Evidence on economies of scale in local public service provision: A meta-analysis

The standard theory of optimal jurisdictional size hinges on the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods and services. However, despite its relevance for forced local amalgamation programs and related policies, the empirical evidence on the existence of such economies of scale remains elusive. The main goal of this paper is to produce an updated and comprehensive quantitative review of the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods using a meta-analysis approach to systematize the wide range of empirical approaches and modeling frameworks found in the previous literature. Our analysis confirms the presence of moderately increasing to constant returns to scale in the provision of local services with no reduction in the average costs of production in the delivery of most local public services beyond a certain, modest jurisdictional size, which many studies have estimated at 10,000 residents. Also, the potential for economies of scale differs at least across three traditional services: education, water and sanitation, and garbage collection, being highest for education and lowest for garbage collection. Our analysis also offers guidelines for future empirical research in this area. Physical output and production cost data should be used, together with translog specifications for the modeling of cost functions. Last, we find evidence that the determinants of output cost elasticity include bidirectional publication bias and population density but do not include the presence or absence of modern “lean” production technologies or the (perceived) capital intensity of the sector, contrary to conventional wisdom. These findings have significant policy implications for countries considering jurisdictional consolidation programs.     

The spread of Neolithic plant economies from the Near East to northwest Europe: a phylogenetic analysis

Phylogenetic techniques are used to analyse the spread of Neolithic plant economies from the Near East to northwest Europe as a branching process from a founding ancestor. The analyses are based on a database of c. 7500 records of plant taxa from 250 sites dated to the early Neolithic of the region in which they occur, aggregated into a number of regional groups. The analysis demonstrates that a phylogenetic signal exists in the data but it is complicated by the fact that in comparison with the changes that occurred when the crop agriculture complex expanded out of the Near East, once it arrived in Europe it underwent only limited further changes. On the basis of the analysis it has been possible to identify the species losses and gains that occurred as the complex of crops and associated weeds spread and to show the influence of geographical location and cultural affinity on the pattern of losses and gains. This has led to consideration of the processes producing that history, including some reasons why the dispersal process did not produce a perfect tree phylogeny, as well as to the identification of some specific anomalies, such as the unusual nature of the Bulgarian pattern, which raise further questions for the future.     

Heritage and scale: settings,boundaries and relations

While recent years have seen increasing interest in the geographies of heritage, very few scholars have interrogated the difference that scale makes. Indeed, in a world in which the nation state appears to be on the wane, the process of articulating heritage on whatever scale – whether of individuals and communities, towns and cities, regions, nations, continents or globally – becomes ever more important. Partly reflecting this crisis of the national container, researchers have sought opportunities both through processes of ‘downscaling’, towards community, family and even personal forms of heritage, as well as ‘upscaling’, towards a universal understanding of heritage. While such work has had critical impact within prescribed scalar boundaries, we need to build a theoretical understanding of what an emergent relationship between heritage and scale does within the context of dynamic power relations. This paper examines how heritage is produced and practised, consumed and experienced, managed and deployed at a variety of scales, exploring how notions of scale, territory and boundedness have a profound effect on the heritage process. Drawing on the work of Doreen Massey and others, the paper considers how the heritage–scale relationship can be articulated as a process of openness, pluralism and relationality.     

Agglomeration economies and the location of foreign direct investment: A meta‐analysis

This paper undertakes a meta‐analysis of the effect of agglomeration economies on foreign direct investment (FDI) location. It finds strong differences in these economies arising from both measurement and study‐specific characteristics. Economies generated from domestic rather than foreign activity have the strongest effects on FDI, with the latter only significant if related to the home country of the investor. Support is also found for studies that identify different sources of agglomeration economies, although this is largely underexplored in the empirical literature. The average agglomeration economies estimate is not influenced by publication bias and indicates genuine effects for agglomeration economies on FDI location choice.     

新旧并存:近代江南农村金融实态管窥

近代上海崛起后,以其为中心的江南城乡间的金融联系明显增强,一些新的金融业开始向江南农村伸展,江南农村金融实态因此呈现新旧并存的特征。     

Spatially varying relationships between municipal operating expenditure and its determinants: The case of South Africa

We apply the geographically weighted regression to investigate spatial variability (nonstationarity) in the relationships between municipal operating expenditure (in total and for a separate component thereof) and the determinants of this expenditure, in South Africa. The empirical findings indicate that some of these relationships are spatially varying for the period under consideration. The global model (i.e., least square regression) cannot take account of the unequal environment in which South African municipalities operate. One implication of our findings is that a “one-size-fits-all” approach in the design of policies targeting municipal finances may not be appropriate for municipalities in South Africa, and indeed in other contexts in which such heterogeneity is found. Instead, policy formulation should explicitly consider relevant differences in local conditions.     

Urban impoverishment and multiple modes of livelihood in Ghana

Many African countries experienced economic crisis in the 1970s and are currently restructuring their economies under the tutelage of the World Bank and the IMF. The restructuring process has had pervasive effects on the livelihood strategies of many people, as their established means of income generation have been disrupted. While survival of the urban poor has been studied, little is known of strategies of other social groups. Using Ghana as a case study, I argue that although urban poverty predates the implementation of structural adjustment program (SAP), the policies have created a favorable environment for the intensification of multiple livelihood strategies among of salaried employees. The paper finds that multiple livelihood strategies are practiced by a large number of salaried employees, but their involvement depends on many factors, including individual, family and household characteristics; access to capital and resources; opportunities offered by the urban economy; and the nature of formal employment.     

Inclusive growth from an urban perspective: a challenge for the metropolis of the twenty-first century

This paper addresses the study of inclusive growth from an urban perspective. It proposes to focus the relationship between urban economic growth and income distribution in cities in which manufacturing production and external demand play a central role. Opposed to the literature that considers economic growth leads to an increase in inequality in income distribution, we present some operative economic tools from Marshallian Industrial Districts theory and from urban economic theory with which to develop an economic strategy for inclusive urban growth, making possible to achieve simultaneously economic growth and improvements in income distribution. An interesting example of a metropolis with a dynamic of economic and employment growth compatible with a reduction in income inequality is provided by Barcelona. This metropolis disposes a Survey of living conditions and habits of the population since 1986 that allows an analysis in terms of inclusive urban growth.     

Psychics,crystals, candles and cauldrons: alternative spiritualities and the question of their esoteric economies

Studies of alternative and ‘New Age’ spiritualities and of the paranormal in popular culture hint at the existence of underlying economic relationships that are, though small in size by some measures, both significant and influential. This paper seeks to foreground the economic relationships underpinning the beliefs, practices and activities associated with alternative spiritualities. For, as we argue, these have either been marginalised in most studies of alternative spirituality or been understood in very limited terms, as a narrow reflection of contemporary capitalist consumer culture. This paper consequently asks how we might bring to view the economic relationships that necessarily accompany alternative spiritualities by exploring their size, shape and reach. Here, we draw on UK-based case studies of Manchester and London. Our exploration of alternative spiritualities and their economic relationships concludes that even while alternative spiritualities are woven into, and out of, ordinary economic relationships, there remains an intriguing sense that there is something distinctively esoteric about their economies. This, we believe, warrants further investigation (in the UK and beyond) into this too often marginalised aspect of contemporary culture and modern economic life.     

Place‐based policies,firm productivity,and displacement effects: Evidence from Shenzhen,China

Developing and transitional countries devote considerable funds to selected areas to stimulate local growth and firm productivity. We examine the impact of place‐based interventions due to the opening of science parks in Shenzhen, China, on firm productivity and factor use. Our identification strategy, exploiting spatial and temporal differencing in firm‐level data, addresses the issues that (a) the selection of science park locations is not random and (b) high‐productivity firms sort themselves into science parks. Firm productivity is approximately 15–25% higher due to the science park policy. The policy also increases local wages and leads to distortions due to job displacement.     

Heritage designation and scale: a World Heritage case study of the Ningaloo Coast

As heritage research has engaged with a greater plurality of heritage practices, scale has emerged as an important concept in Heritage Studies, albeit relatively narrowly defined as hierarchical levels (household, local, national, etcetera). This paper argues for a definition of scale in heritage research that incorporates size (geographical scale), level (vertical scale) and relation (an understanding that scale is constituted through dynamic relationships in specific contexts). The paper utilises this definition of scale to analyse heritage designation first through consideration of changing World Heritage processes, and then through a case study of the world heritage designation of the Ningaloo Coast region in Western Australia. Three key findings are: both scale and heritage gain appeal because they are abstractions, and gain definition through the spatial politics of interrelationships within specific situations; the spatial politics of heritage designation comes into focus through attention to those configurations of size, level and relation that are invoked and enabled in heritage processes; and researchers choice to analyse or ignore particular scales and scalar politics are political decisions. Utilising scale as size, level and relation enables analyses that move beyond heritage to the spatial politics through which all heritage is constituted.     

Building economies from the bottom up: (mis)representations of poverty in the rural American Northwest

This paper examines interconnected processes of economic restructuring and representations of poor subjects that rely on imaginaries of race, ethnicity, class and rural space. We argue that poverty and privilege are mutually produced and so we focus on the representational practices of White leaders in persistently poor counties across the American Northwest. We draw from case study research to understand region-wide material and discursive processes that are contributing to economic distress and social marginalization. We interrogate the range of representational practices that White leaders employ to explain, deny and/or racialize poverty in their communities. We also draw attention to how poverty emerges from the intersection of political, economic and cultural processes operating across a range of scales and sites. We further analyze how representations of the poor and poverty rest on a host of imaginary landscapes about who belongs, who is an outsider and who has a right to a place and its services. We argue that these representations serve to invigorate neoliberal policies and silence a more critical debate about poverty in the USA.     

Islands,extraction and violence: Mining and the politics of scale in Island Melanesia

Set against the backdrop of past, contemporary and possible future mining-related violence on islands in the western Pacific, this article explores how scholarship on the politics of scale, as well as strands of the burgeoning island studies literature, might sharpen our understanding of the political economic and violent effects of extractive resource enclaves in Island Melanesia. Drawing upon field research in Bougainville and Solomon Islands, I argue that just as Melanesian islands were produced as a scale of struggle in the context of the introduction of capitalist social relations under colonialism, so too have they emerged as a critical, albeit problematic, scale of struggle in contemporary contestations around extractive resource capitalism under the current round of globalisation and accumulation by dispossession. I suggest that this politics of scale lens enriches our understanding of how “islandness” can be an important variable in social and political economic processes. When the politics of scale is imbricated with the well-established idea of the island as the paradigmatic setting for territorialising projects, including the nation-state and sub-national jurisdictions, islandness emerges as a potentially powerful variable in the political economic struggles that attend extractive resource enclaves. I also highlight, in the cases considered here, how islands can become containers for internal socio-spatial contradictions that can be animated by extractive enclaves and can contribute to the island scale becoming violent and “ungovernable”. The article advances recent efforts to bring the island studies literature into closer conversation with political and economic geography.     

The external effects of inner-city shopping centers: Evidence from the Netherlands

Shopping center redevelopment is inevitable to remain attractive for consumers. In this paper, we investigate the external effects of shopping center redevelopment on nearby residential property prices. Using a difference-in-difference empirical framework, we find the redevelopment has positive external effects on nearby property prices. We find the price of a property located next to a redeveloped shopping center increases by 1.43% on average just after redevelopment. Our results indicate that these positive external effects wear off rather rapidly across space and over time. This suggests that shopping center redevelopment plays a substantial, but limited, role in combating neighborhood deprivation.     

From sustainable development to carbon control: eco-state restructuring and the politics of urban and regional development

The management of carbon emissions holds some prospect for challenging sustainable development as the organising principle of socio-environmental regulation. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon polity as an ideological state project, and examines its potential ramifications for the regulation of economy–environment relations at the urban and regional scale. Carbon control would seem to introduce a new set of values into state regulation and this might open up possibilities for challenging mainstream modes of urban and regional development in a manner not possible under sustainable development. But low-carbon restructuring also portends intensified uneven development, new forms of state control and a socially uneven reworking of state–society relations. In order to explore these issues we start by setting out a framework for conceptualising environmental regulation based around the idea of eco-state restructuring. This idea is introduced to capture the conflicts, power struggles and strategic selectivities involved as governments seek to reconcile environmental protection with multiple other pressures and demands. Overall the paper seeks to make a distinctive contribution to theoretical work on state environmental regulation and the emerging spatial dimensions of climate policy.     

Gendered meanings and everyday experiences of violence in urban Brazil

Violent acts are not random, but are infused with meaning: those intended by the perpetrators and those ascribed by others. This article explores how dominant gangs in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro attempt to manipulate the meanings of violence to maintain their control of territory, presenting themselves as protectors of the community. Gangs impose violent punishment on residents who have breached their rules and behavioural norms. The messages they send out regarding the (un)acceptability of violence against women is highly ambiguous, however, which reduces women's options and increases levels of insecurity. Despite the ambiguity and unpredictability of gang rule, residents refrain from challenging gang control, preferring to moderate their own daily routines as a means to feel secure in the face of high levels of insecurity.     

Urban redevelopment and residential location choice: Evidence from a major earthquake in Japan

We examine residential location choice behavior in a metropolitan area of Japan that experienced seismic damage. We find that the internal structure of the affected area was reshaped, although, in the long term, its total population size was robust to this temporary shock. Before the earthquake, the population was evolving toward a state of equilibrium with dense locations in the core facing redevelopment barriers and, therefore, stagnation. In contrast, the periphery was becoming increasingly appealing and thus growing. Seismic damage allowed for redevelopment at higher density, making the adjusted equilibrium with dense locations grow again. In summary, the initially expanding periphery stagnated as an unintended consequence of urban redevelopment.     

Beyond the Local Trap: New Municipalism and the Rise of the Fearless Cities

The Fearless Cities summit, coordinated by Barcelona en Comú in June 2017, marked the first global gathering of the nascent “new municipalist” movement. Responding to the “imperative that geographers engage critically and creatively with the way localism is being articulated”, this paper argues that the new municipalist initiatives are developing urban political strategies that successfully avoid the Local Trap. Rather than essentialising cities as inherently progressive or democratic, the municipal is instead becoming framed as a “strategic front” for developing a transformative politics of scale. Given this critical awareness, this nascent movement demonstrates how local loyalties can be mobilised as part of a progressive scalar strategy without falling into the trap of a “particular localism”. What remains to be seen is whether these initiatives are able to develop a variegated scalar strategy of transformation that retains the democratic essence that underpins them.     

The role of local leaders in regional development funding: Evidence from an elite survey

Many postsocialist countries are run by an elite with links to the socialist legacy and often share similar challenges and issues. We investigate formal and informal factors shaping the role of mayors in accessing regional development funds in Albania, a postsocialist country. With data from one of the largest elite (mayors) survey, we analyze both channels of influence of the mayors: the number of applications and the success rate. We find that mayors bring their communities more funds using formal leadership qualities that intensify the number of submissions. On the other hand, informal leadership remains important in explaining the success rate, as by using networking channels leaders enhance the probability to get financed. Political power is also decisive in the process.     

The economic effects of big events: Evidence from the great jubilee 2000 in Rome

This paper assesses the short- and long-term economic impact of the 2000 Great Jubilee, the foremost Catholic event occurring every 25 years, on the city of Rome's economy. By applying the synthetic control approach, we find that the value added per capita increases slightly in the short term, whereas in the long term it is not significantly different from what it would have been if Rome had not hosted the Jubilee. However, we do find a significant effect on the employment rate. Consistent with these findings, we document a shift of the local economy toward less productive sectors, such as construction and services requiring lower skills, and an overall productivity loss with respect to the counterfactual scenario. The investment in infrastructure, facilities, and urban refurbishment did not significantly increase housing prices in the long term, with the exception of peripheral residential areas, which experienced an appreciation.