ALBERT

Notes: This paper looks at the linkages between three recent developments in spatial economics that in combination have changed the way that economic growth is viewed. These new approaches are that of the New Growth Theory, the measurement of geographical economic convergence, and the role of infrastructure in stimulating economic growth. In combination these developments may combine to provide a different perspective on why regions often grow at differential rates,ways of measuring these differences, and possible policy interventions tomanipulate geographical variations in the growth process. The paper argues, however, that these concepts, while they may offer new insights, are nevertheless unlikely to provide a complete picture of why spatial economic divergence is widespread nor a set of policy instruments that can be simplydeployed to ameliorate such discrepancies.

Notes: This paper provides a synthesis of the 1983–98 published literature on the empirical evidence regarding the interaction between government policies and growth. Five policy areas are considered: general government consumption, tax rates, education expenditures, defense and public infrastructure. The most conclusive results in the literature relate to the positive impact of education expenditures on growth. Public infrastructure also appears important. Regression analysis remains the most commonly adopted research methodology. A better link with current theories will be obtained when parameter calibration methods formicro-foundations based models replace parameter estimation of regression models with ad hoc specifications. Nonetheless, there remain severe limitations on what can be learned for policy from highly aggregative models of endogenous growth. Better data are needed at the regional macro and meso levels to complement thecurrently available pooled cross-section time-series country data. The potential endogeneity of government fiscal variables can be resolved through the selection of appropriate instrumental variables, such as those that arise in cases of “natural experiments”.

Notes: Profitable private investments may be bypassed in struggling regions due precisely to such regions' isolation, leading to a self-reinforcing cycle of marginalization. In many cases, development in such regions may be most effectively promoted by providing key information to the private and public sectors, thus addressing potentially significant market failures. In the case study project, the calculation of private and social returns have been particularly crucial in sparking both private investor interest and public support of this business venture. The project's example suggests an updated role for universities in the assistance of productive economic development programs.

Notes: The concept of globalization has become almost ubiquitous in contemporaryaccounts of urban development and cultural transformations. In these accounts, questions of globalization, urbanization, and ethnicity increasingly intersect. But this burgeoning literature, while laudably integrating cultural concerns into political-economic understandings of globalization, tends to rely on a dualistic sense of scale which treats localities as points of reaction to and resistance against global forces. Ethnicity and identity, situated in a rigid local scale, are reduced to either primordial communal sentiments or commodified symbols in the global economy. This paper advocates a conceptualization of ethnicity and locality not in opposition to the global, but in relation to social, political, and economic relationships that operate within and beyond particular spaces. These arguments are illustrated with the case of downtown Beirut. Beirut's reconstruction epitomizes the commodification of place identities. But the marketing of place identity is significant beyond the immediate investment goals of the city's investors. Indeed, this new identity and the new Beirut have been generated in a hotly-contested terrain of sectarian allegiances and state legitimacy. The redevelopment of Beirut and the re-creation of Lebanese identity are embedded not only in the imperatives of the contemporary global economy, but also in the troublesome legacies of a violent past and in the day-to-day lives of the Lebanese populace.

Notes: The focus of this paper is on the demolition of a sacred space, the Babri Masjid, a sixteenth century mosque, in Ayodhya, India, in December 1992, an illegal albeit well-organized act by the Hindu right. Drawing on postcolonial theory, and feminist geographical theory, and using a discourse analysis primarily of Hindu nationalist texts, and of significant action as text, the author examines the strategic construction and deployment of cultural meanings pertaining to space, and the engagement of social actors on that basis, towards political, violent ends. The author argues, firstly, that Hindu nationalist ideologues, notwithstanding pretensions to Hindu ‘authenticity,’ make use of Western thought to rewrite Hindu-Muslim relations in antagonistic terms, and to signify these oppositional relations through sacred spatialities (mosque, temple, and Motherland as the body of the mother goddess Bharatmata). Secondly, in this framework, the Babri Masjid, one particular mosque, became a site of conflict because Hindu nationalists were able to transform it into a symbol of Muslim military invasions and Muslim male sexual aggression against Hindu femininity (as Motherland and Hindu women's bodies). Thirdly, Hindu nationalists, through a well-orchestrated campaign, were able to convince a wider audience that these violations could only be avenged by the demolition of the Babri mosque (while also unofficially and inadvertently targeting Muslim women's bodies for sexual violation). Finally, this analysis should have wider implications for understanding the place of space, gender, sexuality, and sexual violation, in religio-political and ethnic conflicts elsewhere.

Notes: This paper uses state-level pollution data from 1986–1997 to construct two indices that rank U.S. states according to environmental outputs. A major finding is that marginal performers in other indices, such as Wyoming, garner top spots in these ranking systems. The paper also presents findings from fixed and random effects models of panel data that imply state income levels are positively associated with environmental outputs after a threshold level of income is obtained.

Notes: The traditional empirical approaches to the analysis of economic growth,cross-section and panel data regressions are substantially uninformative withrespect to the issue of convergence. Whether national or regional economies appear to converge in terms of per capita income or productivity levels (the so-called β-convergence) critically depends on the way in which the empirical model is specified. Traditional specifications witness a disproportionate presence of proxies for forces leading towards divergence among the conditioning variables. It is therefore hardly surprising that these analyses find a positive and statistically significant value for the estimate of the speed of convergence.A more constructive use of cross-section and panel data regressions is in the analysis of the determinants of growth. The present paper therefore builds on recent work on the role of different growth determinants (Cheshire and Carbonaro 1996) and analyses the growth performance of 122 Functional Urban Regions (FURs)over the period 1978–1994. This model explicitly recognizes growth as amultivariate process. In this new formulation it incorporates a spatialized adaptation of Romer's endogenous growth model (Romer 1990), developing the work of Magrini (Magrini 1997). Magrini's model originated from the view that technological knowledge has a very important tacit component that has been neglected in formal theories of endogenous growth. This tacit component, being the non-written personal heritage of individuals or groups, is naturally concentrated in space. As a result, technological change is profoundly influenced by the interaction between firms and their local environments.The present paper reports the results of the estimation of a fully specified model of regional growth in per capita income. Particular attention is played to the role of research and development (R&D) activities, and to the influence of factors such as Universities that shape the local environments and have important policy implications.These results are then applied to quantifying the scope for policy to influence the growth process. Several simulations are presented deriving alternative growth outcomes across European regions that would have been obtained if those variables over which policy might have control—including the contribution of human capital—had had alternative values reflecting the realistic scope of policy makers' influence. The implications for convergence/divergence in regional per capita income levels are then analyzed using a Markov chain approach (Quah 1993 and 1996; Magrini 1999).