Lina Bjerke

Import Flows: Extraregional Linkages Stimulating Renewal of Regional Sectors?

We examine the role of regional import flows for renewal of regional industries. The hypothesis is that imports stimulate renewal of local industries by being vehicles for technology diffusion and means by which local firms can exploit advantages of global specialisation. We find robust and positive relationships between high-quality imports and renewal of regional exports, where the latter are measured by the introduction of novel export products of local firms. Connectedness to international markets via import networks appears to be a stimulus for the renewal of regional exports.

Metropolitan Regions and Export Renewal

Metropolitan regions are advantageous location for new export products due to factors such as external economies, diversified industry environment and a large share of skilled labour. This is the main assumption of this paper. What happens to these products when the technology becomes common knowledge? Using empirical data on exports, we find that products with a high specialisation in the metropolitan region have a tendency to be successful in the non-metropolitan regions subsequent years. Also, this export product diffusion does not seem to be related to a location in the immediate proximity to the metropolitan region. Instead, the recipient regions are mainly characterised as being centrally located in its labour market region, having a high share of highly educated individuals. Features related product standardisation such as a large manufacturing sector and low labour costs cannot be distinguished as prominent features.

Geographies of growth: Innovations, networks and collaborations

Today we can observe an increasing spatial divide as some large urban regions and many more medium-sized and small regions face growing problems such as decreasing labour demand, increasing unemployment and an ageing population. In view of these trends, this book offers a better understanding of the general characteristics and specific drivers of the geographies of growth. It shows how these may vary in different spatial contexts, how hurdles and barriers to growth in different types of regions can be dealt with, how and to what extent resources in different areas can develop, and how the potential of these resources to stimulate growth can be realized.

Geographies of Growth

Today we can observe an increasing spatial divide as some large urban regions and many more medium-sized and small regions face growing problems such as decreasing labour demand, increasing unemployment and an ageing population. In view of these trends, this book offers a better understanding of the general characteristics and specific drivers of the geographies of growth. It shows how these may vary in different spatial contexts, how hurdles and barriers to growth in different types of regions can be dealt with, how and to what extent resources in different areas can develop, and how the potential of these resources to stimulate growth can be realized.

Imports and regional development

The contributions in this volume extend our understanding about the different ways distance impacts the knowledge conversion process. Knowledge itself is a raw input into the innovation process which can then transform it into an economically useful output such as prototypes, patents, licences and new companies. New knowledge is often tacit and thus tends to be highly localized, as indeed is the conversion process. Consequently, as the book demonstrates, space or distance matter significantly in the transformation of raw knowledge into beneficial knowledge.

Returns to Higher Education : a Regional Perspective

The returns to education have been thoroughly investigated and Sweden has shown to have a relatively low return compared to other countries in Europe. Nevertheless, few studies have combined the regional perspective with returns to education. Hence, the purpose of the paper is to analyze regional differences in their returns to higher education within natural science, engineering and medicine. We assume that individuals maximize expected utility; they will try to attain the highest expected return to education as possible. The regional sum of employment possibilities as well as unemployment shares may differ between regions. Therefore, it is plausible to believe that the regional return to education varies between locations which accounted for in the empirical part of the paper. The result shows that there are clear differences between regional classifications concerning returns to higher education. Central urban regions, except the three largest cities and ten largest universities have the highest return to education. These regions may need to compensate the individuals with a higher return. The three largest cities in Sweden have a relatively low return but have other amenities that attract individuals.