Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

The evolving methodology of regulation theory is explored, with particular reference to the problematic of uneven development. With a concentration on the subnational scale, the notion of localised modes of regulation is critically examined. With a view to operationalising some of these regulationist concepts, an analysis of the geographical contradictions of Thatcherism is presented. Thatcherism, it is suggested, should be interpreted as a failed or failing regulatory experiment, the contradictions of which are manifest in a variety of ways, including in the geographical sphere—in the collapse of the economy of the South East of England (Thatcherism's ‘heartland’ region) and in Britain's continuing crisis of uneven development. There is scope, it is argued, further to spatialise regulation theory through methodological refinement, and through analyses of regional restructuring and crisis.

A case study of the McLaren Vale wine industry is used to challenge four areas of the regulation debate. First, the uniqueness of some of the key features underpinning the periodisations of accumulation regimes and their associated modes of social regulation is questioned. Second, concern is raised over the extent to which ‘new industrial districts’ can really be described as engaging in ‘new’ practices. Third, the importance of local regulatory mechanisms is emphasised. Last, the importance of nonstate, nonlegislative forms of regulation are highlighted.

Research on Fordism, industrial districts and flexible specialisation all emphasise a new role for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and an increasing globalisation of the marketplace. Special focus has been directed towards the increasing externalisation of tasks and a corresponding increase in cooperative arrangements or networking. This paper reports from a Scandinavian empirical study of the internationalisation of SMEs, their use of external resources, and in what sense local resources are mobilised in the process of internationalisation. Relevant literature is surveyed and a conceptual model on internationalisation is developed. In this model local business environment, the internal resources of the firm, the quality of the manager, and the ability of the firm to make use of external resources explain the export behaviour of the firm. Four different regions were included in a quasi-experimental design, each including their population of SMEs in the mechanical and wood product sector. The empirical part of the paper is mostly descriptive and includes analyses of the structural differences between the SME populations in the four regions and a report on their involvement in subcontracting, interfirm relations, and their use of producer services. Next the export behaviour is analysed and a simple analysis of the model ends the paper.

New industrial districts occur in a number of forms, some of which are not subsumable under the flexibly specialized, locally embedded, and endogenously driven model based on the Italian case. In this paper, we critique the industrial districts literature, focusing on the role of the state, interdistrict mobility of labor, nonlocal externalities, and non-place embeddedness in district formation and character. We introduce the notion of the satellite industrial district, comprised of branch operations of nonlocally based corporations, as an example of a rapidly growing industrial district distinct from Marshallian and Italianate forms, and argue with evidence from South Korea that these types of districts may predominate, especially in developing countries.

The past few years have seen a resurging interest in the modifiable areal unit problem, or aggregation effects. The new evidence, however, both supports and conflicts with previous work. This paper represents the first stage in a series of numerical experiments designed to explore the nature and extent of scale and zonation effects. Results from a series of carefully controlled statistical simulations are reported. It is concluded that there definitely are aggregation effects separate from effects that can be attributed to changing the definition of the spatial process. These effects, however, vary with the statistic calculated. Means and variances are resistant to aggregation effects, whereas regression coefficients and correlation statistics exhibit dramatic effects. In summary, the world of spatial analysis as it relates to the modifiable areal unit problem is not entirely well-behaved, but neither is it completely random and ill-defined.

The property in some random utility models that the distribution of achieved utility is invariant across alternatives (the invariance property) is noteworthy as it applies to the multinomial logit model as well as to its generalization: the generalized extreme-value (GEV) models. GEV models constitute the most versatile tool yet known for dealing with discrete choice situations with a structure of similarity—that is, statistical dependence—among alternatives. The invariance property is obviously violated in practice for heterogeneous populations. Therefore it has been argued that invariance constitutes a major problem for GEV models. In contrast these authors argue that invariance is a useful theoretical concept precisely by bringing out heterogeneity. Further, multiple segment GEV models are a suitable tool for dealing with heterogeneity—both theoretically and pragmatically. The class of random utility models possessing the invariance property was characterized by Robertson and Strauss; called the RS class here. However, their proof was not complete. An alternative representation of the RS class is suggested based on the notion of additive homogeneity. This new representation enables the authors to prove the RS characterization theorem and to simplify and systematize the proofs of many other results on RS—and specifically GEV—models. Also, in the new representation, the characterization is naturally stated in terms of the choice probabilities, and of the probability distribution of maximum utility. Assuming that the distribution of actual choices is observable, the choice probabilities are particularly empirically meaningful. This motivates a study of the conditions for a choice probability structure to be RS representable. For the binary choice case conditions that are both necessary and sufficient are given.

Despite the widespread use and several published evaluations of the IMPLAN and REMI models, the issue of how the multipliers in these models compare is unresolved. In particular, little is known about the stability of the IMPLAN and REMI multipliers across the different versions of the models. The difficulty in comparing the multipliers derives from problems in benchmarking or standardizing the models, and this problem has been compounded by the release of new versions in recent years. Therefore, in this paper the current and previous versions of the IMPLAN and REMI models are compared. It is found that apparent changes in the multipliers in each model result from undocumented or poorly documented changes in the vendor default values of the available options for calculating the multipliers, not from structural changes in the models. The use of benchmarked versions of each model in the comparison, then, provides evidence on the stability of the multipliers of the models, and forms the basis for clarifying the misinterpretations of results in some of the published evaluations.