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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Tomoya MORI; Miki OGAWA |
| Abstract: | The world is undeniably facing trends of aging, declining birth rates and shrinking populations. As a result, rural economies are shrinking rapidly while large cities are absorbing their populations. Each country must make difficult decisions about which cities to preserve in order to sustain the country as a whole. Japan is at the forefront of rapid economic contraction, and we propose a systematic method for assessing the sustainability of cities as living communities. This method is based on the hierarchy property that holds between a larger and smaller city in the composition of tertiary industries. This property allows us to identify the threshold population size of a city for a given set of industries to be able to operate in the city. In particular, by defining the sets of essential industries for modern life, one can identify the population size of a sustainable city. Combined with a separately conducted future projection of individual city sizes, this represents a guideline for a strategic reduction of the country's economic geography by identifying the future spatial distribution of focal cities. This will allow for the reorganization of functional regions around focal cities to ensure that the country can adapt to its declining population. |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:polidp:25006 |
| By: | Paulo Morceiro; Ron Boschma; Pierre-Alex Balland |
| Abstract: | Universities lack a comprehensive view of their entire research portfolio when looking for opportunities in new research fields and searching for collaboration partners. The paper presents an analytical framework, building on the principle of relatedness, that aims to assess the potential of universities to extend their research portfolios, to identify potentials of collaborations with other research organizations, and to determine the extent to which universities exploit complementarities in their collaborations. We illustrate the framework presenting the case of an university alliance between three Dutch universities that aims to contribute to the circular society. Publication data are used to identify relevant scientific capabilities of the universities to promote the circular society, in what research fields complementarities can be identified between partners, and to what extent partners exploit those complementarities in terms of co-publications. |
| Keywords: | scientific portfolio of universities, scientific capabilities, scientific complementarities, inter-university collaborations, circular society |
| JEL: | J24 J82 R11 O15 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2506 |