Theory and History in Regional Perspective

The focus in this chapter is on geodemographics—essentially the analysis of people by where they live—from the perspective of those involved in planning and policy-making. Like other analysts, they seek to distil the main sources of social and economic variation in cities. However, what distinguishes them is usually some practical purpose directly related to policy formulation, analysis, and evaluation. The chapter takes the form of an historical review in which four main themes are examined: (1) early efforts to apply rudimentary geodemographic classifications, in order to inform and influence policy; (2) harnessing advances in computing and multivariate statistics that make it possible to handle the large datasets needed to explore urban spatial structure; (3) pioneering applications of geodemographics to enable local authorities to identify multi-dimensional needs and to indicate priorities for spatial targeting of resources, and (4) geodemographics in action as an evaluation tool to measure the success of spatial targeting of area-based policy initiatives and identify potential improvements. In a final section, some aspects of the present status of geodemographics are considered and related to the findings of the historical review.

We use microeconomic theory and calculus to study two geographically contiguous cities A and B that compete for N members of the creative class by providing a local public good (LPG) that is of interest to these members. The members can costlessly move between cities A and B. We demonstrate that as a result of this mobility, the equilibrium number of members residing in each city must be such that the utility levels obtained by consuming the LPG on offer are equalized across the two cities. Next, we suppose that the LPG can be provided at unit cost and that the two cities share this cost equally among the resident members. In this setting, we show when a policy that aims to attract and retain members in a city by maximizing the utility of a representative resident member is efficient.

We study dynamics in pit market trading by a laboratory experiment. Our exchange economy model contains two types of consumers and two kinds of commodities, and three competitive equilibria exist. The two equilibria with the lowest and the highest relative prices are beneficial for one type of the consumers, and the intermediate price gives an equitable allocation. The theory of Walrasian tatonnement dynamics predicts that relative prices diverge from the intermediate equilibrium towards the lowest equilibrium or the highest equilibrium depending on initial prices. On the other hand, Marshallian quantity adjustment process leads the total supplied volume to the intermediate equilibrium only regardless of initial states. In order to examine how robust the equilibrium selection is, we conducted a manual experiment of pit market trading with different combinations of ethnicities of subjects in Kenya. Our result shows strong support for the convergence to the intermediate equilibrium, which is unstable in Walrasian tatonnement dynamics and is stable in Marshallian quantity adjustment process.

There are potentially problematic regions in which the local population constantly decreases and the regional government must coordinate a sustainable local economy. These areas may be required to reorganise the spatial economic structure so that sufficient levels of economic environment and regional well-being are present. This paper introduces a location model that applies the established notion of agglomeration economies in rural areas. It shows that an adjustment of the spatial system of goods and services, by means of a rearrangement on the local transportation network, may keep the regional system above a minimum sufficient level to satisfy local demand and supply of goods and services. The change in the transportation network partly employs interregional cooperative coordination by utilising the spatial planning and policy.

Generally, when a local government releases the construction plan for a “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) facility to the public, they nominate only one area as the candidate area of the proposed facility and fail to mention other areas that would benefit from it. This study theoretically explores the implications of releasing the NIMBY facility’s construction plan to the public in this manner, especially whether the candidate area’s nomination compels its residents to accept the facility. Our analysis shows that, if a candidate area’s nomination induces the public to perceive that there is no alternative to building the facility in the nominated area, the nomination requires residents in the nominated area to approve the facility. On the other hand, residents in the nominated area would not be content to accept the facility if it came under such public perception, excluding the possibility of the facility being built in other areas. They would hope for such public perceptions to be corrected and the siting to be reconsidered without excluding other possibilities. Our analysis also investigates the conditions under which the abovementioned reactions occur, which do not necessarily oppose the proposed facility, but hope for a site to be selected without the exclusion of any possible sites. Our analysis suggests that residents in the candidate area know (or can specify) the residents in the non-nominated areas are crucially important for the emergence of such reactions.

The purpose of this study is to explore the interdependent relationships between regional economies and long-standing firms in Japan. Research on family businesses is scarce, so this study analyses the actions of successive generations of family run businesses, interweaving their knowledge of management strategy, society, and history. In this study, we provide a field study on Suzuyo & Co., Ltd., a major logistics company rooted in Shizuoka City, Shizuoka Prefecture (Shimizu area) which has been operating for nine generations over the last 200 years. We discuss this case from the perspectives of innovation, business system, and socio-emotional wealth (SEW). Suzuyo’s business style is based on sound region-customer relationships and is the biggest contributing factor to their long existence. This study offers a strong contribution to the literature due to its research methods, which included interviews and historical materials provided by the people at Suzuyo. In particular, we were able to interview President and Chairman Yohei Suzuki, the eighth generation of the family within the company. His effort ensured that our analysis was fact-based, allowing us to clarify the factors behind the firm’s long-standing operation and the relationship of successive family generations with the local community.

The purpose of this article is to reexamine the logic behind the Japanese spin-off governance mode by revealing the formation process of Japanese spin-offs. In order to achieve that purpose, this paper will conduct a case analysis centered on companies belonging to the Morimura Zaibatsu, while paying special attention to the formation process of the parent-subsidiary relationship between Morimura-gumi and Nippon Touki Gomei Kaisha.

In conclusion, this paper clarifies that there may be limits to previous explorations of the Japanese spin-off governance mode focusing on the process of forming Japanese spin-offs, and points out that the nature of Japanese companies may play an important role in the logic behind Japanese firms adopting the spin-off governance mode.

We try to examine the optimal number of the regions or the optimal number of the population would be? The Henry George theorem is about the optimal supply of local public goods. The theorem asserts that the optimal population of a region is attained when the total expenditure on the public goods equals the total revenue of the land rents. This theorem had been discussed in static frameworks. We examine this theorem in a dynamic framework. We used an overlapping-generations model and derived the optimal dynamic path of the economy, and we try to examine the theorem. As the result, it is shown that the theorem holds in a steady state, but does not hold on the optimal path which is converging to the steady state.

The chapter addresses the question of how open should a city region be? The approach is rooted in the literature on Spatial Interaction Models enlarged to integrate a productive space conceptualized as interconnected channels in which size can change instead of a space if inert links. The argument begins with the formulation of an open spatial interaction model with two channels: Cardo for the internal interaction and Decumanus for the external connection; both constrained by energy, environmental, technological, and economic restrictions. Results indicate that the optimal openness depends on relative structural centrality of the city region, or the length of Cardo and Decumanus, on the environmental capacity of the channels and on the multiplier effect of external connections.

Migration is a key theme in regional science, as it concerns the movement and distribution of human populations and the impacts thereof. The twenty-first century has witnessed increasingly diverse forms of migration, in particular the bifurcation of migrants into permanent migrants and temporary migrants, among others. In this chapter, we focus on the specific case of Australia to uncover how the stratification of migrants by visa class helps to explain the mobility of migrants after arrival. It draws on two new powerful datasets that link visa status with census data to examine the settlement and migration patterns of immigrants by visa class. Our analysis reveals important variations by visa class that are missed when migrants are lumped together. The results confirm that early years post-arrival constitute an important period of adjustment as immigrants seek to establish themselves in the labour and housing markets, but they show that this process is particularly pronounced for skilled migrants who exhibit heightened levels of mobility. While the visa types used in this analysis are specific to Australia, they are underpinned by distinct reasons for immigrating, namely employment, family reunification, and humanitarian motives, which remain the primary drivers of international migration in most countries.

This paper seeks to analyse the significance of cultural amenities in a city for its socio-economic performance. In particular, our study aims to provide an evidence-based answer to the question which cities are the most efficient in terms of their multidimensional economy-culture ratio, and why. This analysis is pursued by using a large database on 40 global cities extracted from the Global Power City Index (GPCI) data system. The methodology adopted here originates from Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) complemented with a so-called Super-Efficiency Module (SEM) so as to arrive at unambiguous rankings of the cities at hand on a global cultural ladder. The DEA results are complemented with a multivariate analysis and regression models. By analysing the cultural productivity of these cities, it appears that our empirical results differ often from the usual urban ranking methods where cities such as London, New York, Paris, or Tokyo rank the highest. Large Asian cities appear to be able to obtain a good efficiency performance in terms of the ratio of (multidimensional) economic outcomes versus (multidimensional) cultural input resources.

This paper develops a dynamic economic analysis of fiscal housing policy effects on the housing market in Korea. The analytical framework integrates a standard Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with a housing market model. The housing model accounts for housing demand, investment, user costs, and multiregional migration. The market is disaggregated into four major regions; three regions (Seoul, Inchon, and Gyeonggi) in the Seoul Metropolitan Area and the rest of Korea to incorporate the regional heterogeneity in housing stocks. The policy simulations using the CGE model show that it would be more effective to increase the property tax rate than the acquisition tax to stabilize housing prices with a moderate increase in housing demand.

The study analyses the impacts of selected regional universities on regional economies within Australia using a multi-regional CGE model, VU-TERM. Universities enhance a community’s knowledge base through teaching and research, raising productivity within the region. To depict the regional economic contribution of universities, we simulate a hypothetical removal of regional campuses. This includes closing campus activities, plus demand-side shocks to remove student expenditures, and supply-side shocks to capture the campuses’ productivity effects on their local economies. We estimate demand-side shocks using expenditure patterns of university enrollees. The major supply-side shocks use inputs from econometric studies estimating rates of return to levels of educational attainment. Simulation results show a wide variation in the effects of the campuses on host regions’ gross regional product, varying from around half a per cent for regions with small campuses through to around 13% for the local economy of Armidale, which has a strong university presence.

Against the backdrop of the rapidly expanding household debt in China, we have conducted this empirical analysis of the relationship between financial literacy and consumer debt. This paper focuses on the purpose of household borrowing, based on the data from Chinese Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data, and examines how exactly financial literacy affects actual household and consumer debt. This paper shows how financial literacy affects actual household debt accumulation and distribution. The main findings of the paper are as follows: (1) higher financial literacy is linked to household debt, but lower financial literacy correlates with excessive debt, which suggests that financial literacy helps households to rationally manage their assets, thereby effectively controlling household debt risk and reducing the risk of excessive debt. (2) Financial literacy has a strong positive impact on consumer debt, which has serious implications for the rapidly expanding household consumer finance market. Our study means that high level of financial literacy can push up consumer debt and in the process contribute to the expansion of the consumption market. Therefore, improving financial literacy can promote healthy borrowing behavior and reduce the risks associated with consumer finance and financial markets as a whole.

According to a report of Japan’s Ministry of the Environment (2015), the severity and significance of climate change are “very high,” and the urgency is “high” for paddy rice and fruit trees among crop cultivation. In this study, we focused on Japan’s fruit tree production, assessing the impacts of climate change, particularly global warming, on regional economies through changes in Japan’s fruit tree cultivation using a panel data model and a nine regional computable general equilibrium (9SCGE) model and the effects of adaptation technology and tariff reduction as recovery policies to mitigate the influence of climate change using this model. Our study revealed three findings: First, we estimated the panel data model of fruit tree production with climate change variables and demonstrated that the impact of high temperature became larger and production decreased when temperature exceeded a certain point, except in Hokkaido. Second, we constructed the 9SCGE model by combining the nine interregional social accounting matrix and the estimation results of the panel data model and conducted three simulated scenarios of global warming without adaptation technology, including the future temperature reaching the predicted maximum, mean, and minimum values. These simulation results revealed that global warming has different impacts on each region and results in regional economic disparities. For example, global warming has a positive impact on regional economies in Hokkaido, Tohoku, and Okinawa. Moreover, through the changes in producer prices for fruit trees and other agricultural products, farmers’ sales will increase to differing degrees among regions. Third, we conducted simulated scenarios of global warming with adaptation technology under the assumption that the development of high-temperature-tolerant fruit trees results in curbing global warming-induced productivity decline (with adaptation technology) as a recovery policy. This simulation revealed that the negative impact on fruit tree production to the west of Kanto will be lower than the range of decline and the equivalent variation gaps between Tohoku and Shikoku will decrease.

The aim of this research is to estimate how much Palauan people value coral reefs in the Rock Island Southern Lagoon (RISL) in Palau by using the Contingent Valuation Method, which is one of the methods used in Environmental Economics. According to some surveys, Palauan people are comparatively more environmentally conscious than those from other countries. However, in recent years, land development has been rapidly increased, and the number of tourists has been drastically increasing as well. Climate change is a global phenomenon that is affecting the condition of the marine environment. These trends cause serious damages to the natural environment. Since coral reefs provide some of the most important resources to the Palauan people, we conducted this study to understand the value of coral reefs to the people of Palau and as a result develop appropriate and effective conservation policy for Palau’s coral reefs. As a result of CVM survey conducted in Koror and Airai states, people’s “willingness to pay” and “willingness to work” are estimated at US $8.00 per month with a total annual value that is estimated at US $452,448. These estimated values can be used as critical information for compensation for coral damage, evaluation of economic efficiency of conservation policy, and improving awareness or education for Palauan residents.

This paper analyzes the relationship between international trade in environmental goods and environmental regulation in the presence of lobbying. We assume an open economy consisting of two countries and two polluting sectors subject to environmental taxation. Thus, we have an environmental goods industry sector supplying pollution abatement goods and services. The pollution abatement goods and services are assumed to be internationally traded, and this is the only industrial interaction between the two countries. Pollution affects consumers in both countries. The impact of lobbying on a politically optimal pollution abatement subsidy is ambiguous and depends on the relative strength of the environmental lobby group.

Regional scientists have adopted two rather different empirical views of agglomeration. One view, favored by economists, examines the distribution of some property across a class of entities (agents, regions). The other view, favored by geographers, examines the spatial correlation of that property based on the arrangement of those entities. Adopting the first approach, this paper develops new statistical properties for the Herfindahl–Hirschman concentration index. The methodology is based on the standard occupancy problem in physics, where r particles (points) are distributed across n cells (quadrats). Both r and n are random variables so the Herfindahl index itself is considered a random variable H(r, n). Including all the equi-probable states of this random variable, expected values for both the mean and standard deviation are specified. A test compares the Herfindahl score for a specific state (sample) to the score based on all possible states, allowing inferences to be made about whether the observed score conforms to a random process. A few applications follow and then a short discussion concludes the chapter.

Facing the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we find quite different people’s attitudes among nations toward the same crisis. This is a good timing to analyze why there shows such difference between countries. In this paper, we argue about factors of the culture which determine the characteristics of risk management in the country. Especially referring to insurance industry, we attempt to clarify why, and to what extent, the culture influences risk management in Japan in comparison with Anglo-Saxon and European countries.

As a research field, risk analysis does not have a long history. However, its theoretical advances have been remarkable, and many lessons have been learned. It has made great contributions to such fields as chemical regulation and food safety. Although it is only at the beginning of addressing complex, uncertain systemic risks, risk analysis can provide some tools for those difficult risks including transparency in decision making and risk communication. In Japan, however, these tools and knowledge are not fully utilized. Japanese risk scientists are needed to think more actively about “implementation science.” This paper presents lessons learned from “lessons not learned” by the Japanese government, using a case of the travel subsidy program aimed at boosting the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Japan, sales agents stimulate the demand for insurance by building a relationship of trust with customers. In recent years, the growth of new life insurance policies has become sluggish owing to the low birthrate and an aging population. Therefore, the need to build good relationships further increases to maintain the existing insurance contracts. Studies have examined the factors that lead consumers to buy life insurance through sales agents, but rarely have any explored how sales agents’ activities affect the contract amount. We explain relationship marketing in the Japanese life insurance market using the accumulation of human capital theory as well as estimate its effect on the insurance contract amount. The study therefore contributes to the literature in determining whether relationship marketing helps in increasing the contract amount. This study used panel data analysis and insurance data were obtained from the annual reports of individual insurance companies. The empirical results reveal that as the number of sales agents increases, a decrease is seen in the total amount of individual insurance in force in traditional and Japan Post insurers. This implies that sales agents fail to build good relationship marketing. The employee turnover rate is high because anonymity of labor does not dissipate. Japanese life insurers need to evaluate the proficiency of labor and improve skills to decrease employee turnover.

This paper compares COVID-19 infections between selected pairs of neighboring states where the policies of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as lockdown/stay-at-home differ. This analysis uses a difference-in-differences (Diff-in-Diff) model to test the effectiveness of NPI in mitigating COVID-19 infections at the state level. The states are Iowa and Illinois, the Dakotas (North and South) and Minnesota, and Arkansas and Mississippi. In each case the policies for each pair of states differ. Based on the difference-in-difference model output, state policies appear to make a significant difference in infection rates but these differences vary. This is for the first phase (wave) of the pandemic (April–June 2020). State level results are mixed reflecting spatial heterogeneity and interaction across the inter-state system. However, there appears to be a significant positive lag effect following the lifting of these mitigation/lockdown policies.

While there has been a great deal of attention directed to the structure and structural changes in world trade, there is a growing interest in exploring the integration of international and interregional trade. The paper focuses on the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei mega-metropolitan region (hereafter JingJinJi) through the development of a five-region model (Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, rest of China, and rest of world) by merging the China Multi-Regional Input–Output Table and World Input–Output Table. The initial explorations explore the internal and external structure of the multi-region economies to understanding the nature and strength of internal interdependence, using measure of feedback effects, fields of influence and hypothetical extraction, and average propagation lengths. The second section of the paper examines the nature and strength on interregional income formation employing the Miyazawa framework. We conclude that the flow of goods and labor inside JingJinJi is stronger than that in the outside area. And there is a close interdependence between Beijing and Tianjin within the JingJinJi metropolitan area.

This aimed to derive an exponential land price function based on explicit analytical assumptions on the spatial and dynamic urban model which is an alternative to conventional Alonso–Muth type model in a dynamic context. With homogeneous space conventionally adopted, it was assumed that landowners are differentiated with the distance to the CBD boundary so that landowners having land located at outer location ring cannot sell their land with higher land price than landowners having land at inner location ring. It was shown that dynamic land price function becomes negative exponential function in the distance to the city center and its growth rate becomes discounting rate in case land demand function is negative exponential function in land traded which is faced by differentiated landowners. Tax on sales of tracts of land and deemed tax on reserved land for speculation were introduced into the model and their impact on the urban sprawl was analyzed. It was shown that both deemed tax on reserved land and revenue tax on utilization of land enhance city development although urban sprawl is inevitable elsewhere and increase in tax rates will shorten the period when urban sprawl is observed in the city. Conversely, sale tax itself is of course neutral to the speculation but its effects become unclear if it is charged together with deemed tax. The differentiation of landowners was extended to incorporate other location attributes than the distance to the city center and meaning of non-geographical space was analyzed on which human activities are developed. A possible experimental analysis was suggested which utilizes estimated hedonic land price function.