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After a decade of devolution and amid uncertainties about its effects, it is timely to assess and reflect upon the evidence and enduring meaning of any 'economic dividend' of devolution in the UK. Taking an institutionalist and quantitative approach, we seek to discern the nature and extent of any economic dividend through a conceptual and empirical analysis of the relationships between spatial disparities, spatial economic policy, and decentralisation. Situating the UK experience within its evolving historical context, we find: (i) a varied and uneven nature of the relationships between regional disparities, spatial economic policy, and decentralisation that change direction during specific time periods; (ii) the role of national economic growth is pivotal in explaining spatial disparities and the nature and extent of their relationship with the particular forms of spatial economic policy and decentralisation deployed; and, (iii) there is limited evidence that any economic dividend of devolution has emerged, but this remains difficult to discern because its likely effects are overridden by the role of national economic growth in decisively shaping the pattern of spatial disparities and in determining the scope and effects of spatial economic policy and decentralisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their apparently pervasive reach and relevance, the geographies of branded commodities and their branding have been unevenly recognised and under-researched. This paper presents a way of conceptualising and analysing brand and branding geographies. Focusing upon goods and services, the notion of geographical entanglements is developed to understand the spatial associations and connotations that unavoidably ensnare brands and branding. Second, it examines how such attachments shape and are shaped by brand and branding agents, including producers, circulators, consumers and regulators. Last, the placing of the geographical entanglements of brands and branding is developed as a means of lifting their 'mystical veils' and prompting reflections upon their politics and relationships to uneven development. Situating branding genealogies in geographical context, the empirical analysis comprises a socio-spatial biography of Newcastle Brown Ale (NBA). It explains how NBA's geographical entanglements have been (re)constructed in its contrasting survival in the UK and growth in the US. As a way of thinking about brand and branding geographies, the paper seeks to broaden the reach of economic geographies at their intersections with cultural economy approaches and to stimulate debate about their politics and alternatives to uneven development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has argued that human capital has become the key driver of city growth and that there is a widening divergence between high- and low-skill cities. This skilled-city view includes several stylised propositions. The first is that more skills and human capital generate stronger economic growth; the second is that already-skilled cities are becoming ever more skilled; and, the third is that larger cities tend to have stronger concentrations of, and faster growth in, high-skilled, cognitive occupations. Using a detailed data set for occupational change in 85 urban Travel to Work Areas in Britain between 1981 and 2015, this paper evaluates whether these propositions apply to British urban evolution, and how they relate to the 'hollowing-out' of medium-skilled jobs. The results confirm the close interactive relationship between growth and high-skilled occupations. However, some of the skilled-city propositions, such as 'smart cities becoming smarter', and a positive relationship between agglomeration and high-skilled employment growth, do not apply in Britain where other factors have been more important. The pattern of high-skill growth has shown a strong regional dimension, and the 'emergence' of newer smaller cities, particularly in southern England, has been more evident than the 'resurgence' of large core and industrial cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]