Guest editors

Carolina Guevara Rosero, Departamento de Economía Cuantitativa, Facultad de Ciencias, Escuela Politécnica Nacional - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Karina Sass, University of Sao Paulo - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Motivation
The Latin American countries are the most unequal countries in the world, not only considering income inequality across individuals but also across regions within them. Specifically, in Latin America, on average, the ratio between the richest region and the poorest region is approximately 8 times while in OECD countries, this ratio reaches only 2 times (ECLAC-ILPES, 2012). Therefore, spatial disparities across regions within Latin American countries need to be analyzed more deeply to have a better comprehension of its causes and effects. It is especially interesting to analyze the case of Latin American cities since they have particularities that are not accounted for in theories for developed countries, such as informality, poverty, crime, insecurity, economic specialization, urban expansion, among others. Differences across regions within LAC countries in various dimensions such as basic infrastructure, amenities, transport infrastructure, innovation, productive and social networks, and socioeconomic characteristics in general may influence the economic performance and welfare of economic agents, including people, communities and firms in those regions.
While big cities are attractive places to workers and firms due to more and better opportunities, they face issues such as crime and insecurity. Although small cities would not have severe problems of insecurity, they lack basic services.
This calls for public policy recommendations and actions aiming to reduce unequal regional development and growth.
This special call aims to mobilize studies on regional disparities in Latin America that give insights for possible policy recommendations. We kindly invite contributions on topics related (but not limited) to:

• Spatial disparities at the subnational level, causes and effects
• Firms (innovation) and social networks in regions
• Effects of spatial disparities in economic performance
• Effects of spatial disparities in welfare
• Regional migration
• Regional economic structure and productive networks and resilience

Invitation for submission
We welcome original, unpublished papers that address the above questions, or any other research questions not mentioned, as they relate to regional economics. We look forward to papers from all parts of the world.
Please note that the deadline for submitting papers to https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/regional-science-policy-and-practice for the RSPP Special Issue on Regional disparities in Latin America and social welfare and economic development is December 15, 2023, with foreseen publication of accepted papers in 2024. Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you need more information.