Evgeniya Kolomak (p)

Metropolitan areas are considered as poles of growth in the recent political discussions in Russia. However an influence of large cities on the neighboring territories is ambiguous and depends on how successfully the impulses and quality of growth are transmitted from the center to the periphery. The paper presents empirical estimates of the influence of the urban agglomerations on the value of residential real estate. The housing market is considered as an indicator of the population's incomes and perspectives of the territorial development. The tested hypothesis is that in cities belonging to metropolitan area, housing prices are higher than in settlements beyond its borders. In the regression, where the dependent variable is the average cost per square meter of housing, along with the fact of belonging to the metropolitan areas, we control for the distance to the center of the area, the distance to Moscow and the population density in the city. The estimates showed that in the cities of the metropolitan areas housing prices are significantly higher than in the cities outside the areas. This result is an indirect confirmation of the positive effects of the agglomeration process in the Russian urban system. Practical recommendation of the paper is to provide an institutional environment aimed at the effective governance of the development of urban agglomerations and at the realization of their potential. It is important also to use resources of federalism and decentralization.

Angelika Krehl (p)

Regional economic and spatial development is explained with agglomeration economies, accessibility and land prices. However, the role of natural resources for regional development is somewhat missing. Whereas natural resources have been used to explain initial location choices resulting in city emergence, they have been largely neglected in further regional development processes. This finding especially pertains to land as a natural and spare resource.

Land is indirectly considered in terms of transportation costs in studies about spatial reconfiguration processes, whereas it is directly addressed in discussions about urban sprawl or growth management to preserve open spaces. But established spatial economic models and related empirical work simply premise that sufficient land is available for urban economic progress. Likewise, these models postulate that (new) land consumption essentially follows economic development.

Thus, starting from current regional spatial and economic development processes, it is necessary to perceive economy and ecology as two sides of a coin. This is partially done in the so-called decoupling debate. It addresses the relationship between GDP growth and environmental degradation while focusing on the potentials of decoupling these two to achieve a sustainable economic development. However, the natural resource land is neglected there, too, although current political and environmental goals advocate a reduction of land consumption while maintaining decent regional economic development.

This situation establishes this paper’s stating point. The paper addresses the role of land in regional economic development by means of two questions: how do different types of economic development—both regional and sectoral—affect land in terms of use and consumption? Do different types of land contribute differently to the regional economic and spatial development?

These questions are answered using spatial regression analyses conducted on several spatial scales to acknowledge both local and regional relationships as well as their interaction. The data basis consists of administrative data on several socioeconomic variables and data on several aspects of land use and open space provided by the IOER-Monitor. Additionally, a number of controls is included.

The paper contributes a deeper understanding of the relationship between socioeconomics and land on different spatial scales. It furthermore outlines the opportunities and limits of decoupling economic development and land consumption. Finally, it is discussed if decoupling is certainly desirable from an economic and/or environmental perspective.

Giulio Cainelli (p), Roberto Ganau , Marco Modica

The study of the transformations of the productive structures – i.e. the structural change of an economic system – has a long-standing tradition in economics that goes back to the contributions of the classic English economists and of Karl Marx. More recently, this debate has seen a renovated interest in economic geography and regional economics. By adopting a case study approach, several works have focused on the determinants of the industrial decline of urban areas, local productive systems and regions. One example is Turin (Italy), where the automotive industry, together with its ancillary industries, have seen a contraction during the last decades due to the advantages related to other production specialisations. Many more examples could be given, with reference to the United States and other European territories. In general, however, what it is important is that the interest in the study of de-industrialisation and economic structural change processes is not limited to regional economics and economic geography, but it involves also other fields of research. For example, the decline in urban manufacturing, with the consequent destruction of low-skilled labour, is highly associated with the emergence of populism. Many studies on Brexit and the electoral success of Mr. Donald Trump in the United States identify the regional de-industrialisation process as one of the key factors to explain these political events. In spite of this renovated interest, there is a lack of works that, abandoning the case study approach, investigate systematically the determinants of the manufacturing decline at the regional level. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate by identifying the main factors behind the de-industrialisation process of European regions. This is done using a new dataset collecting information on 260 European Union regions − defined at the level 2 of the Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques − over the period 2003-2015. The empirical analysis employs spatial econometric techniques, and the preliminary results suggest that the de-industrialisation process tends to affect centrally located regions, where the local economic structure is able to shift from traditional and labour-intensive productions to services-oriented activities. On the contrary, peripheral regions characterised by a relative specialisation in primary industries seem to maintain a relatively high level of manufacturing production.

Oliver Rafaj (p), Štefan Rehák , Tomáš Černěnko

In recent years, the rise of populism, extremism and the anti-establishment movements can be seen in many parts of the developed world. These trends dominate mainly in lagging regions, places that have been overlooked by the public authorities for a long time. People in these regions are lacking opportunities to reach the average standard of living in their countries. This contribution focuses on the rise of an anti-establishment movement in Slovakia. Using cross sectional data from parliament elections in 2016 we explore role of local socioeconomic factors in the support of political party People’s Party - Our Slovakia. This extreme right party was established in 2011 and it declares to build its mission on three core principles – national, Christian and social. Spatial analysis of the election results showed strong spatial concentration of its support in regions of central Slovakia. Regression analysis showed that the party gained higher support in regions with higher concentration of Catholics and a smaller share of the Hungarian minority. In addition, the party received higher support in rural and less densely populated regions with higher unemployment rate. Neither higher intensity of EU funding nor state investment aid had any significant effect on the political support for this party. We discuss the political consequences of our results.

Gerson Javier Perez-valbuena (p), Jaime Bonet , Edwin Chirivi

The concept of informality is understood from multiple contexts, mostly denoting a negative aspect related to the total or partial non-compliance with certain conditions established by regulations. Two of the contexts are the labor market and the housing market. In both, the condition of informality is associated with undesirable situations, in the first related to employment status and in the second related to individual or familial housing conditions. As expected, developing countries are the most vulnerable to cope with informality. According to the International Labor Organization, in countries like Ethiopia, Madagascar and Rwanda, more than 70% of the working population does not have the minimum working conditions. For the particular case of Colombia, based on 2016 data, labor informality is about 50%.
In the case of urban informality, about 800 million people live in informal settlements worldwide. In developing countries, on average, about 32% of the urban population live in places without the minimum housing conditions. For the particular case of Colombia, according to UN-Habitat in 2009, Colombia had approximately five million people in informal dwellings, representing 14% of the urban population. Compared with 31% in the early nineties, it is clear the achievements of the country regarding the improvements in the quality of housing conditions.
Despite the evident relationship between these two types of informality, the literature shows just a small number of studies analyzing the potential relationship between these two phenomena. In order to fill this gap, the aim of this paper is to conduct a first exploration for Colombia, that allow us to understand (1) what has been the dynamics of these two phenomena?; (2) whether or not has been persistent over time; (3) are housing and labor informality feeding back to each other?.
In order to answer these questions, we use data from Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares (GEIH), the Colombian household survey, corresponding to 13 main metropolitan areas over the period 2009-2015. From this comprehensive database, it is possible to build indicators that approximate the level of labor and urban informality in each of the metropolitan areas. Methods analyzing these phenomena includes contingency tables, transition matrices, and bivariate probit models. Results show that the incidence of one informality is closely related to the other, and there is evidence of a stable long-term relationship. The main related factors affecting both informalities are household size and education, with differential effects across economic sectors and regions.