European Regional Science Association
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European Regional Science Association
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The abstract for paper number 449:
Dirk Stelder, Associated professor spatial economics University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Agglomerations and regions: do we need integrated or hybrid models?
In the Netherlands, academic and policy interest is shifting from regions to agglomerations. At the level of provinces substantial regional divergence in terms of unemployment or GDP per capita no longer exist. Instead, a dramatic rise of traffic congestion, housing prices and economic-environmental conflicts throughout the country reflect the growing urgence of scarcety of space and the need for policy at lower spatial levels as subregions, specific agglomerated clusters or individual cities. This trend puts a growing pressure on the academic world to come up with simulation and forecasting models that can produce results at lower spatial levels than – as was the case in the Netherlands - the traditional level of provinces. The classes of regional models at our current disposal can be roughly devided into the integrated input-output/econometric approach aimed at forecasting and the (inter)regional CGE approach aimed at simulation. At the level of cities and agglomerations, however, the rapidly growing literature in New Economic Geography has come up with a third class of methods, models and techniques. This paper discusses the question whether these classes of models need and can be integrated. A framework of a hybrid prototype model for the Northern Netherlands is presented in wich two spatial levels, regions and cities are modelled together.
Unfortunately full paper has not been submitted.