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The COVID-19 and 2021-2022 energy crises shed new light on urban resilience. Cities face many more challenges and external shocks. This study aims to measure urban resilience.

Methodological approaches to assessing the level of innovation and investment attractiveness of the Western Ukrainian market of tourist services (WUMTS) substantiated the dependence of WUMTS on investment factors analyzed the level of competitiveness of WUMTS. In order to determine the level of dependence (independence) of WUMTS on investment and innovation factors, a paired linear regression was built for each of the regions (regions) included in the WUMTS, Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ternopil, Khmelnytsky, Zakarpattia, I. Frankivsk, Chernivtsi). In order to eliminate the disproportionate impact of the size of the impact of tourist services (the so-called effect of scale), the studied absolute indicators were converted into relative (growth rate). To assess the innovation and investment attractiveness of WUMTS, it was decided to apply methodological approaches to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of state and regional policy with further improvement in several groups of indicators, monitoring and evaluation of innovation, investment, and social development of the studied areas. Data, information of central executive bodies, regional state administrations, etc. The assessment of WUMTS development indicators was carried out by calculating the rating for each area and the overall rating for all areas. The rating assessment was performed by comparing the deviations of the values of indicators for each specific region under the conditions of the best values for the relevant (reporting) period and the corresponding ranking of regions from 1st to 8th position. As a result of calculations, the integrated rating was determined as the arithmetic means of the sum of ratings in all areas using the formula. The competitiveness of regional tourism markets should be assessed comprehensively, where two groups of indicators should be used to determine the competitiveness of an individual region: indicators of the tourism market and indicators of development of the region as a whole.

This paper examines the effect of agglomeration economies on firm productivity and the role of absorptive capacity in China. Taking into account the transitioning economy context, I further exploit the gradual and spatially uneven implementation of market-oriented reforms to track the relative importance of firms' absorptive capacity for economic catch-up. The three main results are as follows. First, firms exhibit higher productivity when located in an area with a denser network of related activities, particularly for firms with higher absorptive capacity. Second, the sources of the productivity gains are driven by externalities that arise from better access to inputs, similar workers and technological-related knowledge spillovers. Third, the role of absorptive capacity becomes more important for boosting productivity following more versus less intensive market-oriented economic reforms. These findings have important policy implications for transitioning economies and suggest that market reforms promote efficiency improvements related to performing actual R&D as well as encourage firms to seek out external sources of knowledge in order to attain market competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is an integral part of the ecology and economy of northern China. Unique geographical factors closely interlink the regions; however, limited attention has been paid to urban clusters' ecological and economic spatial linkages. Therefore, this paper introduces Ecosystem service value and Ecological-economic coordination degree, considering extensive spatial spillover effects within the region under study. This paper adopts spatial autocorrelation and the spatial Durbin model to detect the coordination relationship. Moreover, examine the influence of population growth, sales of consumer goods, health facilities, green areas, and Tertiary Industry on Ecological-economic coordination. The relationship is tested economic growth, using the internal and external Thus, it determines that the change of coordination degree shows a “V”-shaped development in time and space and gradually realizes the overall coordinated development. It affirmed the judgment that the Ecological-economic coordination degree of each region has an obvious spatial spillover effect. Policy reforms, improved functions, and development mechanisms can enable the balanced and healthy development of the region's ecological and economic systems.

The establishment of free trade pilot zones (FTZs) in China has constituted a pivotal endeavor to enhance global collaboration, foster economic restructuring and transformation, and attract foreign direct investment (FDI). These objectives are pursued through a series of strategies, including implementing a negative list system, reducing the threshold for FDI, and enhancing the FDI service framework. Based on panel data from 47 cities between 2005 and 2018, this research employs a spatial difference-in-differences model to empirically examine the spatial spillover effects of establishing FTZs concerning FDI. The findings reveal the substantial positive impact of FTZs on fostering FDI within respective domains. Conversely, an adverse spillover effect is observed on FDI in neighboring vicinities. Coastal FTZs have a negative spillover effect on FDI in surrounding areas, whereas inland FTZs have minimal impact on FDI in surrounding areas. The first and third batches of FTZs have had negative spillover effects on FDI in surrounding areas, while the second batch of FTZs has had no significant spatial spillover effect on FDI. Based on the empirical conclusions, this study proposes policy recommendations to broaden the scope of FTZs, refine the spatial spillover mechanism, and foster the diversified development of FTZs. These measures are envisaged to optimize the efficacy of the FTZ strategy to advance FDI objectives.

AbstractThis paper explores the spatial concentration of 120 service industries in India’s rural and urban areas, covering 33.60 million establishments using Economic census (2013) data at the district level. Besides, this study uses a cartogram map to examine knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) industries’ spatial concentration patterns and geographical concentration of employment of workers in rural and urban areas in India. Empirical results show that the magnitude of the spatial concentration effect varies in rural and urban areas. Further, empirical results reveal that KIBS industries are localized in rural and urban areas but have a skewed distribution toward urban areas. Moreover, results show that hotspots in rural areas seem higher than urban hotspots, although rural hotspots employ fewer employees than urban hotspots. The empirical results suggest that urban planners and district municipal authorities can give more emphasis and implement suitable KIBS industry-specific policies to boost regional economic growth and employment in rural and urban India.

In this article, we adopt a task approach to measure the local pool of capabilities which can more effectively spur innovation. By focusing on the core activities that workers undertake in their jobs, we build an abstract task intensity measure of occupations to proxy the ability in analysing and solving complex problems, as well as in coordinating and integrating people with different knowledge endowments, that should be especially relevant for the process of invention and innovation. We thus estimate the relationship between the local abstract intensity and the inventive performance, proxied by granted patents, of US Commuting Zones (CZs) during the period 2000–2015. The evidence provided, robust to a wide array of sensitivity checks, points to the extent of workers' engagement in abstract tasks across CZs as a crucial determinant of the local inventive activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely understood that innovations tend to be concentrated in cities, which is evidenced by innovative output increasing disproportionately with city size. Yet, given the heterogeneity of countries and technologies, few studies explore the relationship between population and innovation numbers. For instance, in the USA, innovative output scaling is substantial and is particularly pronounced for complex technologies. Whether this is a universal pattern of complex technologies and a potential facilitator of scaling, is unknown. Our analysis compared urban scaling in urban areas across 33 countries and 569 technologies. Considerable variation was identified between countries, which is rooted in two fundamental mechanisms (sorting and boosting). The sorting of innovation-intensive technologies is found to drive larger innovation counts among cities. Among most countries, this mechanism contributes to scaling more than city size boosting innovation within specific technologies. While complex technologies are concentrated in large cities and benefit from the advantages of urbanization, their contribution to the urban scaling of innovations is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characterization of how entrepreneurial a region or country is, has generally been shaped by a narrow view of what actually constitutes entrepreneurship. In the case of Germany, this has led to a characterization of Germany as not being particularly entrepreneurial. Such a view is at odds with the remarkable, high-performing family business, widely held to be the backbone of the economy. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the interpretation prevalent in entrepreneurship literature is problematic due to a too narrow operationalization of the entrepreneurship concept. As Zahra (2007; 2014) emphasized, context matters for entrepreneurship, especially on a local or spatial level. One particular organizational manifestation of entrepreneurship, family business, may be congruent in specific spatial and institutional contexts but not in others. Other geographic and institutional contexts may be congruent with the contrasting startups. Thus, an important and novel contribution of this paper is to analyze the geography of family business as distinct from startups: two ends of the entrepreneurship continuum, embedded in different kinds of entrepreneurial ecosystems. We generate innovative maps working with official data, showing the distinct distribution of both kinds of entrepreneurship in different ecosystems. These findings are connected with spatial effects, living conditions and lead to recommendations for policy measures. The paper focuses on Germany, because startups as well as family business are prevalent and can be found in all regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the GI Bill, returning World War II veterans were generally highly educated, but their locations following the war were highly uneven across cities in the USA. Exploiting the spatial variation in these returning veterans driven by prewar communities of veterans, I study the long-run persistence of an increase in local human capital. While there is strong persistence in skills across cities, this shock produced a large and uneven increase in local skills after the war. Furthermore, this positive shock had long-lasting effects on local human capital from 1940 to 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I estimate the role of agglomeration economies and other local factors on productivity differences across Turkish provinces, which are some of the highest seen in OECD countries. Using a novel administrative dataset and historical instruments to deal with estimation concerns, I find that the elasticity of productivity to density is higher than in developed countries. Moreover, using an individual panel at the regional level, I find weak sorting effects for workers, contrasting with evidence from developed countries. These results suggest that urbanization patterns could be operating differently in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]