Regional Economic Studies Research Articles

An institutional convergence perspective on China’s recent growth experience: A research note

Abstract. This research note reconsiders China’s recent growth experience from an institutional convergence perspective. Based on the neoclassical production function of growth, a stochastic growth model incorporating an institutional variable is specified and estimated using cross‐province socioeconomic data for 1984–2001. While three explanatory variables all contribute to growth, the most significant and important effect comes from the variable of institutional progress. This suggests that China’s good economic performance since 1978 can be attributed to the convergence of China’s economic institutions with the economic institutions of modern capitalist economies, particularly the East Asian capitalist economies. If this suggestion is accepted, then China’s newly emerging regionalism can be better understood as resulting from an uneven institutional convergence process in a spatial context. These results are different from those of conventional Chinese regional development studies. They are important because they represent the first detailed evidence on the role of institutional effects in a Chinese regional economic study.

Economic reform and the transmission of growth impulses across Indian states

While several studies in regional economics and development economics have repeatedly suggested that selected regions are capable of exerting powerful growth impulses on national growth and development, there are studies in the literature which have raised doubts about the existence of transmitting growth impulses from one region to another. The objectives of this paper are to test whether there are any significant growth‐transmission effects across Indian states and to examine whether institutional improvements induced through economic reform have improved such transmission effects. Using data from both pre‐ and post‐1991 economic reform, this study suggests that the growth impulses passing from one state to another have been limited, although it appears to have increased in the post‐reform period. What is evident from this study is that the structure of the state economies, in terms of their sectoral composition, and the quality of their human capital and infrastructure, is a relevant variable from the policy point of view in boosting the growth spillover effects from the leading to the lagging states.

The Geographic Concentration of Knowledge: Scale, Agglomeration, and Congestion in Innovation Across U.S. States

Evidence of the importance of agglomeration economies in productivity is reported by a number of studies in regional economics. We extend the literature by looking into agglomeration and congestion in innovation and technological change using an endogenous innovation approach. It turns out that the geographic specificity of knowledge spillovers is also a central concern. Using data from U.S. states, evidence is found that knowledge spillovers are geographically concentrated but agglomeration economies far outweigh congestion effects. These results have important implications for new growth theory as well as regional economics because growth theorists have abandoned the scale implications of their models.

Using economic base analysis to solve development planning problems: A best practice approach

Economic base analysis is typically sold as a research tool on the promise that it can produce a multiplier. But it can do much more if the practitioner thinks to ask or if the applied geographer bothers to offer. This article identifies six economic development problems commonly faced by development practitioners and illustrates how solutions can be drawn from economic base studies. Two studies are featured; one is a regional economic base study that looks at both a large rural region and at five individual communities within the region. The other is a study of a single community that was initially completed in 1974 and replicated three times between 1974 and 1995. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Using economic base analysis to solve development planning problems: A best practice approach

Economic base analysis is typically sold as a research tool on the promise that it can produce a multiplier. But it can do much more if the practitioner thinks to ask or if the applied geographer bothers to offer. This article identifies six economic development problems commonly faced by development practitioners and illustrates how solutions can be drawn from economic base studies. Two studies are featured; one is a regional economic base study that looks at both a large rural region and at five individual communities within the region. The other is a study of a single community that was initially completed in 1974 and replicated three times between 1974 and 1995. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Changing Competitive Advantage in a Local Economy: The Case of Coventry, 1971-90

This paper examines the application of Porter's analysis of the competitive advantage of nations to understanding why one British local economy, Coventry, changed from a position of relative competitive disadvantage during the 1970s and early 1980s to one of advantage during the remainder of the 1980s. Each of Porter's four determinants of competitive advantage-supply conditions, demand conditions, firms, and clusters of activities—was found to have had some influence on explaining the change in Coventry's competitive advantage. With the qualification that analyses focus on processes of change and account is taken of the alterations in emphasis needed by changing the scale of analysis from national to local economies, Porter's ideas deserve a wider application and critical examination than they have hitherto received in local and regional economic studies.

BOOK REVIEWS

Essays in Regional Economic Studies, by Manoranjan Dutta, Jessie C. Hartline, and Peter D. Loeb (eds.). Spatial Statistics and Models, Theory and Decision Library, Vol. 40. by Gary L. Gaile and Cort J. Willmott (eds.) Input‐Output Analysis: Foundations and Extensions, by Ronald E. Miller and Peter D. Blair. Spatial Divisions of Labor: Social Structures and the Geography of Production, by Doreen Massey. Natural Resource Economics: Selected Papers, by S. V. Ciriacy‐Wantrup, edited by Richard C. Bishop and Stephen O. Andersen.

The regional economic impact of tourism and recreation in national parks

Although regional economic impact studies stop a long way short of providing economic evaluations of alternative uses of open space, they are valuable in quantifying tangible contributions of recreation and tourism to local economic activity. Such studies might be vital in supporting the case for conservation and national parks. Regional economic impact studies predict changes in output, income, and employment stemming from visitor expenditures. A review of the quantitative findings of twenty-nine such studies shows a surprising commonality in regional multiplier estimates in the range 1.25–1.89. This is despite wide diversity in the location, context, and methodology of the studies. The second section of the paper is a case study conducted in Cooloola National Park, Australia. Problems in measuring visitor expenditures are discussed in some detail, as it is argued that inaccuracies in this phase of research may be more significant than those arising from multiplier estimation. Markedly different impacts ...

Local Income Generation and Regional Income Redistribution in a System of Public Higher Education

In the past fifteen years or so considerable attention has been focused on the application of regional multiplier analysis to the estimation of regional economic parameters, i.e., regional economic impacts. With some variations, two general approaches have emerged in the literature-the input-output approach and the economic base approach. It has generally been concluded that the input-output approach is more sophisticated and comprehensive, since it requires the development of a complete interindustry model. The majority of regional economic impact studies still employ the economic base approach, however, because input-output studies typically entail prohibitive costs and data problems.1 More recently, conventional regional multiplier methods have been used in the analysis of two specific questions: (1) the economic impact of public sector institutions or projects [7, 8]; and (2) the distribution of economic benefits from public programs among incidence groups [6, 1 1]. The former has often become essential in project evaluation, and the latter has received more emphasis as governmental developmental planning has emerged as a policy priority. One important outgrowth of these questions has been the recent attention given to estimating local economic impacts of institutions of higher education, fostered in large part by the American Council on Education's development in 1971 of a comprehensive methodology for estimating such impacts [3].2

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY AND REGIONAL ECONOMICS

In a paper read at the 40th anniversary of the Department of Economic Geography of the Geographical Society USSR, a senior Soviet economic geographer reviews attempts to create a new scientific discipline known as regional economics. The new discipline, which is being fostered in particular by the Council for the Study of Productive Forces, the Soviet agency charged with preplanning studies, is found to lack a clear definition of subject, method and content beyond its avowed concern with economic regional studies. The author points out that such studies have long been within the domain of economic geography. He expresses concern that this subject matter may shift to the incipient discipline of regional economics if economic geography does not focus to a greater extent on economic aspects, including economic-mathematical techniques. He suggests that, if there is to be a regional economics, it might more properly concern itself with nongeographic topics, such as regional economic management, regional planni...

The Need for a Research Design in Southern Regional Economic Studies

It is the conviction of this correspondent that the regional research undertaken in the South today is grossly inadequate. Major improvements in adequacy and relevance are possible but will require an entirely new approach to regional problems that is beyond the resources of the individual research scholar. It is important, therefore, that the attention of the widest possible professional audience be called to this matter. Collective awareness is a necessary precondition to corrective action.