Sectoral Resilience: Conceptualizing Industry-Specific Spatial Patterns of Interactive Crisis Adjustment

While the regional resilience approach stresses major place-specific factors of adaptability to economic crises, industry-sector-specific mechanisms of shock response, which often cross-regional boundaries, still require conceptualization relating to aspects of resilience. This paper proposes the concept of sectoral resilience, which acknowledges that the actors who constitute the value chains and production systems of an industry sector, when struck by a major global crisis, collectively and interactively form a sector-specific pattern of response and adaptation. As these actors often strategically use assets at different locations, industry-specific spatial patterns of adaptation emerge that affect various regions in differing ways. After defining the suggested concept and related terminology, its geographical logics are outlined. Then major conceptual pillars of sectoral resilience are depicted, relating to six major, partly interdependent process fields. For each of them, mechanisms of shock adaptation of an industry sector and major factors of inter-sectoral distinctions of resilience patterns are pointed out, briefly illustrated by the examples of the automotive and mechanical engineering sectors. The approach helps us better understand industry-specific features of crisis adaptation and intersections of regional and corporate logics of resilience.     

The role of path-dependence in the resilience of EU regions

The paper studies the role of path-dependence in the resilience of EU regions. Particularly, employing a nonparametric analysis, the paper demonstrates that historical adjustments of EU regions materialized by productivity improvements, primarily in the manufacturing sector and incidentally in the sectors of construction, financial and non-market services, during the period 1995–2008 secured high(er) levels of regional resilience during the economic crisis period 2008–2013. Such a finding provides implications not only for theory but also for policy. Policies aiming at boosting regional productivity and competitiveness, which through a positive regional performance of high growth rates is concealed, a well-structured and robust production restructuring, might affect regional resilience in a way that shields regional economies not only from current imbalances but also from any future downturns.     

珠江三角洲镇域乡镇工业发展及其地方经济影响研究——以顺德市北窑镇为例

本文以珠江三洲为研究区域,以顺德市北窑镇为实例,就乡镇工业发展对一个镇域地方经济产生的影响进行了研究。认为在一些乡镇工业部门的发展过程中,可以作为一个"增长极",通过前后项生产联系有效地带动地方农业和第三产业的增长,从而形成地方的多种经济活动空间集聚体。因此,地方政府在选择其经济增长极时需对其与其它经济部门的前后项生产联系作周密的考察。     

ECONOMIC DECENTRALIZATION AND REGIONALISM

Another recent geographical essay on regional economic management advocates reestablishment of regional economic councils for the achievement of an optimal spatial division of labor under perestroyka and rationalizing competing economic, nationalistic, and economic objectives (see Soviet Geography, May 1990, pp. 366-374). The author criticizes proposals for the further ethnic-based division of the country and questions the economic viability of the Baltic states' drive toward independence and of a “political” (republic-based) system of khozraschet. He also questions the wisdom of “resource payments” as a means of supplementing the income of localities (translated by Elliott B. Urdang, Providence, RI 02906). From: Izvestiya Vsesoyuznogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva, 1990, No. 2, pp. 137-143.     

Gender and Household Economic Strategies in Rural Appalachia

In recent decades, many Appalachian households have experienced declining incomes due to the loss of traditional male jobs in the mining and manufacturing sectors. One response to this decline has been an increase in female employment in formal sector activities. Another response is homework, or the home-based production of goods and services for sale in the formal and informal sectors. In rural Appalachia, where formal jobs are often unavailable or inadequate to support a household, many women are engaging in homework as an economic strategy. Consequently, economic restructuring cannot be fully understood without analyzing household strategies and gender relations. This paper examines the intersection of gender, households, and economic restructuring as it relates to women's homework and employment shifts in rural Appalachia. Research for this paper entailed qualitative interviews with 50 West Virginia women who are engaged in the home-based production of goods and services. The study analyzes the variety of homework activities done by rural women, their contribution to household incomes, and the effect of these activities on gender relations and divisions of labor in the home. The research forwarded in this study advances a conceptual understanding of household economic strategies and has some practical applications for women and economic development in underdeveloped regions .     

STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN LABOR DEMAND AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN LOCAL LABOR MARKETS*

ABSTRACT. It seems quite clear that the US. economy in the late 1970s and early 1980s was exposed to an accelerated rate of structural change resulting from energy price shocks, increased international competition and technological change. It is of considerable interest, then, that previous attempts to examine structural unemployment in this period find that structural shift in employment generally were not Significant determinants of the unemployment rate. This paper revisits this issue using a measure of structural job shifts drawn from the literature on establishment job creation and destruction. The results show that changes in the structure of labor demand across industry by establishment-size sectors had a statically significant and empirically important positive effect on the unemployment rate in a sample of 200 metropolitan labor markets during the 1976 to 1984 period.     

The Service Sector in the Chinese Economy: A Geographic Appraisal

A U.S.-based economic geographer and observer of China's economy examines the rapid expansion of the country's largely overlooked service sector, at both the national and regional levels. A particular focus of the author's research is on identifying regional variations in the development of services within the country and exploring some of the more important contributing factors. Based on the findings, the paper also discusses structural shifts that occurred in China's regional economies, disclosing inter alia that inequality in the contribution of services to GDP did not follow the same trajectory as that of employment in services. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L800, O180, P230. 6 figures, 4 tables, 82 references.     

The Local Implications of Major Job Transformations in the City: A Spatial Microsimulation Approach

The changing dynamics of regional and local labor markets during the last decades have led to an increasing labor market segmentation and socioeconomic polarization and to a rise of income inequalities at the regional, urban, and intraurban level. These problems call for effective social and local labor market policies. However, there is also a growing need for methods and techniques capable of efficiently estimating the likely impact of social and economic change at the local level. For example, the common methodologies for estimating the impacts of large firm openings or closures operate at the regional level. The best of these models disaggregate the region to the city (Armstrong 1993; Batey and Madden 1983). This paper demonstrates how spatial microsimulation modeling techniques can be used for local labor market analysis and policy evaluation to assess these impacts (and their multiplier effects) at the local level‐to measure the effects on individuals and their neighborhood services. First, we review these traditional macroscale and mesoscale regional modeling approaches to urban and regional policy analysis and we illustrate their merits and limitations. Then, we examine the potential of spatial microsimulation modeling to create a new framework for the formulation, analysis and evaluation of social and local labor market policies at the individual or household level. Outputs from a local labor market microsimulation model for Leeds are presented. We show how first it is possible to investigate the interdependencies between individual's or households labor market attributes at the microscale and to model their accessibilities to job opportunities in different localities. From this base we show how detailed what‐if microspatial analysis can be performed to estimate the impact of major changes in the local labor market through job losses or gains, including local multiplier effects.     

Missionization and Economic Change in the Pimería Alta: The Zooarchaeology of San Agustín de Tucson

Spanish missions were important support bases for colonization; Native American labor provided both food and commodities to support regional colonial expansion. Zooarchaeological remains from Mission San Agustín, located in present-day southern Arizona, offer a unique perspective on livestock use at missions, and engagement with regional economic networks through secondary animal products. Despite decades of resistance to livestock, the O’odham became the primary labor force in an economic system based on livestock ranching, particularly of cattle. The transition to cattle ranching was likely influenced by a number of factors including pressure from missionaries, population growth, and, perhaps most importantly, the regional demand for secondary livestock commodities such as hide and tallow.     

China's Demographic and Urban Trends for the 21st Century

This paper assesses remarkable and far-reaching changes under way as China enters the 21st century. Among the most significant are the rapid decline in fertility and birth rates, leading to a slowdown in the rate of population growth and a reduction in the growth rate of the labor force. This occurs against the backdrop of continuing structural shift in the economy from a rural-based economy to one increasingly urban-based with growing employment in manufacturing and services. Oshima's conceptual framework for the demographic and industrial transition in Asia is invoked to help explain conditions of change in China. Urbanization proceeds in parallel with these economic changes, and a key feature of transition will be the growth of cities and towns of all sizes. The regional pattern of urbanization will proceed at different rates, with coastal regions advancing most rapidly owing to stronger linkages to the global economy. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J11, O10, O18. 3 figures, 6 tables, 36 references.     

EUROPEAN UNION REGIONAL PRODUCTIVITY DYNAMICS: A “DISTRIBUTIONAL” APPROACH*

ABSTRACT Working within the “distributional approach,” this research offers evidence of past and future polarization in aggregate regional labor productivity in EU‐15. This finding is robust to alternative definitions of the spatial units used and does not appear to be the result of regional structural change. Spatial effects are found but are of rather localized nature. Turning to separate sectoral analyses suggests that past and future polarization in labor productivity across European regions may be associated with regional productivity differences in the services sectors.     

On the Comparative Effectiveness of the Economic Structure of Regions

An important problem in insuring optimal operation of the centrally planned and state-controlled economy of the Soviet Union is to measure the efficacy of the industrial structure and productive specialization of republics and economic regions. Several measures of the efficacy of regional economies have been proposed, involving various relationships between labor productivity, the value of capital plant and equipment and the value of output. All these measures are unsatisfactory, in the author's view, and an alternate approach is suggested, using the net concept of national income produced by regions. This approach has been made possible by the recent calculation of input-output tables for republics and economic regions. The idea of using national income as a measure of regional economic efficacy was first proposed in the Soviet literature by A. Ye. Probst, whose comments appear elsewhere in the issue of Soviet Geography.     

The Role of Economic Sectors in the Formation of Regional Production Complexes

A variety of approaches used in Soviet economic geography to define and measure the productive specialization of an economic region are reviewed. In the author's view, a regional activity qualifies as regional specialization if it helps shape the basic character of the regional economy. It is not sufficient for a regional activity merely to represent a major portion of a particular national sector of the economy. For example, the asbestos industry in the Urals represents the major portion of Soviet asbestos output, but asbestos does not shape the basic character of the Urals economy and is therefore not a principal specialization sector. Regional specialization derives from relationships among the various sectors of the regional economy, not from the significance of any particular commodity. A classification of economic sectors is proposed as an aid in analyzing the functioning of a regional economy: (1) the principal specialization sectors; (2) basic raw-material sectors; (3) associated sectors using the wastes and by-products of the principal sectors; (4) complementary specialization sectors, such as asbestos in the Urals; (5) auxiliary sectors, such as metallurgical fluxes for the iron and steel industry; (6) service sectors, including utilities, transportation, construction, trade; (7) local sectors, working for local consumption.     

产业要素配置结构对生产率的影响研究——以杨凌示范区为例

本文基于要素生产率变动的视角,以杨凌示范区为例,在分析产业要素配置结构对生产率的作用路径基础上,通过估算资本存量,分析产业要素配置结构的构成,并利用偏离-份额法研究产业要素配置结构对生产率的影响作用。研究结果表明,杨凌示范区存在产业要素错配,第二产业成为杨凌示范区经济增长的核心部门,而第一产业的要素投入与发展农业现代化的目标不协调;劳动生产率的增长主要来自产业内部的增长效应,而非配置效应,其经济增长主要依赖要素投入带来的产业规模扩张;资本生产率的增长主要来源于产业内部的作用,在杨凌示范区发展初期,产业要素配置结构对资本要素生产率起到了阻碍作用,但这一情况正在逐渐改善。     

REGIONAL POPULATION–EMPLOYMENT DYNAMICS ACROSS DIFFERENT SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY*

ABSTRACT An important subset of the literature on agglomeration externalities hypothesizes that intrasectoral and intersectoral relations are endogenously determined in models of local and regional economic growth. Remarkably, structural adjustment models describing the spatio‐temporal dynamics of population and employment levels or growth traditionally do not include intersectoral economic dynamics. This paper argues and shows that allowing for economic linkages across sectors in these models adds considerable value, especially in forecasting. An econometric model of population–employment dynamics, in which sectoral variations in economic development are explicitly taken into account, is applied to a large urban planning policy proposal in the Netherlands. The empirical analyses suggest that population dynamics are largely exogenous, population changes drive employment in particular in the industry and retail sectors, and employment in all sectors depends strongly on intersectoral dynamics. Intersectoral dynamics appear as important drivers of regional sectoral employment changes; they are even more important than population changes, and their effect shows up clearly even within the Dutch institutional context where strict regulatory housing and planning restrictions are enforced.     

FIRM ENTRY AND EXIT: CAUSALITY TESTS AND ECONOMIC-BASE LINKAGES*

ABSTRACT One of the foundations of applied regional economics down through the years has been economic base theory (EBT). EBT presumes that economic activity within the basic sector unidirectionally causes economic activity in nonbasic sectors. In recent years, however, increasing attention has been given to the possibility that traditionally nonbasic activities (e.g., services) may be quite important in determining a region's total economic activity. In this paper, we examine the nature and direction of causality of economic activity within a regional economy. Using novel data on entry and exit of firms, the empirical analysis provides new insights into the strengths and weaknesses of traditional economic base theory.     

The Transformation of Labor Relations in Russian Industry: The Influence of Regional Factors in the Iron and Steel Industry

The author examines the role played by the economic geography of the former Soviet Union in the evolution of labor relations in Russian industry, using the iron and steel industry as a case study. More specifically, three regional factors are analyzed as they affect enterprise economic strategies, organization, and management-labor relations: (1) the inherited industrial structure; (2) the degree of product specialization at the regional level; and (3) the level and sophistication of regional political and labor structures combined with the presence (or lack of same) of a “regional agenda.” These factors are examined within the context of a model predicting several possible variants of post-communist labor relations at the enterprise level. 36 references.     

The Location of Services in the Urban Hierarchy and the Regions of the United States

We use regression and factor analyses to explain intermetropolitan variation in the proportion of jobs in disaggregated service sectors in American metropolitan areas. Central place theory postulates of centrally located establishments serving a surrounding complementary region partially explain the positive relationship between metropolitan size and the proportion of jobs in an area in services. Regional variation in demand following several decades of substantial shifts in population and economic output is an additional influence. Intermetropolitan clustering of service sectors is also occurring. A factor analysis of employment proportions in twenty-two disaggregate service sectors identified five intersectoral service clusters. The factor analysis accounted for substantially more variance than the regression equations. We interpret this result as evidence of the emergence of service-based spatial industrial complexes. We argue that agglomeration of information-intensive intermediate services is driven by an attraction to labor markets endowed with pools of skilled professionals who can flexibly apply their talents in a variety of sectors. Unusual demographic characteristics of some metropolitan areas probably explain clusters of final demand services.     

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.     

跨国公司地方嵌入新视角:基于地方劳工市场的研究进展与理论思考

20世纪90年代以来,跨国公司地方嵌入研究相对聚焦于资本密集型或技术密集型企业,而需要大量非熟练工人的劳动密集型跨国企业并未引起足够关注,建立在产业联系、技术外溢、社会网络等核心概念基础上的跨国公司地方嵌入分析框架很显然不能很好地解释劳动密集型跨国公司地方嵌入的理论与实践问题。在劳工地理学、新经济地理学等学科背景下,基于全球生产网络、关系嵌入、空间修复等核心概念,研究分别从劳工能动性的空间尺度、跨国公司地方嵌入的劳工要素、劳工管控对跨国公司的地方嵌入、区域劳工景观的空间修复等视角出发,系统梳理相关研究进展并提出未来主要研究议题,包括如何识别劳工供需因素对跨国公司地方嵌入的影响机制,如何剖析特殊劳工管控体制下劳工空间实践与能动性的关系,如何刻画跨国公司地方嵌入对区域劳工经济地理景观的影响,如何总结跨国公司地方嵌入与区域发展的战略耦合模式等。