Abstract
The lower Rio Grande Valley (RGV) region consists of Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy counties of Texas in the USA, and the northeast part of Tamaulipas in Mexico. The region includes the cities such as Brownsville, Harlingen; the metropolitan areas such as McAllen, Edinburgh, Mission and Pharr in Texas and the major cities in the Mexican side such as Matamoros and Reynosa. As noted by Dr Cynthia Lynch, Dr Aziza Zemrani and other faculty members of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), Texas, USA, this region is of superior importance since it is an international border region and has a tremendous potential for being converted into a major global economic region. The present case discusses the economic prospect of the lower RGV region and identifies in detail the factors that could be crucial in transforming this region into a major global economic region.
The case adopts a qualitative methodology for the analytical purpose. The author develops a new conceptual framework named as Premier Global Economic/Business Region (PGER) and nudges the readers to use this framework to comprehend the analysis contained in the case. The Oresund region and the Puget Sound region are used as the model regions for RGV. The analysis extracts the main attributes of the Oresund region (Zealand Island in Denmark and the Scania in Sweden) and the Puget Sound region in (northwest part of the Washington in the USA and the southern part of British Columbia in Canada) and builds the PGER conceptual/theoretical framework to describe how the transformation of RGV into a premier international region, with an extremely robust economy and an expansive scientific and technological innovations and creativity landscape, can be systematically designed and implemented.
In order to understand the PGER framework, it is quite important to understand the geography of the concerned region. The case provides a detailed geographic description of the RGV region so that the readers feel comfortable while comprehending how the theoretical model fits in for analyzing the transformation story of the concerned region. Next, the PGER framework is described in great detail. The case clearly identifies the attributes which are capable of transforming RGV into a very robust economic region and into a scientific and technological innovation hub with many world-class high-technology firms. It is worth mentioning here that the attributes identified in this case are very closely related to each other.
As per the analysis, the economic prosperity of PGER is primarily based on the production of high-technology goods and services. The existence of such a production process enables the region to generate high-paying jobs, which, in turn, raise the standard of living. However, for a sustainable production process of high-technology goods and services, human capital development is of foremost importance. The existence of research universities accelerates the pace of scientific and technological innovations and improves the efficiency of the production of high-technology goods and services in PGERs and substantiates the need for the emphasis on developing human capital. This case cites the situation in Oresund and Puget Sound Regions and shows how the existence of world-class research universities helps create more new products and more new jobs through accelerating the technological innovations in the regions. Following the conceptual framework, this case also points out that PGERs are not only the global leaders in terms of the number of start-up high-technology firms but also contain many of the world’s major, big and well-established high-technology firms. Both the Oresund and Puget Sound regions bear these attributes and are recognized as important high-technology regions in the world. Moreover, having numerous venture capitalists enables a region to be converted in to a PGER because venture capitalists provide capital to create start-up high-technology firms. Finally, PGERs have land proportions in two or more countries. The case shows that because of geographical vicinity between Vancouver, Canada, and Seattle, USA, the residents of these two regions share common socio-economic attributes. The same is true in the case of the Oresund region (Zealand Island in Denmark and the Skane/Scania Province in Sweden). Along with these primary attributes, the case also identifies the high proportion of highly educated people, high standard of living, etc. as the distinguishing attributes of PGERs.
As per the theoretical framework developed in the case, the transformation of RGV into a major global economic region is not an easy task to perform. The case succinctly points out the factors required for the purpose. First, a strong leadership is very much needed in order to channel the resources properly so that the region becomes capable of producing high-technology goods and services and provides the economy with highly skilled workers and high-paying jobs. This strong leadership is not only required for expanding business but also needed to resolve the political issues that otherwise may come as obstacles in the path of the development of the region. Secondly, as human capital development is a mandatory requirement for transforming a region in PGER, RGV must focus on developing a world-class education system. Although it seems that the establishment of research universities is of foremost importance, the emphasis on setting up of research universities may not be conducive enough in generating the desired output if RGV fails to provide proper education at all levels (elementary, secondary and higher) of education. Therefore, the case rightly argues,
The elementary level of education provides the foundations for the other levels of education. A world class elementary level of education leads to a world class secondary level of education, which, in turn, leads to a world class level of higher education. Conversely, a weak elementary level of education leads to a weak secondary level of education (where students have to repeat classes) which, in turn leads to a weak higher education level (where universities and colleges have to provide remedial classes for a lot of students, and, therefore, these sort of universities and colleges cannot easily emerge as centers of world class graduate degrees education and centers of word class scientific and technological innovation and creativity.
Apart from the above-mentioned factors, the case also discusses the importance of other factors such as developing a scientific and technological innovations and creativity hub, encouraging venture capitalist for capital adequacy, building of the premium health-care sector, expanding and rebranding of tourism, exploiting the free-trade areas of the USA and strategically positioning RGV to the rest of the world.
The case does a great job of tracing out the factors characterizing a region as a PGER by laying out the theoretical framework. The readers would be able to draw their own conclusions about the factors that are extremely critical for transforming RGV into a major global economic region, though the author summarizes them at the end. Although the case is particularly focused on Rio Grande Valley Region, the analysis carried out throughout the study is of very generic and comprehensive in nature and would be of great help for the scholars who want to identify the potential of a region to be transformed into a PGER. Moreover, the discussion on how different policy issues could be taken care of in order to exploit the economic potential of an international border region would be of great relevance for policymakers while developing such a region into a major economic region.