Management And Regional Science For Economic Development

The greatest challenge facing mankind today is the immense disparity in the levels of income among people in different parts of the globe. The growth rate of income of the poor countries is consistantiy far below the rate of the advanced, industrialized nations. Due to low income and a high propensity to consume, there is very little left in these countries for investment. A major portion of the resources available is devoted to military expenditures. This continual decline in the standard of living, coupled with poverty and unemployment, will lead to social and political upheaval in these countries, which affects developed countries. Because of high capacity and low population growth, the market of the developed countries is already saturated. To maintain the high standard of living in the developed countries it is necessary to have a strong and stable developing world. It is gratifying to see that both groups of countries see the need for peaceful economic growth; however, the amount of cooperation between countries and the material help from the developed countries are far from satisfactory. The economic and social scientists have investigated the best way to achieve the transformation from a poverty-ridden condition to a decent existence. Their studies have proceeded in two different directions. One is a more descriptive, historical analysis and the other is theoretical model building. Although these studies have achieved a relatively high level of perfection, one significant factor is sometimes missing.

This book is the first collection of scholarly writings on science and technology parks (STPs) that has an international perspective. It explores concrete ways to systematically collect information on public and private organizations related to their support of and activities in STPs, including incubation to start-up and scale-up, and collaborations with centers of knowledge creation. Rather than perpetuate the qualitative assessment of successful practices, the focus of this book is to present quantitative and qualitative evidence of the impact of STPs on regional development and to raise awareness on the importance of systematic data collection and analysis. Only through a systematic collection of data on fiscal identification numbers of companies, universities, and university spin-offs will it be possible to conduct current and especially future analyses on the impact of STPs on entrepreneurship, effectiveness of technology transfer, and regional economic development. To this extent, the synergistic views of academics, representatives from STPs, and policy experts are crucial.

This book examines major policy and planning issues in development studies from the regional science perspective. It investigates questions such as: “How are communities able to deal with uncertainties raised by conflicts, technology, and external shocks in the process of development?”; “How can nations achieve sustainable development in terms of resource allocation and management?”; and “How can developing countries improve their economic competitiveness while maintaining the objectives of equitable and coordinated growth among different regions?” using case studies that focus on different subfields, like infrastructure, environment, data science, sustainability and resilience. The book is organized in three parts. Part I clarifies fundamental issues regarding development studies and regional science in general, while Part II includes several case studies that address development-related opportunities and challenges with a focus on Asian countries. Lastly, Part III offers a global perspective and explores development experiences from countries throughout the world. Featuring contributions by leading academics and practitioners working at various organizations linked to international development, and including multidisciplinary analyses, the book appeals to students who are interested in development studies and regional science. It also offers planners and policymakers fresh insights into regional economic development.

This book summarizes the research findings in regarding a region as a rational and abstract concept and explores the principles of regional science. Focusing on location theory, spatial dynamics and regional evolution theory, it stresses that the region as a scientific concept is an essential abstract of an economic entity of a place. While it introduces a number of case studies, the content is general and universal rather than specific. Beginning with location theory – the basis of regional science – it explains how regions breed their own characteristics as economic entities against a background of place. For example, it discusses the location theory of the tourism industry and analyzes issues of facility location and R&D-industry location theory. The second part of the book addresses interactions with the spatial dynamics, including the dynamic mechanism of regions against a background of space. Spatial dynamics, which includes concepts from statistical physics, provides insights into the dynamic mechanism of aggregation, diffusion, and industrial clustering in regional science as well as in geography and economics. The book then describes regional dynamics as a development of spatial dynamics: REGION is completely independent as a research object and is no longer part of spatial dynamics. This book also discusses in detail regions as the dynamic characteristics of the economy or the basic characteristics of a certain place and examines the theory of regional evolution. It argues that regions are evolution and irreversible features of development with path dependence, which are the characteristics of a region that differ from general economic phenomena. This book by Professor Zheng Wang is outstanding. Its focus on Regional Science will open this area up to a wide variety of theoretical and applied researchers. I recommend the work without reservations. It covers critically important principles in the field and should be read and used by students, faculty and applied researchers doing policy analysis. I can see this as an important handbook and reference work as well as a textbook in the field. Kingsley Haynes

Recent technological advancements and other related factors and trends are contributing to the production of an astoundingly large and rapidly accelerating collection of data, or ‘Big Data’. This data now allows us to examine urban and regional phenomena in ways that were previously not possible. Despite the tremendous potential of big data for regional science, its use and application in this context is fraught with issues and challenges. This book brings together leading contributors to present an interdisciplinary, agenda-setting and action-oriented platform for research and practice in the urban and regional community. This book provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary and cutting-edge perspective on big data for regional science. Chapters contain a collection of research notes contributed by experts from all over the world with a wide array of disciplinary backgrounds. The content is organized along four themes: sources of big data; integration, processing and management of big data; analytics for big data; and, higher level policy and programmatic considerations. As well as concisely and comprehensively synthesising work done to date, the book also considers future challenges and prospects for the use of big data in regional science. Big Data for Regional Science provides a seminal contribution to the field of regional science and will appeal to a broad audience, including those at all levels of academia, industry, and government.

This book examines major policy and planning issues in development studies from the regional science perspective. It investigates questions such as: "How are communities able to deal with uncertainties raised by conflicts, technology, and external shocks in the process of development?"; "How can nations achieve sustainable development in terms of resource allocation and management?"; and "How can developing countries improve their economic competitiveness while maintaining the objectives of equitable and coordinated growth among different regions?" using case studies that focus on different subfields, like infrastructure, environment, data science, sustainability and resilience. The book is organized in three parts. Part I clarifies fundamental issues regarding development studies and regional science in general, while Part II includes several case studies that address development-related opportunities and challenges with a focus on Asian countries. Lastly, Part III offers a global perspective and explores development experiences from countries throughout the world. Featuring contributions by leading academics and practitioners working at various organizations linked to international development, and including multidisciplinary analyses, the book appeals to students who are interested in development studies and regional science. It also offers planners and policymakers fresh insights into regional economic development.

Increasingly, endogenous factors and processes are being emphasized as drivers in regional economic development and growth. This 15 chapter book is unique in that it commences by presenting five disciplinary takes on endogenous development from the perspectives of economics, geography, sociology, planning and organizational management. Several chapters demonstrate how researchers have developed operational models to investigate the roles played by endogenous factors in regional economic development, including the role of entrepreneurial rents. Further chapters provide empirical investigations of endogenous factors in regional development at various levels of spatial scale - from the supraregion to the nation, city and small town - and in a variety of situational settings, including the European Union, Asia and Australia. The book is an invaluable up-to-date resource for researchers and students in regional science, and regional economic development and planning.

This is a relatively simple and easy to read introduction of major regional and local economic development theories, their theoretical evolution and other relevant topics such as governance, institutions and local leadership within the globalization context. It also discusses some basic analytical tools and provides a template for them in an easy to use MS Excel spreadsheet application. It introduces conflict management procedures into regional development process and provides a regional decision support framework.

Thorough and authoritative, Regional and Urban Economics and Economic Development: Theory and Methods provides students with a sound approach to analyzing the economic progress of a region or urban area. The textbook is divided into four sections for ease of reference. The first section, Market Areas and Firm Location Analysis introduces spatial economics and location theory, while the next section, Regional Growth and Development analyzes regional growth and development models and policy. Introducing the foundations of urban economics, Urban Land Use and Urban Form examines land rent, land use patterns, and the effects of attempts to control land uses. The final section, Urban Problems and Policy, investigates local public finance and introduces the policy analysis involved in countering urban problems. Addressing these topics from the perspectives of how they affect the population at large and how they become established within public policy, Regional and Urban Economics and Economic Development: Theory and Methods provides students with an essential foundation not only to understand but also to contemplate the dynamics of varying economic factors as they relate to an area's growth.