Bibliometric Analysis of Literature on Regional Development and the Center- Periphery Model in Europe (original) (raw)
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Innovation Geography and Regional Growth in European Union
SAGE Open, 2011
There is a huge literature regarding the main determinants and sources of economic growth. Most of the recent work emphasizes on the role of knowledge and innovation activities typically produced by a specific sector of the economy, and on analyzing the implications and the importance for economic growth. Moreover, the socioeconomic and public policies aim to distinguish the determining factors of growth to enhance the regional cohesion and the convergence process. Much of the recent work on regional growth can be viewed as refining the basic economic insights of economic geography. This article attempts to analyze the European systems of innovation and the effects of European technological policy to regional growth.
A Bibliometric analysis of functional economic areas, centres, peripheral zones, and networks
Regions and regional policy play an important role in today's economy. The center-periphery model represents a generally accepted paradigm, despite the relativity of many theoretical issues (the multidimensionality of social activities or rescaling of relationship scales). Each spatial division and its corresponding boundaries address the formation of some networks and constrain the formation of others. As a result, policies often reinforce marginalization processes. This article analyzes how these notions are employed. The bibliometric analysis tries to synthesize and emphasize critical results from the literature. Analysis may also assist in developing linkages between current relevant topics and exploring new study ideas.
Overview on Regional Economic Development Gaps across the EU
Research Papers in Economics, 2017
Despite existing policies of regional development and cohesion at the national and the EU level, economic regional inequalities or disparities stay relatively high or decrease too slowly. In this context, policies to reduce economic regional disparities in the European Union are a constant concern both for policy-makers and for theoretical and empirical research because of the strong impact on sustainable development in general. In this study we combine elements of theoretical and policy discussions with the empirical assessment of economic regional development in the European Union in order to identify the state of regional disparities, what factors are favouring unbalanced growth in different regions of the EU and to find an appropriate theoretical setting to understand, explain and reduce with regional inequality in the EU
Regional disparities in the European Union: Convergence and agglomeration
Papers in Regional Science, 2008
Economic disparities between the regions of the European Union are of constant concern both for policy and economic research. In this paper we examine whether there are overlapping trends of regional development in the EU: overall convergence on the one hand and persistent or even increasing spatial concentration (agglomeration) on the other. Kernel density estimation, Markov chain analysis and cross-sectional regressions provide evidence that convergence of regional per-capita income in the EU15 has become considerably stronger in the 1990s. The reduction of income disparities, however, is a phenomenon between nations but not between regions within the EU countries. European integration (and possibly European regional policy) foster the catching-up of lagging countries but at the same time forces for agglomeration of economic activities tend to increase disparities within the EU member states. Obviously, the productive advantages of spatial proximity do not vanish in the knowledge economy.
Questioning the ‘Periphery Label’ in Economic Geography
ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2019
Firm innovation is widely considered an effective means to facilitate and strengthen regional economic development, especially for cities and dynamic agglomerations. In turn, reduced innovation activities are regarded a critical element of missing economic dynamics in peripheral regions. Against this background, the paper offers a critical reading on how peripheral regions and their actors are typically portrayed in established accounts on the interconnections between innovation and space. Thereby, recent propositions to adopt more nuanced understandings that expand the prevailing ‘core region thinking’ are taken into account. The article provides two in-depth cases which explore innovation projects of firms located in peripheral Estonian regions. The analysis focuses on practices and strategies, which these firms mobilize as part of their innovation activities. Findings reveal that firms actively involve diverse partners from multiple spatial scales, respond to structural constrain...
European Planning Studies, 2008
This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the Knowledge-based Economy spatial distribution across the European Union (EU) regions (NUTS II), linking recent research approaches on innovation and structural change with approaches to regional economics. As a means of conducting this research, we classify economic activities according to six sectors based on their knowledge/technology intensity. Our results show that the higher the knowledge/technology content of the economic activity, the higher the concentration level of the activity. We find that some service activities (those considered knowledge intensive) have similar concentration levels to those operating in high or medium tech manufacturing. With regard to specialization, the most outstanding result is the strong presence of high and medium knowledge intensive service activities in metropolitan/capital regions. In general, our results reinforce the notion that an oligocentric model persists in Europe, with the southern German regions leading high and medium tech manufacturing, the south-east of England leading in high knowledgeintensive services, and with the mid-core model exemplified by the European metropolitan archipelago (particularly capital cities) in both northern and southern Europe.
Eastern Journal of European Studies, 2019
Debates around how to deal with increasing inequalities gained significant importance following the 2007 global financial crisis. This is the case not only for personal inequalities, but also for regional inequalities. Indeed, recent electoral outcomes, such as Brexit referendum and the emergence of right-wing nationalism throughout Europe, have shown that regional inequalities might be more important than scholars and policy-makers thought (Rodriguez-Pose, 2018). As such, there should be no surprise that the issues of lagging regions and how to deal with them have risen to prominence in regional studies. Lagging regions are sometimes labelled "places that do not matter" and their electoral behaviour in favour of populists is interpreted as a sort of revenge for being left behind over long periods of time (Rodriguez-Pose, 2018), or as a "rebellion of the globalisation's losers" (Davoudi, 2019). Moreover, Davoudi (2019) argues that we are not only dealing with places "left behind", but also "kept behind", by "neglect, lack of investment and misguided policies stemming from the long-term neo-liberal obsession with aggregate growth, big city boosterism and trickle down effects". The author, therefore, calls for re-imagining European cohesion policy, and she is not the only scholar stating this. Iammarino et al. (2017) also call for re-imagining cohesion policies, arguing for a place-sensitive approach, a new concept that asks for policies that take into consideration the context, and not only the local one, but also the context exterior to local conditions. In both cases, as in many others, one can notice a shift from place-neutral or even-place-based approaches to place-sensitive and more systemic approaches to dealing with lagging regions. Against this background, the edited volume of Lang and Görmar argues that one should regard regional inequalities in a broader perspective, taking into consideration not only differences between central and peripheral places, the performance of lagging regions per se, or the "catch-up" perspective, but to look instead at the core-periphery relations and its subsequent processes: polarisation, centralisation and peripheralisation. The book starts with the assumption that polarisation is an ongoing process that is happening in a threefold manner within the EU: demographically, economically, and even electoral. The authors are searching * Mihail EVA is assistant lecturer at the "Alexandru
Regional inequality in Europe: evidence, theory and policy implications
Journal of Economic Geography, 2018
Regional economic divergence has become a threat to economic progress, social cohesion and political stability in Europe. Market processes and policies that are supposed to spread prosperity and opportunity are no longer sufficiently effective. The evidence points to the existence of several different modes of regional economic performance in Europe, responding to different development challenges and opportunities. Both mainstream and heterodox theories have gaps in their ability to explain the existence of these different regional trajectories and the weakness of the convergence processes among them. Therefore, a different approach is required, one that strengthens Europe's strongest regions but develops new approaches to promote opportunity in industrial declining and less-developed regions. There is ample new theory and evidence to support such an approach, which we have labelled 'place-sensitive distributed development policy'.
Engineering for Rural Development, 2017
In our paper we made an overview on the literature about the creation and role of clusters and concentration of economic activities in the development of regions in Europe. Based on data available, we tried to find the correlation between the welfare, the quality of life and the clusters (especially in the knowledgeintensive sectors). In our research we assumed that the concentration of a sector in a region can have influence on the quality of life and that higher knowledge-intensive sectors of manufacturing and services have greater contribution to welfare. During research two main questions may arise: After how many years can we see beneficial effects on quality of life if a region starts to specialize. And: Can quality of life react flexibly to the changes in economy? After our research we got to the conclusion that there is a time shift in this phenomenon, the correlation is not linear and the changes are not elastic. We assumed that knowledge-driven economy has greater effect on quality of life than traditional economy but this cannot be proven generally. Moreover, regional specialties in labor market and industrial traditions seem to have great impact. We collected the data from the Eurostat database. The sample data give the opportunity to calculate the labor based location quotient (LQ), Herfindahl index and Dissimilarity index as well. All the three indices can show us the same effects that we are interested, but we have chosen LQ for our research. Eurostat has a so called high-tech industry and knowledgeintensive service database, which was used and filtered to the employment data in order to calculate the labor based LQ. The database lasts from 1994 to 2008 and shows the employment in the different knowledge intensive sectors on regional levels in 33 countries. The aim of our research was to find out how much the clusters/economic concentrations affect the development of regions and to try to define possible development ways for the future.