| 1. |
- Berggren, Björn, 1972-, et al.
(författare)
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Does the increase in house prices influence the creation of business startups? : The case of Sweden
- 2017
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Ingår i: Region. - : European Regional Science Association. - 2409-5370. ; 4:1, s. 1-16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Entrepreneurs are at the core of economic development in that they start new businesses or make existing firms grow. To fulfill this important role, entrepreneurs need access to financing. Owing to information asymmetry and the relatively high risk associated with business startups, many financiers shy away from engaging in relationships with firms during the early stages of their development. Based on the existing body of knowledge on the financing of entrepreneurship, we know that insider finance is of paramount importance in the early stages of firms’ development. We expand this knowledge base by analyzing the influence of house prices on business startups across municipalities in Sweden. In our analysis, we include data from all municipalities in Sweden. Our data on house prices and control variables are collected in period one, and our data on the frequency of startups are collected in period two. We find that rising house prices in a municipality lead to a higher frequency of startups. In our spatial Durbin model, we find that a 1% increase in house prices leads to around 0.15% increase in startups. Our findings are in line with the limited international research that has been previously conducted, and therefore, our study might make a small but vital addition to this growing body of knowledge within the area of entrepreneurship and regional development.
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| 2. |
- Kourtit, Karima, et al.
(författare)
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Critical performance factors for large world cities - In search of qualitative causal patterns by means of rough set analysis
- 2017
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Ingår i: Region. - : European Regional Science Association. - 2409-5370. ; 4:1, s. 51-70
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the currently emerging ‘urban century’, large cities and urban agglomerations are increasingly turning into (socio-)economic and political powerhouses of world-wide importance. This paper offers a comparative assessment of the multidimensional performance profile of major cities in our world, with particular emphasis on the livability and economic potential of these cities. We use an explanatory cohesive framework in the present study, which finds its origin in the so-called ‘urban piazza’ model. Next, using an extensive database on various rankings of 40 global cities (the so-called GPCI data base), the relative performance of these cities is ‘explained’ in a qualitative sense by means of a non-parametric ordinal ranking method, known as rough set analysis. The approach allows us to identify in a qualitative sense the driving forces that altogether are responsible for the economic and livability achievements of these cities. Our analysis is based on a novel triple-layer rough set analysis of the performance of the cities concerned. The empirical analysis highlights the combined explanatory ‘power’ of several success conditions and drivers of the cities concerned. Our empirical results demonstrate that in particular geographical accessibility and R&D of these urban areas appears to play in many cases an important role in shaping their strong position.
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| 3. |
- Kourtit, Karima, et al.
(författare)
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Effective clusters as territorial performance engines in a regional development strategy – a triple-layer dea assessment of the aviation valley in poland
- 2017
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Ingår i: Region. - : European Regional Science Association. - 2409-5370. ; 4:3, s. 39-63
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Regional development policy aims to cope with the challenge of spatial disparities. It is based on a smart combination of various critical capital assets in a region which functionally and spatially interact and which yield synergetic economic opportunities and promising challenges for innovation and progress. The present study regards sustainable territorial performance – as a manifestation of regional development – as the overarching principle for competitive advantages and economic growth in a system of regions, which is particularly induced by territorial capital, comprising human capital, infrastructural capital and social capital. In the long-standing tradition of regional development policy a wide variety of effective facilitators or drivers of accelerated spatial growth has been distinguished, for instance, industrial districts, growth poles, growth centers, industrial complexes, special economic zones, communication axes, and so forth. In the past decades, a new concept has been introduced, viz. economic-technological clusters. An avalanche of literature has been published on the conceptual, operational and policy foundation and relevance of this concept, especially in relation to previously developed regional growth concepts. In this paper, clusters will be regarded as the spatial foci of sustainable territorial performance strategies and synergetic actions by both public and private actors. The present paper aims to address the relevance of cluster concepts for an effective regional development policy, based on the above notion of territorial capital. It does so by introducing a new concept, viz. effective cluster, in which spatial-economic synergy, local/regional concentration of industry, and the supporting role of territorial capital are regarded as the main determinants of a highly performing cluster in a given territory. The effective cluster concept will be tested on the basis of a field study on the aviation and aerospace cluster ‘Dolina Lotnicza’ in the Podkarpackie region in South-East Poland. This is one of the most vibrant high-tech clusters in thecountry. A new approach based on a triple-layer architecture will be adopted here, viz.: a quantitative comparative analysis of the 16 Polish ‘voivodships’ (main administrative regions in the country, at a NUTS-2 level), a benchmark analysis of the 25 counties (‘powiats’) within the Podkarpackie voivodship (at a NUTS-4 level), and an effective industrial cluster analysis on the basis of the individual aviation firms located in the Podkarpackie region. In each step an extended Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), characterised by a merger of a Slack-Based Measure (SMB) and a super-efficiency (SE) DEA, will be used in order to achieve an unambiguous ranking of the various regions or Decision Making Units (DMUs). The study will employ an extensive database on individual actors in the cluster, in combination with a broadly composed territorial-capital database for the areas under study. The paper will be concluded with some strategic policy lessons.
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| 4. |
- Kourtit, Karima, et al.
(författare)
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Quality and inequality in regional and urban systems
- 2019
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Ingår i: Region. - : European Regional Science Association. - 2409-5370. ; 5:4, s. E1-E5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the aftermath of both ongoing globalisation (with both widening and deepening effects on countries, regions and cities) and structural changes resulting from the 2008 economic recession, regions and cities in our world are confronted with a different arena of players, performances and institutions. The challenges are formidable and numerous. Many regions and cities seem to resort to their indigenous strength, without much regard to other players in the field. This has enormous consequences for the competitive behaviour and profile of regional and urban actors but has at the same time deep impacts on the distribution of wealth, income and employment over and within countries, regions and cities. There is indeed much evidence that disparities among regions and in cities are increasing in this new force field. This special issue of REGION makes a solid scientific attempt (i) to map out the spatial consequences of recent transitions in growth trajectories of countries or regions, and (ii) to trace policy strategies and design effective policy information, to cope adequately with these new challenges. The present special issue does so by highlighting the new force field of regional and urban dynamics from three angles in the context of spatial quality and inequality. These will be briefly sketched below.
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| 5. |
- Larsson, Anders, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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Potentials and limitations for the use of accessibility measures for national transport policy goals in freight transport and logistics: Evidence from Västra Götaland County, Sweden-
- 2017
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Ingår i: Region. - : European Regional Science Association. - 2409-5370. ; 4:1, s. 71-92
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Swedish national transport policy treats freight transport as a major facilitator of economic development at all geographical levels. It is simultaneously noted that methods and data for business location and transportation are inadequate for following up transport policy objectives. This paper reports on a pilot study of the potential to develop accessibility measures to support and follow up policy objectives in the Swedish context. The accessibility concept and its practical application in concrete measures are discussed and problematized. Several practical examples from Vastra Gotaland County are used as illustrations. In terms of results, the study identies several potentials and limitations of using accessibility measures to address freight transport issues. These measures' usefulness is driven mainly by the integration capability of transport and land use. This permits more complex questions and measures, supporting the integration between planning specializations. Limitations largely concern data availability and quality and the extent to which maps and measures can be communicated to non-experts. The concluding discussion highlights how the policy and governance context is central to understanding how best to utilize the potential strengths of the accessibility concept and related measures.
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| 6. |
- Nijkamp, P., et al.
(författare)
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Towards a regional science academy : A manifesto
- 2016
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Ingår i: Region. - : European Regional Science Association. - 2409-5370. ; 3:1, s. R1-R16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This Manifesto provides a joint proposal to create a Regional Science Academy as a think-tank support platform for a strategic development of the spatial sciences. The Regional Science Academy is a strategic spatial knowledge catalyst: it acts as a global intellectual powerhouse for new knowledge network initiatives and scholarly views on regions and cities as vital centrepieces of interconnected spatial systems. This contribution highlights its role and presents various activity plans.
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| 7. |
- Snickars, Folke, 1944-, et al.
(författare)
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Research infrastructure, networks of science and regional development – the case of oskarshamn
- 2017
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Ingår i: Region. - : European Regional Science Association. - 2409-5370. ; 4:3, s. 119-131
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Final disposal of nuclear waste is a global engineering challenge. The Swedish nuclear industry has consequently spent more than thirty years investigating the best sites and technologies for the final storage of nuclear waste. Universities have been involved as experts in this large-scale R&D activity. This has resulted in a well-documented body of knowledge for supporting relevant decision-making. Simultaneously, as a result, global research infrastructure networks have been developed and consequently more than 140 PhD theses have been produced. Eleven of these PhD holders are now full professors. Based on earlier work on research infrastructures from Lund, Hamburg, and Kiruna, see for instance Snickars, Falck (2015), we have addressed the question of the role of a technical research infrastructure in the development of the fields of engineering and natural science while simultaneously generating regional development. It has provided an opportunity to empirically study the use of research infrastructure in a specialized technology field. At the same time, this study investigates one municipality’s efforts to specialize in research without a university in the vicinity. Do networks of cooperation differ between research groups and research infrastructures? How can a region build its smart specialization on research infrastructure? How can research equipment once belonging to a company be transformed to a public research infrastructure asset? Our results indicate that research infrastructures such as the ones in Oskarshamn are powerful creators of international research networks. It is possible, although somewhat difficult in view of scattered systems for data provision, to assess their academic and societal impacts. Engineering research has its own networks of university-industry and industry-university interaction where project-based value is cogenerated dynamically. In this study, we have come some way towards empirically analyzing the networks of research cooperation between industry and university using methods of infrastructure and social network analysis.
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