The Labour Market Impact of the Run on Northern Rock: Continuity and Evolution in an old Industrial Region

The Northern Rock mortgage bank was a high profile casualty of the credit crunch in 2007. A longitudinal investigation focused on the redundancy and resettlement of employees at the bank provides a case study of the labour market impact of the banking crisis on the North East of England. An evolutionary geographical political economy approach indicates that Northern RockÕs growth and decline was shaped by its location in an old industrial region, and echoes the historical position of the peripheral region in the spatial division of labour. The Northern Rock case highlights the enduring occupational structure of the regionÕs labour market, and suggests older industrial regions may suffer from a process of Ôoccupational disadvantageÕ that restricts their ability to adapt to economic change.Financial crisis, Northern Rock, Labour market impact, Evolutionary geographical political economy

Rethinking path creation: a geographical political economy approach

A burgeoning strand of evolutionary economic geography (EEG) research is addressing questions of regional path creation, based on the idea that place-specific legacies and conditions play a critical role in supporting the emergence of new economic activities. Yet there has been little effort thus far to take stock of this emerging body of research. In response, the aims of this article are to offer a fresh synthesis of recent work and to develop a broader theoretical framework to inform future research. First, it presents a critical appraisal of the state of the art in path creation research. In an effort to address identified gaps in EEG research, this incorporates insights from sociological perspectives, the global production networks approach, and transition studies. Second, the article’s development of a systematic theoretical framework is based on the identification of key dimensions of path creation and their constitutive interrelations. This contribution is underpinned by a geographical political economy (GPE) approach that provides the ontological basis for the integration of the five key dimensions of path creation within an overarching framework and the positioning of regional processes in relation to the broader dynamics of uneven development. Informed by GPE, the argument is that knowledgeable actors, operating within multiscalar institutional environments, create paths through the strategic coupling of regional and extraregional assets to mechanisms of path creation and associated markets. To inform further research, the article outlines four concrete propositions regarding the operation of path creation processes in different types of regions and explores these through case studies of Berlin and Pittsburgh

Towards the resilient region?: policy activism and peripheral region development

Discussions of local and regional development have recently broadened from a preoccupation with growth to one which captures the notion of resilience. This paper makes two main contributions to these debates. First, the paper critiques static equilibrium-based notions of resilience and instead advances a more dynamic evolutionary approach to explain local and regional resilience. Second, we seek to address the widening gap between resilience thinking and its transfer to practical policy prescription. To do this, we explore the notions of adaptability, adaptive capacity and new path creation in developing local and regional resilience. We then focus upon what this might mean for local and regional strategies and draw on the case study of the Renewable Energy sector in North East England to demonstrate the enduring role of policy intervention in stimulating change and building resilience in peripheral regions

Rounds of investment and peripheral region development : the case of the semiconductor fabrication industry in the north east region of England 1989-2002

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Making labour-market geographies: volatile ‘flagship’ inward investment and peripheral regions

In recent years a series of high-profile flagship plant closures and short-lived investment projects across peripheral regions in the United Kingdom provided a stark reminder of the potential fallibility of peripheral region development strategies based upon inward investment. Nevertheless, inward investment promotion remains a common component within the economic development strategies of UK peripheral regions. In particular, capturing the potential positive labour market contributions offered by flagship projects has been used by policymakers to legitimate the continued pursuit of inward investment. In this paper I move beyond the static analysis of employment outcomes of investment episodes by investigating the detailed structure of labour-market processes and imprints across workforce formation and dissolution. I use the example of the fluctuating and youthful history of the semiconductor fabrication industry in the old industrial region of the North East of England to illustrate the spatial, occupational, and sectoral labour-market imprints of investment episodes. Using the example of two large-scale high-technology inward-investment projects, Fujitsu and Siemens, I expand our understanding of both the labour-market dynamics associated with volatile flagship investment and the policy implications for peripheral regions.

Towards the resilient region?: Policy activism and peripheral region development

Abstract Discussions of local and regional development have recently broadened from a preoccupation with growth to one which captures the notion of resilience. This paper makes two main contributions to these debates. First, the paper critiques static equilibrium-based notions of resilience and instead advances a more dynamic evolutionary approach to explain local and regional resilience. Second, we seek to address the widening gap between resilience thinking and its transfer to practical policy prescription. To do this, we explore the notions of adaptability, adaptive capacity and new path creation in developing local and regional resilience. We then focus upon what this might mean for local and regional strategies and draw on the case study of the Renewable Energy sector in North East England to demonstrate the enduring role of policy intervention in stimulating change and building resilience in peripheral regions

Evolutionary perspectives on economic resilience in regional development

In this chapter we will discuss how the mechanisms and drivers of regional economic resilience can be theorised using Evolutionary Approaches in Economic Geography. We focus on Evolutionary Approaches, which draw from three main theoretical frameworks: Generalised Darwinism, Complexity Theory, and Path Dependency. We will review each of the three frameworks with regard to their understanding of regional economic resilience, with particular attention to their treatment of the roles of agency, institutions and multi-scalar processes. We conclude that the Path Dependency approach – so far relatively neglected in debates on regional resilience – offers the greatest theoretical insight into these interrelated domains and provides the basis for a more comprehensive evolutionary resilience research agenda

Towards the Resilient Region?: Policy Activism and Peripheral Region Development

Discussions of local and regional development have recently broadened from a preoccupation with growth to one which captures the notion of resilience. This paper makes two main contributions to these debates. First, the paper critiques static equilibrium-based notions of resilience and instead advances a more dynamic evolutionary approach to explain local and regional resilience. Second, we seek to address the widening gap between resilience thinking and its transfer to practical policy prescription. To do this, we explore the notions of adaptability, adaptive capacity and new path creation in developing local and regional resilience. We then focus upon what this might mean for local and regional strategies and draw on the case study of the Renewable Energy sector in North East England to demonstrate the enduring role of policy intervention in stimulating change and building resilience in peripheral regions.Resilience, adaptability, adaptation