Economic Geography

Senior Honor Thesis

by Eric Chuhao Chan

Regional unemployment and industrial restructuring in Poland

by Francesco Pastore

Co-authored with Andrew Newell.
Eastern European Economics, 2006, 44(3): 5-28.
(also available as IZA DP, n. 194, November 2000, University of Sussex DP, n. 63, May 2000, e CELPE DP, n. 51, February 2000)

This paper studies regional unemployment inequality in Poland. We find that regions experiencing greater change in... more This paper studies regional unemployment inequality in Poland. We find that regions experiencing greater change in industrial structure have higher unemployment rates. We also find that high-unemployment regions have higher inflow rates to unemployment rather than longer spells of unemployment. These findings suggest that regional unemployment varies importantly with job destruction in Poland. Econometric analysis of the determinants of employment to unemployment flows reinforces this impression. We use our estimates to assess the extent to which regional unemployment variation is due to economic restructuring. We show that this cannot be done unambiguously, and offer reasons why many previous attempts to separate out the effects of restructuring on unemployment have been unsuccessful.

Air Transportation Industry Co-evolution: Market, Technology and Institutions

by Montserrat Pallares-Barbera

Mapping indigenous Siberia: Spatial changes and ethnic realities, 1900–2010

by Ivan Sablin

co-authored with Maria Savelyeva, published in Settler Colonial Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2011, pp. 77–110.

This article discusses spatial changes in the ethnic territories of Native Siberians from the late nineteenth century... more This article discusses spatial changes in the ethnic territories of Native Siberians from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. A Geographic Information System (GIS) was developed to model and observe these changes. The GIS also features resource-oriented economic activities, major waterways and railroads. Analysis of the model, textual sources and statistical data made it possible to determine what factors constituted Siberia’s ethnographical pattern of the early twentieth century and led to its changes in the ensuing decades and what impact on the indigenous peoples these changes had. Four special maps showing Siberia in the 1900s–10s, 1930s–40s, 1970s–80s and 2000s–10s were produced from the GIS and are included in the article. The current legal status of the indigenous peoples’ territories was also examined. This article presents an interdisciplinary macroscale case study.

Neoliberalism and geography: expansions, variegations, formations

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2010. Neoliberalism and geography: expansions, variegations, formations. Geography Compass. 4 (8), 1025-1038.

The pervasiveness of neoliberalism within the field of human geography is remarkable, especially when we consider its... more The pervasiveness of neoliberalism within the field of human geography is remarkable, especially when we consider its virtual absence from the literature less than a decade ago. While the growing attention afforded to neoliberalism among geographers is new, the phenomenon of neoliberalism is not. This paper traces the intellectual history of neoliberalism and its expansions across various institutional frameworks and geographical settings. I review the primary contributions geographers have made to the literature, and specifically their recognition for neoliberalism’s variegations within existing political economic matrixes and institutional frameworks. Contra the prevailing view of neoliberalism as a pure and static end-state, geographical inquiry illuminates neoliberalism as a dynamic and unfolding process. The concept of ‘neoliberalization’ is thus seen as more appropriate to geographical theorizations insofar as it recognizes neoliberalism’s hybridized and mutated forms as it travels around our world. I also consider some of the most salient ways that neoliberalism has been theorized among human geographers. In particular, I highlight understandings of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, as a policy-based approach to state reform, and as a particular logic of governmentality, arguing that while there are significant differences between these various formations, it may also be important to work beyond methodological, epistemological, and ontological divides in the larger interest of social justice.

Black Market Work in the European Community: Peripheral Work for Peripheral Localities?

by Colin Williams

The Decayed-Core Periphery Model: A Marxian Contribution to Urban Economics

by Michael J. Thompson

Draft

The reality of urban poverty in many cities in the U.S. and the apparent inability of many of these areas to develop,... more The reality of urban poverty in many cities in the U.S. and the apparent inability of many of these areas to develop, even during times of economic expansion, has not been adequately explained either through modern neo-classical models or through the traditional Marxian literature on urban poverty and uneven regional development. This paper argues that there is a specific category, or city-type, present in the landscape of the modern American economy which can be explained through a reversal of the structural core-periphery model of which Marxian economics has made extensive use. This new model will show how urban-suburban disparities occur and endure in advanced capitalism as a result of the interaction between macroeconomic restructuring and a city’s internal loss of scale economies. Specifically, it argues that the effects of the spatial movement of capital acts to construct a permament and enduring relation of economic and social decay in many urban cores and, as a result, a permanent structure of inequality between de-industrialized ghettoes and their more affluent suburbs. I also provide a model for this phenomenon which I refer to as the “decayed core-periphery model.”

Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change.

The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of... more The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of landholding, which are entrenched in notions of community consensus and existing occupation. The discrepancy between such orally recognized antecedents and the written word of law have been at the heart of the recent wave of dispossessions that have swept across the country. Contra the standard critique that corruption has set the tone, this paper argues that evictions in Cambodia are often literally underwritten by the articles of law. Whereas ‘possession’ is a well-understood and accepted concept in Cambodia, a cultural basis rooted in what James C. Scott refers to as ‘orality’, coupled with a long history of subsistence agriculture, semi-nomadic lifestyles, barter economies, and–until recently–widespread land availability have all ensured that notions of ‘property’ are vague among the country’s majority rural poor. In drawing a firm distinction between possessions and property, where the former is premised upon actual use and the latter is embedded in exploitation, this article examines how proprietorship is inextricably bound to the violence of law.

Birch, K. (2012) 'Knowledge, place and power: Geographies of value in the bioeconomy', New Genetics and Society 30(2)

by Kean Birch

Keywords: bioeconomy; geographies of value; life sciences; immaterial labor

The idea that there is an emerging “bioeconomy” characterized by the capture of the latent value found in biological... more The idea that there is an emerging “bioeconomy” characterized by the capture of the latent value found in biological material (e.g. cells, tissues, plants, etc.) has become a popular policy agenda since the mid-2000s. A number of scholars have also written about this intersection between the life sciences and capitalism, often drawing on anthropological and sociological perspectives to conceptualize the new socialities, subjectivities, and identities brought about by new biotechnologies. While these studies are undoubtedly a fruitful academic enterprise, they have also left a gap in our understanding of the bioeconomy because they have not discussed knowledge or knowledge production. This article focuses on this immaterial side of the bioeconomy, exploring the geographies of value in the bioeconomy that are constituted by intangible and immaterial resources and labor. The core argument is that value in the bioeconomy is created from geographical processes that both embed immateriality in particular places and, at the same time, abstract it in global standards and regulations.

Aproximacion a la construcción del paisaje caribe colombiano Siglos XVI a Siglo XX.

by alberto carvajalino

Towards Visceral Entanglements: Knowing and Growing the Economic Geographies of Food

by Michael Goodman

The citation for this chapter is as follows:

Goodman, M. (2011) Towards visceral entanglements: Knowing and growing the economic geographies of food. In The Sage handbook of economic geography eds. R. Lee, A. Leyshon, L. McDowell & P. Sunley, pp. 242-257. Sage, London.

Laying the Foundations for a Crisis: Mapping the Historico‐Geographical Construction of Residential Mortgage Backed Securitization in the UK

by Thomas Wainwright

(2009) International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(2): 372-388

Financializing space, spacing financialization

by Thomas Wainwright

(2011) Progress in Human Geography, 35(6): 798-819.

'It's crunch time': the'lost' geographies of the crisis

by Thomas Wainwright

(2010) Environment and Planning A, 42(4):780-784

Elite knowledges: framing risk and the geographies of credit

by Thomas Wainwright

(2011) Environment and Planning A 43(3): 650 – 665

Tax doesn't have to be taxing: London's `onshore' finance industry and the fiscal spaces of a global crisis

by Thomas Wainwright

(2011) Environment and Planning A, 43(6):1287-1304

Transferring Securitization, Bond-Rating, and a Crisis from the US to the UK

by Thomas Wainwright

(2012) in Aalbers, Manuel B., (ed.) Subprime cities. the political economy of mortgage markets. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Number crunching: financialization and spatial strategies of risk organization

by Thomas Wainwright

(2012) Journal of Economic Geography, Advance Access.

Scoping the private wealth management of the high net worth and mass affluent markets in the United Kingdom's financial services industry

by Thomas Wainwright

(2010) Research report published by the Financial Services Research Forum.

En homenatge a Julie Graham

by Antonia Casellas

Casellas, A. 2012. “In Memoriam to Julie Graham (1945-2010). Documents d´Anàlisi Geografica (in Catalan) 58 (1), 7-11.