SIRE Workshop and Policy Forum on

“Regional Economic Policy”  

‌‌ 

A highly successful SIRE Workshop and Policy Forum was held in the University of Dundee on the 28^th September 2012 on “Regional Economic Policy”.

Currently, regional economics is an exciting area of research and policy in Europe. First, at a theoretical level, there is an increasing interdisciplinary ethos within the subject, integrating traditional approaches based on input-output, social accounting and general equilibrium models with new ideas from new economic geography, regional studies and spatial economics and econometrics. Second, there is a substantial and increasing attention to regional policy within Europe, particularly in the context of the EU regional framework for delivering the Europe 2020 programme. Finally, and importantly, there is an increasing impetus to broaden the focus of regional economies to encompass migration and environmental issues, which both raises the policy relevance of research and brings new theoretical and methodological challenges. This leads to substantial scope for research and policy, but most importantly to interactions between the two.

The area has also seen consistent research activity within Scotland, not least in Dundee University, traditionally in the core area of input-output analyses, but increasingly in the linkages with (new) economic geography and spatial economics. Against this backdrop,  a full day event was organised (Workshop followed by Policy Forum) in the area of Regional Economic Policy, focussing on the current context of European regional economies. The speakers were leading experts in the field whose work combines academic rigour and economic thinking with a strong focus towards regional policy. We are grateful to the Scottish Institute for Research in Economics for financial support.

Professor Geoff Hewings is one of the greatest researchers and experts in the field, and has been the major pivot of the Regional Science Association International over the past 30 years. He is currently Director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Professor Philip McCann, University of Groningen Endowed Chair of Economic Geography and Professor of Economics at Waikato University, is one of the world’s most highly cited economic geographers and spatial economists of his generation. He is currently Special Adviser to the European Commissioner for Regional Policy. Dr Castro and Dr Madsen are leading experts on regional economics and policy in Europe, with regional specialisations on southern and northern Europe respectively. The idea was to organise the workshop and policy forum in a way that was conducive towards the development of a research cluster centred at Dundee for policy-relevant research in this area. The choice of invited speakers was partly made keeping this issue in focus. Another workshop in a related area is planned for 2013.

Given their focus on current regional policy in the EU, the presentations directly led into the Policy Forum. This facilitated exchange between academics and government economists on issues concerning regional economic policy in Scotland and the UK, but within the context of the current EU regional framework – including discussions of the EU-led ESPON programme (European Observation Network, Territorial Development and Cohesion) closely tied in one of the major aims of the EU: "European Territorial Cooperation Delivering Europe 2020". Participants in the Policy Forum included invited members from the Scottish Government as well as the European Union. It is expected that the event will facilitate the consolidation and further development of this network of researchers leading to rich interdisciplinary and international co-operation across institutions and government agencies.

For us here in Economic Studies and the School of Business, it was also a way to celebrate the illustrious, long and continued contributions of Professor John Dewhurst to the research community and to the University of Dundee.

Programme

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