Journal of Regional Science最新文献

Using administrative data on the universe of police recorded crime linked to judicial outcomes for England and Wales from January 2013 to December 2018, we document—for the first time—large and persistent spatial inequalities in the proportion of solved and unsolved crimes across small neighborhoods covering a whole country. We find substantial differences across neighborhoods in the same municipality or police force. Fixed effects decompositions suggest that neighborhoods have different clearance rates across different crimes and that high-crime neighborhoods also have high clearance rates, but with substantial heterogeneity across offences. Clearance rates correlate systematically with neighborhood composition.

The connection between individual and macroeconomic conditions and voting behavior is well-established. We contribute to the less resolved “spatial gap” in the literature that centers on how the localized economic conditions of where voters live influence their likelihood to vote. We test how space mediates the tension between voter mobilization and withdrawal in the face of economic shocks. We consider a scenario, the Great Recession, where economic shocks were quite localized and sudden, and compile an extensive dataset of all registered voters in the four-county Tampa metropolitan area between 2006 and 2015. Using sales prices and property characteristics from the tax assessor rolls, we estimate a neighborhood-level shock to housing values induced by the Great Recession. Results show that when we do not account for local neighborhood variation, the Great Recession is associated with a significant decrease in voter turnout. However, when we account for localized economic shocks, we find that residents in neighborhoods with negative price shocks were more likely to vote after the Recession, especially in non-local elections. In addition, the propensity to vote increases with the size of the negative price shock. There is some evidence that variation at the neighborhood level matters more than voter-level heterogeneity. The positive voting response is most profound in predominantly Black neighborhoods, and, to a lesser extent, in predominantly Hispanic and the lowest income neighborhoods. Increases in the propensity to vote are robust to models controlling for baseline economic vulnerabilities, such as localized unemployment, the weakness of the local housing market and exposure to sectors hit hardest by the Recession. The results indicate that dramatic and sudden changes in localized economic conditions can drive voting behavior, and in ways that are distinct from macroeconomic drivers. In addition, the housing asset channel appears to be a powerful one, which can induce significant voting responses at the national level apart from other localized economic drivers, especially among homeowners.

We analyzed the relationship between economic variables, Amazon deforestation, and CO₂ emissions in Brazil. We used a macroeconomic approach of a system of open economies (global vector autoregressive [GVAR]). We constructed the international economy using 34 countries, representing 77% of the world GDP and 80% of world CO₂ emissions. GVAR allows us to simulate the world economy, capture spillover effects, incorporate the externality of gas emissions, treating Brazil as a small open economy, and including trade integration in the analysis. We found that domestic and external shocks affect Amazon deforestation and CO₂ emissions; the principal external shock is the Chinese one, followed by the European and the US shocks. China, directly and indirectly, affects CO₂ emissions and deforestation in Brazil through two channels (exchange rates and policy rates). The estimates showed that Brazilian currency and commodity prices are relevant for deforestation, while industrial production is for gas emissions. Other results are that (i) the Brazilian economy affects CO₂ emissions in Latin America (and the principal influence of China is on Asia), and (ii) the Chinese shock loses importance when using bilateral trade in 1999–2001, when China was not a fundamental trade partner of Brazil. Alternative model configurations demonstrate that soybean prices and Argentina influence Brazilian carbon emissions and Amazon deforestation. Specifically, soybean prices emerge as a major driver of carbon emissions. These results suggest that geography and trade integration matter to understanding Amazon deforestation and CO₂ emissions. Our estimates highlight the importance of government policies and international cooperation in curbing Amazon deforestation.

We evaluate a place-based policy aimed at commercial service providers. In 2016, the Swedish government introduced special operating support for grocery stores in remote rural areas to slow down the process of store closures. We estimate the local causal effect in a regression discontinuity design framework using the fact that only stores located at least 15 km away from another store were eligible for the support. The results indicate a 15%–20% increase in store survival rates due to the support. For surviving stores, the effects on employment are negative, possibly due to labor-saving investments.

The paper analyzes the relationship between different types of proximities—network and spatial—in relation to innovation in the context of the R&D service industry. In doing so, it contributes to the recent debate in the literature on the effects of network connectivity versus geographical colocation. The paper uses original data from a survey of 145 R&D service establishments in Montreal (Canada) and their interactions with both local and nonlocal organizations. The findings of the paper indicate that collaborative networks (both local and nonlocal) have a stronger association with R&D service innovation than spatial proximity to R&D service organizations and other collaborators. However, when these two dimensions are interacted, they are shown to function as substitutes. The paper also demonstrates that the relationship between spatial proximity and networking varies across three dimensions: local versus nonlocal networking, the type of relationship (client, supplier, competitor, and research institutes and university), and the type of network connectivity—brokerage versus closure.

Undesirable temperature fluctuations pose significant financial risks for enterprises. By merging fine-grained meteorological data with a panel of publicly listed firms, we delve into the relationship between temperature volatility and financing constraints. Our analysis reveals a positive correlation between temperature fluctuations and increasingly stringent financing limitations. State-owned or large-scale enterprises endowed with greater resources and risk diversification mechanisms are more likely to counteract the adverse effects of temperature volatility. Furthermore, we furnish evidence indicating that temperature fluctuations exert a substantial influence on corporate labor productivity. In response, companies tend to expand their workforce and elevate wages during the fiscal year. Faced with dwindling income and escalating operational costs, enterprises significantly amplify their insurance expenditures. The pronounced escalation in default risk and borrowing costs could undermine investors' sanguine profit expectations, subsequently prompting declines in firms' price-to-earnings and price-to-book ratios. Our study underscores the imperative for executive management teams to prudently account for climate change-induced financing constraints when devising investment and production strategies.

Remote rural and postindustrial regions are much more vulnerable to population drain in comparison with industrialized centers and capitals, due to obvious reasons such as meager job opportunities, difficulties in accessing public services in education, healthcare and transport, housing, entertainment, lack of integration with other territories and, finally, less advanced levels of digitalization. This represents an open challenge for the European Union within the framework of its Cohesion Policy. This paper analyzes the impact of digital trends, represented by the percentage of the population with access to internet and broadband and the percentage of individuals who buy goods and internet services (percentages provided by Eurostat) in less populated EU NUTS2 regions with lower income, on the crude population growth rate composed of natural changes in population and migratory flows and on the unemployment rate by applying panel data analysis. It has been possible to confirm that digitalization has a positive impact on natural changes in population in EU regions with lower economic development. On the contrary, the unemployment rate does not affect natural changes in population, but it does have a negative impact on migratory flows. The findings show that digitalization may contribute to reversing negative demographic trends in more disadvantaged EU regions in terms of income and population density.

The paper investigates the influence of regional import shocks from low-wage countries on electoral support for European social democratic parties in 289 NUTS2 regions (2002–2022). The estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in the import shock from low-wage countries over an election period may lead to a decline in support for social democratic parties between 0.6 and 1.2 percentage points. Similar results also apply to imports from Asian economies, such as China and India. The negative impact on electoral support for social democratic parties is amplified in moderately industrial and predominantly rural regions. For the former, the decline in industrial employment led to a shift of social democratic voters to the radical right. In contrast, in the latter case, the relatively slower growth of employment in the tertiary and quaternary sectors and the peripheral position of these regions caused a shift to the radical left.

We investigate intergenerational income mobility across labor market regions in Norway, looking at gender differences in response to industrial diversity. Our identification strategy exploits variation in the timing of regional migration, measured over the age spans 6−19 and 13−19 years. We make extensive use of fixed effects so that each region only affects adult outcomes, measured as income rank, through differences in exposure time. Our results reveal significantly larger exposure effects among daughters than among sons. The difference is particularly large when we contrast sons to fathers and daughters to mothers, but it is also apparent when we place sons and daughters, respectively, fathers and mothers, in the same distribution. We further find that industrial diversity, and thus the range of job opportunities, matters most during the teenage years. The patterns are, to some extent, detectible on maps, for example, with better mobility opportunities for men in coastal regions based on maritime and/or marine specialization. We conclude with assessments, a recommendation for regional policy, and some international considerations.