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Is Regional Science Just Economics with a “dij” Added to All Equations? Some Thoughts of an Economist

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Development Studies in Regional Science

Part of the book series: New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives ((NFRSASIPER,volume 42))

Abstract

This chapter looks at the extent to which “regional science” is distinctive enough to be called a unique sub-discipline. It considers the background against which the idea of a regional science was initiated and at the publications, institutions, and work that has been associated with the idea. In particular, it reviews the ways the American Economic Association has sought over the years to embrace geographical spatial analysis with the larger body of economic thinking. But this still leaves open the question of whether location and distance are really that different to the numerous elements included in modern economic analysis. The chapter looks at whether, even if there were a justification for a regional science in the 1950s, this has evaporated as economic thinking and analysis has morphed into something more integrated with other areas of social analysis. The conclusions reached are that even at the outset the notion of a specific regional science was vague and added little to what regional and urban economists were discussing. And even if differences could have been detected 75 years ago, these have now evaporated.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Other notable retrospective collections are the July 2007 issue of Regional Science and Urban Economics that reflects on 35 years of the journal and the April 2012 special issues of the Journal of Regional Science that assess the then state of spatial econometrics.

  2. 2.

    I focus mainly here on the situation in the USA. There were similar debates taking place elsewhere and especially in the UK from the mid-1980s when the Government’s Research Assessment Exercise was introduced across all disciplines to assist in the award of university grants. A defined subject specialism of an academic department, as well as the quality of the faculty, affected allocations of resources.

  3. 3.

    There was a considerable argument over the positioning of economic geography. Fritz Machlup, the international economist, along with some others, felt it should be split between “Area Studies” and “International Economics” on the basis that it entailed comparative analysis.

  4. 4.

    Edwin Mills, an innovator in the new urban economics, provided blueprints for the organization of “Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics” classification, and Richard Muth, another with an interest in NUE, was consulted on urban economics.

  5. 5.

    In his Principles of Economics, Marshall (1890) does include a specific chapter on “The concentration of specialized industries in particular localities” as well as introducing space and geography into a variety of economic discussions.

  6. 6.

    It was also about this time, in 1946, when, for similar reasons, the Transportation and Public Utilities Group was formed as the first associated organization to the AEA by economists such as James Nelson, Charles Dearing, and Ralph Dewey who were interested in those subjects.

  7. 7.

    Isard (2003) provides a more detailed account, while Barnes (2003) offers a critical assessment. It should perhaps be noted that Isard himself seemed to publish in economics journal in the early 1950s, e.g., Isard (1951).

  8. 8.

    One might also argue that the early 1950s was also the time that the embryonic ideas of regional multipliers, regional input-output analysis, regional trade-theory, etc. were laid down, albeit initially in the context of “national regions” rather than “economic regions.”

  9. 9.

    In fact, the inter-war theoretical literature had already said quite a bit on the effect of space on industrial organization – e.g., Hotelling (1929) on oligopolies and Chamberlain (1933) on monopolistic competition.

  10. 10.

    Meyer also footnotes that Isard’s book “constitutes a good single-volume introduction to regional economics… .”

  11. 11.

    This complaint is more difficult to make now since the founding of numerous national and sub-national Regional Science Associations and of the Regional Science Association International.

  12. 12.

    Kristian Behrens and Jacques Thisse (2007) make the salient point “… regardless of what is meant by a region, the concept is useful if and only if a region is part of a broader network through which various types of interactions occur. Without taking this aspect into account, one may wonder what the difference between regional economics and the macroeconomics of a closed economy would be.”

  13. 13.

    Jean Paelinck seems to have originated the term “spatial econometrics” in 1974. Moran’s (1948) work is generally considered the origin of spatial autocorrelation analysis.

  14. 14.

    If Isard did have a case for highlighting regional economic issues in the 1950s, it was on the grounds of inadequate official data collection rather than any intellectual neglect by the AEA. Richard Stone (1961) offers observations on the UK data situation in the 1950s.

  15. 15.

    This is one reason why local case studies have been a pronounced feature of regional studies where, unlike regional science, overriding laws are not sought.

  16. 16.

    In fact, Isard had wanted to call it “spatial science” but felt this would confuse it with physics and astronomy.

  17. 17.

    Here we talk about social science in the way Lionel Robins (1932) does.

  18. 18.

    Some transportation economists have in the past discussed the idea of using time (hours or minutes) as a measure of value on the basis that it is more equitable. It never gained acceptance.

  19. 19.

    There are programming techniques, such as data envelopment analysis, that are not limited to a single unit of measurement and that have a fairly long pedigree in economics, although admittedly not often used in spatial analysis. John Hicks (1960) provides an early general survey of some of these.

  20. 20.

    John Maynard Keynes gives a more complete reason, “I also want to emphasise strongly the point about economics being a moral science. I mentioned before that it deals with introspection and with values. I might have added that it deals with motives, expectations, psychological uncertainties. One has to be constantly on guard against treating the material as constant and homogeneous in the same way that the material of the other sciences, in spite of its complexity, is constant and homogeneous” (Letter to Roy Harrod, 10th July 1938).

  21. 21.

    This is very much in line with Mario Polèse’s (1995) argument that the fact regions are very distinctive makes generalization along traditional scientific lines extraordinarily difficult. In a nutshell, one should focus on individual regions.

  22. 22.

    In particular, the new institutional economics associated with the likes of Oliver Williamson (2000) have provided positive theories allowing a richer range of economic hypothesis to be explored.

  23. 23.

    Other papers include Chang and Li (2017) who replicated 22 of 67 economics papers that used the authors’ data and code files and additional 7 papers with assistance from the authors. Of articles using public data and making use of code written for software owned by the authors, 29 of 59 could be replicated. Replication has also involved several economic fields; Camerer et al. (2016) sought to replicate papers in experimental economics, Hamermesh (2017) labor economics, and Sandip Sukhtankar (2017) development economics.

  24. 24.

    Edward Leamer (1983) highlights “p-hacking.” “The econometric art as it is practiced at the computer terminal involves fitting many, perhaps thousands, of statistical models. One or several that the researcher finds pleasing are selected for reporting purposes. This research for a model is often well intended, but there can be no doubt that such a specification search invalidates the traditional theories of inference.” The situation was put bluntly by the Nobel Prize winner, Ronald Coase (cited in Gordon Tullock 2001), when he joked, “If you torture the data long enough, Nature will confess.”

  25. 25.

    The proportion may be even larger. Those not recording a specific department are classified as noneconomists.

  26. 26.

    Isard (1956) argues that economics, “…rarely obtains depth of analysis in that area which touches upon the broad influence of space and physical environment upon man’s behaviour and land utilization patterns.”

  27. 27.

    The Nobel speeches of Richard Thaler (2018) and Vernon Smith (2003), respectively, highlight the nature of these approaches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Kenneth Button

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  1. Kenneth Button
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Correspondence to Kenneth Button .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Knowlton School of Architecture, City and Regional Planning, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Zhenhua Chen

  2. Department of Urban Studies, Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    William M. Bowen

  3. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Dale Whittington

  4. University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Dale Whittington

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Button, K. (2020). Is Regional Science Just Economics with a “dij” Added to All Equations? Some Thoughts of an Economist. In: Chen, Z., Bowen, W.M., Whittington, D. (eds) Development Studies in Regional Science. New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives, vol 42. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1435-7_3

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