Johannes Bröcker, a long-time member of RSAI, passed away after a short illness on January 19, 2021 at the age of 70.  He was an active member of ERSA and a regular participant in the German-speaking section.  He served on the editorial boards of several journals, most prominently the Annals of Regional Science and Spatial Economic Analysis.  His undergraduate degree was from Freiburg and his master and doctoral degrees and habilitation were from Kiel.  With the exception of the period from 1990-2000 when he served as the Chair in Macroeconomics and Regional Science at the University of Dresden, his career was centered in Kiel.  His last appointment, dating from 2000 until he retired in 2015, was as Chair in International and Regional Economics.

Johannes was a brilliant theoretical and applied spatial economist; his advisor, Karin Peschel, (who sadly passed away in June 2020) had worked with Andreas Predhöl on her doctorate and with Rolf Funck on her habilitation and she imbued that strong German location theory tradition in Johannes’ work that later included his support and active participation in the August Lösch Prize committee.  Johannes was the progenitor of the development of spatial computable general equilibrium models and the work reflected his firm foundation in location theory (Bröcker, 1995) where he drew on the work of Lösch and Chamberlin and in the formulation of flows in multi-economy models (Bröcker, 1989).  Subsequently, he provided some integration of general equilibrium and transportation systems (Bröcker and Mercenier, 2011).  However, one of his most highly cited articles (Bröcker, 1988) developed an operational spatial computable equilibrium model building up from Arrow-Debreu equilibrium under perfect competition.  The model was promoted as one that was both transparent and parsimonious (in terms of the number of equations) and perfectly illustrated Johannes’ ability to move effectively from strong theoretical foundations through empirical implementation.  This model and subsequent version were used in a wide variety of applications assessing the impacts of infrastructure investment (especially transportation), transport and trade policy and the impacts of cohesion policies.

He loved to attend meetings and seminars where he enjoyed asking penetrating, imaginative questions; one sensed that he enjoyed being a scholar and the enthusiasm for his work resonated strongly in his publications. 

References

• Johannes Bröcker (1985) “Partial equilibrium theory of interregional trade and the gravity model,” Papers of the Regional Science Association 66, 7– 18.
• Johannes Bröcker (1995) “Chamberlinian spatial computable general equilibrium modelling: a theoretical framework,” Economic Systems Research, 7, 137–149.
• Johannes Bröcker (1998) “Operational Spatial Computable General Equilibrium Modelling,” Annals of Regional Science, 32, 367–387.
• Johannes Bröcker and Jean Mercenier (2011) “General Equilibrium Models for Transportation Economics,” in André de Palma, Robin Lindsey, Emile Quinet, and Roger Vickerman (eds.) Handbook of Transport Economics Vol. 1, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, pp. 21–45.

Obituary on the website of the Institute for Environmental, Resource and Spatial Economics at Kiel University available at http://www.re2.uni-kiel.de/en/documents-pictures/obituary-prof-dr-johannes-brocker

Call for participation - XV World Conference of the Spatial Econometrics Association Tokyo, (Japan), 26th - 28th May 2021.

Due to COVID-19 outbreaks all sessions will be in a real time online format without video presentations. Your slot will be allocated considering your time zone.

 Important Dates:
·      Abstract submission: March 1, 2021 (300-600 words).
·      Notification of acceptance: April 10, 2021
·      Deadline for registration: May 20, 2021
·      Deadline for full paper submission to the Special issue of the
       Journal of Spatial Econometrics August 1, 2021 (state it
       explicitly in the abstract).
·      Jean Paelinck prize for young researcher, full paper by March 1,
       2021

Note: Time zone of the dates above is Japan Standard Time (JST: GMT+09:00).

Plenary/Invited Speakers:
·       Noel Cressie, University of Wollongong
·       Jean Paul Elhorst, University of Groningen
·       Alan E. Gelfand, Duke University
·       Virgilio Gómez-Rubio, The University of Castilla-La Mancha
·       Daniel A. Griffith, The University of Texas at Dallas

 Registration Fees:
·       FREE for all SEA members who pay their membership fees before March 31, 2021.
·       6,000 JPY (about 58 USD and 48 EUR) for SEA members who don’t pay their membership fee for 2021.
·       7,000 JPY (about 67 USD and 56 EUR) for non-members of SEA.
·       3,000 JPY (about 29 USD and 24 EUR) for students.

Conference registration fees include:
·       Annual membership to the Spatial Econometrics Association
        (SEA);
·       Free subscription to the Journal of Spatial Econometrics ;
·       Free participation to the (fully online) Spatial Econometrics  

Advanced Institute (SEAI) summer school -      https://www.spatialeconometricsassociation.org/home-advanced/

More details at the conference webpage: https://confit.atlas.jp/guide/event/sea2021/top

Second and Extended Edition of the Handbook of Regional Science --  a large, multi-volume major reference work with a total of 2,318 pages -- is now officially published!

Handbook of Regional Science

Manfred M. Fischer, Peter Nijkamp (Eds.)

• Covers well-established and newly emerging topics
• Accessible and relevant to both students and researchers
• Prepared by respected scientists in the field

The Handbook of Regional Science is a multi-volume reference work providing state-of-the-art information, prepared by respected scientists in the field. This second edition includes new sections on the history of regional science, and on regional policy. It has been thoroughly updated to reflect new developments, including new chapters on R&D collaboration networks, knowledge spillovers, web-based tools for exploratory spatial data analysis, fuzzy modeling, multivariate spatial process models, heterogeneous coefficient spatial regression panel models, and endogeneity in spatial models, among others. The multi-volume handbook covers the field of regional science comprehensively, including topics such as location and interaction, regional housing and labor markets, regional economic growth, innovation and regional economic development, regional policy in emerging markets, new economic geography and evolutionary economic geography, environmental and natural resources, spatial analysis and geocomputation, as well as spatial statistics and spatial econometrics. The book is intended to serve the needs of graduate students, beginning and experienced scientists in regional science and related fields with an interest in exploring local and regional socio-economic issues.

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783662607220

University Professor

for the specialist field of urban and regional research

RSPP Call for Papers

Special Issue on

Urban Future in the Global South

The Global South is undergoing an urban revolution with profound consequences to its society, economy, culture, polity, demography, human behaviour, and built and natural environments. Many associates this urbanism to arrhythmic (Lefebvre, 2004; Shaban and Datta, 2019) development of Global South through ‘fast urbanization’ (Datta and Shaban, 2017) based on ‘fast policies’ (Peck and Theodore, 2015) from Global North, while others locate the changes in the paradigm of new economic development and social liberation (Brugmann, 2009).  Some studies have located the urbanization in the Global South within the essence of northern urbanity or ‘planetary’ urbanism (Brenner and Schmid, 2015), while others have differentiated its character and called it ‘Southern Urbanism’ (Schindler, 2017).  ‘Fast’ urbanization and city building is seen as utopia by the post-colonial states of the Global South to overcome their economic underdevelopment. The amassed investments in cities by both the private sector and the entrepreneurial states are sharpening the rural-urban divides in development with massive consequences to both the poverty and aspiration led migration to urban centres, especially to the mega cities. Theme based urbanism and city building from garden city, ecocity, intelligent city to smart city has emerged as a trope for urban future and sustainability.

This urban moment in the Global South is caught in many contradictory processes: slow societies with fast urbanism; burgeoning urban system with imbalanced hierarchies of cities; increased city building and rising houselessness and inadequate social and physical infrastructure; rising means of transport with increased traffic congestions; economic growth with increased inequalities; increased accumulation of wealth in urban centres with increased dispossession of the rural; increased nationalism with increased exoticism; increased emphasis on democracy with decreased citizens’ participation; increased size of government with declining social welfare; increased planning with rising informality; rising economic development with increased adverse environmental consequences; rising middle class with sharpening ethnic divides; increased policing with rising crimes, etc.

In the above context, we invite well-researched papers and case studies from the Global South (Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania) around the following sub-themes (with discussion on implications to the urban future),

1. Urban planning and local context
2. Urban infrastructure (including digital Infrastructure)
3. Urban mobilities
4. Urbanization and democratic participation
5. Socio-spatial segregation and exclusion in cities
6. Urban violence and community resilience
7. Urban environment and climate action
8. Engagement with sustainable urbanization

The papers with peer review process will be published in special issue of the journal Regional Science, Policy and Practice (of the Regional Science Association International).

Editors

Abdul Shaban, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai [This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.]

Tomaz Ponce Dentinho, University of the Azores, Angra do Heroísmo [This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.]

Planning

• Expression of interest until February 15th 2021
• Full paper submission July 31^st 2021
• Online publication date, one month after the paper is accepted
• Expected Compiled Publication July 2022

References

Brenner N and  Schmid C (2015) Towards a New Epistemology of the Urban? City 19 (2-3): 151–182. 

Brugmann J (2009). Welcome To Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing The World. New Delhi: HarperCollins.

Datta A and Shaban A (eds) (2016) MegaUrbanization in the Global South: Fast Cities and New Urban Utopias of the Postcolonial State. New York: Routledge.

Lefebvre H (2004) Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (Translated by Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore). Paris: Continuum.

Peck J and Theodore N (2015) Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 

Schindler S (2017) Towards a paradigm of Southern urbanism. City 21(1): 47-64.

Shaban A and Datta A (2019) Towards 'Slow' and 'Moderated' Urbanism. Economic and Political Weekly 54(48):36-42.

RSPP WEBINAR | Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Territorial Inequalities Policies

Friday, January 29, 2021

14:00 (CET) [13:00 (GMT) | 13:00 (UTC) | 08:00 (EST)]

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAudumvpj0jEtwajuVWGMgDP3cEWxGICl2j

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

RSPP-EUREAL initiative coordinated by Ana Viñuela

14:00-14:15 | Welcome, by Eduardo Haddad, RSAI President

14:15-14:30 | Introduction, by Ana Viñuela and Tomaz Ponce Dentinho

14:30-15:00 | Understanding the experiences of indigenous minorities through the lens of spatial justice: the case of Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia, by Masni Mat Dong and Maria Plotnikova

15:00-15:30 | Policy design to address territorial inequalities in multi-sectoral political systems, by Paul Cairney, Sean Kippin and Emily St Denny

15:30-16:00 | Regional inequality, spatial dependence and proximity structures, by Domenica Panzera, Alfredo Cartone and Paolo Postiglione

16:00-16:30 | Au revoir Paris! Spanish regions closer to the EU average and further away from the leaders, by Alicia Gómez-Tello, María José Murgui-García and María Teresa Sanchis-Llopis

16:30-17:00 | Productivity and agglomeration economies in manufacturing of the metropolitan areas of Mexico, 1998-2013, by Jaime A. Prudencio Vázquez, Fernando Rubiera Morollón and Esteban Fernández Vázquez

17:00-17:30 | Inequality as a determinant of migration decisions, by Magdalena Ulceluse, Bettina Bock and Tialda Haartsen

Title: One position as Assistant Professor (with Tenure Track) in Economic Policy, with a special focus on Tourism Economics.

Place: Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Rimini Campus (Rimini, Italy). Application deadline: 26 January 2019 12.00 p.m. (noon)

Excerpt of the call for application, for more detailed information see this link.

The Department of Economics of the University of Bologna, ranked among the top 100 departments of economics in the world, has an opening for one positions (with tenure track) of Assistant Professor. This position is in Economic Policy (formally: Fixed-term researcher, field: SECS P/02), will start in the academic year 2021/2022 and is intended for an initial period of three years. Subject to a satisfactory performance in these three years, the successful candidate will be promoted to tenured Associate Professor.

Candidates must hold a Ph.D. in economics or econometrics and must have at least three years of research experience as a post-doc, or being in possess of habilitation as Associate Professor according to the Italian law (see http://abilitazione.miur.it/ for details). Successful candidates are expected to have articles published or forthcoming in international economic journals of a very good level or in top field journals of tourism and hospitality.

Teaching duties and expected research output

The Assistant Professor will deliver 60 hours of lectures, plus associated teaching activities. Teaching duties have to be performed at the Rimini campus of the University of Bologna, specifically in the field of tourism economics. Satisfactory teaching activity is a necessary condition for promotion to Associate Professor after three years. Other necessary conditions refer to the quality and continuity of research activities. In particular, we expect at least four articles published or forthcoming in international journals of excellent renown or top field journals and three high quality working papers produced during the three years as assistant professor in the department. While a good teaching performance is important for tenure, substantially more weight will be given to research performance.

Salary

The gross salary is 41K euros per year. The net amount after taxes depends on the total personal income, the composition of the family, and other parameters. The Assistant Professor will be provided with the necessary equipment to conduct his/her research, as well as competitive research funding.

A six-year tax exemption on 90 per cent of the salary (which can be extended up to 13 years) is available according to the Italian tax law for those candidates (of any nationality) who have been residing outside Italy for 2 years or more.

Application and selection procedure

The application for participation in the selection must be submitted exclusively via electronic procedure by accessing the following link:  https://personale.unibo.it/pol/welcome.htm?siteLanguage=en

The deadline for reception of the documents by the University is January 26, 2021 at 12.00

p.m. (noon) CET time.

Further enquiries about the position and the application can be addressed to Ms. Paola Mandelli (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Spatial Interpretations of Election Results in North America

Explaining spatial patterns of voting behavior is a very recent and rapidly growing field of research in regional science. Since the rise of more right-wing and/or protest voting, it has become apparent that these votes are not randomly spread over space. One example is the changing spatial patterns of election outcomes in the US presidential election in the last decade with states that used to be strongholds for either party flipping sides. Not only does recent patterns suggest an urban-rural divide, but they also reflect socioeconomic and demographic changes across and within US regions and cities due to intra-metropolitan, national and international migration. These voting patterns are spatially associated with patterns of educational attainment, income, race, ethnicity, and the industrial makeup of places (Frey 2020).

In this special issue, the focus is on underlying factors of regional voting patterns. The territory contains many variables that can be associated with voters' political orientation and general ideology. Can we link voting patterns to discontent, and if so, what is causing this feeling of discontent? How do voting patterns on various topics differ between and within regions, between urban and rural regions, and between regions that grow or are in decline? Have local or regional crises (such as natural disasters, water contamination, pandemic outbreak, and how they were handled by the local/regional elected officials) affected election outcomes? What about space-time patterns? Do we see a relationship between areas that are hit more by COVID19 and their (change in) voting behavior? We in particular welcome submissions that focus on causality.

Planning

• Expression of interest until February 15th 2021
• Full paper submission June 15th 2021
• Reviews July-August 2021
• Final paper submission November 2021

Editors

Dr. Isabelle Nilsson (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), University of North Carolina – Charlotte, Eleni Bardaka (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), North Carolina State University, Prof. Eveline van Leeuwen (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) & Dr. Solmaria Halleck-Vega (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Urban Economics group, Wageningen University.

References

Frey, W. (2020). Exit polls show both familiar and new voting blocs sealed Biden’s win. Brookings Institute, November 12, https://www.brookings.edu/research/2020-exit-polls-show-a-scrambling-of-democrats-and-republicans-traditional-bases/

‍Dear members, friends and colleagues,

AISRe, the Italian Section of the Regional Science Association
International, is pleased to announce its 42st Annual Conference about

Local Sustainable Rebound and Development:

What role for Tradition and Innovation?

 Lecce, 8-10 September 2021

Here the call for papers and the AISRe awards call.

We look forward to seeing you in Lecce.
Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Roberta Capello, President AISRe
Cristina Bernini, Executive Director AISRe
Marusca De Castris, Tresurer AISRe

Call for papers: 2021 RSAI World Congress

Smart regions – Opportunities for sustainable development in the digital era

www.regionalscience.org/2021worldcongress

The 2021 RSAI World Conference will be held from 25 to 28 May, 2021. It will be organized by the Moroccan Section of the Regional Science Association International. The meeting is open for the worldwide regional science community and aims to bring together the key elements of multidisciplinary regional science research and to provide a scientific platform for presenting and discussing research at the frontiers of the spatial sciences in a broad sense. The themes addressed zoom in particular on the pressing challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in the light of the socio-economic impact of covid-19, in both developed and developing economies, and cover spatial dimensions ranging from local to global development. Such challenges relate to both people and places, and call for innovative and critical contributions from a conceptual-theoretical, statistical-modelling, qualitative, practical evidence-based, or governance perspectives.

Consequently, topics such as urban-rural development, migration, spatial and resources location, border effects, urbanization, sustainable and circular cities, mobility, land use, environmental quality, disaster management, energy transition, culture, poverty, segregation, spatial justice, social justice, gender, social enterprises, policy and governance, entrepreneurship, spatial statistics and modelling are important ingredients of the 2021 World Congress. A new challenge to regional science research is formed by the emerging digital technology and its implications for analysis, monitoring, evaluation and forecasting spatial dynamics at all levels. Therefore, the potential of spatial and temporal big data, of social media information, and of the new spatial maps emerging from digitization and robotization are potential topics as well. Clearly, given the ongoing challenge, and threat, posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, studies dealing with the assessment of its impact on regional and urban economies will also be welcome.

The Mediterranean area and Africa present their own challenges. Morocco, named Africa’s most attractive investment destination according to the Africa Investment Index 2018, is the ideal venue to address the frictions between the developing and developed worlds.

The Ocher City Marrakech provides the perfect setting of a geographically varied and pristine landscape. It is well connected by air, and boasts plenty of high quality and modestly priced hotels. Regional scientists from around the globe can enjoy the desert in this historic tourist destination. Its geographical location at the foot of the Atlas Mountains and less than one hundred miles either from the Sahara dunes or the Atlantic beaches, is a guarantee for a creative and enjoyable regional science gathering.

Our plan is to hold the World Congress at the Mogador Palace Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco. If instead the public health conditions remain uncertain, we have plans for an online mode. Details will be provided later.

Because many potential attendees had previously submitted their abstracts for the 2020 edition of the World Congress, that was eventually postponed, the fees are unchanged. However, in case the conference switches online, fees will be considerably reduced.

Important dates:

Abstract submission portal:

https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/2427/submitter