Virtual ERSA2020 Event under examination

Due to the global health issue related to the coronavirus outbreak, the Local Organising Committee together with the ERSA Board and Executive bodies (EOC and ERSAC), have the regret to announce that this year’s 60th Annual ERSA Congress of Bolzano, 25-28 August, is postponed to 2021 in the same location. 

To make sure that our Regional Science Community does not miss out on the extraordinary input of this year’s Congress, including 926 submissions from around the world, we are considering all the options to organise an Online Event at the same period, late August.

The format and content of an ERSA2020 Online Event are currently under examination. Accepted authors of this year’s Congress have also been approached regarding the opportunity of presenting their research.

Further details will be communicated in the coming weeks.

André Torre                              Thomas Streifeneder and Andrea Omizzolo,  
ERSA President                         Co-Chairs of the Local Organising Committee

Special Series on Covid 19

RSPP Working Paper nº 2020.002

Socio-Demographic Disparities in COVID-19 Case Rates and Testing: An exploratory spatial analysis of ZIP code data in Chicago, IL [PDF]

By Kevin Credit

Margaret Bock, a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at West Virginia University has been selected as the winner of the Twentieth Annual Benjamin H. Stevens Graduate Fellowship in Regional Science. The Fellowship will provide a 2020–2021 Academic Year stipend of $30,000 to support Ms. Bock’s dissertation research entitled, “The Road Less Traveled: Economic Analysis of Roads and Highways.”

The research investigates the connection between roads and highways on several aspects of urban and rural locales including commuting, mortality, and mayoral elections. The results of this dissertation will be of wide-ranging interest to regional scientists and policymakers given current interest in the state of infrastructure in the United States, poising Ms. Bock to make several scholarly and practical contributions. Ms. Bock’s doctoral research is supervised by Joshua Hall, Professor and Chair of Economics at West Virginia University.

In addition to selecting the Fellowship recipient, the Selection Committee identified two applicants as meriting special recognition in the 20^th Annual Competition:  Melissa Haller, Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), supervised by David Rigby; and Sydney Schreiner, Ph.D. student in Agricultural, Environmental, and Developmental Economics at The Ohio State University, supervised by Mark Partridge.

The 20^th competition winner and finalists will be recognized at the awards banquet luncheon of the upcoming November 11–14, 67^th North American Meetings of the RSAI in San Diego, California.

The Fellowship is awarded in memory of Dr. Benjamin H. Stevens, an intellectual leader whose selfless devotion to graduate students as teacher, advisor, mentor, and friend continues to have a profound impact on the field of regional science. Fundraising efforts to increase the Fellowship’s endowment are ongoing. Donations should be sent to: The Stevens Fellowship Fund, First Financial Bank, Attn. Trust Department, 1205 S. Neil Street, Champaign, IL 61820 USA. Checks should be drawn to The Stevens Fellowship Fund. Donations may also be made by credit card through the NARSC website at www.narsc.org/newsite/donations2.php.

The 2020 Stevens Fellowship Selection Committee is composed of: Elizabeth Mack, Geography, Michigan State University (Chair); Daoqin Tong, Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University; Nicholas Nagle, Geography, University of Tennessee; and Steven Deller, Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Stevens Fellowship Committee administrates the Stevens Fellowship Fund on behalf of the North American Regional Science Council; its members are: Tony Smith, Chair; David Plane, Secretary; Michael Lahr, Treasurer; Janet Kohlhase; and Neil Reid, Executive Director of NARSC.

The Committee thanks the 24 students who entered the competition in 2020, as well as their dissertation supervisors. Faculty at all North American Ph.D. programs related to the interdisciplinary field of Regional Science are encouraged to have their best students apply for the Twenty-First Annual Stevens Graduate Regional Science Fellowship. The winning student’s dissertation research will be supported during the 2021–2022 year with a one-year stipend of $30,000. The application deadline is February 15, 2021. Full submission guidelines will be posted at http://www.narsc.org/newsite/awards-prizes/applications/

April 2020

Special Series on Covid 19

We are opening a 2-year Post Doc position in the ANET Lab Budapest. 

ANET Lab is an interdisciplinary group at the Institute of Economics in Budapest and aims to uncover how urbanization and the structure of social networks are interrelated. We build our research projects on large data bases and intend to answer the questions how social networks form in geographical space, how the structure of social networks explain economic and technological progress in cities and how dynamic learning and spreading processes happen in spatial social networks. For more information, see our website at http://anet.krtk.mta.hu. 

We are seeking a Post-Doc colleague who will be employed by ANET Lab from September 2020 until June 2022. The new colleague is expected to join at least one of the ongoing research projects of the Lab but will be given the opportunity to start new ones as well. Our projects include: 

• Automation and development: we investigate how AI and automation threatens occupations, influences industry structure, business opportunities and labour mobility in regions. 
• Diffusion and churn of innovation: we develop an empirical network-science framework to predict the adoption and disadoption of products and technologies at local scales. 
• Organizational networks, skills and performance: we analyse the relationship between skills of employees, the network structure of their interactions, and firm performance. 
• Price of contact reduction: we aim to understand the extent to which mobility restrictions in certain industries help slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the light of consequent economic effects. 
• Social networks and inequality: we explore how network structures in cities contribute to income and educational inequalities. 
• Technological diversification of regions: we explore how collaboration networks facilitate the production of new technologies in regions, and the path-dependence regions follow in technological development.   

Please, find the call on this link.

Application deadline: May 31, 2020. Starting date: September 1, 2020 or upon agreement.  

RSPP Call for Papers on Drivers, Impacts and Policies of Covid19

COVID-19 is spreading around the world while governments try to control the spread of the disease taking into account the potential of the health systems to cure patients and the capacity of their economies to survive and react to the constraints imposed to save lives.

The aim of the RSPP Special Issue Drivers Effects and Policies of Covid19 is to gather regional science research along the following lines:

• Analytical papers on the impacts on regional and urban economies of Covid-19 and of the policies implemented to control the disease.
• Policy papers on the regional and urban impacts of alternative Covid-19 policies.
• Prospective papers on sustainable urbanization post Covid-19.
• Epidemic bio-economic models and methods.

Paper submission can be made in the Platform of Regional Science Policy and Practice https://rsaiconnect.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17577802

Papers accepted and edited will be immediately available free on-line. All the papers on this topic will be compiled in one or more Special Issues on Drivers, Impacts and Policies of Covit19 published in the second issue of 2021.

The order of submission and acceptance is important if more than one issue is published on the topic:

• First deadline May 30^th
• Second deadline July 31^st
• Third deadline November 20^th

RSPP Working Papers on the topic are very much welcome. For that use the template available (download) and submit it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We review and assess the submission of Working Papers and can accept sequential versions of each when new data can provide updated evidences.

The Editorial Team

David Plane has been awarded the 2020 edition of the Hirotada Kohno award. The decision was made by the Jury comprising Mark Partridge (President); Serena Erendira (Council member); Andrés Rodrigues-Pose and Yoshiro Higano (RSAI Past Presidents), which I would like to thank for their service despite these troubled times.

The Hirotada Kohno award is bestowed to eminent regional scientists for their outstanding professional service to our discipline, and this description perfectly fits Prof. Plane’s.

In fact, David A. Plane, a Professor Emeritus of the University of Arizona, has been a lifetime contributor to regional science. His research focuses on population geography and regional science, U.S. migration and settlement patterns, the role of the life course in affecting mobility, and methods for modeling activity patterns and temporal change in spatial interaction systems.

Prof. Plane was elected as a Fellow of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) in 2010. He has served as President and Chair of the North American Regional Science Council (NARSC); President of the Pacific Regional Science Conference Organization (PRSCO); Editor-in-Chief of Papers in Regional Science (PiRS) and Co-Managing Editor of the Journal of Regional Science (JRS); as well as numerous panels and committees for the National Science Foundation, the National Academies, and the U.S. Most importantly, David Plane had been leading the Western Regional Science Association of NARSC as the executive director for 21 years between 1991 and 2011, served as the 57th president for WRSA and elected as a fellow in 2011. For over two decades, David Plane had been the main driving force for the continuing growth of WRSA. He had focused on maintaining the quality of scholarly interaction among regional scientists through the annual meetings of the WRSA. Since 1998, he has been serving as a councillor for PRSCO, which was founded by WRSA and JSRSA (Japan Section of the Regional Science Association) in 1968.

Respected Sir/Madam,

The proposal for an edited volume titled “Railway Transportation: Region, Development and Economy” will be submitted shortly to the Springer for their approval. In framing the list of potential contributors to the Volume, we humbly seek your kind permission to list you as an author for the same. We strongly believe that your contribution shall significantly enrich the proposed book as well as guide pertinent future research in this field.

Relevance of the Edited Volume

Railway is the most important developmental instrument of a region, province or country. Railway plays a very important role in economic development, urban growth, urban mobility, regional susceptibility, integrating markets and world trade and commerce. In meeting the increasing demand and supply, railway becomes the integral part of regional development in terms of both freight and passenger transportation.

The objective of the proposed book is to highlight the varying magnitude of railway transportation, its effects and externalities of mechanisms across the geographical spaces. Therefore, keeping in mind the regional development, economic growth and urban metamorphosis, a contributor may deliver the specific regional entity with scientific analysis of railway transport system. Railway transport related contemporary issues like railway infrastructural facilities, service quality, passenger mobility, passenger satisfaction, rail freight transportation, market demand, railway management system, technological development, urban transportation, railway planning, railway and environmental susceptibility, future trends of development, cross border trading etc. may be emphasised in the proposed book.

Submission Guideline

• A suitable and brief title not exceeding 15 words in font size 14 should be given.
• Author/authors affiliation is mandatory with their designation, institute, postal address, mobile number and email ID.
• Abstracts should be written within 300 words along with 4 to 5 keywords.
• Submission of manuscript must be in MS-Word format with all four sides 1-inch margin. Manuscript should be typed in Times New Roman with a 12 size and keep line spacing at 1.15.
• Manuscript should contain the statement of problem, objective, research methodology and findings of the work.
• Citations and reference should comply with APA style of referencing. Give example for book and journal.
• Length of the manuscript should not exceed 4000-6000 words.

Submission of abstract/full manuscript must be sent to Dr. Saptarshi Mitra or Prof. Tomaz Ponce Dentinho

• through email attachment (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it./)

Time Line of Publication

Outreach

The target reader includes academicians (University and College teachers and researchers) and organisations like RSAI (Regional Science Association, International) and RSAi (Regional Science Association, India). Students of Geography, Economics, Regional Science and Transport Planning (at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels) shall also benefit from having a concise volume on the railway transportation aspects of this region. We envisage that those associated with the economic development, environmental externalities shall also be interested, for the rich details of transport planning that the Volume shall contain. we further envisage that the appeal of the Volume shall be significantly enhanced.

Sections/Themes of the proposed Edited Volume

• Section-I: Chronological Evolution of Railway Transport System
• Section-II: Railway Transportation: Economy, Urbanization and Development
• Section-III: Passengers Mobility and Passengers’ Perception on Railway Transport System
• Section-IV: Railway Transport System: Future Planning and Policy Perspective

Manuscript submission and publishing timeline

On acceptance of the Book Proposal by the Publisher, we shall request your kind submission by the end of May, 2020. With subsequent incorporation of all submissions and completion of other editorial tasks, we envisage the Edited Volume to be published by first quarter of 2021.

We thus hope Sir, that you shall give your kind consent to be part of the above endeavour and also provide any valuable suggestions that may help us frame the Volume better and proceed smoothly towards its completion and publication. We look forward to your support in this matter and remain most grateful for the same.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

The Editors

Dr. Saptarshi Mitra

Prof. Sumana Bandyopadhyay

Prof. Tomaz Ponce Dentinho

Mr. Stabak Roy

WEBCONFERÊNCIA
“Impactos Regionais da Pandemia COVID-19”

Data: 20/04/2020

Horário: 11:00-13:00

URL: https://zoom.us/j/309320334

Objetivo: Promover o encontro virtual de pesquisadores de diferentes instituições brasileiras para apresentação e discussão de resultados de pesquisas relacionadas à COVID-19 na área de Ciência Regional.

Programa

11:00-11:10 - Abertura, Eduardo Haddad (USP) e Carlos Azzoni (USP)

Bloco 1 - Evolução da Pandemia
11:10-11:20 - Modelo Bio-Econômico de Apoio à Gestão de Epidemias - Tomás Dentinho (Universidade dos Açores)
11:20-11:30 - Weather Impacts on COVID-19 Transmission - Paula Pereda (USP), Bruno Palialol (USP) e Carlos Azzoni (USP)
11:30-11:40 - Perguntas dos participantes

Bloco 2 - Impactos Econômicos 1
11:40-11:50 - Custos Econômicos das Medidas de Isolamento e Distanciamento Social - Eduardo Haddad (USP), Fernando Perobelli (UFJF) e Inácio Araújo (USP)
11:50-12:00 - Impactos Regionais da COVID-19 sobre a Cadeia de Valor do Setor de Turismo - Eduardo Haddad (USP), Moisés Vassallo (UNIFEI), Fernando Perobelli (UFJF) e Inácio Araújo (USP)
12:00-12:10 - Perguntas dos participantes

Bloco 3 - Impactos Econômicos 2
12:10-12:20 - Impactos Econômicos da COVID-19 no Brasil - Alexandre Porsse (UFPR), Kênia de Souza (UFPR), Terciane Carvalho (UFPR), Vinícius Vale (UFPR)
12:20-12:30 - Cenários Globais da Pandemia COVID-19 no Brasil - Edson Domingues (UFMG), Aline Magalhães (UFMG), Débora Cardoso (UFMG), Thiago Simonato (UFMG), Diego Miyajima (UFMG)
12:30-13:00 - Perguntas dos participantes e conclusões