The Objective Basis of Economic Regionalization and its Long-Range Prospects

The author defends the objective existence of regions as opposed to the subjective concept prevalent in the West. He sees the unity of an economic region in its economic specialization and its internal economic relations. In his view, analysis of these relations is required to work out a system of regions, and in view of the complexity of economic relations, several variants of regionalization are possible.     

Regional Specialization and Industrial Concentration Patterns in the Turkish Manufacturing Industry: An Assessment for the 1980–2000 Period1

Previous studies on geographical distribution of economic activity in Turkey demonstrate that firms are localized in major metropolitan areas as well as a set of emerging regions. The aim of the paper is to complement the findings of the studies on regional and industrial concentration in Turkey's manufacturing industry by exploring whether regional specialization and industrial concentration patterns changed during the 1980–2000 period. The paper further aims to explore the driving forces of industrial concentration in Turkey's manufacturing industry, particularly during Turkey's economic integration process that started with trade liberalization after 1980 and further developed with the Customs Union in 1996. Regional specialization and industrial concentration are measured by GINI indices Turkey's NUTS-2 regions at the four-digit level for the years between 1980 and 2000. To investigate which variables determine industry concentration, systematic relation between the characteristics of the industry and industrial concentration is tested. Following the method proposed by Paluzie, Pons and Tirado, a panel regression equation is estimated, where the dependent variable is the Gini concentration index and the independent variables are the variables that represent the characteristics of the sectors that follow the predictions of classical trade theory, new trade theory and new economic geography. The major finding of the study is that during 1980–2000, Turkey's regions became more specialized and industry became more concentrated. Increases in the average values of regional specialization and industrial concentration support the prediction developed by Krugman hypothesis that regions become more specialized and industries become more concentrated with economic integration. In exploring the driving forces of industrial concentration, the findings demonstrate that firms tend to cluster in regions where there are economies of scale.     

Leaves in the wind? Local policies of small and medium-sized towns in metropolitan regions

Small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) contribute to the economic performance of whole metropolitan regions. However, the variety of factors that influence the economic development of SMSTs is understudied and the impact and relevance of their local policies are especially unclear. This article studies local policies of SMSTs within the metropolitan region of Zurich (Switzerland) and the impact of local policies on the economic specialization of these towns. Switzerland serves as an interesting context in which to study SMSTs, particularly those in metropolitan regions, due to their constant growth and the high local autonomy enjoyed by Swiss local governments. Using a multiple case study design that relies on a pair-wise comparison, we find that the economic specialization of SMSTs can mainly be explained by factors that are exogenous to local policy-making such as the town’s location and its connectivity. Land-use strategies are the only local policies that can influence the economic specialization of SMSTs. Therefore, SMSTs are well advised to invest in professionalized land-use departments and to coordinate their land-use strategies with neighbouring jurisdictions.     

SOME ASPECTS OF THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE USSR

Studies of the geography of higher education have become increasingly common in the Soviet Union in view of two basic issues: (1) what some consider an excessive concentration of educational and research centers in Moscow and Leningrad, and a sparse distribution of such institutions in some other regions of the USSR; (2) the need for relating the specialization of institutions of higher learning to the basic economic activities of the regions in which they are situated. The author develops a number of measures such as indices of localization of undergraduates, graduate students and holders of academic degrees to assess the significance of higher education in various regions of the Soviet Union.     

A Preliminary Scheme for the Economic Regionalization of Cuba

The authors propose a scheme of economic regionalization for Cuba, based on Soviet Marxist principles. These include the idea of objective existence of a region, independently of man's will; the need for considering future developmental prospects; energy supply; the prerequisites for integrated development of the regional economy; the presence of a regional specialization; maximum promotion of a geographical division of labor, and the factor of the country's defense capability. The resulting system of six regions in described.     

江苏沿江地区制造业同构状况及合意性评判

产业空间分工是产业分工在地域上的投影,强调不同地域的产业分工发展及相互关系。按照一般意义,产业地域专业化分工有利于集约利用资源、增强区域竞争力。而产业同构作为产业空间分工的现实问题,存在两面性,即合意与非合意的趋同。以江苏沿江21个市区、县(市)为样本,采用地区相对分工指数、地区间分工指数和地方专业化指数等方法,探析沿江地区产业空间分工趋势和同构程度。并基于合意与非合意产业同构的特征,从市场需求、发挥地区比较优势和环境效益等方面进一步分析江苏沿江地区产业同构的合意程度。     

Problems in the Economic Regionalization of India

The authors propose a framework of a system of economic regions based on economic production principles. This principle is designed, on the one hand, to promote a regional economic specialization, and, on the other hand, to ensure integrated development of the regional economy. The Soviet geographers find that some major economic regions are already evident, for example, Western India (including West Bengal, Bihar and possibly Orissa), but that large parts of the country, especially in the north, lack sufficiently clear characteristics to make possible an economic regionalization without further detailed study.     

Persistence in regional learning paradigms and trajectories: consequences for innovation policy design

Inspired by the first evaluation processes on how nations and regions have interpreted and specified the smart specialization strategy, this paper applies the lens of evolutionary economic theory to interpret the causes of the lock-in mechanisms in learning processes that seem to prevail in most regions. The paper elaborates the notion of regional learning paradigms and trajectories to interpret evolution in the way innovation occurs in regions. By identifying the sources of path-dependence in regional learning paradigms and trajectories, the paper explains the difficulties faced by regions in ‘jumping’ on a new paradigm/trajectory and initiating an explorative entrepreneurial discovery process. Once the reasons for lock-in are highlighted, the paper advances some suggestions on possible adjustments to the design of a smart specialization strategy.     

Local Politics,Economic Structure,and Performance: The Case of Sakhalin

Two geographers assess the results of the State Duma elections in Sakhalin Oblast and relate the regional pattern of voting to varying socio-economic conditions of the region. The research is structured to test a working hypothesis that voting patterns in large part can be explained by regional variations in economic structure and performance. More specifically, it explores whether, at the rayon level, there is any relationship between: (1) economic specialization and election results; (2) economic trends and election results; and (3) long-term socioeconomic indicators and election results. The case study is presented as a caveat against the uncritical use of national party preferences as a measure of the political climate in Russia's regions. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: J60, O18, R12. 2 figures, 7 tables, 36 references.     

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.     

A Quantitative Approach to Designing a System of Economic Regions of the USSR

The authors state the rationale and describe the technique used to devise a system of seven economic macroregions of the USSR for long-term planning purposes. Since broad resource groups determine the specialization of regional complexes and their specialization in the geographical division of labor, the macroregions were constructed on the basis of homogeneity in key resources, such as manpower, fuels, land, water and transport geography. The new regional system preserves the basic division of the USSR into western and eastern economic zones, and reflects the lower labor and transport costs in the west, and the lower natural-resource costs in the east. The seven-region system, which is already being used in the 15-year plan 1975–1990, is expected to help determine optimal directions of regional development depending on whether regions have surpluses or are short of fuels, electric power, land, water or manpower. The new macroregions were designed by consolidating existing basic economic regions and union republics into larger entities, but the republics may be set apart as subzones for more detailed planning purposes.     

Outsmarting geography: implementing territorial innovation strategies in sparsely populated regions

The smart specialization literature has hardly addressed the role of geography in promoting novel approaches to local and regional innovation processes beyond classic clustering approaches. Based on empirical observations from five sparsely populated regions, the present article proposes original insights that contribute to the theoretical debate on the place-based nature and spatial dimension of entrepreneurial discovery, the key functional mechanism behind smart specialization. First, it advocates the added-value of integrating strategic spatial planning approaches at different stages of smart specialization implementation, from design to operationalization. Second, it suggests that more effective ways of creating domains through shared knowledge bases of existing sectors should aim at promoting collaboration between second-tier economic agents. Finally, the specificity of the territorial preconditions found in sparsely populated regions brings to the fore new forms of proximity relations based on institutional, cognitive and organizational proximity rather than on geographical clustering.     

Craft Specialization and Adze Production on Hawai'i Island

Abstract

Archaeological models of economic organization in complex societies frequently hinge on indications of craft specialization. Interpretations of such specialization in the Hawaiian islands often involve large-scale production of basalt adzes at Mauna Kea, the largest known quarry in the Pacific region. The recent discovery of expedient non-specialized production of adzes at Pohakuloa outside the main quarry of Mauna Kea, illustrates another dimension of Hawaiian economic systems. The identification of both small-scale and large-scale adze production has important implications for archaeological studies of craft specialization. The Hawaiian example illustrates that some aspects of production, such as context scale, and intensity, may vary within a single technological tradition. This study also suggests that previous interpretations of craft production that have emphasized differences across time — or across different categories — must also address variation among individual groups of contemporary materials.     

Bank Statistics as a Source of Data for the Geography of Territorial-Economic Links

Bank statistics, covering interregional payments are described as a useful tool in the study of interregional commodity traffic because, unlike freight tonnage statistics, the payment data reflect also low-tonnage, high-value goods, which often determine the economic specialization of a region.     

A Typology of Regional Production Complexes

Soviet regional production complexes at the level of major economic regions are classified on the basis of a combination of two criteria: (a) regional specialization in terms of the energy-and-industry cycles proposed by N. N. Kolosovskiy (coke-based metallurgy, energy-intensive industries, etc.); (b) the developmental stage of the regional economy, in terms of five developmental phases (pioneering, the formation of industrial nodes, the formation of industrial cycles, a reconstruction phase, and achievement of a complex structure). The typological classification is viewed as a possible basis for more detailed breakdowns below the level of major economic regions.     

NEGATIVE FEEDBACKS IN THE ECONOMY AND INDUSTRIAL LOCATION*

ABSTRACT. Incorporating regional asymmetry and negative feedbacks (congestion) in a model of economic geography and international trade shows that complete specialization of production at one location is unlikely. We identify an agglomerating force: the home market effect, and two spreading forces, competition for demand from immobile sectors of production and congestion. We demonstrate that negative feedbacks can explain the economic viability of small industrial regions observed in the real world. Simulations clarify the basic structure of the model.     

An information-theoretic approach to the analysis of location and colocation patterns

The study of location and colocation of economic activities lies at the heart of economic geography and related disciplines, but the indices used to quantify these patterns are often defined ad hoc and lack a clear statistical foundation. We propose a statistical framework to quantify location and colocation associations of economic activities using information-theoretic measures. We relate the resulting measures to existing measures of revealed comparative advantage, localization, specialization, and coagglomeration and show how different measures derive from the same general framework. To support the use of these measures in hypothesis testing and statistical inference, we develop a Bayesian estimation approach to provide measures of uncertainty and statistical significance of the estimated quantities. We illustrate this framework in an application to an analysis of location and colocation patterns of occupations in US cities.     

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.     

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.     

Beyond flexible specialization: the rearrangement of regional production orders in Emilia‐Romagna and Baden‐Württemberg

Emilia‐Romagna and Baden‐Württemberg are two highly successful industrial regions. Their economic success is based on a specific industrial and institutional order, on regionally concentrated production network based mainly on small and medium enterprises and on ‘cooperation enhancing’ institutions. This regional production order was the basis for strategies of flexible specialization’. The fundamental restructuring of mass production concepts as well as harsher worldwide competition over innovation and costs, however, undermined previous advantages of these regions. Emilia‐Romagna and Baden‐Württemburg handle these new challenges in different ways: while Baden‐Württemberg counts on technology‐ and research‐based restructuring, Emilia‐Romagna's restructuring is service‐based—increasing the demand for new production‐related services (quality control, financial services, marketing). These different patterns of reorganization and institutional learning point out institutional and industrial differences between the two regions undervalued in the concept of ‘flexible specialization’.