There is a substantial body of research that recognises the importance of analysing regional characteristics in employment and labour relations that occur in a given geographical context. However, this phenomenon has been scarcely studied from a spatial approach. This article uses a spatio-temporal panel data model to examine the spatial interactions between the gender employment gap and, some labour and socioeconomic characteristics of 727 municipalities of Andalusia, Spain, for the period 2012–2016. The results show that due to spatial diffusion mechanisms, a spatial spillover effect occurs in both the gender gap in employment and in some of the labour and socioeconomic characteristics considered. These findings may be extended to other geographic areas and can be of use for the implementation of regional policies aimed at narrowing the gender employment gap.

This study summarizes research on farm-, local-, regional-, and macro-level economic effects of ethanol production. Given current production levels, the ethanol production industry annually employees approximately 3,500 workers, pays out nearly $132 million in worker salaries, generates over $110 million in local taxes, and takes in some $2 billion in government incentive payments. Projections for a 60 million gallon per year ethanol plant indicate an annual increase in corn usage of 21 million bushels, a one-time capitalization of $75 million, an increase in local corn prices of between $0.06/bushel and $0.12/bushel, a 54 direct and a 210 indirect jobs created, an increase in local tax revenues of $1.2 million, a decrease in federal commodity program outlays of $30 million, and an increase in ethanol production incentives (federal only) of around $30.5 million.

In this paper we explore the relationship between the presence of agglomeration economies and regional economic growth in Spain during the period 1870-1930. The study allows us to revisit the existence of a trade-off between economic growth and territorial cohesion, and also to examine whether the existence of agglomeration economies could explain the upswing in regional income inequality during the early stages of development. In doing so, we present alternative indicators for agglomeration economies and estimate conditional growth regressions at province (NUTS3) level. In line with new economic geography models, agglomeration economies in a context of market integration widened regional inequality in the second half of the 19th century and hindered its reduction during the early decades of the 20th.

Fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with improved health outcomes,yet there is limited understanding of the impact of cost and accessibilityon fruit and vegetable intake in rural settings. This study examines therelationship between the consumption of fruits and vegetables and their costand accessibility among blacks and non-Hispanic whites in a rural area.Individual characteristics from a 2006 mail survey (n = 1,510) were combinedwith store locations and price information from a 2006 ground-truthed censusof retail outlets. The mail survey covered seven counties in central Texaswith 38 supermarkets/grocery stores. Blacks tended to live closer to asupermarket or grocery store, but they were only slightly more likely thanwhites to consume two or more servings of fruit daily and much less likelyto consume three or more servings of vegetables. Multivariate probitregression analysis revealed that neither access nor cost was related tofruit or vegetable consumption among white respondents. Among blacks, costwas also not associated with consumption. In contrast to whites, however,each additional mile was associated with a three percentage point decline inthe probability of consuming two or more servings of fruit daily and a 1.8percentage point decline in the probability of consuming three or morevegetable servings.

En este documento se analiza la jerarquía urbana de Colombia y sus regiones utilizando información censal de entre 1835 y 2005. Se estudian tres aspectos: 1) la distribución del tamaño poblacional a través de las regularidades empíricas de Zipf y de Gibrat; 2) el cambio en el modelo de crecimiento poblacional, y 3) la validación empírica sobre la coincidencia de la dinámica poblacional para un país y sus regiones. Haciendo uso de la relación rango-tamaño y de técnicas no paramétricas, se encuentra coincidencia nacional y regional desde 1964 del cumplimiento de la ley de Zipf y parcialmente de la ley de Gibrat, lo cual evidencia un cambio en el modelo de crecimiento poblacional desde mediados del siglo XX en los ámbitos nacional y regional.

Metropolization is not a new phenomenon: metropolises have been around for centuries. The prime and permanent function of a metropolis is the coordination of economic activities at a world scale. This function has been applied to different activities in history, depending on technological conditions and economic organization, and consequently it generated different forms of metropolises. The resulting continuities and discontinuities in the metropolises' evolution can be understood in terms of agglomeration economies. In the pre-industrial period, the trading metropolis coordinates long range trade. The industrial revolutions generate new needs for coordination of production and give rise to the manufacturing metropolis. Finally, the information revolution and the emergence of the post-industrial economy create the global metropolis.

This paper aims at providing a possible explanation for the seemingly peripheral role played by spatial economics in modern economic theory. It considers successively five points of view according to which space is introduced in economic models and assesses their contributions and limits.

This paper explains how road pricing and toll charge theory appeared and evolved on the basis of contributions from the French engineer-economist school, from Dupuit to Allais, and of Anglo-Saxon theories inspired by Pigou and Vickrey on decongestion tolls and network tools.

There is an entire branch of industrial location analysis in economics and operational research that refers back to Weber. In this paper I show that the model he developed had already been proposed by W. Launhardt in 1882 as a generalization of a route planning method presented in 1872. It contained all the technical aspects of Weber’s model. That does not mean Weber should be forgotten though, as his contribution involves far more than the simple presentation of the model. In terms of method, he defends and uses the hypothetical-deductive method. As for the content, he attempts to understand the formation of concentrations of economic activities and population, which leads to an interesting analysis of agglomeration economies.

This article traces a little-known French tradition in spatial economics that was advanced by state engineers who were trained at the École des Ponts et Chaussées and worked for the State corps of engineers. Spurred in part by changes in power technology, especially the advent of the railroad, these engineers pioneered the spatial aspects of competition in a microeconomic framework. The contributions of Jules Dupuit (1804-1866) and Emile Cheysson (1836-1910) are especially singled out for analysis, and are shown to have anticipated later important developments in spatial economic theory.

The paper discusses the relation between the justly famous Hotelling’s [1929] paper on stability in competition and the corresponding passages of the often ignored Launhardt’s [1885] book, devoted to mathematical economics. Launhardt is sometimes credited for the anticipation of Hotelling’s spatial model and analysis of oligopolistic competition with product differentiation. The paper argues that Launhardt’s model is in fact significantly more general, in particular in introducing vertical along with horizontal differentiation, and that his analysis of strategic competition is correspondingly finer and more complete. Thus, the earlier author does not appear to be a forerunner of the later, rather the later a successor of the earlier. However, Hotelling did (objectively) innovate, in a significant way, by endogenizing locations as strategic variables, and principally by developing the concept of an abstract characteristics space, which transcends the geographical space.