Regional Studies

Dijkstra, Lewis; Poelman, Hugo; Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1654603pmid: N/A

Support for parties opposed to European Union (EU) integration has risen rapidly, and a wave of discontent has taken over the EU. This discontent is purportedly driven by the very factors behind the surge of populism: differences in age, wealth, education, or economic and demographic trajectories. This paper maps the geography of EU discontent across more than 63,000 electoral districts in the EU-28 and assesses which factors push anti-EU voting. The results show that the anti-EU vote is mainly a consequence of local economic and industrial decline in combination with lower employment and a less educated workforce. Many of the other suggested causes of discontent, by contrast, matter less than expected, or their impact varies depending on levels of opposition to European integration.

Pontarollo, Nicola; Serpieri, Carolina

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1640357pmid: N/A

The 2008 financial crisis reopened the debate on regions’ ability to deal with shocks within the European Union. We identify the spatial dimension of the renewal capacity, among the dimensions of economic resilience, and estimate its main drivers. We investigate the variables that determine the regional renewal capacity using different model specifications focusing upon several socioeconomic factors at two geographical scales: national and regional. The results highlight the fact that regional renewal has to be analysed including both local and contextual (national) factors. This multilevel perspective is useful for policy strategies in terms of reorienting their targets to the proper geographical and socioeconomic dimensions.

Pagliacci, Francesco; Pavone, Pasquale; Russo, Margherita; Giorgi, Anna

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1635689pmid: N/A

In the future of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy, a critical feature is how to capitalize on the current Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation (RIS3), introduced in the 2014–20 programming period as an ex-ante conditionality for accessing European Structural Investment Funds. As a contribution to the current debate, this paper frames the socioeconomic comparative analysis of EU regions, considering subnational structural similarities, and referring to population, labour market and the sectoral composition of the economy. Principal component analysis and cluster analysis are performed on 31 input variables, returning 19 different types of EU regions. With an application to the EU macro-regions, the paper supports policy planning in macro-regions as a meso-level of interventions for the future Cohesion Policy.

Martinus, Kirsten; Suzuki, Jun; Bossaghzadeh, Shabnam

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1641592pmid: N/A

Regional development and innovation are often studied in the context of agglomeration economies, leading to a perception bias regarding the virtues of cities. Recent work on interregional connectivity has explored alternative mechanisms for economic growth, such as borrowed size and regional embeddedness, but there are limited studies examining these in the context of peripheries. The paper addresses this by examining the spatial relations of industry, commuting and agglomeration to innovation in Japan peripheries, finding dynamics between and within communities vary in how these factors increase innovation. Such understandings are critical in policy redressing core–periphery imbalances and industry competitiveness.

Mohan, Gretta; Longo, Alberto; Kee, Frank

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1644450pmid: N/A

Neighbourhood Renewal is the main area-based urban regeneration initiative in Northern Ireland. The region is a unique setting for urban regeneration because of an enduring legacy of ethno-religious conflict. Using longitudinal micro-data, the paper investigates the effect of the policy on the economic welfare of residents living in policy-on areas compared with three policy-off control groups. Difference-in-difference regression on employment and unemployment status, household income, and benefit receipt and subjective financial status reveals that Neighbourhood Renewal did not close the gap in economic circumstances. However, the policy contended with a challenging economic period, which may have constrained the ability of areas to capitalize on the initiatives fully.

Hand, Chris

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1645953pmid: N/A

Multiple studies have identified an urban penalty on, and regional differences in, life satisfaction, but few studies compare the effects of both. This study applies a generalized ordered logit to data on residential location, region of the UK and two different life satisfaction measures. Overall, the regional effect outweighs the rural effect. A stable rural premium for life satisfaction is found; for satisfaction with leisure, though, the effect differs across levels of satisfaction (a rural location increases the likelihood of being both highly satisfied and highly dissatisfied). Regional effects are also found to differ across levels of life satisfaction.

Agostino, Mariarosaria; Nifo, Annamaria; Trivieri, Francesco; Vecchione, Gaetano

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1648785pmid: N/A

This paper investigates empirically the effects of institutions on new business formation in the Italian provinces over the period 2004–12. According to the results, local institutional quality positively affects entry rates, and its impact is stronger in high-tech industries. Among different institutional dimensions, rule of law turns out to be more important in southern lagging regions, while regulatory quality seems more relevant in the developed centre–north. In times of crisis, institutional quality loses importance in determining entries, which become more sensitive to the propensity to innovate and to human capital and infrastructural endowments.

Storm, Rasmus K.; Jakobsen, Tor Georg; Nielsen, Christian Gjersing

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1648787pmid: N/A

The tangible effects of hosting major sporting events have been thoroughly examined in recent years. The consensus among scholars is that the effects on tourism, inbound foreign investments and gross domestic product (GDP) from hosting, for example, the Olympic Games or the football World Cup are absent. Further, only a few studies have been conducted on one of the most commercially successful (major) sporting events: Formula 1 motor racing. This paper applies regression models to test the effects on GDP, employment and tourism in European regions that have hosted Formula 1 grand prix from 1991 to 2017. The output from the models suggests that hosting Formula 1 races does not produce positive effects.

Soroka, Anthony; Bristow, Gillian; Naim, Mohamed; Purvis, Laura

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1652893pmid: N/A

The concept of regional resilience is explored by understanding the resilience of individual firms within both the region (and their capabilities to cope, adapt and reconfigure) and a constantly evolving economic environment. This study examines the utility of the QuiScore credit indicator (from the Financial Analysis Made Easy (FAME) database) to measure both firm and regional economic resilience. Using the Cardiff Capital Region in Wales, UK (for the period 2006–16) as a case study, the results indicate that the QuiScore is an effective indicator of the economic resilience of firms as well as an early warning indicator of economic stresses for a region.

Korosteleva, Julia; Mickiewicz, Tomasz; Stępień-Baig, Paulina

doi: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1652894pmid: N/A

Petty administrative corruption (bribery) can be seen as a regional phenomenon and investigated in the spatial context. By applying Heckman selection models with instrumenting to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) data, it is found that larger cities appear more prone to corruption. However, capital cities exhibit lower corruption, owing to differences in social and political structures and government accountability. Furthermore, the paper illustrates the importance of the meso-level social environment, exploring complementarity between bridging (across broader local society by institutional trust) and bonding trust (within more embedded communities) in alleviating bribery.