This paper conducts a comparative assessment of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) inflation-hedging effectiveness across both mature (the United States and the United Kingdom) and emerging African (South Africa and Nigeria) markets, thereby situating African REIT performance within a broader global context. The investigation across these four markets was conducted over the period 2013 to 2024. Grounded on the Fisher hypothesis and its Fama-Schwert extension, this study decomposes inflation into actual, expected and unexpected components, and analyses their relationship with REIT capital returns. Using indexed monthly data and a suite of econometric models including ARDL for the main analysis and FMOLS, DOLS and CCR for robustness checks, we find mixed and often adverse inflation responsiveness across the sample. Notably, REITs in Nigeria exhibit strong hedging against unexpected inflation despite institutional fragility, while South African REITs demonstrate weak or negative inflation responsiveness. Conversely, REITs in the US and UK offer partial or limited protection, particularly in short-run scenarios. Our findings challenge the notion that REITs offer uniform inflation hedging across global markets and highlight the importance of institutional structure, inflation volatility and asset composition. This study underscores the need for investors and policymakers to contextualise REIT performance within both macroeconomic environments and market-specific frameworks.
This paper investigates the intricate relationship between EU integration, regional growth, and discontent, with a specific focus on Greece. While EU integration is often associated with growth through market expansion and resource optimization, its uneven impacts across regions can produce adverse outcomes. In Greece, persistent regional disparities, trade deficits, and the long-term effects of a severe economic crisis have been accompanied by a visible rise in discontent. This discontent, increasingly expressed through anti-EU sentiment, appears strongly linked to low and uneven returns from integration, especially in regions more vulnerable to trade shocks. By utilizing newly available regional trade data, we analyze how different types of trade integration influence regional growth patterns, contributing to either convergence or divergence. The conclusions underscore that discontent in Greece is not a peripheral issue but a central consequence of integration processes that fail to deliver balanced benefits. As such, the interdependence between integration, discontent, and cohesion policy emerges as a critical dimension for the EU’s democratic and economic stability.
The real state markets have been faced different challenges in China. Drawing on the dual attributes of real estate as consumption and investment goods, this study constructs a theoretical framework and indicator system and scientifically measures the spatiotemporal patterns for evaluating urban real estate market healthiness from the dimensions of product market competitiveness and factor sufficiency. This study findings unfold that the China's urban real estate market health level generally improved in different geographical pattern. This study further highlights that health levels exhibited heterogeneous spatial distribution with notable global spatial autocorrelation. Additionally, regional disparities in real estate market health showed a trend of initial expansion followed by contraction. The Northeast region exhibited the largest and continuously growing intra-regional differences, while Central China maintained the smallest disparities. Furthermore, this sector has healthy development on economic growth with direct and mediated effect of land finance.
Regional economies are increasingly exposed to volatility and prolonged shocks, yet the role of intersectoral linkages and their spatial interdependencies in shaping adjustment remains underexplored. This study analyses the evolution and spatial structure of inter-industrial dependencies across Greek NUTS-2 regions during 2008–2018, a period of deep recession and uneven recovery. Using regional input-output models, the analysis estimates sectoral output multipliers to identify key drivers of economy-wide effects and to trace their evolution over time. Spatial diagnostics detect clustering patterns in multiplier dynamics, while correlation and spatial correlation analyses explore the relationship between structural change and regional gross value added performance. Results indicate that the crisis was associated with a modest weakening of overall inter-industrial linkages, alongside a reconfiguration of production structures. The industry sector emerged as the dominant source of multiplier effects, while construction and finance experienced a substantial decline in network importance. Information and communication maintained relatively steady multiplier strength, suggesting their growing role within regional production systems. Spatial analysis indicates persistent industrial polarization and sector-specific clustering, pointing to path-dependent and geographically uneven adjustment processes. Correlation analysis shows weak associations between multiplier growth and own-region economic performance, but positive relationships with neighbouring regions’ growth, underscoring the importance of spatial spillovers. By integrating production-network and spatial perspectives, the proposed analytical framework offers a diagnostic tool for assessing regional economic restructuring and supports the design of place-based resilience policies that explicitly account for intersectoral linkages and cross-regional spillover mechanisms.
Contemporary literature underscores the demographic and economic stagnation of non-urban areas, driven by ongoing urbanization and the associated outflow of human capital. Although counterurban migration has long been proposed as a potential remedy, empirical evidence on its long-term consequences remains limited, particularly with respect to individuals who remain in these areas over time. This study examines post-migration staying among individuals who moved from metropolitan to non-metropolitan regions in Sweden between 2006 and 2010, analysing the determinants of staying duration over a ten-year follow-up period using administrative register data. Employing survival models, the analysis reveals substantial variation in staying duration across regional contexts and migrant sub-groups. Longer residential stability is more strongly associated with proximity to metropolitan labour markets, family-related characteristics, and prior regional ties, while more remote and structurally weaker regions exhibit higher exit risks. The findings indicate that counterurban migration frequently takes the form of selective settlement in commuting-accessible areas rather than deep rural retention. Overall, the results highlight patterns of regional fit and selective retention across migrant sub-groups and destination types, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of counterurban migration and its role in regional population redistribution.
The role of universities in regional development has gained increasing importance in research, particularly regarding their economic and societal contributions. However, there is no consistent understanding on how context factors influence engagement and how these factors are perceived by university stakeholders and their respective collaboration network. Utilizing the theoretical foundations derived from the literature, the study employs a case study analysis of two Austrian universities located in industrial regions, Linz (JKU) and Graz (KFU) with vibrant regional innovation systems. Our research is based on a combined flexible pattern matching analysis (FPMA) and the Gioia methodology. The Gioia method identifies patterns directly from the empirical data which is relevant for understanding stakeholders’ perceptions and FPMA involves the iterative matching between theoretical patterns derived from literature and empirically observed patterns. Influenced by various context factors—spatial-relational, organizational, and institutional—the findings reveal, that academic engagement is perceived in two different spheres, the organizational sphere of the university and the regional sphere which allows a differentiated reflection on the existing engagement theory. While university engagement often focuses on knowledge transfer and scientific impact, regional engagement involves broader collaborations with regional stakeholders and is frequently policy driven. Besides organizational influencing factors, such as the founding history, leadership and motivated university actors, the findings reveal that the type of engagement is strongly driven by regional networks as well as proximity. Institutional and social proximity coin the university’s definition and understanding of academic engagement as well as its implementation in the form of university and/or regional engagement.
This paper explores the asymmetric nature of spatial interactions in environmental taxation. The analysis focuses on the intermediate level of government in Spain—namely, the regions—and is based on an extended dynamic spatial Durbin model. While the initial results confirm the existence of spatial dependence—where regions tend to imitate their neighbours’ revenue-based measure of environmental tax stringency—the extended model, which interacts the spatial lag of the dependent variable with an index capturing the characteristics of neighbouring regions, reveals that this imitation is far from uniform. Specifically, regions tend to emulate the environmental tax behaviour of the neighbouring regions when these are prosperous but choose to behave differently when the neighbouring economies are poorly developed, with sluggish or stagnant markets. In this scenario, they opt for tax competition to attract firms. Moreover, tax interaction is minimal when neighbouring regions have very low environmental tax revenues or have a minority government. These findings challenge uniform approaches to environmental tax coordination and highlight the need for strategies that account for regional heterogeneity.
Income Composition Inequality (ICI) has emerged as a relevant framework for linking functional and personal income distribution, yet empirical evidence remains limited and focused exclusively on national-level analyses. This paper addresses this gap by offering the first comprehensive regional study of ICI in Spain over the period 2007–2021, a context characterised by pronounced territorial heterogeneity. Using microdata from the Income and Living Conditions Survey and a set of indicators capturing primary and secondary ICI, the article provides three main contributions. First, it demonstrates that ICI varies across regions and that neither its levels nor its patterns of change follow conventional geographical divides documented in the broader inequality literature. This reveals that regional disparities in income composition represent an independent dimension of territorial inequality that cannot be inferred from standard measures of income distribution. Second, the study shows that the concentration of individual income sources (particularly wages by education level, financial income and real estate income) plays a central role in explaining regional divergence, highlighting structural factors such as ageing, specialisation in tourism or exposure to gentrification. Third, the paper documents heterogeneous redistributive capacities across regions and identifies cases where high ICI persists even after transfers, underscoring the need for region-specific approaches to fiscal policy, housing policy and human-capital accumulation. Together, these contributions advance the understanding of ICI by revealing its relevance in contexts with strong regional heterogeneity and by establishing a methodological and empirical foundation for extending regional analyses of income composition to other countries.
Income inequality is a global issue, and China’s unique dual social structure places rural residents at a lower social status than urban residents. In this context, examining the income disparity between urban and rural areas in China is particularly important. Using provincial panel data from 2003 to 2022 and a fixed effects model, the findings indicate that urbanization generally reduces urban-rural income inequality, but there is no strong evidence of a U-shaped relationship as suggested by the Kuznets hypothesis. Among the transmission mechanisms, the results show that urbanization promotes foreign trade, which serves as a key mechanism for reducing inequality, whereas labor mobility does not play a significant role due to the restrictions of household registration (hukou) system. The role of the social security system is limited and complex: although urbanization lowers overall social security levels, it inadvertently narrows disparities due to urban-centered resource allocation. The regional analysis reveals that urbanization has the most pronounced inequality-reducing effect in the western provinces, while its impact is statistically insignificant in the northeastern region, where economic stagnation and reliance on heavy industries limit its effectiveness. These findings underscore the necessity of hukou reform to enhance labor mobility and ensure equitable access to public services for rural migrants. They also underscore the need for regionally tailored policies, such as promoting urbanization in the west, enhancing trade openness, and improving rural social security.
This study examines infrastructure-induced land transformation across Bangalore–Mysore Urban Corridor (BMUC), a rapidly evolving region between two major urban centres in southern India. Employing an integrated geospatial approach supplemented by qualitative insights from local communities, the study captures the multifaceted spatial and social dimensions of change. Findings reveal that Bangalore–Mysore Expressway (NH275) functions as a spatial catalyst, driving accelerated urban expansion and a marked decline in agricultural land and natural vegetation. The intensity of land use and land cover change exhibits a strong spatial gradient, strongly correlated with expressway proximity—underscoring the transformative influence of transport infrastructure on adjacent landscapes. Predictive modelling projects a continuous intensification of these trends through the late 2030s, particularly along Bangalore fringe. Concurrently, socioeconomic analysis uncovers emerging spatial inequities, characterized by divergent development trajectories and a deepening urban–rural divide. By synthesizing spatial modelling with grounded community narratives, this study advances a novel framework for interpreting infrastructure-led land dynamics in the Global South. It critiques dominant top-down planning paradigms, illustrating not only the persistent marginalization of local communities in accessibility outcomes but also their agency in moderating land change trajectories. The findings offer actionable insights for regional policymakers, emphasizing the strategic importance of participatory governance as a cornerstone of inclusive and spatially just development.
An increasing number of stakeholders demand that higher education institutions contribute to sustainability transitions in places where they operate. Concurrently, policymakers encourage universities to differentiate themselves from each other. On the one hand, universities’ sustainability contributions through third mission must complement those of other institutions in the same region to prevent resource fragmentation. On the other hand, they must also distinguish themselves to ensure that their sustainability efforts do not overlap excessively and become too similar. This article reports on the findings from a study of three higher education institutions in Vestland, Norway, exploring how external pressures and internal organizational dynamics influence their third mission positioning in relation to local sustainability transitions. The findings suggest that multiple coercive isomorphic pressures have played a key role in making these otherwise distinct institutions moderately similar over time. This convergence has, in turn, laid the foundation for closer coordination and collaboration in addressing regional sustainability challenges. Furthermore, we identify specific institutional carriers—symbolic systems, relational systems and routines—that have been instrumental in fostering complementary differentiation in third mission activities of the three universities. The article concludes with proposition of complementary differentiation as a conceptual lens to explore universities’ positioning in regional sustainability transitions, followed by policy recommendations and avenues for future research.
Indonesia is currently facing rapid urban development due to its government’s policies. Gentrification, which is present in the country accompanying the rapid urbanization, may bring about development and increase of life quality in a region. However, previous studies using data from urban and rural areas from other countries have shown the negative effects of gentrification, particularly on crime. Most of those studies have explored the effect of gentrification on crime through sociological mechanisms, even so the economic theories argued that the effect may be in a reverse direction. Therefore, reverse causality is a potential estimation problem to address. The present study aims to examine the effect of gentrification on crime while dealing with reverse causality problem and spatial interdependence of crime variables. Using Indonesian districts and cities level data from the 2019 National Household Survey, the study employs generalized spatial two-stages least square (GS2SLS) estimation. The results found that the inflow of gentrifiers positively affects property crime rate, which is observed more strongly on peripheral districts compared to cities, and negatively affects violent crime rate on cities. This difference in results is attributed to the nature of the type of crimes analysed in this study.
Poverty is a complex and persistent phenomenon, the eradication of which is crucial for all economies, regardless of their development level. Its multidimensional nature necessitates a comprehensive understanding of demographic, socioeconomic, and institutional determinants to devise effective poverty alleviation strategies and promote sustainable development. Within this context, this paper aims, first, to measure the deprivation levels of the NUTS2 regions of the EU during 2002–2020 through the lens of people’s perceptions. This approach captures individual perspectives across multiple fields of deprivation—income, living conditions, health, education, and safety—offering a more nuanced view of poverty persistence. Second, it explores the determinants of deprivation, which are shaped not only by individual characteristics but also by the socio-economic, institutional and geographic environment that define regional development capacity. By shedding light on these complex and interconnected factors, this analysis aims to deepen understanding of poverty’s persistence and prevalence, offering valuable insights for policymaking.
This study revisits the hypothesis that the Cistercian monastic order has had a persistent and still measurable influence on contemporary European work values, specifically the claim that there are “pre-Reformation roots” to a strong (‘Protestant’) work ethic. Theoretically, this claim faces historical objections regarding the function of work within Cistercian monastic thought and the resulting ambiguous doctrinal stance, especially concerning the work ethic of the lay population. Drawing on data from the European Values Study (EVS 2008) and an expanded dataset of medieval monastic communities, the analysis tests the relationship between the historical regional presence of Cistercians and modern work-related values of respondents. The study improves upon previous research, inter alia, by considering a broader range of measures of work ethic and by incorporating data on three other religious orders. The results cast doubt on the existence of a persistent Cistercian effect on European work ethic. Most indicators of a strong work ethic show no or theoretically unexpected associations with past Cistercian presence. Likewise, placebo outcomes and associations between other orders and work-ethic indicators suggest that the research design may be vulnerable to spurious results, which may explain the few positive findings in this as well as in previous studies.
Investigating the dynamics of regional development is central to the broader literature on the geography of innovation. While the role of innovation in economic modernisation, industrial growth, and the restructuring of regions has long dominated the scientific discourse, increasing attention has recently been directed towards major societal challenges and the need for transformative change. However, integrative perspectives on how regions cope with the dual challenge posed by structural and transformative change remain scarce. Against this background, the contributions in this special issue provide new insights into how regional development, particularly in lagging and old industrial regions, unfolds, shaped by region-specific actor constellations, agency, and institutional settings. This editorial synthesises the articles and outlines future research directions.
Tourism constitutes a key driver of regional economic development, integrating diverse industries and fostering socio-economic growth. Acknowledging the strategic importance of public intervention in enhancing tourism development and competitiveness, this paper employs a disaggregated, dynamic panel analysis across two major EU tourism economies to isolate the effects of thematically classified public investments, according to the objectives of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) 2014–2020 programming period, on tourism performance. This study provides evidence on the short-term associations between finalized ERDF investments and regional tourism development, as measured by the Gross Value Added (GVA). The findings reveal that investments in connectivity infrastructure have a significant and positive influence on regional tourism outcomes. In contrast, other ERDF-funded initiatives did not exhibit immediate measurable effects, likely due to their broader or longer-term objectives. The results provide a nuanced understanding of the relationship between specific types of public investment and tourism dynamics, offering actionable insights for policymakers seeking to optimize resource allocation and promote sustainable regional development.
This article offers a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the financial dynamics underlying the EU’s Interreg A (cross-border) programmes during the 2014–2020 period. Drawing on microdata from 54 programmes and over 4000 projects, the study explores how participation dynamics and budget execution are shaped by participant profiles and programme management. The principal findings indicate that public organisations predominate both participation and budget allocation, with smaller territories being overrepresented and more affluent areas receiving relatively lower budgets, which is in keeping with cohesion policy goals. The effectiveness of budget execution is positively linked to technical assistance, overall programme size, and institutional quality. Moreover, higher execution rates are associated with programmes that involve lower-population or demographically diverse partnerships, alongside stronger institutional quality and increased investment in technical assistance. These findings complement earlier research focusing on geographic and substantive dimensions, and they provide further conclusions to be considered jointly from academic and policy perspectives.
Deindustrialization seems to depress innovation despite ever-increasing R D. One practical response has been to colocate more production back with R D. However, research investigating the effectiveness of colocation has so far focused on the intraorganizational level, which does not match the scale of deindustrialization. To bridge this gap, this study theorizes that the interorganizational colocation of production and R D by clusters of small firms in industrially diversified cities may have innovative benefits. Accordingly, innovation would benefit from being more widely distributed spatially. This hypothesis is tested on Seoul, Korea, which presents globally extreme parameters of early deindustrialization, large-firm dominance, and innovativeness. The study evaluates the spatial concentration and clustering of innovators and research universities across the 360 city districts of the Seoul Metropolitan area from 1990 to 2014. The results support the hypothesis by showing that innovators deconcentrated disproportionately as innovation soared. At the same time, innovators clustered less than expected among themselves and with universities.
Central and Eastern Europe continue to generate incremental innovations, slow rates of technology commercialization, and exhibit limited public-private collaboration in research and development. This paper examines the role of cluster organizations as intermediaries, particularly in bridging the knowledge transfer gap between industry and research. Employing qualitative comparative analysis methodology, this exploratory paper highlights the conditions that foster industry-driven collaboration. As a mixed research method that is novel to cluster research, it provides a fresh perspective on how companies establish and maintain connections with research centers. The analysis investigates the associations between the hindering and facilitating factors of cooperation within cluster organizations (conditions) and the prevalence of business-initiated collaboration with research organizations (outcome). The results indicate that structural, socio-behavioral and power dynamics factors influence the patterns of cooperation between these two types of actors. However, to contribute to the advancement and continuity of these relationships, intermediary actors should prioritize addressing the power imbalances to secure strategic cooperation that can lead to regional structural and systemic transformations. The results provide evidence for policy implications, emphasizing the importance of simplifying early-stage technology transfer procedures and reducing administrative obstacles to enhance clusters’ mediator role in an innovation system.
