase in the share of the resource economy and a decrease in the share of the science-intensity economy, the development of which contributes to the welfare of the country’s population.

Local resistance to rising unemployment in the context of the COVID‐19 mitigation policies across Great Britain

AbstractPolicies to arrest the rapid spread of the COVID‐19 pandemic resulted in whole sectors of the economy and social life being either entirely locked down or severely curtailed in the Spring of 2020. This paper uses a resilience framework to analyse two aspects of ability to resist rising unemployment at local level across Great Britain during the early part of the COVID‐19 pandemic when full “lockdown” measures were in place: (i) level of pre‐lockdown unemployment; and (ii) share of employment in sectors most affected by the lockdown. Findings reveal that pre‐lockdown unemployment is a stronger predictor than sector mix of the rise in unemployment in the first month of the lockdown. This finding underlines the importance of spatially rebalancing the UK economy, including strong local and regional economic development policies, in order to build resilience to future recessionary shocks.

Post-Brexit regional economic development policy in the UK? Some enduring lessons from European Union Cohesion Policy

The UK has been a recipient of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy funding since its inception, and it has played a key role ever since in local and regional economic development across the UK. However, in the run up to the Brexit referendum in 2016, discussions about the significance of EU Cohesion Policy funding to the UK’s cities and regions, which have benefitted from this support for decades, was not a major topic of discussion. Paradoxically, the demise of EU Cohesion Policy in the UK, post-Brexit, comes precisely at a time when spatial inequalities are rising. Moreover, real questions remain about the UK government’s commitment to tackling regional economic development in the coming years. Having said that, as this Commentary discusses, several decades of EU Cohesion Policy implementation in the UK do provide a number of significant policy lessons, which should inform the contours of future UK regional economic development policy.

Assessment of Relationship Among Regional Economic Development Policy, Urban Development Policy and Public Policy

This study mainly investigates the problems of public management from the two interdisciplinary approaches of regional economic development policy and urban development policy. A qualitative desk review approach has been adopted to contribute the debate and reach the objectives of the study. This study reveals that there is an integral relationship among regional economic development policy, urban development policy and public policy. It also introduces the main essence of regional economic development policy, the analysis of the research difficulties and causes, expounds the relationship and enlightenment between regional economic development policy research perspectives, approach and research methods of public management. It also highlights the relationship and enlightenment between the way and research method and the theory and practice of public management. This paper also analyzes the main similarity and differences between regional economic development policy and urban development policy and forward recommendations based on the findings.

Policy cohesion and post-recession economic imaginaries: manufacturing discourse in the Chicago metropolitan region

ABSTRACT This paper examines the proliferation of the Chicago metropolitan region’s post-recession regional economic development initiatives, and a consequent shift towards manufacturing-centric development programmes among regional planning bodies and public–private institutions. This phenomenon provides important insights about the post-recession economic development policy terrain in mature city-regions and the politics of economic development imaginaries. While there has been justified celebration of a new creativity in urban and regional economic development and industrial policy in the geographical literature, the Chicagoland case indicates that defensive actions, meant to recode older, disciplinary attitudes towards the region’s labour pools and lobbying from region’s industrial capitals, are an important element of the region’s post-recession policy coordination. What is dubbed herein as ‘manufacturing discourse’ in Chicagoland originates in institutions endogenous to the region’s industrial capitals and represents a longer term project of maintaining a specific type of socio-spatial fix as the predominant mode of crisis response among the region’s governance bodies, civil society and fractions of capital. In turn, it is argued that geographers and urban scholars need to theorize properly about the link between ‘soft’ economic imaginaries and the protection of power centres within city-regions, particularly amid state rationality crises and bursts of policy experimentation.

Woman’s entrepreneurship as a gendered niche: the implications for regional development policy

AbstractIn this article, we argue that entrepreneurship is a socio-spatial embedded activity and that the social construction of gender, time, space, economy and culture is manifest in the masculinities that are ascribed a normative role in entrepreneurship development policies. Drawing on feminist approaches to articulate and perform resistance to the hegemonic ‘masculinist’ discourses on entrepreneurship, we argue that women’s entrepreneurship is contextually embedded in institutional and social structures that both limit and provide opportunities for its enactment. Regional economic development policy has focused, inter alia, on stimulating and supporting women’s entrepreneurship through the establishment of women-only entrepreneurial networks to provide support, role models and access to resources. Grounded in feminist geography and based on a detailed qualitative study of network managers and members of formally established women-only networks, we provide evidence of the disconnect between the emancipatory intent and the actual impact of these initiatives. While these networks aim to empower and encourage women into entrepreneurship, in practice, they perpetuate women’s marginalisation and ghettoisation in gendered niches.

Understanding the strategic ‘black hole’ in regional innovation coalitions: reflections from the Twente region, eastern Netherlands

ABSTRACTActive coalitions of regional stakeholders are at the heart of contemporary regional economic development policies, such as Smart Specialisation or Constructing Regional Advantage. These coalitions consist of actors from various organizations such as regional authorities, companies and higher education institutions that come together to achieve common agendas and advance their region. Accordingly, the numerous stakeholders are expected to work together seamlessly, build and implement strategies and thereby deliver regional development. However, by assuming that strategy formulation and implementation is straightforward, the challenges that lie within partnerships and the tensions that may arise between stakeholders can become neglected. Therefore, it is vital to understand tensions that drive towards situations in which strategy-building is not successful and ‘black holes’ of strategy-building emerge. By identifying the tensions between regional partners in the Twente region of the Netherlands, the aim is to understand how such stakeholder tensions affect regional development. It is assumed that by easing or resolving these tensions, stakeholder partnerships can contribute to the successful advancement of their region. The data for this qualitative case study are drawn from both research interviews and secondary sources.

Políticas regionais na Argentina. Tensões entre o Estado, a governança e o espaço regional

Este trabalho é uma intervenção no recente debate teórico e empírico sobre as características das políticas de desenvolvimento econômico regional e sua dinâmica de governança com uma análise exploratória sobre a Argentina (Santa Fé) no período 2001-2015. No contexto de um Estado transformado (descentralização de funções, reescalonamento de regiões e ascensão da governança), este trabalho sugere que há uma crença exagerada sobre a capacidade das redes de governança para implementar políticas regionais, e que tem sido problemática para a efetividade dessas políticas. Propõe uma discussão em torno de três hipóteses: i) de que houve pouco apoio concreto por parte do Estado a essas dinâmicas de governaça, ii) que houve uma relação inadequada entre os níveis de regulação (nacional, regional e local) para aplicar políticas baseadas na dinâmica de governança; e iii) que existe uma grande lacuna entre ideias políticas sobre o espaço regional de governança e a concretização de políticas nesse espaço regional. a pesquisa tem como objetivo repensar a partir do interior do estado, as políticas regionais de regeneração econômica.

Lead contamination in sediments in the past 20 years: A challenge for China

Lead (Pb) contamination was recognized in China early in the 1920s. However, the response of Pb contamination in sediments to China's rapid economic and social development remains uncertain to date. We conducted a literature review of over 1000 articles from 1990 to 2016 and the first national-scale survey of Pb contamination in China. A literature review showed that available research in China focused on the economically highly developed river basins, including the Pearl River Basin (PRB), Yellow River Basin (YRB), and Yangtze River Basin (YtRB), whereas those in the less developed southeastern, southwestern, and northwestern river basins received limited attention. The YtRB and YRB had higher Pb contamination levels than other basins, corresponding with the rapid economic development in those regions. However, the less economically developed river basins in the southeastern and northwestern regions of China were also contaminated by Pb. Analysis of 146 studies in the PRB, YRB, and YtRB revealed that Pb contamination in PRB sediments showed a tendency to improve over time, whereas that from the YtRB exhibited a tendency to worsen. For the YRB, there was a slight increase from 1990 to 2006 and a decreasing trend from 2007 to 2014. The overall temporal trend in Pb levels in PRB and YRB sediments corresponded with that of the Pb discharged in wastewater in the surrounding cities, indicating that industrial wastewater discharge was possibly one of the main anthropogenic sources of Pb in those sediments. For the YtRB, the increasing trend in Pb concentrations was related to the considerably high atmospheric Pb emissions in the surrounding cities and its geographical characteristics. These findings suggested that China should develop systematic and consistent approaches for monitoring Pb contents in sediments and adopt a regional economic development policy focusing on pollution prevention.

Outdoor Recreation as a Sustainable Export Industry: A Case Study of the Boundary Waters Wilderness

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in northeastern Minnesota contains more than a million acres of connected lakes and rivers. As one of the most heavily visited U.S. Wilderness areas, the BWCAW represents an ecosystem managed primarily for conservation values that also has a substantial regional economic impact. This combination of high visitation and strong conservation management represents a sustainable symbiotic relationship where visitor expenditures help maintain ecosystem protection. To investigate this symbiotic relationship, the regional economic impacts of the BWCAW were estimated. Multiplier effects were calculated and the sustainability and tradeoffs associated with BWCAW tourism were examined, as was the export nature of BWCAW recreation. Data collection consisted of surveying 2016 summer BWCAW visitors. Visitor regional expenditures were extrapolated to overall visitation data and entered into IMPLAN impact analysis software. Based on 513 completed surveys, and an overall survey response rate of 40%, out-of-region visitors spent over $56 million in the three counties surrounding the BWCAW in 2016, generating $78 million in total economic output and creating 1100 full and part-time jobs. Estimated economic impacts of outdoor recreation and their sustainability can be helpful for informing regional economic development policy for conservation areas world-wide.

A methodological approach for the design of sustainability initiatives: in pursuit of sustainable transition in China

The foundation of sustainability science is the effort to understand the fundamental interactions between nature and society, and to guide these interactions along sustainable trajectories (Miller et al. Sustain Sci 9(2):240–246, 2014). More importantly, sustainability science aims at creating knowledge needed to improve relevancy and quality of sustainability decision-making processes through broader representation of knowledge and values. This study contributes to the sustainability science literature in the areas of strategic planning and decision-making. Both the values and the role of decision-making science in promoting sustainability are examined through the design of a strategic framework and application of a graphical multi-agent decision-making model (GMADM). This approach allows for analysis, valuation, and ranking of potential sustainability initiatives according to their projected benefits and gains for organizations and for society. The model is structured on three interrelated pillars: (I) stakeholder views and concerns (government, industry, academic institutions); (II) sustainable development trends and requirements (World Bank data); and (III) valuations of the benefits expected from sustainability efforts. The framework is applied to case studies of Shandong and Guangdong provinces in China. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of data obtained from three groups of stakeholders in each province confirmed the utility of the proposed decision-making approach for promoting sustainable transition in China. Results also demonstrated the convenience and effectiveness of the proposed framework for guiding organizations’ efforts toward optimizing their sustainability initiatives while supporting regional economic growth and sustainable development policies.