Innovation and regional economic resilience: an exploratory analysis

The varying rates of recovery of European regional economies from the 2007-2008 economic crisis have raised interesting questions about the sources of economic resilience. Policy discourse has increasingly asserted the role played by innovation in facilitating rapid recovery from economic shocks, whilst evolutionary thinking has highlighted the specific importance of innovation capacity. However, empirical evidence on this is lacking. This paper addresses this gap by providing new empirical analysis of the relationship between regional innovation capacity and the resilience of European regions to the crisis. It finds that regions identified as Innovation Leaders at the time of the crisis were significantly more likely to have either resisted the crisis or recovered quickly from it (i.e. within three years). This provides important insights for evolutionary approaches theorising the relationship between innovation and resilience

Spaces of city-regionalism: conceptualising pluralism in policymaking

City-regionalism is now established as a key spatial arena for shaping sub-national urban policy. In these spaces, economic growth interests are marshalled within a competitiveness narrative as the dominant approach for the development of governance and policy. Yet such dominance in principle does not preclude other policy approaches from emerging and re-fashioning city-regionalism. In this paper, making reference to evolving city-region arrangements in the UK, specifically Cardiff, we explore and conceptualise policy pluralism. Our core argument is that to determine the possibilities for plural approaches to emerge, researchers can productively assess the intersections of relational and territorial geographies filtered through a micro-meso-macro framework. The framework positions governing principles, institutions and practices as mediators of, or triggers for, relational and territorial policymaking processes whose interaction may open up windows through which pluralistic approaches might develop. With such a conceptual approach applied in the context of city-regionalism, the break points in competitiveness-focused policymaking may more readily come into view

Measuring Regional Economic Resilience across Europe: Operationalising a complex concept

This paper describes an approach developed to measure regional economic resilience across Europe which is novel in three key dimensions. Firstly, it seeks to date regional downturns as opposed to assuming that all regional economies are affected by economic shocks at the same point in time; secondly, it measures the amplitude and duration of economic downturns and subsequent recoveries; and thirdly, as well as measuring recovery, it measures the resistance of regional economies to economic shocks. The paper applies this methodology to selected European countries to provide an analysis of differential regional responses to several economic shocks since the early 1990s. The paper then reflects upon the utility of this methodology for operationalizing regional economic resilience in cross-comparative studies

Reflections on the Welsh economy: remanence, resilience and resourcefulness

The challenges facing the Welsh economy are well known and understood, but are brought into sharp perspective by the fact that after twenty years of devolution and considerable policy effort, the Welsh economy today is exactly where it was in 1998 in relative performance terms. The critical question therefore becomes why - why does the Welsh economy continue to struggle to improve its relative economic performance in the UK? There are many factors at work of course and this short paper cannot possibly do justice to them all. Instead, this article seeks to highlight the value of taking an evolutionary perspective on the issues facing the Welsh economy. In other words, this seeks to understand how regional economies grow, adapt and change over time in line with the changes occurring in their external environment

The survival of academic spinoff companies: An empircal study of key determinants

The formation of university spinoff companies has been studied extensively, yet limited attention has been devoted to their survival. Consequently, little is known about spinoff’s later stage developments. Spinoff companies exist in university networks where they access resources through different types of actors. However, it remains unclear on which actors specifically these firms should focus their networking efforts, especially in relation to their success. It is also poorly understood how the regional economic environment affects spinoff survival. This article examines the core determinants of survival of academic spinoff companies. The article analyses a unique sample of 870 UK spinoff companies from 81 universities formed between 2002 and 2013. The results show that spinoff company survival is dependent on three core university network actors: investors, external entrepreneurs and technology transfer offices (TTOs). In addition, spinoff companies born into less industrially diversified regions enjoy greater probability of survival

Measuring regional business resilience

The concept of regional resilience is explored by understanding the resilience of individual firms within both the region (and their capabilities to cope, adapt and reconfigure) and a constantly evolving economic environment. This study examines the utility of the QuiScore credit indicator (from the Financial Analysis Made Easy (FAME) database) to measure both firm and regional economic resilience. Using the Cardiff Capital Region in Wales, UK (for the period 2006–16) as a case study, the results indicate that the QuiScore is an effective indicator of the economic resilience of firms as well as an early warning indicator of economic stresses for a region

Stay, leave or return? Patterns of Welsh graduate mobility

This paper presents the initial findings of a study into Welsh graduate mobility within the UK, which has a highly uneven geography of graduate labour. After surveying recent debates, the paper explores the extent to which Wales retains its graduate labour by examining the scale of graduate mobility and its nature in terms of qualifications. It does this by augmenting the data produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) with detailed analysis of Labour Force Survey (LFS) data to consider the location of successive ‘young’ graduate cohorts since the 1992 expansion of Higher Education. The research finds that Wales is a net exporter of graduates and that those who migrate have higher educational attainment. However, the notion of a clear, unequivocal brain drain has to be qualified. Wales manages to retain high numbers of graduates relative to many English regions. The paper highlights that inter-regional flows of graduates are sensitive to the path dependencies of mobile graduates themselves as well as the structures of regional economies. This has implications for both Higher Education and regional development policies

Stay, leave or return? Understanding Welsh graduate mobility

This working paper presents the initial findings of a SKOPE study exploring graduate migration from Wales. The paper seeks to establish the extent to which Wales retains its graduate labour in employment; and secondly, to estimate the labour market outcomes for ‘Welsh’ graduates (i.e. those born in Wales) and to investigate whether and how these may change and what factors may become more significant over time. In so doing, the paper focuses on analysing the location and employment outcomes of successive ‘young’ graduate cohorts since the 1992 expansion of Higher Education. It does this by augmenting the widely used graduate first destinations data produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) with detailed analysis of Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Annual Population Survey (APS) data to provide new insights into the patterns of and returns to graduate mobility