Papers in Regional Science最新文献

Despite the continuous expansion of trade and investment agreements between China and South Korea, little is known about the distribution of benefits and losses stemming from synergy and competition at the regional level. This paper aims to investigate the complementary and competitive interactions among 14 economic regions of the two countries concerning bilateral export scale. Using a Dendrinos-Sonis model based on a zero-sum structure, we analyzed the interregional trade patterns between the two countries from 2002 to 2022. The evidence shows that the growth of Seoul metropolitan area is complementary to the growth of Shanghai metropolitan area in terms of regioinal export share, but not vice versa. Central Area in South Korea exhibits widespread complementarity, while Beijing metropolitan leans towards competition.

Regions and industries are not isolated islands; so, when evaluating productivity growth, regional and sectoral growth paths should not be expected to generate independently. Moreover, accounting for spatial interactions via econometric models has become normal practice; but modelling interindustry dependencies has not. Thus, we expand labour productivity econometric convergence models by introducing interindustry spillovers in addition to spillovers that are spatial in nature. To illustrate our findings, we present an empirical application predicated upon Galicia (extreme northwest Spain), a region posing major challenges to such modelling. Our results point to the relevance of interindustry spillovers in explaining productivity growth. Furthermore, the approach allows us to better interpret covariates that explain the different growth paths across regions and industries, thus enabling more reliable policy recommendations. We find that interindustry dependencies transmit productivity shocks across regions. In addition, our results suggest that spatial and interindustry dependencies should be considered when formulating (sub)regional economic development policies. Finally, our approach corrects possible misspecification problems that arise from data scarcity. This makes it a viable alternative for multiregional econometric tests in which some sectoral detail is needed. It is particularly useful for sets of regions where data needed to populate such models is scarce.

In this paper we investigate the role of EU structural funds in promoting economic growth of Italian provinces (NUTS 3), and whether a more developed local banking sector may expedite the process. We focus on total value added growth for the period 2000–2019, and employ a panel growth regression approach where a measure of funds coming from EU public programs, and spent in a given province, is interacted with a variable measuring local banking development. Our empirical results show that areas receiving structural funds have relatively higher value added growth rates when local banking markets are more developed. This evidence is robust to alternative model specifications, and holds even when we employ spatial panel models so as to account for geographic spillovers between provinces.

Venture capital, as an expectation of investors, has become an important vehicle for regional financialization. From the perspective of evolutionary economic geography, we figure out that venture capital investments in China significantly contribute to regional product expansion. Such a positive effect is not only concentrated in the core cities in the investment network but also benefits the periphery counterparts. However, venture capital investments may not completely break the path lock-in of left-behind regions to enhance their economic resilience. In this sense, the uneven geographic development led by venture capital should raise the awareness of policymakers and planners.

The aim of our paper is to examine the role of different types of local absorptive capacity in moderating the relation between inward FDI spillovers and regional innovation. We use data on the investments of multinational companies (MNCs) in Brazilian regions from 2003 to 2014, linking them to regional innovative performance. Our results reveal that the transfer of technological knowledge from MNCs to local firms cannot be taken for granted since the positive effects of inward FDI spillovers on regional innovation occur when the new knowledge provided by inward FDI can be associated with the existing capabilities of local actors. The different types of absorptive capacity among local actors have diverse effects on their ability to benefit from inward FDI spillovers. Our findings reveal the distinct moderating effects of firm and local institutions capabilities, indicating that firms' absorptive capacity can derive greater benefits from the new knowledge provided by inward FDI. Finally, our study provides new empirical evidence of inward FDI spillovers and sheds new light on regional FDI attraction policies.

Invoking the concept of regional resilience, this paper investigates how Brexit has affected the exporting behaviour of UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The research found only two UK regions, Northern Ireland and London, remained strongly export-oriented by volume and intensity of exports to the EU. Across most other regions we detected strong levels of disengagement from exporting, whereby “discouraged exporters” may experience longer-term productivity “scarring” effects instigated by reduced exposure to EU markets. Resilience to Brexit is shown to be spatially skewed and most robust in regions spatially proximate to, and in closest regulatory alignment with, the EU.