The committee (made up of Balazs Forman, Jozsef Karpati, Ilona Palne-Kovacs, Sarah Low, and Hee-Jung Jun) recommended the two papers the winners of the 2024 RSAI Young Researcher Award:

1st place: 

Kenneth Castillo-Hidalgo from Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona wins first prize with his paper titled “Mines, fields, or classrooms: Effects of primary activities agglomeration on local human capital accumulation.” This paper is about the role of human capital in mining and non-mining agglomerations in Chile. Using the Spatial Autocorrelation Model, with excellent sensitivity analyses, he finds that higher mining activity is associated with lower human capital in periods with high copper prices. Its contributions include the spatial and temporal differences in mining’s impacts on human capital and the need for tailored regional development strategies around growing human capital. The committee appreciated this paper’s relevance and regional nature.

2nd place:

Maria Kubara of University of Warsaw wins second prize with her paper titled, “Unravelling causal CBD impact on technological startup survival.” It uses novel machine learning techniques to examine non-linear relations between startups’ initial conditions and locational characteristics. She investigates the impact of Central Business District location on startup growth trajectories, finding that CBD’s influence is dependent upon the startup’s capital endowment, with more capitalized firms benefitting most from CBD location. However, the CBD location becomes less relevant as the startup grows in employment size. The committee appreciated the contribution of new methods to the regional science community.

Congratulations!

The RSAI Young Researchers Prize aims to showcase the research of young scholars in regional science through paper presentation and in-depth discussion organized at the Regional Science Association World Congress.