After three weeks of policy-led discussions at the Party Conferences this week has been about getting my head back into some ‘real’ research.
This week’s reading list links to some of the policy-discussions I’ve been involved in over the last three weeks on rebalancing the economy, city region governance, expanding cities and demand-side interventions. Hope you enjoy. keep the suggestions coming.
- ‘Agglomeration and Governance: Greater Manchester in a European Perspective’by Alan Harding, James Rees & Marianne Sensier (2010) – highlights the city region governance challenges associated with the growing unevenness of economic performance within and between cities in Europe. Includes case-studies of Manchester, Lyon, Barcelona and Dublin.
- ‘Endogenous regional growth: a critical survey’ by Mark Roberts & Mark Setterfield (2007) – its sounds worse than it is. Reminds us we need to focus on the demand side, as well as the supply side, of local economies and that local economies should be considered as part of national and international systems rather than as isolated entities.
- ‘Resurgent Cities and Regional Economic Performance’by Henry Overman & Patricia Rice (2008) – a great paper I re-read frequently. Argues that if we want growth across the country then focusing our resources on a region’s stronger cities is likely to have a greater affect. Also reminds us that there will be winners and losers from this approach which will need to be carefully managed.
- ‘Agglomeration, Accessibility, and Productivity: Evidence for Urbanized Areas in the US’ by Patricia Melo, Daniel Graham, David Levinson & Sarah Aarabi (2012) – I won’t pretend it’s an easy read but it is rewarding. Explores the distance that agglomeration effects operate over and finds that the outer time limit is 60 minutes, but the magnitude of these effects reduces very quickly. Doubling the number of jobs accessible within 20 minutes of driving time leads to an increase in real average wages of 6.5%, while the impact for a similar increase within 20 to 30 minutes is as small as 0.5%.
- ‘Concrete gains’ by The Economist Free Exchange (2012) – argues that in highly skilled societies, bigger cities are associated with higher levels of productivity and income and America has a greater spread of these bigger cities than Europe. Unsurprisingly it argues that regulatory barriers – planning, migration, etc. – are likely to be the problem in Europe.
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