Regional Economic Development and History Regions and Cities Series

Regional Studies is inextricably intertwined with history. Cultural and institutional legacies inform choices between different policy options, meaning that the past plays a crucial role in how we think about regional economic development, planning and policy.

Through a selection of accessible theoretical, methodological and empirical chapters, this book explores the connections between regional development and history. Drawing on the expertise of scholars in several disciplines, it links history to topics such as behavioural geography, interdependence, divergence and regional and urban policy.

This innovative book will be of interest to researchers across regional studies, planning, economic geography and economic history.

Prolegemenon

Bringing the past back in: Taking history seriously in the study of regional development Ron Martin, Peter Sunley and Emil Evenhuis

Introduction

1. The importance of history for regional economic development Sara Svensson and Marijn Molema

Part I: Disciplinary & theoretical explorations

2. Regional development, history and the institutional lens Marijn Molema and John Tomaney

3. Behavioural economic geography and regional history: Explaining uneven development from a human perspective Robert Huggins and Piers Thompson

Part II: Innovations in research design and methodology

4. An interdisciplinary approach to the persistent effects of Polish partitions on educational achievements Justyna Kościńska and Mikołaj Herbst

5. Regional GDP before GDP: A methodological survey of historical regional accounts Kerstin Enflo and Anna Missiaia

6. Comparative research designs: Interdependence as challenge and opportunity in regional studies Martin Åberg and Thomas Denk

Part III: Empirical case studies

7. Catching the ladder: The formation and growth of the São Paulo automotive industry cluster Tomàs Fernández-de-Sevilla and Armando J. dalla Costa

8. Urban and regional development policy: Its history and its differences Kevin Cox

9. Spatial-economic development: The effect of urbanisation on education in China, 1890–present Meimei Wang and Bas van Leeuwen

Conclusions

10. Setting an agenda for a "New Regional History" Marijn Molema

Marijn Molema is a historian and working as programme leader at the Frisian Institute of Social Research. He is also a guest researcher at the Fryske Akademy, a research institute in the city of Leeuwarden of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sara Svensson is a political scientist specializing in regional collaboration across national borders. She is Senior Lecturer at Halmstad University in Sweden and Research Fellow at the Center for Policy Studies at Central European University in Budapest (Hungary).