Andy Pike

Evolution in Economic Geography: Institutions, Political Economy, and Adaptation

Abstract Economic geography has, over the past decade or so, drawn upon ideas from evolutionary economics in trying to understand processes of regional growth and change. Recently, some researchers have sought to delimit and develop an “evolutionary economic geography” (EEG), aiming to create a more systematic theoretical framework for research. This article provides a sympathetic critique and elaboration of this emergent EEG but takes issue with some aspects of its characterization in recent programmatic statements. While acknowledging that EEG is an evolving and pluralist project, we are concerned that the reliance on certain theoretical frameworks that are imported from evolutionary economics and complexity science threatens to isolate it from other approaches in economic geography, limiting the opportunities for cross-fertilization. In response, the article seeks to develop a social and pluralist conception of institutions and social agency in EEG, drawing upon the writings of leading institutional economists, and to link evolutionary concepts to political economy approaches, arguing that the evolution of the economic landscape must be related to processes of capital accumulation and uneven development. As such, we favor the use of evolutionary and institutional concepts within a geographical political economy approach, rather than the construction of some kind of theoretically separate EEG—evolution in economic geography, not an evolutionary economic geography.

Economic Geographies of Financialization

Abstract This article argues that financialization—shorthand for the growing influence of capital markets, their intermediaries, and processes in contemporary economic and political life—generates an analytical opportunity and political economic imperative to move finance into the heart of economic geographic analysis. Drawing upon long-standing concerns about the relatively marginal location of finance in economic geography, we emphasize the integral role of finance in connecting the entangled geographies of the economic to the social, the cultural, and the political. In the wake of various “turns” in the discipline, we develop this integrationist approach to finance in ways that retain political economies of states, markets, and social power in our interpretations of geographically uneven development. In this article, we discuss the plural nature of emergent work on financialization and develop three analytical themes to shape our discussion of financialization. Next, we elaborate our analytical approach by warning against functional, political, and spatial disconnections traced in the literature on the geographies of money. We then explore how financialization is broadening and deepening the array of agents, relations, and sites that require consideration in economic geography and is generating tensions between territorial and relational spatialities of geographic differentiation. Finally, we address the relative dearth of empirical work by examining the financialization of brands that have shaped the evolution of the brewing business and the development of new derivative instruments to hedge against weather risks. We conclude by arguing that our analysis of financialization demonstrates how finance occupies an integral position within economic geographies and reveals some of the sociospatial relations, constructions, and reach of existing and new actors, relations, and sites in shaping the uneven development of financialized contemporary capitalism.

Towards the Resilient Region

Discussions of local and regional development have recently broadened from a preoccupation with growth to one which captures the notion of resilience. This article makes two main contributions to these debates. First, it critiques static equilibrium-based notions of resilience and instead advances a more dynamic evolutionary approach to explain local and regional resilience. Secondly, it seeks to address the widening gap between resilience thinking and its transfer to practical policy prescription. To do this, we explore the notions of adaptability, adaptive capacity and new path creation in developing local and regional resilience. We then focus upon what this might mean for local and regional strategies, and draw on the case study of the renewable energy sector in north-east England to demonstrate the enduring role of policy intervention in stimulating change and building resilience in peripheral regions.

Geographies of brands and branding

This paper seeks to elucidate the geographies of brands and branding through interpreting their geographical entanglements. Focusing upon goods and services, it argues, first, that the object of the brand and the process of branding are geographical because they are entangled in inescapable spatial associations. Second, these spatial associations matter because they are geographically differentiated and uneven. Third, geographically entangled brands and branding are closely related to spatially uneven development through the articulation and reinforcement of economic and social inequalities and unequal and competitive sociospatial relations and divisions of labour. Despite their apparent pervasiveness and significance for geographical inquiry, the geographical entanglements of brands and branding have been under-investigated in Geography and hardly recognized and poorly specified in other social science research. A critical account is provided that demonstrates the entangled geographies of brands and branding in their: (1) geographical origins, provenance and sociospatial histories; (2) spatial circuits of value and meaning and uneven development; and (3) territorial and relational spaces and places. Reading the changing forms, extent and nature of the geographical entanglements of brands and branding provides a novel but relatively overlooked window to consider and illustrate the vital spaces at the intersections of economic, social, cultural and political geographies, the tensions between relational and territorial notions of space and place and the politics and limits of brands and branding. Learning from wider social science, the paper demonstrates the importance of geography by projecting more clearly specified and sophisticated treatments of space and place into accounts of brands and branding.

In search of the ‘economic dividend’ of devolution: spatial disparities, spatial economic policy, and decentralisation in the UK

After a decade of devolution and amid uncertainties about its effects, it is timely to assess and reflect upon the evidence and enduring meaning of any ‘economic dividend’ of devolution in the UK. Taking an institutionalist and quantitative approach, we seek to discern the nature and extent of any economic dividend through a conceptual and empirical analysis of the relationships between spatial disparities, spatial economic policy, and decentralisation. Situating the UK experience within its evolving historical context, we find: (i) a varied and uneven nature of the relationships between regional disparities, spatial economic policy, and decentralisation that change direction during specific time periods; (ii) the role of national economic growth is pivotal in explaining spatial disparities and the nature and extent of their relationship with the particular forms of spatial economic policy and decentralisation deployed; and, (iii) there is limited evidence that any economic dividend of devolution has emerged, but this remains difficult to discern because its likely effects are overridden by the role of national economic growth in decisively shaping the pattern of spatial disparities and in determining the scope and effects of spatial economic policy and decentralisation.

Income inequality, decentralisation and regional development in Western Europe

This paper deals with the relationship between decentralisation, regional economic development, and income inequality within regions. Using multiplicative interaction models and regionally aggregated microeconomic data for more than 100 000 individuals in the European Union (EU), it addresses two main questions. First, whether fiscal and political decentralisation in Western Europe has an effect on within-regional interpersonal inequality. Second, whether this potential relationship is mediated by the level of economic development of the region. The results of the analysis show that greater fiscal decentralisation is associated with lower interpersonal income inequality, but, as regional income rises, further decentralisation is connected to a lower decrease in inequality. This finding is robust to the measurement and definition of income inequality, as well as to the weighting of the spatial units by their population size.

A Geographical Political Economy of Evolution in Economic Geography

Abstract Key themes for evolution in economic geography are identified that clarify and further refine and reinforce our argument for broader conceptions of institutions, social agency, and power and for the situation of the plural and emerging field of evolutionary approaches more fully within geographical political economy. We address the following issues: conceptual and terminological clarity; evolution and institutions within and beyond the firm; agency, bounded determinacy, and power; and research method and design. Our central contention is that geographical political economy provides a coherent and well-structured conceptual and theoretical framework with which to broaden and deepen our understanding, exploration, and practice of evolutionary thinking in economic geography.

City Deals, Decentralisation and the Governance of Local Infrastructure Funding and Financing in the UK

This article reflects upon a comparative analysis of the 28 ‘City Deals’ agreed between UK government, Scottish government and city-regional groupings in England and Scotland since 2011. The City Deals have sought to incentivise local actors to identify and prioritise ‘asks’ of UK and devolved governments, fund, finance and deliver infrastructure and other economic development interventions, and to reform city/city-region governance structures to ‘unlock’ urban growth. Our analysis is based upon 32 in-depth interviews with lead actors in the City Deals, including elected officials from local government, central government officials and policy specialists from think tanks, as well as a secondary literature review. We find that City Deals are reworking the role of the UK state internally and through changed central-local and intra-local (city-regional) relations. Regional and urban public policy is being recast as a process of deal-making founded upon territorial competition and negotiation between central national and local actors unequally endowed with information and resources, leading to highly imbalanced and inequitable outcomes across the UK. As a template for public policymaking in an emergent and decentralising context, deal-making raises substantive and unresolved issues for governance in the UK that are especially pertinent as the new Conservative government at Westminster pledges to widen and broaden this approach as a central component of its future devolution strategy and policy.

Spatially Rebalancing the UK Economy: Towards a New Policy Model?

Martin R., Pike A., Tyler P. and Gardiner B. Spatially rebalancing the UK economy: towards a new policy model?, Regional Studies. The current UK government has announced its intention to rebalance the national economy spatially, to create a ‘northern powerhouse’ to rival that in London and the South East. This imbalance is in fact a longstanding problem that 90 years of regional policy has not resolved. This paper argues that the entrenched nature of the UKs spatial imbalance derives in part from the centralized nature of the national political economy, and that only a bold and radical change in that political economy – based on a devolution and decentralization of or economic, financial and political power – is called for.

Editorial: Regional Studies: 40 Years and More …

At the 40th anniversary of Regional Studies, we seek to reflect on the establishment, evolution and progress of the journal over its first 40 years. The current context is especially timely and appropriate to consider the journal’s achievements given the unprecedented significance and growing diversity of interand multidisciplinary approaches to regional studies and the increased demand for high-quality theoretical and empirical analysis to support policy-making. We offer a brief review to mark the journal’s milestones, celebrate its achievements and provide a selection of significant contributions published in the journal in its first four decades. This paper complements the forward look provided in our special issue addressing the question ‘Whither regional studies?’ published in 2007. What follows, then, is not an attempt to articulate and document a disciplinary and institutional history in the manner of recent work in regional science (BARNES, 2004; BOYCE, 2004; ISSERMAN, 1993). This piece focuses specifically on the journal Regional Studies. It can only offer a contribution to the broader and as yet only partially told historiography of regional studies and the Regional Studies Association (WISE, 1989). We outline the origins and establishment of the journal, note key developments in its evolution, and comment on the selection process for the papers included in this supplement, before articulating some conclusions about the place of Regional Studies in the wider and shifting disciplinary context.