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The balanced socio–economic development of the territory of Russia is one of the main goals of managing the country’s economy. An important role in achieving this goal is played by the development of Russian border territories, especially those remote from the central regions of the country, but having sufficiently developed economic ties with neighboring countries. Russia and China have a fairly long border and vast border areas, in the development of which the governments of both countries are interested. A balanced long– term development of border areas is impossible without scientifically grounded state programs, the development of which presupposes a preliminary comparative analysis of the methodological and theoretical foundations of scientific theories, as well as their relevance to the set goals and objectives.The subject of research in the article is the heuristic possibilities of the cluster approach of the theory of spatial economics, on the one hand, and the ecosystem approach of the theory of socio–economic ecosystems, on the other. The research results are to identify the relative advantages and disadvantages of the cluster and system approaches as theoretical, methodological and practical tools for the development and implementation of programs for the socio–economic development of the territories of the Russian Federation bordering China. The author substantiated the advantages of the theory of socio–economic ecosystems as a theoretical and methodological tool for programs for the development of border areas.

In this paper we review the interconnection between the economic colonization and development of the Russian Far East from one hand and the formation of the system economic researches in the region from the others. The authors make accent on the construction of regional economic researches’ organizing structure and coordination. The organization and development of the Economic Research Institute of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is reviewing as an important stage of the scientific architecture for the Far Eastern region’ construction. The article is describing, that scientists and specialists of the Economic Research Institute carried out a long-term theoretical and empirical researches in analysis, modeling and forecasting of spatial processes in economic systems. The creation a new academic economic institute in the Russian Far East in the 1970-s made it possible to solve a number of major issues on the national level. First, to provide highly qualified research support for the development and implementation of large regional economic programs. Second, to develop new areas of national science, including the creation of a scientific school for the study of spatial economics. Third, to create an intellectual platform for international cooperation between researchers from the Pacific Russia and the expert community in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Currently, the most important area of the institute’s activities is the restoration of the regional scientific and economic infrastructure, through building the system of ‘new integration’ by combining educational and surviving academic and project organizations in the Far East on the principle of a distributed spatial network

This article shows the potentials of georeferenced data for labor market research. We review developments in the literature and highlight areas that can benefit from exploiting georeferenced data. Moreover, we share our experiences in geocoding administrative employment data including wage and socioeconomic information of almost the entire German workforce between 2000 and 2017. To make the data easily accessible for research, we create 1-square-kilometer grid cells aggregating a rich set of labor market characteristics and sociodemographics of unprecedented spatial precision. These unique data provide detailed insights into inner-city distributions for all German cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Accordingly, we provide an extensive series of maps in the Additional file 1 and describe Berlin and Munich in greater detail. The small-scale maps reveal substantial differences in various labor market aspects within and across cities.

Environmental justice is a term that includes both exposure to environmental ‘bads’ as well as access to environmental ‘goods’ which might be unequally experienced by different socio‑economic groups. In other words, environmental justice scholars study whether everybody can have an equal right to a healthy, nurturing environment which supports their development and well‑being. The environmental justice movement arose in response to the so‑called ‘environmental racism’ in the USA which affected communities of blue‑collar workers, people with lower income and of Afro‑American, Asian, Latin or native origins. Although initially environmental (in)justice was rooted in racial discrimination in the USA, nowadays it encompasses a wider range of issues, including problems at the local and global level, from degradation and pollution of natural resources to aspects related to spatial planning. Unequal access to environmental amenities – such as green spaces – was not the main focus of the discourse, however, it is gaining attention nowadays, especially in the context of urban environment. Urban green spaces influence health and well‑being of urban residents, but access to them can be uneven in terms of socio‑spatial heterogeneity. Growing challenges of living in cities, related to, among others, climate change, densification or sprawling of developments, urban heat islands, and other nuisances, require sustainable management of green spaces and provision of equal (socially just) access to benefits provided by these areas. Moreover, another important aspect of the discussion is linked to potentially beneficial planning decisions (e.g. increasing availability of urban green spaces) and their long‑term consequences, which may eventually lead to gentrification and increased social inequalities (environmental injustice). Complexity of the problem related to availability of green spaces in cities needs an interdisciplinary approach which combines ecological, spatial and socio‑economic aspects. The article reviews the current state‑of‑the‑art literature in the field of environmental justice, with particular emphasis on green space availability in the context of urban environment. Sprawiedliwość środowiskowa to termin, który zawiera zarówno ekspozycję na zagrożenia środowiskowe, jak i dostęp do dóbr środowiskowych, które mogą być różnie doświadczane przez poszczególne grupy społeczno‑ekonomiczne. Innymi słowy, sprawiedliwość środowiskowa bada, czy każdy może mieć równe prawo do korzystania ze środowiska, które zapewnia rozwój, zdrowie i dobre samopoczucie. Ruch na rzecz sprawiedliwości środowiskowej powstał w odpowiedzi na przejawy dyskryminacji na tle tzw. rasizmu środowiskowego w Stanach Zjednoczonych, której doświadczyły społeczności klasy robotniczej, o niskich dochodach, pochodzenia afroamerykańskiego, azjatyckiego, latynoamerykańskiego oraz rdzenni mieszkańcy. I choć niesprawiedliwość środowiskowa miała początkowo silny związek z dyskryminacją rasową w Stanach Zjednoczonych, obecnie jest to zagadnienie znacznie szersze, obejmujące problemy globalne i lokalne, związane z degradacją i skażeniem zasobów naturalnych oraz planowaniem przestrzennym. Mimo że nierówny dostęp do dóbr środowiskowych – takich jak tereny zieleni – nie był początkowo głównym nurtem dyskursu, obecnie zyskuje na znaczeniu, zwłaszcza w kontekście miast. Tereny zieleni w miastach są istotnym czynnikiem stanowiącym o dobrym zdrowiu i samopoczuciu mieszkańców, jednak dostęp do nich może być zróżnicowany pod względem społeczno‑przestrzennym. Z powodu coraz poważniejszych problemów dotyczących zarządzania i życia w miastach, związanych m.in. ze zmianami klimatu, zagęszczaniem czy rozlewaniem się przestrzennym miast, konieczne staje się zrównoważone zarządzanie zasobami terenów zieleni oraz zapewnienie równego (sprawiedliwego społecznie) dostępu do płynących z nich korzyści. Ważnym aspektem jest również związek między podejmowaniem pozornie korzystnych decyzji planistycznych w miastach (m.in. w celu zwiększenia dostępności terenów zieleni) a ich długofalowymi skutkami, które prowadzą do gentryfikacji i nasilenia niesprawiedliwości środowiskowej. Ze względu na złożoność problemu dostępności terenów zieleni w miastach zbadanie tego zjawiska wymaga podejścia interdyscyplinarnego, uwzględniającego aspekty ekologiczne, przestrzenne oraz społeczno‑ekonomiczne. Niniejszy artykuł stanowi przegląd literatury tematu i obecnie prowadzonych w tym zakresie badań, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem dostępu do zasobów terenów zieleni w miastach.

In this work, we propose a novel robustness measure for networks, which we refer to as Effective Resistance Centrality of a vertex (or an edge), defined as the relative drop of the Kirchhoff index due to deletion of this vertex (edge) from the network. Indeed, we provide a local robustness measure, able to catch which is the effect of either a specific vertex or a specific edge on the network robustness. The validness of this new measure is illustrated on some typical graphs and on a wide variety of well-known model networks. Furthermore, we analyse the topology of the US domestic flight connections. In particular, we investigate the role that airports play in maintaining the structure of the entire network.

Over the last century, the urban spatial structure of cities has transformed dramatically from a traditional monocentric configuration to varying forms of decentralized organization. This paper reviews theory and empirical evidence to understand the urban morphology of jobs and land use within a city. Our survey highlights four broad insights: (i) The evolution of monocentric to polycentric centers have been accompanied by structural changes within the city. (ii) The internal geography of a city is an outcome of the trade-off between the pull from agglomeration economies and the push from congestion. (iii) The presence of externalities implies that the equilibrium spatial organization achieved by profit-maximizing firms may not necessarily be optimal. This justifies the role of public policy in addressing associated market failures. (iv) The productive edge and competitiveness of a city can be enhanced by introducing policies that increase the overall connectivity to take advantage of economic opportunities across the metropolitan area. The survey also puts together a wide range of policy instruments useful in closing the gap between equilibrium urban spatial structures and the optimal outcome.

Relevant studies about the relationship between transport and economic development is not a new research area. Many advocates and policy makers believe that investment in transport projects can stimulate the economy in different ways. However, the impact of transportation projects on economic development is still very difficult to measure due to the underlying complexity of this topic. This is precisely the focus and contribution of this thesis. From the 1990s, the Chinese government started to plan the national High Speed Railway (HSR) development to alleviate the pressure on the conventional railway system. The first well-known HSR (���Jing-Jin��� railway) was introduced in 2008 to connect Beijing and Tianjin. Ever since then, a massive and rapid development of HSR has been introduced in various places of China, providing many scholars a unique opportunity to evaluate national scale transport investment. This thesis aims to analyze the impact of such remarkable HSR development in China from different perspectives. HSR can certainly change the spatial pattern of China due to its advantages in efficiency, comfortability and sustainability. The transport gap between the coastal line area and inland of China might be significantly reduced due to the shrinkage of time-space map caused by the provision of HSR services. Therefore, this thesis discusses the impact of HSR, from spatial perspective, by developing an accessibility measure index based on railway timetable data and then evaluating the accessibility changes for each prefecture-level city. From the macroeconomic perspective, utilizing the results from accessibility measure index to a production function model, this thesis produces significant results in terms of changing the accessibility level on economic growth, accounting for spatial interrelationships between prefecture level cities. On the other hand, this thesis also develops a micro founded agent-based model to analyze the causal relationship between HSR and economic development, and empirically verify the results from the microeconomic perspective. Based on the empirical investigations in this thesis, HSR should be treated as a ���necessary��� but not ���sufficient��� condition for economic development. In addition, knowing its potential in terms of its impact on economic growth, it is beneficial to many stakeholders.

The purpose of the study is to clarify theories of “spatial economics” and to analyse the theory of “new economic geography”, in particular, to find out peculiarities of the spatial economics theories applying in the context of integration of Ukraine into the European Union and to simulate theoretically the consequences of Ukraine’s accession to this integration group. Methodology. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the principles of the spatial economics theories, scientific works and researches of domestic and foreign scientists. The methodological grounds for the study are both general scientific and special scientific methods, which in the complex are used to achieve the purpose of the study. The historical-evolutionary and critical-constructive analysis, theoretical generalization (in the study of approaches to the analysis of the spatial economics theories); induction, deduction, generalization and comparison (in the study of the main principles of the theories of spatial economics using in terms of economic integration); abstract-logical and graphic interpretation (in the study of the peculiarities of integration of Ukraine into the European Union) are used. Results. The basic idea of the spatial economics theory is that the size of the market interacts with economies of scale at the firm level and transport costs, and forms the division of economic activity of the country in a spatial aspect. Applying the basic principles of the spatial economics theories to Ukraine made it possible to distinguish several main features: the difference in the country regions development; the probability of becoming a new “periphery” of the European Union; the relations between Ukraine and European Union in the “centre-periphery” aspect depend on the economy’s openness and the cross-border interaction of Ukraine with the so-called “eastern periphery” of the European Union. Practical implications are to develop recommendations for the successful economic integration of Ukraine into the European Union. Value/originality is the theoretical generalization and development of the concepts of spatial economics in the international economic integration process. The highlighted theoretical positions can be used for further study of theories of spatial economics.

Summary This paper estimates slum residents’ willingness to pay for formalized land tenure in Pune, India. The results show that the legal assurance of slum residents’ occupancy of their lands could benefit them. Previous studies have discussed the legal and non-legal factors that substantially influence the tenure security of residents in informal settlements; however, it remains unclear how and to what extent the assignment of legal property rights through the formalization of land tenure improves the tenure security of residents in informal settlements and living conditions, even in the presence of other legal and non-legal factors that also contribute to their tenure security. To address this question, this study focuses on the city of Pune, India, where government agencies have formalized slums by legally ensuring the occupancy of the residents under the “slum declaration.” Applying a hedonic price model to an original household survey, this paper investigates how slum residents evaluate formalized land tenure. A spatial econometrics method is also applied to account for spatial dependence and spatially autocorrelated unobserved errors. The spatial hedonic analysis shows that the premium of slum declaration is worth 19.2% of the average housing rent in slums. The associated marginal willingness to pay is equivalent to 6.7% of the average household expenditure, although it is heterogeneous depending on a household’s caste and other legal conditions. This finding suggests that the assurance of occupancy rights is a vital component of land-tenure formalization policy even if it does not directly provide full property rights.

Residential support is one key factor that increases the probability of a positive outcome of mega events. Especially, pre-event support seems important, since hosting the event often requires public consensus. Within the discussion of determinants of pre-event support, the distance between a resident’s home (district) and the event area has been neglected so far. To explore the spatial nature of event support, representative survey data ( n = 900) from the 2016 Olympic Games is analyzed using ordered probit and spatial regression models. Estimates reveal a lower probability of high support for residents living close to the main event area. Moreover, the rate of marginal changes in the probability of support decreases with decreasing distance to other areas.

Economic and social working arrangement in Russia is determined by spatial nonuniformity and underpopulation. The existing mono-towns are quite different and yet there isn’t single methodological foundation or practical way of development their territories. Taking in view their considerable mass and conglomeration of population in them, finding a source of Russian mono-towns modernization is becoming a major factor of macroeconomic dynamics.

My thesis investigates the spatial economics of knowledge accumulation. The main contributions of my work are the following: First, I explore the theoretical foundations and the economic relevance of the spatial heterogeneity in knowledge accumulation. The distinction between the creation and transmission of knowledge and their respective local determinants are the main focus of this exploration that links endogenous growth theory and recent research on spatial aspects of human capital and innovation. Second, I present a theoretical analysis on the role of face-to-face interactions in knowledge spillovers. This search-theoretic model considers the creation and transmission of knowledge and determines that knowledge externalities do not reach their optimal extent because agents choose their partners for interaction too narrowly. Third, my empirical analysis for European regions shows that geographical and technological proximity foster innovative spillovers between regions. A spatial-autoregressive estimation of the reduced form of the knowledge production function provides the framework for this investigation., Meine Dissertation untersucht die räumliche Ökonomik der Wissensübertragung. Die zentralen Forschungsbeiträge meiner Arbeit sind Folgende: Zunächst untersuche ich die theoretischen Grundlagen sowie die ökonomische Relevanz der räumlichen Heterogenität der Wissensübertragung. Die Unterscheidung zwischen Schöpfung und Weitergabe von Wissen und ihrer jeweiligen lokalen Bestimmungsfaktoren sind Hauptgegenstand dieser Ausarbeitung, die endogene Wachstumstheorie und aktuelle Forschungsbeiträge zu räumlichen Aspekten von Humankapital und Innovation verknüpft. Zweitens stelle ich eine theoretische Analyse des Beitrags von face-to-face Interaktionen zu Wissensexternalitäten vor. Dieses Modell berücksichtigt Schöpfung und Weitergabe von Wissen und stellt fest, dass Wissensexternalitäten nicht ihr optimales Ausmaß erreichen, da Individuen bei der Bestimmung ihrer Interaktionspartner zu wählerisch sind. Drittens zeigt meine empirische Analyse europäischer Regionen, dass geografische und technologische Nähe innovative Externalitäten zwischen Regionen stärken. Eine räumlich-autoregressive Schätzung der reduzierten Form der Wissens-Produktionsfunktion liefert den Rahmen dieser Untersuchung.

We calculate the rate (or gradient) at which employment declines depending on the increase in the distance between regional capitals and peripheral municipalities in Colombia in 2005. Employment in Colombia is concentrated in the central region, in the mountainous andean sector and the Caribbean, therefore, a set of seven regions, which are the most representative in the country because of their economic activity, were analyzed. In order to measure the rate, a log-lin model by OLS is estimated using employment information from the DANE Census of 2005. The results show that in five of the seven regions, the gradient is statistically significant and negative, because employment is reduced from the capital to distant municipalities, following the pattern of Clarck’s law, leading to items to be considered in regional development policy. Se calcula la tasa (o gradiente) a la que el empleo desciende conforme aumenta la distancia entre las capitales regionales y los municipios periféricos en Colombia, en el año 2005. El empleo en el país se localiza en la parte central, en el sector andino montañoso y en el Caribe. Por lo tanto, se analiza un conjunto de las siete regiones más representativas del país por su nivel de actividad económica. Para medir el gradiente de empleo, se estima un modelo log-lin por M.C.O. y se utiliza la información de empleo del censo DANE del 2005. Los resultados muestran que en cinco de las siete regiones el gradiente es estadísticamente significativo y con signo negativo, por lo que el empleo se reduce a partir de las capitales hacia los municipios distantes. En consecuencia, este cálculo permite establecer en qué regiones el empleo se concentra más en torno a la capital regional de acuerdo con el patrón sugerido en la ley de Clarck, lo que da pie a elementos por considerar en la política de desarrollo regional. Universidad de San Buenaventura - Cali

The article addresses issues of formation of the national and global infrastructure in the Arctic and its Asia-Pacific zone in the context of the new challenges in the development of the region, associated mainly with the political and military deterioration of relations between Russia and the United States. The study also characterizes international experience in the area of infrastructure researches and presents strategic documents of both countries in the sphere of the study and development of the Arctic and its territories. The author concludes that research organizations need to overcome their passivity to strengthen cooperation between these structures from both sides, which is absolutely essential for the development of a global scientific and other kinds of infrastructure and for the further successful, rational and effective exploitation of the Arctic areas

Background: The adequate supply of infrastructure is essential to ensure increasing productivity and economic growth. Research found this relationship to be significantly positive. The external effects that spending on public capital has on the production function of private firms stimulates economic growth overall. This implies that public capital inputs should be incorporated into the production function. Aim: The way provincial or regional growth depends on infrastructure is investigated in this article and it is applied to data from KwaZulu-Natal province, as an illustration. Setting: This study investigates the extent to which infrastructure in KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa leads towards economic growth of the province. Methods: From a theoretical framework, this article develops an endogenous growth model, which investigates the association between provincial public capital stock expenditure and economic growth. Data series for public capital formation are first developed to apply in this study and others to follow. Econometric techniques are then employed, using quarterly data between 2001 and 2015, to assess the set hypothesis that growth in expenditure on public capital leads to national economic growth. Results: The empirical results support the argument of a positive relationship between provincial capital stock and economic growth in the long-term. The findings also suggests that the long-term causality or effect fades over time, albeit slowly. Conclusion: The nature and statistical significance of the long-term equilibrium relationship seems to be ambiguous at best. Some evidence of an equilibrium relationship in the short-term was, however, also observed. In conclusion, there also seems to be some causality between provincial capital stock and provincial gross domestic product in the short-run.

So far, the economic assessments of tidal stream energy have been conducted from a sectorial, spatially dimensionless point of view; or in other words, on the basis of mean values obtained as representative of the average across the tidal industry. However, as this marine technology progresses, such assessments will need to be performed on a per-project basis, which inevitably requires the consideration of site-related variables: from the tidal resource to the local topography and accessibility. With this in view, this thesis develops a new methodology to include the spatial dimension into the economic analysis of tidal stream energy projects, and more specifically into the LCOE, in a continuous manner – thereby allowing for macro-micro linkages: impacts of a project over an entire region and vice versa. The methodology is materialised in the form of a new ad hoc tool and illustrated through a case study in the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary (UK), a region with one of the greatest potentials for tidal power development in the world. As a result, spatial cost patterns over the study domain, together with environmental and socioeconomic constraints for project deployment are showed. They constitute the basis on which informed decisions on public and private funding allocation should be taken, for a further sustainable development of tidal stream energy hotspots and an integrated coastal management of the regions of interest.

Land suitable for agricultural production is limited and should be used in a sustainable manner and protected. Countries of the former communist bloc, where the majority of the agricultural land was dynamically privatized, are in a special situation. Land has been used there also to serve the needs of growing cities, for investment speculation and as entitlement to subsidies. Therefore, legal regulations protecting agricultural land were introduced. In the case of Poland, particular attention should be paid to the radical act of 2016, which completely stopped the sale of Treasury resources and strongly limited sales on the private market. However, the new act caused a number of side effects and various pathologies. This article examines the real effects of policy aimed at combating the misuse of agricultural land. It was assumed that most of the side effects will be observed around big cities, defined as Functional Urban Areas. The following methods were used: a survey in Polish FUAs, analysis of transactions on the real estate market in 2015&ndash, 2018 and in-depth interviews with representatives of local governments and relevant institutions. The study revealed a number of pathologies, such as ways of circumventing new restrictions or searching for legal loopholes.

Considered are links of the modern French spatial economics (the 1990—2000s) with other trends and schools of scientific thought. Some typical features of the modern French spatial economics are demonstrated. The evolution of the theory of proximity and typology of localized economic systems is shown in detail

In connection with the anniversary of the Institute of Economics, the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (70 years since the start of the academic economic research in the Urals and 40 years of the Institute’s functioning), the history of formation of economic research is presented. Particular attention is paid to the evolution of spatial concepts in the field of administrative-territorial planning and allocation of productive forces, interregional cooperation, infrastructure priorities formation

Characteristic is given of conceptual issues of the so-called “spatial sciences” and opportunities for using their methodological tools and techniques to conduct interdisciplinary research in the field of spatial economics. Ways are determined to coordinate the conceptual approaches of these disciplines based on a single subject of research in order to further conduct specific research activities to improve the spatial development of the national economy

L’objectif de cet article est d’etudier, sur la periode 1980 a 1992, les effets qu’ont eu les spillovers des connaissances technologiques, a differents niveaux territoriaux (local, national et international), sur la dynamique de la productivite du travail dans les industries manufacturieres des regions europeennes. En particulier, l’utilisation d’une version modifiee de l’equation catching-up et d’une version elargie de la base de donnees REGIO, a permis d’evaluer de facon empirique la propension des spillovers des connaissances a expliquer la croissance de la productivite du travail dans les entreprises localisees dans les differentes regions europeennes. On analyse l’eventuel trade-off entre la pression locale (concernant le transfert de connaissances tacites) et la pression globale (concernant la diffusion de connaissances entierement codifiees) en tant que determinants possibles de la croissance de la productivite manufacturiere au niveau regional en Europe, sur la periode 1980 a 1992.

We study the relationship between geography and growth. To do so, we first develop a dynamic spatial growth theory with realistic geography. We characterize the model and its balanced growth path and propose a methodology to analyze equilibria with different levels of migration frictions. We bring the model to the data for the whole world economy at a 1º times 1º geographic resolution. We then use the model to quantify the gains from relaxing migration restrictions as well as to describe the evolution of the distribution of economic activity in the different migration scenarios. Our results indicate that fully liberalizing migration would increase welfare more than three-fold and would significantly affect the evolution of particular regions in the world. We then use the model to study the effect of a spatial shock. We focus on the example of a rise in the sea level and find that coastal flooding can have an important impact on welfare by changing the geographic-dynamic path of the world economy.

The parameters and tendencies of economic space evolution have been considered, as well as logic and dynamics of reproduction of its endogenous components – factors of production: human, technological, natural, institutional, organizational and information factors

This paper assesses the location determinants of the newly created firms in the creative sector within the framework of Discrete Choice Models. Estimations using a conditional logit model, which incorporate spatial effects of neighbouring regions in the location choices of firms, yield the following results: i) the concentration of creative and knowledge-based activities, due to agglomeration economies, play an important role in location decisions of new creative establishments; ii) in contrast, the concentration of service-business activities has a negative impact on location choices, which may be due to the fact that creative firms privilege interdependencies with other activity sectors, such as innovation/ knowledge-based activities; iii) creative firms tend to favour a diversified industrial tissue and related variety, in order to enjoy from inter-sectorial synergies; iv) higher education at a regional level has a highly significant, positive effect on location decisions, while lower educational levels of human capital negatively affect those decisions, explained by the specific requirements that creative firms usually have of a highly skilled labour force; v) tolerant/ open environments attract creative activities; vi) creative firms tend to favour municipalities where the stock of knowledge and conditions for innovative activity are higher. Location decisions of creative firms also vary according to the creative sector they belong to and to their own characteristics, firm’s educational level or technology-intensity. Finally, municipality attributes are more important in terms of firms’ location decisions than the characteristics of nearby regions.

International audience; This chapter discusses the ongoing transformations of the French defence support. Considering the importance of economic activities related to defence support, this contribution aims at discussing the evolution of defence support and its costs for the State. The literature in defence economics presents very little analysis of defence support in its different forms. Neither space nor base locations have been deeply analysed in such a literature. We try to bridge this gap in an original research framework. We focus on the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) of defence platforms. More particularly, we focus on the array of measures that surround French defence support in MRO since the end of the 1990s. Considering both economic and spatial leverages, how can the organisation of MRO be optimised? With concepts from spatial economics, we propose a new look on the defence support system. We examine new economic interconnections (e.g. Public Private Partnerships and outsourcing) between military and civilian activities. More broadly speaking, this path of research could help us to better understand the new type of economic interrelations between defence organisation and 'territory' as a social fabric.

In most countries economic prosperity is very unevenly distributed. Regional, urban and neighbourhood policies are often based on concerns about these kinds of disparities, and reducing such disparities is a key policy objective in many countries. High quality evaluation is central to understanding how to meet these objectives. However, impact evaluation – which seeks to identify the causal effects of policies – is often in short supply for spatial policies. In this viewpoint we highlight three barriers that hamper more rigorous impact evaluation. First, data availability constrains research. Second, identifying the causal impact of polices is difficult. Third, there are several practical barriers. We briefly consider each of these in turn, and make practical recommendations for change. Better policy design, more use of open data, and capacity-building for government analysts are three important and achievable steps in improving the extent and quality of future impact evaluations.

Empirical literature on the geographic location of creative activities is mostly based on the spatial analysis of industries, disregarding the creative employment that lies outside the necessarily limited boundaries of creative industries. In this paper, we analyse agglomeration and co-location patterns of core creative activities by considering both ‘embedded’ (creative professionals working outside the creative sectors) and ‘specialized’ (creative professionals working in the creative sectors) creative employment. Using location quotients and principal component factor and cluster analyses, applied to all 308 Portuguese municipalities, for ten core creative groups, we found that the geographical agglomeration and co-location patterns of these core creative groups differ substantially. The typical arguments sustained by literature - the tendency of creative industries/ employment to agglomerate and co-locate in large metropolises - are only supported in the case of knowledge-intensive activities subjected to Intellectual Property Rights, most notably ‘Advertising/ Marketing’, ‘Publishing’, ‘TV/ Radio’, and ‘Software/ Digital Media’, densely concentrated and co-located in highly developed, large urban centres, with high levels of human capital. These arguments do not hold for the traditional creative activities of ‘Architecture’, ‘Design/ Visual Arts’ and ‘Crafts’, which, although co-located, appear mostly dispersed with small concentrations around intermediate urban centres. ‘Teaching/ training/ research’ present quite dispersed geographical patterns with some clusterization around municipalities with tertiary education institutions. ‘Film/ video/ photography’ and ‘Music/ Performing arts’ show some dispersion throughout the Portuguese territory with concentration around small urban centres and in rural areas. It is evident that, from agglomeration to co-location patterns, creative employment reveals heterogeneous characteristics across creative groups. Indeed, the results obtained show that the differentiated (co)location patterns of creative activities are mainly a regional phenomenon distinguishing regions within the same country, and not only an aspect differentiating countries in international comparisons.

The authors investigate the impact of the golden quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on the spatial organization and efficiency of manufacturing activity. The GQ project upgraded the quality and width of 3,633 miles of roads in India. The authors use a difference-in-difference estimation strategy to compare non-nodal districts based upon their distance from the highway system. For the organized portion of the manufacturing sector, we find that GQ led to improvements in both urban and rural areas of non-nodal districts located 0 to 10 kilometers from GQ. These higher entry rates and increases in plant productivity are not present in districts 10 to 50 kilometers away. The entry effects are stronger in rural areas of districts, but the differences between urban and rural areas are modest relative to the overall effect. For the unorganized sector, we do not find material effects from the GQ upgrades in either setting. These findings suggest that in the time frames that we can consider the first five to seven years during and after upgrades, the economic effects of major highway projects contribute modestly to the migration of the organized sector out of Indian cities but are unrelated to the increased urbanization of the unorganized sector.

This paper examines what regional characteristics drove urban economic growth in Europe during the past decade. Possible impacts on the new member states in Central Europe due to expansion of the European Union are accounted for by comparison between two periods, before and after 2004. With a focus on cities, a more precise view of Europe-wide regional disparities and their development can be provided than by research based on larger territories, which prevails in the empirical literature on regional convergence. After 2004, economic growth accelerated considerably in the least developed peripheral regions and in the wealthier capital cities of Central European countries. In the medium term, however, no equalisation of disparities within Europe can be exptected. The analysis suggests that economic prosperity in Central Europe and in other parts of Europe depends on the performance of urban “growth poles” favouring regional innovation. This implies that it is a task of regional policy to support provision of a high-quality infrastructure for education and innovation in cities and to encourage utilisation of these facilities within wider regions.

Le document résume des recherches sur l’approvisionnement alimentaire des villes en Afrique et en Asie, menées en collaboration avec des chercheurs nationaux, sur une période de vingt ans. Les principales questions de recherche sont les suivantes : Quel est le rôle de la proximité géographique et relationnelle dans la performance des filières alimentaires en Afrique et en Asie? La grande distribution transforme-t-elle les filières au bénéfice des acteurs défavorisés ? Les travaux s’appuient sur la littérature en économie spatiale, en économie des organisations rurales et le cadre théorique des chaînes globales de valeur. Ils montrent le rôle de la proximité géographique dans l’alimentation des villes en aliments périssables selon les prédictions de Von Thünen. Nous soulignons le rôle de la proximité relationnelle dans la réduction des incertitudes en termes de quantité, de prix et de qualité, auxquelles sont soumis les vendeurs et acheteurs de produits alimentaires. Des pistes de recherche futures sont présentées, en particulier pour mieux quantifier l’impact économique, social et environnemental de l’agriculture de proximité par rapport à des approvisionnements alimentaires de longue distance., The document summarises the results of twenty years of coordination of research programmes on urban food supply in Africa and Asia in collaboration with national researchers. The main research questions are the following ones: What is the role of geographical and relational proximity in the performance of food chains in Africa and Asia? Does modern distribution change food chains in favour of the less wealthy stakeholders? The research is based on spatial economics, economics of rural organisations and global value chain analysis. The results show the role of geographical proximity in the supply of perishable commodities in line with Von Thünen predictions. We identify the role of relational proximity in reducing uncertainties in terms of quantity, price and quality, which the sellers and buyers of food commodities must face. Future research areas are presented, including a deeper evaluation of economic, environmental and social impact of proximity agriculture relative to more distant food supplying areas.

This paper lays down the path from the period of the European Renaissance until the present time of how economists and geographers finally came together in their pursuit of explaining economic phenomenon taking into account geographical features based on the concept of location. Underlying this path is the fact that social sciences cannot be taken one by one and independently from each other: One cannot separate economics, political science, political economy, anthropology, sociology, psychology and arts from geography and history. Moreover, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy as well as mathematics and statistics also interact with this big picture. It is due to this synthesis aspect that today as a result, following Paul Krugman, the New Economic Geography emerged as an hybrid field, Bu makale, Avrupa'da Rönesans döneminden günümüze değin geçen süre içinde, ekonomistler ve coğrafya bilimcilerinin nihayet nasıl bir yol izleyip biraraya gelerek ekonomik olayları mekân kavramı üzerinden coğrafi özelliklere dayandırarak belirlemeye başladığını analiz etmektedir. Bu birleşmenin altında yatan gerçek, sosyal bilim dallarının aslında hiçbir zaman tek tek ve biribirlerinden bağımsız olarak ele alınamayacaklarıdır: Ekonomi, siyaset bilimi, siyasi ekonomi, antropoloji, sosyoloji, psikoloji ve sanat , esasen coğrafya ve tarih bilimlerinden ayrılamazlar. Ayrıca, fizik, kimya, biyoloji, astronomi, hatta matematik ve istatistik dahi bu büyük çerçevede yer almaktadırlar. Sonuçta bugün, sosyal bilimlerdeki bu sentez açısı dolayısıyla, Paul Krugman'ı izleyerek Yeni Ekonomik Coğrafya bilimi ortaya çıkmıştır.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are used for inputting, storing, managing, analysing and mapping spatial data. This article argues that each of these functions can help researchers interested in spatial economics. In addition, GIS provide access to new data which is both interesting in its own right, but also as a source of exogenous variation.

The spatial and economics has not given careful attention to space. This article surveys recent contributions on the spatial or regional economics, which often overlaps with urban economics. As this literature is very heterogeneous, we use the concept of spatial externalities as the common criterion for the basic classification of the studies. The pecuniary externalities, which are by-product of the market transactions, became the cornerstone of the New Economic Geography (NEG) introduced by Krugman. NEG is presently the dominant theory in the economics of space as it builds on robust microeconomic foundations. Yet its empirical verification is at the very beginning. On the contrary the technological externalities are believed to arise rather spontaneously because of the physical proximity rather then intentional economic transactions. The existing research on these externalities is predominately empiric. Meanwhile the human capital externalities are example of static technological externalities; the related externalities of labour pooling are of pecuniary nature. Finally, the knowledge externalities or spillovers are pure technological externalities. There are three main strands of literature that employ this concept: studies on local economic growth, empirical studies on the localized knowledge spillovers (part of it known as spatial econometrics) and Italian New Industrial Geography. Many of the studies give important insight on the formation of economic space but all lacks generality. For this reason it would be vital in the future to extent the studies that they could deal with different kinds of spatial externalities and directly compare their individual importance in territory.

In this paper we use British data to ask whether local employment density–which we take as a proxy of labor market competition–affects employer-provided training. We find that training is less frequent in economically denser areas. We interpret this result as evidence that the balance of poaching and local agglomeration effects on training is negative. The effect of density on training is not negligible: when evaluated at the average firm size in the local area, a 1% increase in density reduces the probability of employer-provided training by 0.014, close to 4% of the average incidence of this type of training in the UK.

This article employs established techniques from the spatial economics literature to identify regional patterns of income and growth in Mexico and to examine how they have changed over the period spanned by trade liberalization and how they may be linked to the income divergence observed following liberalization. The article first shows that divergence has emerged in the form of several income clusters that only partially correspond to traditional geographic regions. Next, when regions are defined by spatial correlation in incomes, a south clearly exists, but the north seems to be restricted to the states directly on the United States (U.S.) border and there is no center region. Overall, the principal dynamic of both the increased spatial dependency and the increased divergence lies not on the border but in the sustained underperformance of the southern states, starting before the North American free-trade agreement, and to a lesser extent in the superior performance of an emerging convergence club in the north-center of the country.

Using US county data, we estimate employment growth equations to analyze how the spatial distribution of jobs has changed between 1972 and 2000. We find that total employment has become increasingly concentrated. This aggregate picture hides important sectoral differences though: whereas non-service employment has been spreading out, service jobs have clustered in areas of high aggregate employment. By controlling for employment at different distances, we explicitly take into account the spatial dimension. This allows us to conclude that the spreading out of non-service jobs has benefitted counties 20 to 70 km away from large agglomerations, whereas the concentration of services has come at the expense of jobs in the surrounding 20 kilometers. Publicado

The incorporation of space allows the establishment of a more precise relationship between a contaminating input, a contaminating byproduct and emissions that reach the final receptor. However, the presence of asymmetric information impedes the implementation of the first-best policy. As a solution to this problem a site specific deposit refund system for the contaminating input and the contaminating byproduct are proposed. Moreover, the utilization of a successive optimization technique first over space and second over time enables definition of the optimal intertemporal site specific deposit refund system.

In this article, we study a class of functions defined by a system of linear inequalities which arises naturally in at least four different economic issues: redistribution, spatial economics, theory of incentives and utility theory. The main tool used to study solutions of those inequalities is the duality theory for the Monge-Kantorovich problem with a given marginal difference.