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In 2020, a market in convalescent blood plasma developed as a potential treatment for COVID‐19. During this time, commercial plasma centres—which collect the blood plasma from paid donors for pharmaceutical production—paid recovered patients as much as US$100 for a donation of blood plasma containing COVID‐19 antibodies, from which they manufactured an experimental treatment. This paper uses the commercial collection of COVID‐19 antibodies found in plasma as an entry point into exploring how racially uneven exposures to disease may produce biovalue. The first section considers the spatial history of antibody‐derived plasma products, using historical research to examine how inmates at predominantly black plantation‐prisons in the US South were valued for antibody production in the 1960s. Against this historical relief, the second section examines the spatiality of antibodies in current practices of the plasma industry, as well as in the plasma industry's response to the COVID‐19 pandemic (even as those efforts eventually failed in clinical trials). If geographical literatures on environmental exposure, as well as on COVID‐19 transmission, discuss exposure as an outcome of racial capitalism, this paper emphasises the productive opportunities that capital can solicit from exposures, especially those that are useful to different forms of biomedicine. By critically scrutinising the practice of ‘sharing immunity’ and attending to its decidedly geographic constitution, we can see how what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls the ‘death‐dealing logics’ of racial capitalism may also work through the seemingly affirmative practices and communal imaginaries behind the redistribution of antibodies as medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world": And what's economic geography going to do about it? It is against this looming future that Henry Yeung ([13]) has written "Troubling economic geography" about the discipline's looming future. The paper is a critical commentary of Henry Yeung's paper, 'Troubling economic geography: new directions in the post-pandemic world'. In Kuhn's example, one now saw only bunnies, whereas before it was only ducks.[4] Or, in the case of economic geography, as John Hudson said, he saw now only "points and lines", whereas before he saw regions and Hartshornian element complexes.[5] The second is economic geography after the 1970s crisis of deindustrialisation and Fordism. [Extracted from the article]

The COVID‐19 pandemic and consequent health regulations compelled office‐based knowledge workers to work from home (WFH) en masse. Government and employer directives to WFH disrupted common norms of commuting to city office spaces and reshaped the geographies of office‐based knowledge work, with potentially lasting implications. Pandemic‐induced cohabitation of work‐space and home‐space saw more workers navigating the performance of paid labour in the home to produce new relational geographies of home, work, and worker. This paper provides a window on the lived experiences of the sizeable cohort of office‐based knowledge workers displaced from Sydney's CBD to undertake WFH in the Illawarra region during the pandemic. We explore the unfolding pandemic geographies of work and home by drawing together feminist economic geography and geographies of home literatures. Our analysis reveals the emergent and variegated time‐spaces of WFH that emerged as the rhythms and routines of WFH shaped the home and vice versa. The analysis also reveals the differentiated agency of embodied workers to orchestrate emergent configurations of WFH, shaped by gender and by the socio‐materialities of home shaped by size, tenure, and life‐cycle stage. We conclude by drawing out important lines of analysis for further research as "hybrid work" evidently becomes entrenched post‐COVID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian superannuation industry has grown enormously over the past 30 years. Whereas working people are automatically enrolled at their workplaces, the head offices of many industry funds are in Melbourne rather than Sydney. Melbourne's dominance of the superannuation industry is explained, in part, by happenstance—the location of major unions and employer groups and their initiatives in response to the enabling legislation. Other factors identified include opportunism, cooperation, and the advantages of growth. Government‐prompted mergers and acquisitions have also reinforced the dominance of Melbourne, notwithstanding attempts by Sydney‐based superannuation funds to out‐compete their Melbourne rivals. Whereas the geographical bifurcation of the Australian superannuation industry has been mediated by the formation of a Queensland‐based superfund "champion," it is suggested that it faces numerous challenges. In conclusion, avenues for future research are sketched, focusing upon the future of Melbourne as the centre of the superannuation industry, the role of digital platforms in service delivery, pension adequacy, and the increasing importance of Australian funds in global financial markets. This is one of the first academic paper in the field of economic and financial geography to document and explain the growth and significance of Melbourne as the dominant superannuation centre in the Australian financial industry. It has far‐reaching implications for understanding the Australian landscape of finance with implications for policy, welfare, and geographical theory. Its explanation of the rise of Melbourne combines happenstance with core concepts of spatial differentiation anchored in contemporary economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since austerity policies in the UK began in 2010, homelessness has risen rapidly. Drawing from feminist geographical theories and methodologies, this paper examines experiences of homelessness under austerity in Haringey, London through photo‐elicitation research with one participant, Tessa. This paper argues that home(un)making—the constantly shifting balance of homemaking and unmaking—is central to everyday experiences of, and resistance to, austerity. The paper first demonstrates how Tessa resists austerity through practices of homemaking that enable her to cope with the difficulties of homelessness at a time of austerity. Next, it explores how Tessa's relationships with other actors in the homeless shelter—other residents and government officials—contributed to processes of home‐unmaking, exacerbating the hardships she experiences. By developing the concept of home(un)making, therefore, this paper aims to show the dynamism of home for homeless people under austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so‐called age of AI, industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution, etc. all attempt to conjure into existence a new technological paradigm. Should we believe the hype? This paper draws on neo‐Schumpeterian and régulation theory to widen the scope of this debate and examine techno‐economic and institutional discontinuities. In exploring these discontinuities, this paper argues, first, that growth regimes are not necessarily tenable as indicators of new paradigms, and, second, that there are (infra)structural discontinuities between the ICT/post‐Fordist era and those of the AI/platform era. Platformisation entails a distinct institutional logic, regime of accumulation (RA) and mode of social régulation (MSR). The clusters of technological and institutional changes behind this shift have not yet been sufficiently addressed by economic geography and associated literatures. In reconceptualising the shift in terms of (infra)structural discontinuity, the paper synthesises neo‐Schumpeterian and régulation theory to identify both technological and institutional changes in the régulation of capitalist accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a three‐region economic geography model with workers of heterogeneous skills and mobility rates to consider how first‐nature, regional differences impact both inter‐ and intraregional inequality. In our model, the skill premium within a region summarizes both the degree of intraregional inequality between mobile, skilled workers and immobile, unskilled workers and the interregional inequality through differences in the welfare of unskilled workers across regions. Regions with the highest skill premium have the greatest degree of intraregional inequality and provide the lowest level of welfare to unskilled workers, relative to other regions. We find that the skill premium will be higher in regions with a greater supply of unskilled labor, lower supply of housing, or are more remote. An increase in a region's housing supply or centrality will lower intraregional inequality and raise the welfare of the local, unskilled workforce. However, the magnitude of these changes are declining in the initial number of skilled workers in the region. The model is extended to consider imperfectly elastic housing supply. The larger the price elasticity of housing, the larger the range of values, such that more populated regions will host a disproportionate share of skilled workers, have lower levels of intraregional inequality, and provide higher levels of welfare for unskilled workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical overview of research in geography that has explored the economic lives of Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals. I begin by considering how the consumption and production of mainstream commercial gaybourhoods is the primary approach through which geographies of sexuality, and queer geographies have engaged with economy. I then examine the ways in which digital spaces have blurred the boundaries of consumption and production, arguing that digital spaces are indicative of the much broader range of economic actions in which LGBTQ+ people take part. Finally, I turn to Gibson‐Graham's 'diverse economies', suggesting that this concept can attend to the existence of numerous multi‐scalar and overlapping queer economies. Developing a queer economies research agenda is crucial to turn attention beyond consumption and production in a narrow range of gaybourhoods, and to better portray the lives of those frequently excluded from mainstream commercial LGBTQ+ economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to an emerging discussion about transformative enterprises, which are increasingly seen as change agents in sustainability transformations. Some scholars have hitherto described them as pioneering enterprises that strive for fundamental changes towards sustainability at different scales. Economic geography has, however, so far glossed over a micro‐perspective on such enterprises. In this paper, we define transformative enterprises in detail by systematically identifying and elaborating their characteristics and actions. We ask: What operationalizable characteristics that refer to transformative enterprises are discussed in the literature? How can we define transformative enterprises? Starting from a comprehensive literature review, we identify nine key dimensions of transformative enterprises that we specify with a set of indicators, and we then synthesize our finding with a definition. With this contribution, we further develop the concept of transformative enterprise in economic geography and show how it complements current conceptualizations of firm‐level agency and system‐level agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing amount of literature in economic geography showing that historical episodes can leave long‐lasting cultural and institutional legacies across space. For credibly identifying such persistent effects the analyses should not pick up trends preceding the respective episodes. Against this background, the paper re‐examines the famous case of the German division and reunification. The empirical focus is on the persistent mark‐up of women in work in East relative to West German regions that are often associated with legacy effects of the socialist regime that was in place in East Germany during the country's four decades of division. In contrast to the conventional wisdom in academia, policy, and the public, the current paper shows that the higher share of working women in East German regions is not due to a legacy of socialism. Female labor force participation was already remarkably higher in the East before the introduction of socialism. The general lesson is that any attempt to explain spatial variation in individual decision‐making by persisting institutional and cultural legacies of certain historical episodes needs to assess regional conditions predating these episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the cusp catastrophe in a two‐strategy population game with exogenous locational asymmetries and its application to spatial economics. We derive approximating games of two kinds: a cusp catastrophe form and a more general form. As a novel contribution of this paper, the effects of an arbitrary number of regional asymmetries are expressed using only three asymmetry parameters, thereby allowing for an analytical analysis. We find a new behavior with hysteresis using the general form. The usefulness of the forms is demonstrated for two economic geography models. A numerical recipe is presented to construct the cusp catastrophe form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Happiness has become a high‐profile goal for national governments, city authorities, and technology developers finding new ways to map and measure emotions through happiness economics, urban management, and digital emotion‐sensing. This paper advances critical geographical analysis of the neglected rationales, mechanisms, and implications of promoting the emotion of happiness. Researchers, policy‐makers, and publics alike are intrigued and troubled by how a growing concern with mapping and monitoring human happiness can co‐occur with increasing levels of social inequality, human suffering, anxiety, and sadness. The paper outlines the intersection between three key trajectories (economisation, spatialisation, and technologisation) in order to demonstrate how particular assumptions about space, time, scale, and subjectivity are implied in the framing of happiness as an objective scientific construct to be measured, and as a problem of government. These trajectories combine to create what I term a new spatial science of emotions, which is yet to be defined, empirically documented, and critically analysed. It considers what kind of economic futures and contested knowledge practices are laid out by this new spatial science of emotions. By bringing together insights from critical economic geographies of neuroscientific and behavioural forms of governance, geographies of well‐being, and social theories of embodied technologies, the paper challenges researchers to shift attention from subjective well‐being to public well‐being. Happiness has become a high‐profile goal for national governments, city authorities and technology developers finding new ways to map and measure emotions through happiness economics, urban management and digital emotion sensing. This paper advances critical geographical analysis of the neglected rationales, mechanisms and implications of promoting the emotion of happiness. It challenges researchers to shift attention from subjective wellbeing to public wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We exploit the GEOSTAT 2011 population grid with a very high 1 km2 resolution to document that Spain presents the lowest density of settlements among European countries. Only a small fraction of the Spanish territory is inhabited, particularly in its southern half, which goes hand in hand with a high degree of population concentration. We uncover through standard regression analysis and spatial regression discontinuity that this anomaly cannot be accounted for by adverse geographic and climatic conditions. The second part of the paper takes a historical perspective on Spain's settlement patterns by showing that the spatial distribution of the population has been very persistent in the last two centuries, and that the abnormally low density of settlements with respect to European neighbors was already visible in the 19th century, which indicates that this phenomenon has not emerged recently as a consequence of the transformations associated with industrialization and tertiarization. Using data on ancient sites, we find that Spain did not feature scarcity of settlements in comparison to other countries in premedieval times, suggesting that its current anomalous settlement pattern has not always existed and is, therefore, not intrinsic to its geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique database on investment funds and the conceptual framework of global financial networks, this paper examines the spatial structure of the European investment fund industry, with particular focus on Luxembourg and Ireland. Grounded in financial and economic geography, the paper shows how these countries became the leading investment fund domiciles through a mixture of structural factors and agency enabling a fast and flexible implementation of the European Directive on the Undertakings for the Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) of 1985, and the cultivation of the investment fund industry ever since. In the process, Luxembourg and Ireland have built on and developed their functions as offshore jurisdictions and international financial centres, both sustained by their governments and regulatory agencies. The analysis of the functional structure of investment funds and their networked geography reveals the increasingly dominant position of London as the investment management centre for the industry, and the increasing concentration of control by large asset management firms. Stripped to its basics, the geography of European investment fund networks is about large, mainly US, asset management firms, creating and managing funds in Luxembourg and Ireland, and investing money through London. As such, the rise of European investment funds can be seen as an example of European financial integration through Americanisation. The Luxembourg and Irish investment fund industry are connected mainly through London and New York, and thus function as satellites of the NY–LON axis, rather than a Luxembourg–Dublin axis in international finance. Overall, the paper demonstrates that studying this seemingly arcane industry, and the role of two small countries in it, reveals much about the nature of financial globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Site selection processes whereby companies choose a location for an expansion or relocation have changed substantially over the past several decades. One key shift has been the emergence of collaboration among both individual economic developers and cooperation among the communities they represent. The rise in collaborative practices has also been increasingly reflected in the contemporary economic development literature outside the discipline of geography. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of economic development studies of collaboration and then to suggest ways that geographers might use concepts from that scholarship to inform and extend the limited number of studies exploring site selection practices. The paper begins by offering a context for the emergence of collaboration trends by highlighting the ways that information asymmetry in site selection processes create a demand for greater collaboration among industry practitioners. It then turns to an overview of the burgeoning literature on collaboration that has evolved over the last decade in the interdisciplinary scholarship on economic development. Next, the paper shifts to a discussion of the ways that geographers might use the literature on collaboration to inform studies of site selection, specifically focusing on geographic scale and research on site selection consultants as possible areas for future investigation. The article concludes by arguing that studying collaboration in the context of geographies of site selection holds the potential for greater insights into the broader outcomes of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on insights in feminist economic geography to critically review the literature on work in the home and provide a starting point for examining COVID‐19 pandemic‐imposed work from home measures for tertiary and quaternary sector firms and organizations. It critically reviews literature on the pandemic, working from home, and work in general, to examine lockdown‐related workplace disruptions in relation to the various forms of work that took place in the home prior to the pandemic. It argues that feminist economic geography provides a starting point for examinations of working from home during and after COVID‐19. This situates writing on social reproduction, and informal and unpaid work in the home, within the purview of our understanding of pandemic response. Following this review, the paper demonstrates this argument by interrogating Canada's "telework capacity" discourse and the decisions by white‐collar offices regarding the continuation and abatement of "digital by default" policies. The pandemic will radically shift our understanding of the meanings of both home and work, and this paper, through a critical review of key literature, suggests that feminist economic geography provides one starting point for theorizing the implications of that shift in the Canadian context. Key Messages: The COVID‐19 pandemic stands to alter work‐life conditions for households in ways that transform the role and meaning of both home and work. Feminist economic geography helps us to understand shifts to working from home in light of the COVID‐19 pandemic. An interrogation of "telework capacity" and "digital by default" reveals the various assumptions built into these discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the geography of the fintech industry in China's cities, which has not been systematically studied. It contributes to the literature on fintech by applying a new theoretical perspective—evolutionary economic geography. Improving on the existing literature on fintech that conducts a relatively general analysis of the role of technology in fintech development, evolutionary economic geography offers a detailed analysis that zooms in on the specific kinds of technology that determine fintech development. Moreover, this article contributes to the literature on evolutionary economic geography by systematically examining the role of market demand in developing a new industry. Based on a unique data set from 2003 to 2019, this article provides a city‐level analysis of the fintech industry in China. The results show that the fintech industry tends to develop in cities that have accumulated technologies in the fields of finance, e‐commerce, data sciences, and security. Moreover, there is a positive relationship between the development of the fintech industry and the demand for fintech services. Finally, this paper sheds light on the role of a favorable regulatory environment in fintech development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observing trade flows at a Southern African border reveals that different commodities move differently, raising the question of why some commodities stop when others flow, and why some flows move faster when others experience speed reductions and stoppages. This paper is concerned with presenting a theoretical framework – the flow regime framework – to make sense of the uneven rhythms and manners of the flow of commodities. Building on a review of four economic geography trends (transport geography, logistics studies, thing‐following studies, and scalar analysis) and of the orderings and dichotomies they create, I argue that we need a non‐hierarchical way to understand the complexity and variability of trade flows and traders' strategies along different paces and rhythms. The flow regimes, defined as lasting socio‐technical agencements of practices, actors, infrastructure uses, and ideologies, comprise the proposed theoretical solution to make sense of the variability of commodities' paces. This theoretical framework is illustrated empirically through the examples of the three flow regimes identified in the Central African Copperbelt, based on 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork: the off‐road regime, characterised by modular and flexible rhythms; the spare‐wheel regime, whose flows are subjected to state‐induced accelerations and stoppages; and the power‐steering regime, based on costly public and private technologies allowing for fast and fluid commercial movements. Without attempting to describe a particular scale of action, the concept of regimes makes it possible to analyse head‐on activities that are usually studied separately (such as "small" border trade and flows driven by large logistics firms). I conclude by suggesting that the flow regimes framework allows to highlight how the globalisation of flows features irregularity and lumpiness. Why do some commodities flow fast when others stop? This paper aims to propose an alternative theoretical framework – the flow regime framework – to analyse trade flows without resorting to hierarchies and binaries that appear in the existing trends of economic geography. This view is supported by a case study of trade flows in the Central African Copperbelt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept, which in recent years has gained interest from a variety of perspectives including entrepreneurship, management, and economic geography. Specifically, the paper identifies a gap in the literature regarding the concept's sectoral or industrial focus. Prior applications to real‐world case studies have focused on a fairly narrow range of industries and places. In this paper, we apply the concept to a case study of one creative and cultural industry, the fashion industry, to help us understand not only the performance and function of entrepreneurs and small businesses in this industries, but also potential policy supports. We map the institutions and spaces in Toronto's entrepreneurial ecosystem, drawing on extensive qualitative research to consider the dynamics and interactions therein. In parallel, we advance the concept theoretically, questioning its tenability and applicability in a wider range of economic systems by adding the perspective of cultural and creative industries. Key Messages: The entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) framework provides the foundation for an analysis of the institutions, actors, and organizations within the Toronto fashion industry.We found a fragmented, competitive EE composed of overlapping institutions and isolated fashion designers.There is a need for EE research to move beyond successful, high‐tech and/or masculinized cases to consider a broader range of entrepreneurial spaces and actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the field's interdisciplinary nature, regional scientists come with a wide spectrum of backgrounds. In this paper, we study the contributions to regional science made by scholars from Japan. First, we briefly examine how Japanese regional scientists came to develop a keen sense towards urban problems. Second, we identify the most influential authors and papers via a citation analysis. The results indicate that scholarly outputs in regional science are reaching a wider audience beyond scientists, while maintaining the order of impact among them. Lastly, we focus on the new economic geography where Japanese scholars have made a significant contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary draws on the Spanish case to shed light on the three dimensions of de‐centering in economic geography: epistemological, geographical, and idiomatic. Although the geography of contributors to the most influential Companions and Handbooks of economic geography shows hints of a timid de‐centering from the UK and the USA to other English‐speaking or English‐fluent countries in America, Asia, Oceania, and Europe, Spain still remains outside this language‐led process. However, reasons other than language must be taken into account for a proper understanding of this situation. Indeed, a small but engaged network of economic geographers has settled in Spain since the late 1980s. These scholars have developed a research agenda in close dialogue with some of the main concerns of Anglo‐American economic geography. Such a development has followed a path of its own, contingent to the Spanish academic environment and to some specific traits of that network: a sustained reliance on coordinated research projects with several universities involved (the how); a shared definition of the core research topics (the what); and a process of internationalisation that does not equate to getting our papers published in English‐speaking outlets (the where). Since 1990, economic geography in Spain has developed a research agenda in close dialogue with some of the main concerns of Anglo‐American economic geography. Such a development has followed a path of its own, contingent to the Spanish academic environment and to some specific traits of the network of economic geographers involved: a sustained reliance on co‐ordinated research projects with several universities involved (the how); a shared definition of the core research topics (the what); and a process of internationalization that does not equate to getting our papers published in English‐speaking outlets (the where). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies insights from global value chains (GVC)/global production networks (GPN) frameworks to explore the economic geographies brought into being by digital labour platforms. In particular, these perspectives facilitate analyses of power imbalances and value extraction across territories—an under‐theorized aspect within platform studies. We theorize this dynamic by introducing the descriptor 'digital value network' (DVN): a digitally mediated nexus of platform operations that produce and distribute value between territories, on the basis of labour transactions. Empirically, we draw on a multi‐year action research project, assessing the operations of platforms and the experiences of platform workers in 54 countries. Our analysis highlights that platforms as lead firms extend GVC/GPN logics of coordination and drivenness in DVN to (i) optimize production capabilities while externalizing ownership and costs, (ii) accumulate both monetary and non‐monetary forms of value, and (iii) concentrate power at the global scale in both existing and new sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we outline how evolutionary economic geography (EEG) explains peripheral economic development by comparing two peripheries over extended time periods. This comparison involves critically appraising EEG's capacity to account for peripheral evolution. For geographical, historical, and political reasons, peripheries lack resources that lead to path creation and renewal. The hyper‐peripheral regions of the Pilbara in north‐west Australia and of Buryatia in south‐east Russia provide excellent comparative case studies for understanding how peripheral regional development evolves in ways contingent upon time, state institutions, natural resource endowments, and region/firm dynamics. Our analysis shows that EEG is well equipped to deal with historical factors and capitalist economies but it struggles to reconcile these regions' resilience and ability to sustain both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous socio‐economies. Development in these regions over extended periods of time invites questions about whether it is appropriate to apply EEG and its constituent parts: path creation, renewal, and exhaustion; regional resilience; and institutional thinness and thickness. In addressing those questions, we show that EEG can incorporate temporal development, stretching over long periods and economic analysis. We also critique the extent to which EEG can be used to consider how state activities influence path creation and renewal, the importance of extra‐regional contexts, and heterodox and Indigenous perspectives. This paper compares the long histories of the Pilbara, Australia, and Buryatia, Russia, to examine the economic development of hyper‐peripheries. We use Evolutionary Economic Geography over extended time periods, as well as Indigenous perspectives, to show how peripherality is both ingrained over time and also defined based on core‐periphery power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines current research on financialization in economic geography through the lens of recent feminist interventions in the financialization of social reproduction. Although the financialization literature provides new perspectives by interrogating everyday household economies, debt relations and subjectivities, I argue that there needs to be a critical re‐evaluation of what the financialization of everyday life is in the context of neoliberal austerity regimes and the crisis of care. My paper does this by expanding the boundaries of the financialization literature in economic geography, connecting long‐lasting concerns from feminist political economy. It draws attention to the intimate relationship between indebtedness, care and everyday life and discusses limits to financialization when debts are cared for at the expense of social reproduction. Finally, it emphasizes the need for feminist politics to decolonize the financial narrative over daily life and feminist methodologies to understand the intimate, embodied and lived experiences of indebtedness for alternative knowledge production. This work will contribute to the dialogue between economic geography and feminist political economy in the domain of financialization, highlighting research on everyday finance and debt in economic geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an integrated framework for discussing issues related to regional concentration, sectorial specialization and overall localization by considering these concepts as a row‐column association– or non‐independence– in a two‐way contingency table 'regions × sectors'. This is the approach of stochastic independence, in which the degree of concentration, or of specialization, is measured by discrepancies among distributions: between profiles and a uniform distribution for absolute concepts; between profiles and the corresponding marginal distribution for relative concepts; or between the joint distribution and the product of the marginal distributions for overall localization. This paper discusses the benefits of this integrating approach, particularly for the practitioner facing a multifaceted literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates how the national urban hierarchies can be understood through the lens of connectivity within globally scaled economic networks. We first examine the global city network structure using a k‐core decomposition method. Values of k‐coreness are then used to understand the distribution of global connectivity within national urban systems. This is observed through a measure of statistical dispersion applied to a novel global dataset of 68,602 weighted headquarter‐subsidiary relations of 31,371 firms linking 4181 cities collected in 2019. Our results confirm the existence of a hierarchical core–periphery structure at a global scale, yet reveal varying degrees of hierarchy at a national scale. At a national scale, single‐core, double‐core or multi‐core network structures characterize the way in which national and global city networks intersect, indicating that there is a distinction between global cities as the core and urban‐systems‐as‐networks that connect nations to the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two interrelated aims. First, it attempts to sketch a preliminary map of economic winners and losers to highlight the emerging economic geographies of the coronavirus pandemic. Second, it aims to explore the links between these emerging economic geographies and the processes of 'financialisation', drawing on the concept of 'financial chains'. Regarding the first aim, the paper argues that the pandemic‐induced crisis will exacerbate social inequalities and deepen uneven development at multiple geographical scales. Regarding the second aim, the paper argues that the 'financialisation' perspective in general, and the concept of 'financial chains' in particular, provide useful insights into the crisis and its uneven effects, by shedding light on the complex web of flows of value and power relations established/emerging between the prospective winners and losers. It also highlights the prominent role of debt and debt‐based financial chains in shaping economic geographies in times of major global crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the particular geographies associated with the COVID‐19 outbreak through the lens of cities that are products of relational urbanisation. This includes small but highly globalised cities, such as financial centres or hot spots of politics and diplomacy, which are usually situated between different political, economic or cultural systems and their boundaries. These cities experienced strong growth due to internationalisation and a dedicated politics of extraversion. Our argument is that such places are unusually affected by the current lock‐down, illustrated by two empirical cases, the cities of Dublin, Ireland, and Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Both have experienced striking growth rates recently, but now suffer from disruption. Their development trajectories remain unclear, since a return to the 'old normal' seems unlikely, and the emergent 'new normal' calls for adaptation towards more state involvement in areas hitherto governed by the market. The paper addresses possible alternative geographies for both cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the category "expatriate" in the Royal Dutch Shell Group of Companies, focusing on two key moments of corporate structural change in the 1950s and 1990s. The paper examines how the "expatriate" was materially and narratively produced by the corporation, by employees labelled expatriate and by spouses. It interrogates continuities and transformations, and their power effects, inquiring who became an expatriate, for what purposes, what meaning the category was inscribed with, and how it was lived. The central argument of the paper is that the Shell "expatriate" has a postcolonial genealogy: its constitution, functions, and lived experience cannot be understood without accounting for histories of European imperialism. The category initially reified imperial power relations – indeed, was instrumental to their racialised production. The mid‐century "racial break" prompted changes, yet did not result in the wholesale decolonisation of corporate mobilities and managerial hierarchies as imperial differentiations and logics continued to work in the postcolonial corporation, if in adapted and ambiguous ways. Similarly, the Shell "expatriate" was a gendered construct that not only denoted husbands' corporate control but increasingly depended on women's organisational, emotional, and social labour, until its gendered destabilisation in the 1990s. The shifting and fragmented category "expatriate" thus reflects how racialised and gendered logics were (re)worked, by and for corporate management, in contested and ambiguous ways. More generally, the paper historicises contemporary managerial arrangements of multinational firms, which depend squarely on migration, and shows them to be central to the postcolonial production of racial capitalism. It thereby contributes to furthering the dialogue between postcolonial and economic approaches in geography. This paper traces the genealogy of the category "expatriate" in the Royal Dutch Shell Group of Companies, focusing on two key moments of structural change in the 1950s and 1990s. The central argument is that the Shell "expatriate" has a postcolonial genealogy: its constitution, functions, and lived experience cannot be understood without accounting for histories of European imperialism. The shifting and fragmented migratory category "expatriate" reflects how racialised and gendered logics were (re)worked, by and for corporate management, in contested and ambiguous ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of the flow of trade are based on three traditional trends, each of which focuses on one component of movement: commodity, infrastructures and actors. Based on these three models' limitations and the use of qualitative economic geography and ethnography, this paper enriches our understanding of the flows of cross‐border trade, crossing of bodies of literature and theories. It offers a description of commercial traffic in the Central African Copperbelt and calls for a better comprehension of the specific conditions for executing commercial movements, where infrastructures, commodities and actors influence each other to allow the movement of things. Analysing commercial movements in the Zambian Copperbelt proves difficult with the existing theoretical framework. This paper provides an ethnographic study of cross‐border commercial circulations in order to enrich our understanding of commercial flows in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hitherto, the path‐dependent understanding of regional diversification in Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) has drawn largely on insights into industrialized countries. However, in the past few decades several regions in the Global South have undergone rapid structural transformations despite starting out with unfavourable regional asset bases. This raises the question as to whether the strong emphasis on endogenous capabilities in EEG also provides a sound theoretical framework for explaining these tremendous diversification dynamics. This paper therefore aims to re‐evaluate the wider validity of the path‐dependent conceptualization of regional diversification in the context of a lower‐middle income economy. To this end, we analyse the diversification of Vietnamese regions between 2006 and 2015. In order to take into account context‐specific conditions that characterize Vietnam's economy, we add the role of foreign‐owned firms and state‐owned enterprises to the conceptualization of regional diversification processes. While the role of relatedness holds true for Vietnam, the presence of foreign‐owned firms allowed Vietnamese regions to break away from path dependency and diversify to unrelated industries. The findings highlight that only by adapting the analysis to context‐specific conditions are we able to understand how regional diversification takes place across different settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of institutions in regional industrial dynamics has been a long‐lasting issue in economic geography and regional studies. This paper seeks to examine this issue in the context of transitional economies, where the market economy is embryonic, by using China as an example. Specifically, we examine how regional industrial dynamics have been shaped by China's peculiar institutional context in general and by its new round of economic reform in particular. One key part of the new reform is the establishment of administrative approval centers (AACs) to streamline official procedures that regulate business start‐ups and existing business. Empirical results show that the establishment of AACs has boosted new industry creations. However, in the first 3 years after the establishment of AACs, the effect of AACs on new industry creation is not evident and becomes significant afterwards. Furthermore, the effect varies across regions and industries. It is especially evident in less marketized cities. Labor‐intensive industries benefit more from the establishment of AACs than do capital‐intensive industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we review the emerging geographical literature dealing with large‐scale transnational real estate development projects (TREDs). Predominantly geared towards (often imagined) upper middle classes through eye‐catching and mixed‐use projects, the distinctive feature of TREDs is that they are facilitated by a formative transnational investor/developer. Based on a literature review and an analysis of fDi Markets data, we discuss the nature of TREDs, where they can be found, which actors and companies are mainly responsible for them, how they emerge and materialize (or not), and why they are so relevant in contemporary economic geography. It is argued that TREDs are both characteristic of and contribute to the rise of authoritarian urban development practices. We furthermore show that both fictitious and symbolic capital play a role and that real estate and geopolitical strategies are inextricably linked with one another. Given that interscalar dynamics between the main facilitators of TREDs are still relatively understudied within economic geography, we end with a call to develop more in‐depth perspectives on these matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a commentary on the theme section entitled "Troubling Institutions at the Nexus of Care and Control." Using the recent book Matters of Care (2017) by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa as a reference point, the authors of the commentary introduce the project of exploring how care and control admix across a range of institutional geographies, reflecting complex assemblages of places, peoples, practices and problems. Taking seriously the prompt by the section editors to think about the "troubling" of institutions, the authors draw provisional distinctions between those that are "troubled" and those that are "troublesome," mapping across to the range of more‐or‐less institutional – more‐or‐less carceral – spaces considered in the papers comprising the theme section. The commentary concludes with attention, inspired by Donna Haraway's notion of "staying with the trouble," to the task of staying both with the troubles bundled up in institutional landscapes and, indeed, with the very idea and practice of institutions themselves. This paper provides a commentary on the special section entitled 'Troubling Institutions at the Nexus of Care and Control.' Using the recent book Matters of Care (2017) by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa as a reference point, the authors of the commentary introduce the project of exploring how care and control admix across a range of institutional geographies, reflecting complex assemblages of places, peoples, practices and problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates and expands understandings of millennial economic insecurity by focusing on the experiences of three people living in socially rented accommodation with their families of origin in Hackney, London. Taking into account the legacies of state violence that racialise Britain's political economy, I argue that millennial precarity requires theorisation across multiple temporalities in order to account for cumulative, intergenerational experience as well as intergenerational dissonance. This article focuses on the affective work required to mediate cumulative precarity with familial relationships, with an emphasis on the ways that participants arduously—yet artfully—weave between multiple temporal scales of experience within concentrated shared space in order to care for and communicate with their family members. Through synthesising geographical scholarship on generational experience, everyday experiences of policy and the spaces of precarious labour, this paper contributes to expanding economic geography's engagement with ongoing histories of coloniality in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Set against the attention given to animal‐agricultural geographies and animal agriculture's environmental impacts, proponents of cultured meat (i.e., biomass cultured from cells) and genetic modification‐based "cellular‐agricultural" technologies today promise that the production of animal products could become more sustainable if animals were taken out of the equation. Though future visions for such a shift have often centred on how much land could be saved through the deployment of new biotechnologies, proponents and researchers today increasingly also foreground the future economic geographies and sites of production that these should engender. In this paper I explore such envisioned geographies, building on 24 interviews with cellular‐agricultural actors and on observations during meetings. Essentially echoing an ecomodernist embrace of the Anthropocene as a great opportunity, cellular‐agriculturalists frequently promise that the technologies they advocate should offer the possibility to unfetter the production of animal products from spatial constraints. (Post‐)animal products can now be produced anywhere. But in assuring that products and production processes should feel familiar, they frequently also describe a world where microbrewery‐like facilities and transparent production processes supplant industrialised animal agriculture's remote slaughterhouses. Hence, a kind of craft‐emphasising "recombinant" ecomodernism emerges. In exploring cellular‐agricultural future visions, my aim is not to determine whether, or which, particular visions might be realised. Rather, I centre on descriptions of future spaces of production and economic geographies in order to explore contemporary biotech boosterism. Engaging with these visions, as well as the often unchronicled creative destruction that they could entail, thus allows me to contribute to an emerging set of texts that scrutinise the current and intended political economy (and ecology) of cellular agriculture, as well as texts emphasising the necessity of pondering Anthropocene spatialities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst workplace mobility (i.e., working from a variety of locations) has become an area of study in its own right, and has increasingly gained media attention, little is known about how prevalent or novel it is. In this paper we use Census place of work data to obtain insights into the prevalence and growth of this phenomenon in Canada's ten largest Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs). These data do not capture all dimensions of workplace mobility, but are the best currently available to assess it population‐wide. We show that workplace mobility has increased modestly since 1996, and that it is particularly prevalent in sectors such as construction, and amongst less qualified workers. Knowledge workers, to the extent they are mobile, tend to work from home. These results do not capture fine‐grained mobility within the working day (which may indeed be increasing), but demonstrate that these finer grained mobilities have not fundamentally impacted the types of workplace that jobs are attached to. Key Messages: With the advent of workplace mobility there is a sense that people no longer work from traditional locations: knowledge workers in particular are thought to have flown the coop.However, the few studies that examine this trend population‐wide suggest that changes in work location are in fact occurring at a fairly slow pace.We confirm this slow pace, which does not preclude possible increases in mobility during the day nor more work from non‐traditional locations outside working hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper explores the changing culinary geography of the Netherlands applying GIS methods. The changing location of Michelin star‐rated restaurants in the period 1986–2016 is put into a context of the changing relations between urban centres and their suburbs as well as the Randstad and the rest of the country. This paper suggests that the changing culinary geography of the Netherlands is related to the re‐emergence of larger cities, particularly of Amsterdam, associated with the rise of an urban middle class epitomised by processes of gentrification. High end award‐winning restaurants are argued to be a useful lens to study the symbolic geography of place, which integrates economic and symbolic perspectives on spatial change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits canonical thinking on international financial centres ( IFCs) that understands them as being primarily sustained through market liquidity, economies of competition and cooperation between financial and related professional services, and acting as interpretative nodes within global finance. In contrast, I explore the implications of foregrounding questions of power and politics in the (re)production of IFCs. Drawing on the case of the development of offshore renminbi markets in London's financial district, I argue the state plays a vital, yet comparatively neglected, role in shaping the development and changing nature of IFCs. In so doing, the paper calls for work in economic geography and cognate social sciences to understand finance as a political as well as an economic, social and cultural relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes the case for the conceptual use of the everyday in economic geography. It does this by firstly demonstrating the explanatory potential that lies in attending to the lived experience of economic development and, secondly, the ability of the everyday to occupy a meso-level analytical position that is sensitive to the agency of economic agents without undermining the role of structural forces. As a result of the in-depth, and detailed nature of the everyday, the explanatory powers offered by this initial focus on the micro-scale is useful to those economic geographers wishing to pursue a more qualitative and holistic understanding of the economy and of economic processes. Therefore, this paper contributes to a much longer project in economic geography concerned with broadening how the economy is defined and therefore studied. Specifically, it compliments and builds on the work of economic geographers engaged in practice-orientated research before turning to the work of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau in demonstrating the analytical richness of the everyday beyond a focus on social practice. In other words, the paper argues the need for economic geography to also attend to the lived experience of everyday life, the meanings and values ascribed to it, and not just socio-economic practices themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is now strong evidence that "soft" institutions are interrelated with the working of the economy. For example, in a geographical setting there is evidence that language borders affect interpersonal relationships, but there is no equivalent evidence regarding the effects of language borders on agglomeration or competition spillovers. This paper examines whether language affects the geographical extension of agglomeration and competition spillovers by observing the geography of employment patterns in a linguistically discontinuous setting. Our findings, for the first time, provide empirical evidence that language borders shape the distance decay of competition spillovers, independent of governance, and institutional issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a preliminary look at a commoditised form of caregiving that emerged in the first decade of the new millennium in the USA, China and Japan: adult male breastfeeding (AMBF). I argue that AMBF is emblematic of both the changing geography of industrial production since the 1973 oil crisis and how consumption has since come to be the most important economic task of those within privileged nations and enclaves. AMBF emphasises how marketing forces today have deployed what are increasingly maternalistic imaginaries to emphasise the degree to which a product or service dyadically recognises, affirms and cares for its consuming subjects. The marketised maternal is rooted in the racialised reproductive savings of those long given privileged access to the superior productivity of the Machine, which compelled smaller family size. It is these savings that have allowed for new dyadic intimacies to be fashioned between the maternalised "market‐and‐me." The flipside of this is that privileged consumers are increasingly infantilised, even as its dependencies are supported by a workforce largely procreated by racially diminished other‐mothers (ROMs). Infantilism, in turn, psychically shields consumers from the planetary devastations that have made privileged consumption possible. AMBF holds theoretical promise by making the unconscious nature of desire‐for the maternal (as a dyadic site of caregiving) explicit along with the latter's revolutionary potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a general equilibrium model of new economic geography, incorporating brand agriculture that produces differentiated agricultural products. Focusing on the core‐periphery space, we show that highly differentiated brand agriculture can be sustained in the periphery even when access to the core market is not particularly good. This result supports the promotion of innovative products in rural areas in order to avoid direct price competition in generic commodities markets under unfavorable conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spatial computable general equilibrium models, interregional trade ought to play an important role in determining the spatial price equilibrium. Although the Armington assumption is commonly employed to describe cross‐hauling, many of the existing models do not explicitly consider the behavior of transport firms. This paper presents a framework that is compatible with the Armington assumption and explicitly considers transport activities. In the model, the trade coefficient takes the form of a potential function, and the equilibrium market price becomes similar to the price index in the context of new economic geography. The features of the model are investigated by using the minimal setting, which comprises two nontransport sectors and three regions. Because transport costs are given exogenously, the commodity prices are determined relative to them. The model can be described as a system of homogeneous equations, where an output in one region can arbitrarily be determined similarly as a price in the Walrasian equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open spaces for experimentation and innovation are receiving growing attention from economic geography and beyond. They are discussed as new material settings for temporarily working on projects and ideas. Moreover, individual users are increasingly regarded as potential innovators who might benefit from "Open Creative Labs" and the (shared) resources provided there. This paper situates Open Creative Labs within the research strands of user innovation and the geography of knowledge creation and explores how Open Creative Labs have been used in four specific user innovation processes. On the basis of innovation biographies, it is reconstructed how Open Creative Labs concretely influenced the pathways of innovation. In all innovation processes, Open Creative Labs have been resources of innovation. In two cases, they can also be regarded as their local sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, while place‐based policies and local development have attracted the interest of institutional economic geography, the issue of features of certain industries and how they are shaping and shaped by institutions at multiple spatial scales, has not been taken up sufficiently. This paper, based on a local creative industry—the Shanghai online games industry, which is an essential part of the new media sector, takes issue with it. It explores two aspects, namely how multi‐scalar institutions relate and influence the development of the online games industry in Shanghai and how local firms and entrepreneurs affect local and national institutions. It shows that the three aspects that are related to media sector in general and games industry in particular (i.e., cultural influence, technological significance, and economic value) matter much as they have resulted in diverse industry‐relevant policies and regulations devised by local and national states. Moreover, local firms and entrepreneurs with different capacities and characteristics also differ much in influencing the design of the industry‐specific institutions in the face of institutional voids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization has altered the appeal of each region to host economic activities. As firms are pushed to be more competitive, they develop outsourcing and relocation strategies, displacing some production activities to new emplacements. These changes have important impacts in some regions and are modifying the economic geography of Europe. This paper aims to present the impact that outsourcing and relocation strategies have across European regions and industries as well as to determine some of the characteristics of the more affected regions most affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underlying spatial forces of firm networking practices are understudied in the literature of economic geography. This paper aims to reveal patterns and mechanisms of networking practices and relates them to China's transitional context based on empirical data from a firm survey in the Pearl River Delta. It addresses the localisation effect as the primary factor in explaining the selection of networking partners. The results of this paper suggest a strong tendency towards networking with local government agencies vis-à-vis weak linkages with business partners. Furthermore, it reveals that the intent of bonding with local authorities through interpersonal relationships increases with the localisation of customers. Meanwhile, firms are more likely to pursue learning-oriented networks with competitors as the number of suppliers in the same city increases. The findings add to the understanding of network relations in China, in particular to the rationales behind relations to local government officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2004-5, 2010 and 2012 to examine the recent expansion of higher education markets in north India. It focuses on a group of young men who attended university in the city of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. Faced with dismal job prospects, they began to improvise, making money ad hoc by acting as small-scale political brokers on campus. However, some of them subsequently utilised these improvisational skills to try and attain loftier economic ambitions. As India's education sector was liberalised, they honed in on an opportunity to establish their own profitable colleges. Our paper points to a paradox that resonates far beyond India; namely, that the continued expansion of private education is, in some cases, happening in spite of and even because of poor job growth. We also extend recent work on the theme of improvisation. By examining long-run changes, we show that improvisation is not indelibly linked to the activities of 'youth', but rather a set of practices that they may perform and abandon as they move through the life course. As such, improvisation can serve as a staging post in the efforts of young people to obtain a more secure foothold in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a discussion of the economic geography of Australia. It provides a history of foreign investment in mining, and discusses several resources booms that shaped the landscape of the continent and the role of governments (state, federal and territory governments) in this process. The paper presents a chronological account of the development of the Australian mining industry, the primary activities of which are the extraction, and export of unprocessed coal, iron, minerals and increasingly natural gas. The paper analyses the industry's interaction with foreign investment and government assistance (that is, government spending in relation to the industry such as subsidies, loans and infrastructure construction, etc.). Australia's trade and foreign investment environment have long been deregulated. The Australian mining industry has benefited from this deregulation. But its most spectacular period has been the 'commodities super-cycle' of the 2000s-2010s. Overall, its contribution to exports has long typified the mining industry. The discussion herein draws attention to the applicability of the 'eclectic theory' in reference to foreign investment in mining. That is, investing mining MNEs (multinational enterprises) have three main types of 'locational advantages' in Australia: (i) volume of the availability of resources; (ii) foreign investment regulatory environment; and (iii) government assistance that benefits the mining industry's expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]