Semanur Soyyigit (p), Suat Tuysuz, İbrahim Tuğrul, Çınar Tüzin Baycan

Sabine D'Costa

This paper aims to analyse the transportation and storage industry supply chain in Türkiye, which was severely impacted by the two destructive earthquakes in early 2023, through the lens of complex network tools. To achieve this, we utilized inter-provincial trade data from 2019, released by the Ministry of Industry and Technology. The findings revealed that the supply chain network of the transportation and storage industry is highly interconnected and dense. However, this interconnectedness follows a power-law distribution and is statistically heterogeneous, indicating the presence of a few super-hubs within the supply chain. Centrality analysis based on the HITs algorithm highlights the significance of the earthquake-affected provinces in the transportation and storage industry supply chain in Türkiye, in terms of both demand and supply. Furthermore, an examination of the right and left eigenvector centralities reveals that the provinces in the region are systemically important within the chain. We also identified four trade communities within this supply chain, with ten provinces affected by the earthquakes belonging to the same community. We interpret this as a factor that increases the vulnerability of the supply chain network to disaster shocks. Aggregating the entire earthquake-affected region, the centrality analysis indicates that the region is both fragile and systemically important for Türkiye's transportation and storage supply chain.

This study is prepared within the scope of 1001 - Scientific and Technological Research Projects Support Program of TÜBİTAK (Project ID: 223K626).

Sabine D'Costa (p), Adelheid Holl

Peifeng Zhang

In periods of economic turmoil, the rate of firm exit (death) is accelerated, with important social implications such as job loss and an uneven impact across space. Though the most productive firms are normally more likely to survive, there is mixed evidence whether this is true during periods of economic crisis. Moreover, although firms in dense urban environments tend to be more productive, we know little about the geographical dimension of the productivity-exit relationship. This project conducts econometric research at the firm and micro-geographic level to study what affects firm exit in Spain between 2011 and 2022. We analyse whether being located in an area with strong access to markets reinforces the positive productivity-survival relationship. We also assess whether high market access areas provided firms with better environments to remain productive and survive, or on the contrary if their very competitive environments might have accelerated the death of firms during the Covid-19 pandemic. Finally, we expect to establish what types of locations are more likely to experience stronger productivity growth through firm exit and reallocation of production during a crisis.
Our results so far show that firms that are closer to the productivity frontier are more likely to survive, while firms in locations with greater access to markets are less likely to survive. The protective effect of productivity is also diminished for firms that are in locations with greater market access, particularly in services industries. This does not change during the pandemic. However, the overall probability of firms exiting is higher during the Covid pandemic, though this varies by sector. In the Covid period, the protective effect of being near the productivity frontier is also diminished.

Peifeng Zhang (p)

Boris A. Portnov

In recent years, evolutionary economic geography has made great progress. However, some scholars have pointed out that evolutionary economic geography has neglected the impact of demand-side elements and external factors on regional economic evolution. To respond to this situation, this paper explores the impact of external demand shocks on the local industrial evolution based on Chinese city-level data and the difference-in-difference model, using the US-China trade friction in 2018 as a research case. It is found that the external demand shock lead local industries into a path-dependent and technical-complexity-reducing evolutionary path. The decline in innovative capacity due to the narrowing of exports as a global channel plays a mediating role between the external demand shock and regional industrial evolution. In addition, there is regional heterogeneity in the impact of the external demand shock on regional industrial evolution. Regions with high levels of related diversification are more vulnerable to shocks.

Boris A. Portnov (p)

Semanur Soyyigit

If we look at the geographic patterns of wealth distribution across the globe, these patterns are not immediately clear. Even in Europe, a relatively small and densely populated continent, the location of places that generate the most national wealth looks quite irregular, with isolated ‘peaks’ surrounding by ‘hollows’ that border each other interchangeably and do not show a clear pattern. Quite often, the ‘spikes’ on this map are the largest cities of nations and their capitals, while the ‘depressions’ between them are less populated regions and rural areas, but not always. Indeed, Oslo, Copenhagen, Dublin, Amsterdam, London, and Paris are largest cities of their nations and national capitals, which generate the most national income in terms of GDP per km2 and GDP per capita. However, in a large number of cases, this general observation is not upheld. The conceptual model, termed the ‘valued attribute concept’, is suggested to explain such (ir)regularities. According to this concept, during each historical period, several attributes of location were important and the most valued, and places, which accumulated most of these favourable attributes, concentrated the most physical and the financial resources and most collective wealth as a result. If in antiquity, such attributes included the availability of fresh water, a temperate climate, and fertile land for agriculture and the cultivation of life stock, later elevated and naturally protected places gained importance, while previously valued attributes retained their importance as well. Next, the advantages associated with size gained prominence for different reasons, such as crafts and services, defence considerations, or both. With accelerated industrial development, the proximity to natural resources gained prominence, while the importance of size became even stronger than before, due to the size of the market for produced goods and services, albeit not due to sole defense considerations, as before. As development progressed, the available services and other urban functions, as well as the infrastructure linking places, allowing factor exchanges and urban expansion, gained prominence. More recently, environmental safety, limited commutes, and good climate have gained importance as ‘valuable attributes’ related to human comfort. As a result, geographically, national wealth accumulated in places that concentrated the most of such ‘valued attributes’. As the list of these ‘valued attributes’ tends to change with time, the location of the wealth loci may also change. In this presentation, this concept is supported by empirical data processed using geo-information tools, applied to European and worldwide data.