Ben Gardiner

How Regions React to Recessions: Resilience and the Role of Economic Structure

Martin R., Sunley P., Gardiner B. and Tyler P. How regions react to recessions: resilience and the role of economic structure, Regional Studies. This paper examines how employment in the major UK regions has reacted to the four major recessions of the last 40 years, namely 1974–76, 1979–83, 1990–93 and 2008–10. The notions of resistance and recoverability are used to examine these reactions. The analysis reveals both continuities and significant changes in the regional impact of recession from one economic cycle to the next. Further, while economic structure is found to have exerted some influence on the resistance and recoverability of certain regions, in general ‘region-specific’ or ‘competitiveness’ effects appear to have played an equally, if not more, significant role.

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.

Employment, wage formation and pricing in the European Union: Empirical modelling of environmental tax reform

The objective of reducing long-term structural unemployment has moved to the top of the international political agenda following the apparent establishment of a regime of low inflation in OECD countries (OECD, 1994; EC, 1993). At the same time, governments are considering and implementing fiscal measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to sustainable levels. Bringing the two objectives together suggests an intriguing opportunity: that the fiscal system be reformed by switching the burden of taxation from employment to pollution 1 (environmental or economic tax reform or “ecological tax reform” — see von Weizsacker and Jesinghaus, 1992; Majocchi, 1994); the switch in taxation appears to offer a route towards full employment at the same time benefiting the environment (see OECD, 1993a and 1993b for case studies; and EC, 1994 for a thorough exploration of the issues in the context of the EU).

Reviving the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ and Spatially Rebalancing the British Economy: The Scale of the Challenge

George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse agenda was based on the idea that Northern cities are ‘individually strong but collectively not strong enough. The whole is less than the sum of its parts’. Few would probably disagree with the basic intent and aspiration behind this declaration, or that the UK economy has become too dominated by London, but this chapter argues that both the dominant diagnosis of the problem, and the main policies being advanced to solve it, are more debatable. It is in fact questionable whether Northern cities are as economically strong ‘individually’ as Osborne’s claim suggests. There is more to a city’s economic success than just size and density, and the argument that greater connectivity to London promised by the High Speed 2 rail project will benefit Northern cities is highly contestable. Moreover, devolution could even intensify economic and social disparities both among Northern cities themselves and in relation to the more advantageous position of London with regard to fiscal devolution. The lagging performance of Northern cities (and regions) and the challenge confronting their catch up with London need to be understood in terms of the historical development of the national political economy, and how that development has favoured a certain disposition towards and role in the evolving process of globalisation.

The impact of enterprise zone tax incentives on local property markets in England: who actually benefits?

Research on the impact of property taxes on local real estate markets has a long history in the urban economics literature but few studies have considered this issue in the context of the commercial real estate market or on data from outside the USA. This is surprising given the use which governments make of property tax exemptions to assist local regeneration with the UK Government recently announcing some 24 new enterprise zones (EZs) in England. In this study we use a novel data-set on commercial real estate leases to investigate the incidence of the local property tax savings. Our data-set covers both taxed and tax exempt areas during the operation of the EZ designations in the UK. Our findings show that a large part of the tax savings appears to be captured in higher rents charged by landlords.