The Annals of Regional Science

Economic growth has a significant impact on health vulnerability primarily through the process of urbanization. This paper conducts a pioneer study by analyzing the impact of regional economic growth and urbanization on the public health vulnerability in the 51 states and territories of the USA from 2011 to 2018 with a fixed-effect panel data regression model. We construct an epidemiological vulnerability index (EVI) using regional smoking, diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, collect CDC social vulnerability index (SVI) as state-level public health vulnerability status, and use COVID-19 to test the actual effect of health vulnerability. The preliminary results show that higher regional economic growth is related to lower EVI and SVI, while urbanization is positively associated with regional health vulnerability and the severity of COVID-19 from case rate and death rate. Robustness check with unemployment shows the same result. We conclude that economic growth is related to lower public health vulnerability, and urbanization has negative public health benefits. Our finding indicates an urgent need to balance the externalities generated by economic development and urbanization trends on public health vulnerability by promoting reasonable medical resource distribution, health practices and safety, improving social and environmental justice, and other health management measures.

The purpose of this article is to critically examine key factors that have been involved in the remarkable economic turnaround of Mediterranean France, which until recently was always considered to be a peripheral zone within the national economy. Particular attention is given to the role of noneconomic factors that condition the location choices of households and firms and to the roles of technological innovation, service activities, and small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in the regional development process. With increasing vertical disintegration, Mediterranean France has been realizing external economies from the expansion of the entire system of production. SMEs, which are especially prevalent in this region — and which have behavior patterns that follow a logic that is more spatial than sectoral in nature — have contributed significantly to endogenous regional development through their growth as an ensemble. The new regional organizational paradigm transcends older forms of industrialization.

This paper examines whether region-specific shocks alter regional labor market tightness and matching efficiencies. We adopt the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, which caused a tsunami and nuclear disaster, as a region-specific shock. We find that an increase in labor market tightness, namely, labor shortage, occurs in the damaged regions after the disaster. Matching efficiencies in the damaged regions deteriorate, suggesting that the composition of unemployment and vacancies changes, leading to higher search frictions. Such nature has spatial spillover effects because of the widespread increase in demand for reconstruction and out-migration from the damaged regions.

We investigate the importance of ethnic origin and local labour markets conditions for self-employment propensities in Sweden. In line with previous research, we find differences in the self-employment rate between different immigrant groups as well as between different immigrant cohorts. We use a multilevel regression approach in order to quantify the role of ethnic background, point of time for immigration and local market conditions in order to further understand differences in self-employment rates between different ethnic groups. We arrive at the following: The self-employment decision is to a major extent guided by factors unobservable in register data. Such factors might be, that is, individual entrepreneurial ability and access to financial capital. The individual’s ethnic background and point of time for immigration play a smaller role for the self-employment decision but are more important than local labour market conditions.

The literature on the effects of environmental policy on the location behaviour of firms has so far failed to draw any firm conclusions. Different studies have shown that the effects may be zero, negative or positive. They always tend to be small. This paper argues that methodological issues form a major explanation for the contradictory results. It discusses the methodological strengths and weaknesses of data collection and secondary data analysis. Moreover, several typical studies are reviewed both in terms of methodology and findings. The paper finds that methodological issues tend to affect the results. The main substantive result is that at the present intensity of environmental policy plant closing is most likely to result, followed by reduced location of new firms whereas relocation is the least likely response. The results have to be interpreted with caution, however, because of methodological problems inherent to most studies.

In this paper, originally presented as my Presidential Address at the 55th WRSA Annual Meeting, I discuss how demographic trends currently underway will need a regional science that responds to the needs of a more/less rather than a more/more world. I ponder the concepts of daily activity and awareness spaces and the ways in which some of the most important questions in regional science have been fundamentally altered by the Internet, cell phones, social media, and other new forms of communications and ways to conduct transactions. I speculate about the nature of distance and other locational concepts in the cyberspace, and I contend that as people live in both physical and virtual activity spaces, the local realm has actually assumed newly increased importance.

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the migration processes that have been occurring in Chile between 1977–1982 and 1987–1992, as a market mechanism to re-allocate labor among regions. Using traditional consumer theory, a model is developed for a migrant who is evaluating migration. Secondly, this model is estimated, with cross section aggregate data, for both periods using a logit formulation. The results indicate that there is a strong force in the Chilean regional labor market, which serves to concentrate the workforce around the largest populated region of the country. Finally, regional labor markets are simulated to show that migration forces are very weak to arbitrage regional wages and unemployment rate and specific policy is required to promote balanced development across Chilean regions.

Over the last several years, considerable attention has been directed to the analysis of interregional and international capital transfers. A few of these studies have been concerned with the persistence of interregional interest rate differentials over time. In this vein, Davis and Banks have argued that between regions within the United States there have been persistent regional differences in going interest rates over very long periods and a tendency for particular regions to show persistently higher or lower than average rates for a variety of different instruments. Unfortunately, the Davis-Banks argument is based upon casual observation rather than upon formal empirical testing. In analytical terms, it has been elsewhere shown that persistent interregional interest rate differentials, if they in fact do exist, may be entirely compatible with conventional economic theory once it is recognized that there may exist barriers of one form or another to the interregional flow of funds. Using this framework of analysis as a point of departure, this paper examines whether the interregional flow of funds within the United States over time has in fact been insensitive to interest rate differentials.