Does spatial agglomeration increase national growth? some evidence from Europe

Gardiner, Ben; Martin, Ron; Tyler, Peter

doi:10.1093/jeg/lbq047

Cited by 107 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…34 Ellison and Glaeser 1997. 35 This index has also been used in academic research such as Rovolis and Tragaki (2006), Milner and Mukherjee (2010) or Gardiner, Martin, and Tyler (2011), among others. 36 See more details in Spiezia (2003).…”

Section: Variables Data and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geography Matters: The Conditional Effect of Electoral Systems on Social Spending

Jurado¹,

León²

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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There is a large body of research showing that the provision of social policies is higher under proportional electoral systems than under majoritarian systems. This article helps advance this literature by showing that the geographic distribution of social recipients plays an essential role in moderating the impact of electoral institutions on social provision. Using data from twenty-two OECD countries, the results show that majoritarian systems increase the provision of social spending when recipients are concentrated in certain regions. When levels of concentration are high, social spending in majoritarian countries can surpass levels of provision in proportional representation systems.Keywords: electoral systems; social spending; political geography; unemployment concentrationThe literature in political economy has shown that electoral rules are essential to explain the composition and levels of public spending across countries. In particular, many authors have argued that the provision of social policies will be higher in proportional representation (PR) electoral systems compared to majoritarian ones. However, a key assumption in most important theoretical works is that the population is homogeneous or perfectly segregated across districts. 1 Yet public policies have beneficiaries that are not necessarily homogeneously spread across territories. This means that the theoretical relationship between electoral rules and public spending might not generally hold. Our article contributes to developing these caveats by studying whether the effect of electoral rules on governments' provision of public spending is contingent on the geography of social recipients. More specifically, we hypothesize that the incentives to provide social spending in majoritarian systems will increase when social recipients are geographically concentrated. We test this argument with data on social spending in twenty-two OECD countries and find supportive evidence. The empirical evidence suggests that geographic clustering can bring social spending in majoritarian systems to levels equal to those in PR systems.This article speaks to recent developments in political economy that explore the role of economic and political geography in redistribution, representation and policy provision. 2 More specifically, our theoretical argument is in line with several studies that focus on the joint role of geography and electoral institutions in the provision of certain policies, such as trade, 3 * Department of Politics, University of York (email: ignacio.jurado@york.ac.uk); Department of Politics, University of York (email: sandra.leon@york.ac.uk). We would like to thank Francesc Amat, Joaquín Artés, Pablo Beramendi, Albert Falcó-Gimeno, Tim Hicks, David Rueda, Scott Siegel, and David Soskice for helpful comments on earlier versions of this project. This article has received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness: CSO2013-40870-R. Data replication sets are available at http://dataverse. harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS...

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Section: Variables Data and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geography Matters: The Conditional Effect of Electoral Systems on Social Spending

Jurado¹,

León²

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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“…This is claimed to hold for all societies, developed or underdeveloped. This debate, over sectoral diversification versus specialization, was also linked to the issue of spatially or regionally balanced growth, not just whether diversification or specialization is the best strategy to promote growth in lagging or less developed regions, but whether the spatial agglomeration of certain sectors in particular regions was not only an inevitable product of the national economic growth process, but also maximized that growth (for example, Myrdal, 1958;Hirschman, 1958, Alonso, 1968, Gardiner, et al, 2011.…”

Section: Regional Economic Imbalance: Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To add to this problem there is is the question of whether ever-increasing in-migration into the South is sustainable from an environmental point of view, let alone from an inflationary standpoint. The assumed (or presumed) 'trade-off' between national growth and greater spatial economic balance contained in these anti-regional policy arguments is neither well supported empirically nor compellingly persuasive theoretically (see for example, Martin, 2008;Gardiner, Martin and Tyler, 2011).…”

Section: Regional Economic Imbalance: Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatially unbalanced growth in the British economy

Gardiner

Martin

Sunley

et al. 2013

Journal of Economic Geography

Self Cite

148

127

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The financial crisis and consequential recession that brought the UK's long economic boom of 1993-2008 to a dramatic end have generated considerable debate about the need to 'rebalance' the economy, both sectorally and spatially. In this paper we examine the scale and nature of imbalance in the UK economy. We first review what different theories of regional growth have to say about the issue of spatial and sectoral imbalance. Next, against this background, the stylised facts of sectoral and spatial imbalance, particularly as between the South and North of the United Kingdom, are identified. We then use dynamic multi-factor partitioning methods to determine the relative contribution that sectoral composition has made to NorthSouth regional imbalance. In the light of our findings we argue that there is an urgent need for a clearly identified industrial policy that is coordinated with a regional policy that seriously begins to address the North-South imbalance in the UK's economy that has become so deep-seated over recent decades.

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“…With the economic basis established, some papers have supplied the evidence needed to verify the hypothesis. Prominent in this line of research is the work done by Ciccone and Hall (1996) and Ciccone (2002) from a static perspective and Crozet and Koenig (2005), Brülhart and Sbergami (2009) and Gardiner et al (2011) from a dynamic view.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Did Spanish Regions Not Converge Before the Civil War? Agglomeration Economies and (Regional) Growth Revisited

2015

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In this paper we explore the relationship between the presence of agglomeration economies and regional economic growth in Spain during the period . The study allows us to revisit the existence of a trade-off between economic growth and territorial cohesion, and also to examine whether the existence of agglomeration economies could explain the upswing in regional income inequality during the early stages of development. In doing so, we present alternative indicators for agglomeration economies and estimate conditional growth regressions at province (NUTS3) level. In line with new economic geography models, agglomeration economies in a context of market integration widened regional inequality in the second half of the 19 th century and hindered its reduction during the early decades of the 20 th .Keywords: agglomeration, economic growth, economic history, Spain 417 RESUMENEn este artículo se analiza la existencia de una relación entre la presencia de economías de aglomeración y el crecimiento económico regional en España durante el periodo 1870-1930. El estudio permite revisitar la existencia de un trade-off entre crecimiento económico y cohesión territorial y, además, examinar si las economías de aglomeración fueron un elemento clave a la hora de explicar el incremento de la desigualdad económica regional en España a lo largo de las primeras fases del desarrollo. Para ello, se presentan diferentes indicadores de aglomeración a nivel provincial (NUTS3) que posteriormente se incluyen en la estimación de regresiones de crecimiento condicionadas. En la línea de los modelos de Nueva Geografía Económica (NEG), sugerimos que la presencia de economías de aglomeración en un contexto de integración de mercado favoreció la aparición de una causación acumulativa que amplió la desigualdad regional en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y dificultó su reducción durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX.

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Does spatial agglomeration increase national growth? some evidence from Europe

Cited by 107 publications

References 32 publications

Geography Matters: The Conditional Effect of Electoral Systems on Social Spending

Geography Matters: The Conditional Effect of Electoral Systems on Social Spending

Spatially unbalanced growth in the British economy

Why Did Spanish Regions Not Converge Before the Civil War? Agglomeration Economies and (Regional) Growth Revisited

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