On the Objective and the Subjective Character of Economic Regionalization

The author takes issue with the preceding article on the question of the objective basis for regionalization. Saushkin maintains that the unity of economic regions is not derived from their internal economic relations, as Alampiyev puts it, but from the existence of what Saushkin terms “territorial complexes of productive forces.” Saushkin asserts that a single objective system of regions exists in reality and that it is the task of science to uncover that system. Saushkin says Alampiyev's suggestion that there may be several variants of regionalization smacks of the Western subjective approach to regionalization.     

体育交流与改革开放:“省港杯”足球赛的创立

始于1979年的“省港杯”足球赛是改革开放初期由以霍英东为代表的部分香港工商界人士发起、获得地方政府支持和中央政府批准的一项体育赛事。在“友谊第一、比赛第二”的友好气氛中,第一届“省港杯”足球赛在广州和香港两地成功举办。这项赛事促进了粤港两地的交流与合作,对广东的改革开放进程产生了积极的影响,增强了香港同胞对于内地坚持实行改革开放政策的信心。     

Rescaling regions in the state: The New Regionalism in California

A “new civic regionalism” – based on participatory, inclusive and partnership models of governance – has recently been rolled out in California to tackle the challenges of urban growth, planning and economic development across the State's diverse metropolitan and rural regions. Backed by non-profits and private foundations, California's New Regionalism has been packaged as a flexible and responsive grassroots governance initiative, which is designed to circumnavigate State and local government. Its proponents have been influenced by New Regionalist ideas and practices circulating nationally and internationally. Despite this, our explanation for the rise of the New Regionalism in California is not grounded in these wider theoretical and policy developments; nor do we see it as the outcome of a “new politics of scale” framed around the region. Instead, California's newest regionalism is part of a much longer-standing social movement spearheaded by large-scale business interests and directed at reorganizing local and State government powers particularly in urban regions. This regional reform movement has sought to rationalize land use and environmental planning, coordinate infrastructure, and make government more fiscally efficient and responsive to growth. Over the longer term, its efforts have been undermined by the fiscal fallout of the property tax revolt, Proposition 13. Our analysis calls into question some of the claims in the literature on state rescaling and suggests the value of collapsing the conceptual distinction made between new spaces of political regionalism and regional economic spaces.     

A study of social‐market interventions in the shaping of the field of cultural production

A social analysis based on extensive evaluation of the Dance and Drama Awards programme reveals the social‐market political paradigm underpinning the formation of cultural policy in the UK underthe New Labour government. This specific intervention in the field of cultural production is placed in the context of broader government interventions in the cultural domain that seek to give respect to undervalued social and cultural groups. There is a political analysis of the characteristics of the social‐market political formation that underpin New Labour’s “affirmative” actions, and the political strategies informing the government’s “access” and “inclusion” agendas and their impact on the cultural and creative industries. The authors argue that the construction of a “social‐market” position in New Labour’s cultural policy represents an attempt to bridge or “hyphenate” the contradictory claims of social democracy, on the one hand, and economic fatalism, on the other. Despite the rhetoric of social and cultural “transformation”, the authors argue that a “faith” in the market prevents New Labour from transforming the political‐economic and cultural structures that generate economic and cultural injustices.     

Western Australia's Royalties for Regions program: a policy response to growth,regional neglect,and perceived disempowerment

Under the right conditions, compounding socio‐political and economic change can dramatically alter government policy. From 2000, Western Australia, a resource‐rich jurisdiction, experienced significant change owing to a once‐in‐a‐generation resources boom, which forced a break with earlier development approaches. In 2008, regional interventionism returned to the State via the State Government's Royalties for Regions program. Departing from the neo‐liberal tradition, the program allocated 25 per cent of the State's royalty income to non‐metropolitan regions, over and above existing regional allocations, and its success remains disputed. While it is easy to question the program retrospectively, the socio‐economic and political circumstances from 2000 to 2008 reveal a “perfect storm” of conditions enabling the transition from neo‐liberalism to interventionism in regional development. This paper sets out to understand the multi‐faceted conditions that enabled the dramatic paradigm shift embodied by the program. To this end, it examines the State's rural–urban settlement dichotomy, its staples economy, and the policy context leading up to the program. Following that, the paper proposes a causal framework mapping out the factors driving and rationalising the program. These factors are then examined in detail and include perceived rural voter disenchantment, ineffectual regional development policy, the State's mining boom, inadequate regional development funding, the contrasting fortunes of two regions (illustrative of the impact of growth, and the lack thereof), and the political manoeuvring during the 2008 election. Finally, the paper concludes by considering how the conversion of these conditions resulted in the State's most significant regional policy redirection in decades.     

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN THE OLD AND NEW EUROPE: THE ROLE OF AGGLOMERATION EXTERNALITIES

As Europe is currently characterized by huge disparities in the economic performance of “old” and “new” states, we investigate whether this is the result of local agglomeration—specialization and diversity—externalities. Our spatial econometric analysis focuses on total factor productivity dynamics over the period 1996–2007 for 13 industries located in 276 European regions. Consistently with the “nursery cities” theory, we find that diversity exerts a positive effect in the knowledge‐intensive services of the “old” Europe urban areas, while specialization is still effective in the “new” Europe low‐tech manufacturing. Human and technological capital has also a positive impact.     

基础设施投资与中国经济增长的地区差异研究

本文应用生产函数法和我国19962000年度混合数据,从全国各地区的层次进行分析,估计基础设施对经济增长的产出弹性,以及不同地域的显著性差异。得到的估计结果是基础设施投资的人均GDP产出弹性为0187;不同地域基础设施对经济增长的影响存在明显差异。本文分三部分。第一部分是引言,介绍了有关的研究文献;第二部分应用生产函数建立模型进行估计;第三部分是结论和政策建议。     

The impact of EU Objective 1 funds on regional development: Evidence from the U.K. and the prospect of Brexit

Brexit means that regions of the United Kingdom will lose access to the EU Cohesion Policy. Have EU funds been effective, and what might be the consequences of an interruption of EU financial support? This paper studies the impact of “Objective 1” funding—the highest form of EU aid—in Cornwall and South Yorkshire, two of the U.K.’s most subsidized regions. Counterfactual methodologies assessing their labor market and economic performance provide evidence of a positive effect of EU Objective 1 funds. When in 2006 South Yorkshire lost Objective 1 eligibility, this massively reduced its share of EU funds and the region was unable to sustain the gains obtained in previous years. This suggests that while Structural Funds may be effectively improving socio‐economic conditions of poorer regions, the performance of subsidized areas could be deeply affected by a reduction (or worse, an interruption) of EU aid.     

On Physical-Geographic Regionalization and the Regionalization of Natural Resources

The author finds conventional physical-geographic regionalization inadequate for economic-geographic purposes, and proposes instead a “natural regionalization” or regionalization of natural resources. Such a regionalization would reflect the economic assessment of the natural environment of a given area and would be more appropriate in economic-geographic research. The principles underlying natural-resource regionalization are illustrated with a regional scheme for the Sudan, an area to which the author has devoted special study.     

SOVIET ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY: SIX DECADES OF DEVELOPMENT AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS

A senior Russian economic geographer reviews the peripatetic evolution of the discipline during the Soviet period. After an early phase in the 1920s and 1930s, when it made some practical contributions to economic planning, particularly in regionalization, economic geography was long relegated to the status of a teaching discipline separating it from the more goal-oriented economic sciences. In recent years, economic geography has again acquired greater practical relevance, largely because of the development, and official endorsement, of the theory and application of territorial-production complex theory as an approach to spatial organization of the Soviet economy. Its thematic content has been broadened by the inclusion of the increasingly active field of population geography and urban geography. The growing “social” content of the discipline has given rise to suggestions that it be renamed “social geography,” or at least “social-economic geography,” reflecting a similar change of designations of the Soviet economic plans to social-economic plans.     

Peering in from the window ledge of the Union: the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the attempt to bring British Conservatism to Northern Ireland

In this article I examine one particular way in which the Anglo-Irish Agreement redefined unionist politics in the late 1980s. While the operation of “direct rule” had drawn the unionist middle classes ever closer to Britain in economic and cultural terms, it had also left them in a precarious position politically. The nature and scale of this political subservience was brought home dramatically in 1985 when the British government signed an international agreement giving the Dublin government the right to be consulted on Northern Irish affairs. In the period of political flux summoned by the Hillsborough Accord, elements of the unionist middle classes were drawn to the previously marginal ideas of a small leftist organisation that argued for the British political parties to organise in the region. Given the material interests and social conservatism of those attracted to it, the call for “equal citizenship” would inevitably take the form primarily of a movement seeking to bring British Conservatism to Northern Ireland.     

A Natural-Resource Regionalization of the USSR

A regionalization of natural resources is treated as a particular case of economic regionalization, in the sense that it makes an economic interpretation of the physical base of an area from the point of view of its capacity to generate an economic region of appropriate rank. The resource regionalization is based on two particular regionalizations of bioclimatic and mineral resources, yielding a set of 86 regions that combine both types of resources. A typology of resource regions distinguishes seven basic types of regions in which bioclimatic resources are dominant and four basic types in which mineral resources are dominant. Combinations of bioclimatic and mineral resources yield 24 groups of integral resource regions.     

Institutional Arrangements and Political Mobilization in the New Italian Regionalism: The Role of Spatial Policies in the Piedmont Region

The paper focuses on the resurgence of the regions as protagonists of the process of the state rescaling in many European countries. In the EU countries this process can be seen as a result of a mix of economic and institutional factors, which have been producing an increasing competition between the central governments and the regional authorities. The rise of the multi-level governance and of the so-called Euroregionalism has reinforced the role of the regional scale in the territorial development: on one hand, with new actors like agencies and organizations engaged in the economic development (FDI attraction, place marketing, innovation and learning), on the other hand by the resurgence of “old” actors, such as the regions, in many cases empowered by processes of institutional devolution. The literature has investigated this re-composition of the political space with regard to the “hollowing out” and the “rescaling” of the state. On the base of these theoretical underpinnings, we discuss some empirical evidence from the Italian experience, in order to show whether and how the regional structures are not only “spaces for policies”, but also “spaces for politics”. Over the last decade, the changes in legal framework, the external inputs from supranational levels of government—the European Commission—and the re-territorialization processes have introduced many elements of innovation in the role of the regions. By illustrating the case of the Piedmont Region, we try to demonstrate that the transition towards the region as an active space of politics can be mediated by the sphere of the policies, especially the spatial ones.     

分野的虚实之辨

分野是中国传统思想中“天、地、人”信仰秩序系统的有机组成部分, 其本质是建立起天秩序与地秩序之间的映射对应系统, 这里的天包括天体、星座、气象、时间等, 而地也极为丰富, 可以是大的区域、列国、州、郡、山脉、河流等等不一而足, 但最为常见的是天体与列国、州郡的对应关系。本文对分野与行政区划关系进行了考察, 发现分野思想的发展虽然依托于行政区划体系, 但西汉以后与行政区划之间逐渐疏离, 进而成为远古信仰秩序思想的象征。究其根本: 建构信仰秩序系统是分野之实, 而形式的繁杂与混乱, 并不为皇权拥有者所重视, 乃分野之虚。     

Long-Period Ground Motion Simulation and its Impact on Seismic Response of High-Rise Buildings

This paper first critically reviews a seismological model and then a three-segment curve model (in log-log space) to model the Q-f relationship is proposed to overcome the potential biased estimation in the long-period range by the “coda wave” method. The optimal curve-fitting process is performed to determine the Q-f relationship for the Hong Kong region. The calibrated seismological factors are incorporated with the stochastic simulation procedure to generate synthetic ground motions, which are validated through comparison with seismic records. The impact of long-period ground motions on the seismic response of high-rise buildings is finally manifested through a numerical study.     

The Managerial Equation and Innovation Platforms: The Case of Linköping and Berzelius Science Park

This paper explores the political and economic origins of a science park in Linköping, Sweden. It shows how different “innovation platforms” emerged to develop the medical industrial sector. An innovation platform is a foundation for growth corresponding to a given set of organizations or networks that incubate and sustain innovative teams tied to a given sector. Large firms and incubator-linked science parks represent different kinds of innovative platforms. The paper centres on the concept of the “managerial equation”, arguing that growth projects like science parks build on coalitions and networks linking innovative resources, acquired knowledge tied to a given sector and power linked to decision-making power and financial resources. Changes within these elements of the equation explain the rise and fall of innovative platforms. Failures in learning in one platform lead to the rise of another. An absence of power (such as supporting resources) can also account for platform changes. Regional development decisions do not simply reflect path dependent specializations as regions use related capacities to break into “new” sectors. Commitments to Triple Helix formations linking universities, corporations and the government reflect changes within each branch of the Helix and political decision-making creating a diversity of development pathways.     

旅游对我国区域经济增长及其敛散性的影响——基于1997年～2010年省际面板数据的实证分析

本文以Barro和Sala-i-Martin的收敛假说为理论基础,利用面板模型探讨了1997年～2010年间旅游业发展对我国总体国民经济及东、中、西部地区区域经济增长及其敛散性的影响。结论显示:1997年～2010年间,全国及东、中、西部地区经济增长均呈发散趋势;旅游发展对全国及东、中、西部地区区域内经济增长及其差距的缩小产生了积极影响。     

ENERGY: GOVERNMENT POLICY OR MARKET RESULT?

From the Truman presidency through that of Carter, the United States worked fitfully toward the development of an energy policy. Now, consistent with the “free market — get government off the backs of the people” philosophy of the Reagan Administration, the 1981 National Energy Policy Plan proposes that “individual choices” and “reliance on market decisions” replace regulations and subsidies in the nation's strategy for energy. This paper starts from the assumption that the Spring, 1982 oil “glut” may turn out to be a rather temporary thing. If one therefore wants to pursue a policy strategy that will protect us in the case of sudden short-term supply disruptions and also work toward long-term energy supply diversification, how far will market reliance carry us? What is a range of policies and programs that might usefully supplement the market? What are the externalities for which compensatory actions may still be needed if one would like to employ the market strategy as a basic thrust? The scope of the paper includes contingency planning, synthetic fuel development, renewables (especially solar energy), conservation, equity issues, environmental externalities, and the conceptualization of policies differentiated as “energy,”“environmental,” or “economic.”     

Does EU cohesion policy work? Theory and evidence

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy in the regions of 12 EU countries in the period 1991–2008, on the basis of a spatial growth model, which allows for the identification of both direct and indirect effects of EU funds on GDP per worker growth. We find that “Objective 1” funds are characterized by strong spatial externalities and a positive and concave effect on the growth of GDP per worker, which reaches a peak at the ratio funds/GDP of approximately 3 percent and becomes non‐significant after 4 percent. “Objective 2” and “Cohesion” funds have nonsignificant effects, while all the other funds exert a positive and significant effect, but their size is very limited. EU Cohesion Policy, moreover, appears to have increased its effectiveness over time. In the period 2000–2006 Objective 1 funds are estimated to have a median multiplier equal to 1.52, and to have added 0.37 percent to the GDP per worker growth. Overall, in the period 1991–2008, funds are estimated to have added 1.4 percent to the median annual growth, and to have reduced regional disparities of 8 basis points in terms of the Gini index.