Javier Bilbao-Ubillos, Vicente Camino-Beldarrain, Gurutze Intxaurburu-Clemente (p), Eva Velasco-Balmaseda (p)

Nejla Ben Arfa

Objective and topic of the contribution: As Kenney & Zysman (2020) state, economic geographers have made great progress in analysing the relationship between space, digitalisation and the role of networks. Regional economic studies have looked at the territorial problems posed by the incorporation of ICTs into the knowledge bases of product fields in manufacturing industry with a view to generating more fabric of production (Bilbao-Ubillos et al., 2021).
From a critical realist perspective, Gong & Hassink (2020) underline the two key concepts in currently economic geography dominant approach—related variety and knowledge bases— and state that it is clear that the two concepts are both influenced by neighboring disciplines—evolutionary economics for related variety and industrial economics/innovation studies for knowledge base. They argue for more careful and reflective theorising and re-theorising in economic geography, paying more attention to the context (Gong & Hassink, 2020).
Regional absorptive capacity and technology-specific dynamics have also been considered as significant variables in the distribution and dissemination of Industry 4.0 technologies across regions (Corradini et al., 2021). Bellandi & Santini (2019) find that the interpretation of changes in local production configurations and the assessment of territorial servitisation trajectories can be explained by observing the multiplicity of know-hows, transaction costs and entrepreneurial drive.
However, the relevant literature has paid less attention to reshoring, i.e. the repatriation of operations outsourced abroad, even though this could also help to consolidate the industrial base of developed economies. Such reshoring might be fostered by the dynamics of servitisation and gradual implementation of Industry 4.0. As De Backer & Flaig (2017) state, the growing digitalisation of production could reverse the importance and length of global value chains and reorient global production and trade back towards developed economies, emphasising that reshoring is expected to become progressively attractive when the activities can be highly automated.
Therefore, in this paper we explore how servitization processes and the implementation of industry 4.0 are promoting a new reconfiguration of the global value chain (GVC), altering the incentives in the geographical location of productive activities and encouraging a dynamic of reshoring in many manufacturing industries.
Method and data: The paper analyses new spatial implications for GVC arising from processes of servitisation and the implementation of Industry 4.0. and reviews the main studies conducted to date in regard to manufacturing industry.

Jaime Fialkow (p)

Eva Velasco-Balmaseda

How do sectoral economic and employment growth react to a shock to land supply for regions where agriculture plays an important role? In which way does this reaction depend on local land use patterns and agricultural productive structure?

In our case, the shocks to local land supply are the establishment of environmental protected areas in Brazil. As an important tool in the fight against climate change, as the size and number of protected areas should increase throughout the world on the next decades. Moreover, climate change should also lead to a decrease in land supply through changes in suitability for crops, highlighting the study's relevance.

This paper looks at the relation between land supply in agriculture and structural transformation at a regional level. Land supply plays a central role in land use decisions that affect agricultural productivity, labor intensity, rents and wages, which can induce broader sectoral transformations, especially in areas where agriculture plays an important role in the local economy. Global income and population increases exert pressure on some regions for agricultural specialization, and thus on land use, as higher prices increases land profitability, which boosts demand for previously unused/underdeveloped land where it becomes profitable to be turned into modern agricultural farms.

While other work focused on the impact on agricultural production, we take a step further and look at how land use affects broader sectoral behaviour. Understanding how those type of policies have an effect on local economies - and not only agriculture - becomes then an important issue, allowing a better cost-benefit evaluation.

We use data from the Brazilian Environmental Ministry for the protected areas, combined with data for the Brazil's Agricultural Census (1995, 2005, 2015) and Demographic Census (2000, 2010) to asses how nearby areas to protected land fare in terms of agricultural productivity, land use, and non-agricultural employment and sectoral strcture.

The paper is not yet finished by the submission date.

Nejla Ben Arfa (p), Mohamed Ghali, Giffona Justinia

Jaime Fialkow

Agriculture, and specifically animal sector, is shifting toward larger farms and regional agglomerations in many countries. In France, the consequence of this development is that manure nutriments have started accumulating in those territories, leading to massive problems from nutrient loading (Ben Arfa et al. 2015). Regulations, such as the EU Water Framework Directive which is the strongest regulation, are not limiting enough to counteract this trend (Chatellier et al 2013). Interestingly, larger unit size and regional agglomeration provide economic returns to scale that may enable larger investments and technological innovation adoption that open opportunity in manure management and treatment (Gaigné and Ben Arfa 2011, Belinskij et al 2019).
Digital technologies are nowadays seen to be “the solution” to gain productivity and also to achieve the goal of reducing environmental problems.
Therefore, in order to fully understand the potential advantages for farmers and society from using digital technologies, we examine the question of whether or not digital technologies improve farm production and environmental performance by a better management of manure (manure production, storage and spreading) and whether or not this improvement benefits larger farms more than smaller ones? We also ask if digital technologies boost the agglomeration spillover by disseminating additional spatial knowledge spillover among farmers. To do this, we chose the dairy sector, which the sector the most concerned by those structural, spatial and technological changes in France, as an empirical application, and we used several estimations (Two-Stage Residual Inclusion (2SRI) and Coarsening Exact Matching (CEM)). Our findings suggest, first, that digital technologies increase milk production between around 14% and to 38%, depending on the technology used. Second, it appears that the agglomeration spillover is enhanced by non-dairy farmers’ or dairy farms’ uses of digital technologies in the county. Thus, farm users of digital technologies disseminate their knowledge and this affects all farmers, even those who do not use digital technologies which reinforce agglomeration.
Third, it seems that some technologies (like Internet connection and Decision Support Systems) may have a positive impact on manure production per cow or liter of milk. However, this efficiency was not observed when we consider the total quantity of manure produced on the farm or in the region. This is what we called in ecology “rebound effect” in which farmers are individually more efficient, given the positive effect of digital technologies on the environment; and consequently, are encouraged to increase their herd size or production.