The Micro-foundations of Regional Branching—the Case of Digitization of Publishing

Abstract

Theorizing within evolutionary economic geography on regional branching of industries has so far been depicted as evolving through routine replication among different economic actors that hold various degrees of relatedness. Methodologically, related variety and unrelated variety have been studied quantitatively, treating relatedness between economic agents as pre-defined industrial classifications. This represents a need for a complementary qualitative and in-depth understanding of how knowledge is re-combined in various settings. Based on a qualitative case study in the publishing industry, whose technological platforms and business models are currently facing severe challenges associated with digitization, this paper seeks to improve our understanding of how knowledge is re-combined and re-applied in various ways. The paper explores and discusses how this industry branches out into new activities, and reflects upon the channels through which these processes unfold. How is the old and the new in the economy bridged? How is the relationship between specialization and diversification played out? In this sense, the paper seeks to contribute to improving our understanding of the epistemic micro-foundations for regional branching and economic development.     

The End of the Beginning?: Welsh Regional Policy and Objective One

'West Wales and the Valleys' now qualify for EU Objective One status, entitled to draw down up to 1.3 billion in EU funds, matched from public and private sources between 2000 and 2006. However, there are many issues raised by the process of organizing the subsequent programme. There are questions over policy focus in the economically diverse Objective One areas, how governance of these policies will work, and the wider implications of Objective One in financial and political terms. There is also debate over previous regional policy initiatives in a Wales that for many years had access to a relatively large share of the UK's regional policy budget and EU funds, yet still faced falling GDP per head as a proportion of the UK average, west Wales and the Valleys' very Objective One status relying on GDP per capita under 75% of the EU average.     

Regional Concentration of the Knowledge-based Economy in the EU: Towards a Renewed Oligocentric Model?

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the Knowledge-based Economy spatial distribution across the European Union (EU) regions (NUTS II), linking recent research approaches on innovation and structural change with approaches to regional economics. As a means of conducting this research, we classify economic activities according to six sectors based on their knowledge/technology intensity. Our results show that the higher the knowledge/technology content of the economic activity, the higher the concentration level of the activity. We find that some service activities (those considered knowledge intensive) have similar concentration levels to those operating in high or medium tech manufacturing. With regard to specialization, the most outstanding result is the strong presence of high and medium knowledge intensive service activities in metropolitan/capital regions. In general, our results reinforce the notion that an oligocentric model persists in Europe, with the southern German regions leading high and medium tech manufacturing, the south-east of England leading in high knowledge-intensive services, and with the mid-core model exemplified by the European metropolitan archipelago (particularly capital cities) in both northern and southern Europe.     

The fragmentation of the nation state? Regional development,distinctiveness, and the growth of nationalism in Cornish politics

Stateless nations across the European Union have become increasingly vocal and confident in asserting a desire for autonomy, devolved governance and independence. Meanwhile, identity politics has become a key factor of contemporary European regional development, with utility as a social, economic and governance tool. Culture has become a resource for regional branding to attract inward investment and differentiate in terms of competitiveness. The paper considers whether the utility of identity to regional development might provide an explanation for the growing confidence of European Union stateless nations. We use the case study of Cornwall to explore the correlation, arguing that economic regionalism has provided a space for the articulation of national identities.     

Finnish Mosaic of Regional Innovation System—Assessment of Thematic Regional Innovation Platforms Based on Related Variety

The emphasis of Finnish innovation policy has very much been on promoting actions that can be labelled as science–technology–innovation mode of innovation, which is based on the production and use of codified scientific and technical knowledge. However, recent research has emphasized also the importance of more experienced-based mode of learning and innovation, which can be labelled as doing–using–interacting mode of innovation. This study is an attempt to shed light on the current development phase of Finnish innovation system facing the new paradigm. The Finnish innovation system is seen as a mosaic of regional innovation systems. The regional innovation systems are analysed through a developed framework including elements of theories of innovation systems and cluster theories as well as two recent national-level strategy documents. One of the main concepts of the study is related variety in regional innovation platforms. This study also aims at creating a pragmatic framework for describing related variety at the regional level by combining aspects from two theoretical frameworks. The empirical data were gathered in a series of workshops in all the Finnish regions during the year 2008. The result maps Finnish thematic regional innovation platforms fuelled by related variety.     

Ex-Ante Analysis of the Regional Impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy: A Rural–Urban Recursive Dynamic CGE Model Approach

A recursive dynamic regional Computable General Equilibrium model is developed to assess the economic impacts of two Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) scenarios in six NUTS-3 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) (NUTS-1: major socio-economic regions, NUTS-2: basic regions for the application of regional policies, NUTS-3: small regions for specific diagnoses) regions of the European Union (EU). The main goal of the analysis is to assess the scenario effects (change in production, prices, income, employment) in the rural and urban parts of these regions as well as on the different sectors. The two scenarios analysed are related to a 30% reduction in Pillar 1 (market measures and direct support to farmers) support and the introduction of an EU-wide flat rate level of Pillar 1 support complemented by a 45% increase in Pillar 2 (Rural Development Policy) funds. Results show that the overall gross domestic product effects are not significant, due to the relatively low importance of both the agricultural sector and CAP spending in the regional economies. However, impacts on the agricultural sector are quite important and differ according to the nature of the policy shock. Also, the structural characteristics of each case study influence the rural–urban and sectoral spillovers, including impacts on region-specific agricultural activity.     

Regional strategic assets and the location strategies of emerging countries’ multinationals in Europe

This paper explores the location strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging countries (EMNEs) in search for regional strategic assets. The analysis is based on a systematic comparison between EMNEs and multinationals from advanced countries (AMNEs) in order to unveil similarities and differences between these two major sources of foreign investment into the regions of the European Union. The empirical results suggest that EMNEs follow a distinctive logic in their location strategies. They are attracted by the availability of technological competences only when their subsidiaries pursue more sophisticated and technology-intensive activities. Conversely, EMNEs share some behavioural similarities with AMNEs in their response to the spatial agglomeration of investments.     

Network Governance and Policy Integration—the Case of Regional Coastal Zone Planning in Norway

Integrated coastal zone management is characterized as a complex management situation, demanding integration across geographical borders, different policy sectors and levels of government. In Norway, the county municipalities are encouraged to take responsibility for achieving integration through regional coastal zone planning. Inspired by literature on network governance, the authors elaborate on how integration capacity might depend on an open and inclusive planning process and on the importance of conditions influencing the actors' perceived payoffs from participation. The result indicates that central actors benefiting from cooperation are more important in explaining the integration capacity, than the characteristics of the planning process itself. This illustrates the importance of the distribution of power and interdependencies among the actors in such processes.     

What Makes SMEs more Likely to Collaborate? Analysing the Role of Regional Innovation Policy

The last 20 years have witnessed the diffusion of regional innovation policies supporting networks of innovators. The underlying aim of these policies is to encourage firms, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to undertake collaborations with organizations possessing complementary knowledge. Focusing on a set of SMEs that have participated, over time, in several innovation networks funded by the same regional government, the paper investigates how their relationships have evolved with respect to the following aspects: (i) reiteration of pre-existing relationships as opposed to experimentation with new relationships; (ii) collaboration with organizations possessing complementary rather than similar knowledge and competencies; (iii) creation of local relationships rather than experimentation with extra-local collaborations; (iv) reliance upon intermediaries to connect with other organizations. Our findings reveal that the involvement in these policy-supported networks changed the firms' relational patterns, leading them to collaborate with a wider variety of agents than those with whom they were linked before the policies. Sectoral heterogeneity had a negative effect on the probability of collaborating, while co-localization increased the likelihood of collaborating. Mutual involvement with intermediaries also had a positive effect. However, in the case of firm-to-university relationships only specialized intermediaries were likely to perform a positive role and, therefore, encourage networking.     

Regional patterns in the experiences and treatment of the sick poor, 1800–40: rights,obligations and duties in the rhetoric of paupers

Abstract

This article focuses on three individual paupers who wrote a series of letters about sickness to their home towns in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. While it would be wrong to claim that the rhetoric and strategies employed by the three writers are representative of all pauper writers, they are representative of those who wrote multiple letters to their parish of settlement and a detailed exposition of their writing can tell us much about sickness and its relief by communities in the last decades of the Old Poor Law. While sick paupers have largely escaped historiographical attention in a literature that has tended to focus on the elderly, widows, children and the unemployed able-bodied man, more detailed study of the life- and dependency-cycles of poor people is beginning to show that sickness was the pivotal experience of people on the margins and that sickness relief swallowed up a very sizeable chunk of poor law resources in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The strategies, thoughts and experiences of the sick poor are thus not just important in their own right, but also for what they tell us about the sentiment of communities towards the poor and the experiences of paupers in those communities.     

Modelling European Regional Policy 2007–2013: Applied General Equilibrium Analysis of the Economic Impact on the Madrid Region

The main purpose of this study was to present an applied general equilibrium model to the economy of the Madrid region. The model developed is considered a neoclassical version of the Walrasian equilibrium, modelling production sectors on perfect competition, full use of production factors and the clearing of all markets of goods. The model thus enables the second objective of the study: to estimate the impact of the 2007–2013 Structural Funds received on the economy of the Madrid region. The effects resulting from the injection of the funds are quantified by simulations performed using the developed model. This analysis of the quantification of effects is extremely important, as the priority objectives of the European Regional Policy have changed with respect to the previous period. In the current operational programme, the Madrid region comes under the regional competitiveness objective, which focuses on the priorities of innovation, research, the information society and business development. The sectors that have traditionally benefited, mainly infrastructure, therefore give way to others and the injection of funds into the Madrid economy is to be through other areas. In addition, there has been a reduction of the European aid received by our Region, as compared with previous Programmes.     

Regional Deindustrialization and Re-bundling: Evidence from the Merger of the Former German Hoechst and French Rhône-Poulenc Groups

large part of the work in economic geography and other social sciences has focused on new growth prospects due to the establishment of global production chains and the rise of new clusters of industrial activity. Much less attention has been paid to former growth industries and regions that have recently experienced shrinking processes due to internationalization. This paper will explore the cases of two chemical regions, i.e. southern Hessen, Germany and Rhône-Alpes, France. These two areas have both undergone drastic restructuring since the mid-1990s, due to the merger of the prominent chemical groups Hoechst and Rhône-Poulenc into Aventis. Instead of investigating the development of the core activities at Aventis, we will focus on the operations that were considered less important and consequently split off. In addition to the negative consequences produced by these activities, in our analysis we also emphasize regional opportunities which arise from competence building, reorientation and new firm formation. These processes can be viewed as re-bundling existing and new knowledge bases with other resources to help overcome economic crises and develop a new competitive edge. As such, the paper aims to contribute to a relational understanding of economic globalization and regional restructuring.     

European Regional Studies: A Coming of Age?

This article reviews current developments in European regional studies. A brief history of settlement archaeology as practiced in Europe is followed by a discussion of new approaches to regional analysis and surface survey. I argue that recent, steady investments in the technology, methods, and theory of regional archaeological analysis and surface survey have stimulated advances in the study of settlement patterns and settlement pattern change through time in many parts of Europe. When innovative technologies (e.g., remote sensing, GPS, GIS), methods (e.g., geoarchaeology, “siteless” survey), and new theoretical frameworks (both processual and postprocessual) have been combined, breakthroughs in our understanding of European settlement have resulted. In the last half of the article, I describe some of these breakthroughs in a broad discussion of European settlement history, beginning with the earliest prehistory of Europe through the Middle Ages. Shifts in perspective are particularly apparent for phases of transition: from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic, Paleolithic to Mesolithic to Neolithic, and with the rise and expansion of states.     

Mapping the Geography of R&D: What Can We Learn for Regional Innovation Policy in the Czech Republic and Beyond?

Administrative regions do not necessarily correspond to areas that are homogenous in terms of innovation intensity. Although this has been recognized in the literature, quantitative evidence that explicitly considers this problem is rare. Using spatial exploratory analysis on detailed regional data derived from a census of R&D performers in the Czech Republic, we identify local spatial clusters of R&D activities and assess the extent of their (mis)match with administrative borders. Overall, the results support the arguments for regionalization of innovation policy. However, the existing policy units do not appear well suited for this purpose. On one hand, there is a need for policy coordination between multiple administrative regions. On the other hand, however, there are diverse patterns within them. Similar problems are likely to haunt the regionalization process in many other countries, which is alarming, as the regional accent of innovation policies becomes ever more vehement over time.     

Regional Responses to the Southeast Asian Financial Crisis: A Case of Self-Help or No Help?

The currency-cum-financial crises of the 1990s, particularly that which hit Southeast Asia after the devaluation of the Thai baht on 2 July 1997, are suggestive of the relevance and pervasiveness of contagion or negative spillover effects that are largely regional in scope. As such, one of the mantras since the onset of the Southeast Asian financial crisis has been the need for 'regional solutions to regional problems'. Given that the two focal institutions in Southeast Asia, namely the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), were perceived as being successful in their past attempts in problem-solving, there were high expectations that such regionalism would be the key in finding solutions to the Southeast Asian financial crisis and mitigating the aftershocks. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the regional responses to the crisis, taking stock of both preventive and curative initiatives of significance. While the focus is on ASEAN and APEC, consistent with the concept of 'loose' or 'non-institutionalised' regionalism in Southeast Asia and the larger Asia-Pacific regions, other ad hoc unilateral or bilateral initiatives of significance by other Asian member countries in APEC are also examined, particularly those by the region's dominant economic power, Japan. Current regional responses have not been very successful. This has led to a shift in the emphasis to unilateral and bilateral arrangements. Japan's contribution has been by far the largest relative to others. The crisis and the responses to it have revealed that unless there is greater institutionalisation, ASEAN countries would continue to look outside the region for assistance to facilitate their recovery.     

Regional Productivity Distribution in the European Union: Which are the Influencing Factors?

The aim of this paper is to analyse some relevant aspects on productivity distribution in the European Union at regional level. Firstly, the paper examines its external shape and intra-distribution dynamics. Subsequently, an analysis of the factors that might be behind the productivity distribution and its dynamics is carried out. The results, represented by means of a relatively new visualization tool, highlight the role played by factors such as geographical location, compensation per employee and investment per employee in explaining this issue.     

An Interview With Chairman Liequ Of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government

QUESTION:Mr.Chairman,wouldyoupleasetalkabouttheplanofyourgovernmentwhosetermwillspanthetwocenturies?ANSWER:Mygovernmenthasenteredofficeattheturnofthecentury.ThefiveyearsaheadwillbeimportantforTibetandChinaasawhole.So,wedecidedtoadoptadown-to-earthapproach,andwillcloselyfollowtheleadershipoftheCentralGovernmentinvariouswork.Ihavefullconfidencetoturnthisgovernmentintoonewhichishighlyefficientandservesthepeoplewholeheartedly,anddistinguishesitselfinbuildingaunited,prosperousandcivilizedTi…     

Exploring the Multiple Roles of Lund University in Strengthening Scania's Regional Innovation System: Towards Institutional Learning?

Universities are increasingly seen as potential contributors to regional innovative capacity by serving as local knowledge conduits, bringing global state-of-the-art science and technology into the region. In practice, however, more active university engagement with their regional innovation systems is not as straightforward as it may seem. The article uses examples from a successful case by which less successful regions could be inspired. Our analysis considers how various forms of technological learning intersecting within Lund University around three distinct sectoral engagement efforts have been built up and how this created new structural regional innovation capacity.     

EMU versus the regions? Regional convergence and divergence in Euroland

There is currently considerable interest in and debate overthe impact of increasing European economic and monetary integration(EMU) on the regions of the EU. Opinion is sharply divided overwhether EMU is leading to regional economic convergence or regionaleconomic divergence. This paper examines the theoretical argumentsand empirical evidence for these opposing views, and presentssome additional analysis of patterns of regional productivitytrends and employment growth over the period 1975–98.The picture that emerges is a complex one: whilst worker productivityshows only very weak convergence across the EU regions (a processwhich halted altogether after the mid-1980s), regional employmentgrowth has been sharply divergent. Although there is littlesupport for the claim that EMU will lead to regional convergence,these findings suggest that until much more detailed investigationof the specific impacts on particular types of region is undertaken,the regional implications of EMU will remain a contentious issue.     

Symposium: Australia–US Economic Relations and the Regional Balance of PowerAustralia–US Economic Relations following the 2005 Free Trade Agreement

The Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into force on 1 January 2005. Australia's exports to the US have since stagnated, while imports into and US investments in Australia have surged. This article analyses Australia–US economic relations with a focus on trade and investment flows. In addition, it examines the capital raising by US investment banks for these projects. The analysis traces the effects on the relationship of the Global Financial Crisis, the resources boom in Australia and the rise of the Australian dollar.

澳美自由贸易协定2005年元旦起生效。自那以来,澳大利亚对美出口止步不前,而来自美国的进口和投资却一路上扬。本文考察了澳美经济关系,重点分析了贸易和投资流。此外作者还研究了美国投资银行为那些项目的融资。以往分析研究探索了全球金融危机、澳大利亚起源开发热以及澳大利亚元升值三者之间关系所受的影响。