Phillip Mccann
Biographic Data
| ID | 325162 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Phillip Mccann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Phillip |
| FAMILY NAME | Mccann |
| SIGNATURE | MCCANN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Groningen |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0389-0654 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 100 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1144 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 100 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
The ‘cost of undoing Europe’: Brexit and the UK textile and apparel industry
Brexit, marked by the UK’s 2021 exit from the Single European Market and Customs Union under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, offers a unique case of reversing deep economic integration. The reintroduction of non-tariff barriers disrupted UK-EU trade, particularly in the GVC-sensitive textile and apparel (T&A) sector. Using survey data from 1,008 UK firms, this paper explores firm-level consequences, strategic responses, and value chain adjus…
The Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness: Challenges of participation, engagement and economic geography
Shadows and Donuts: The Work‐From‐Home Revolution and The Performance of Cities
In this article, we set out the relationships between the behavioral and spatial responses to working from home. The analytical framework centres explicitly on the choice of commuting frequency as the key decision‐making variable that endogenously reshapes the relationships between other spatial and nonspatial variables as a result of the work‐from‐home revolution. We find that optimal commuting frequency is positively related to the opportunity …
The case for place-based policy: Economic divergence, governance integrity and climate change mitigation
The drivers of intra‐ and interregional labor mobility over the industry life cycle of the high‐tech sector
In this article, we analyze how industry‐ and region‐specific characteristics influence individual‐level decisions on mobility within and between regions during the life cycle of the industry. Using uniquely detailed panel‐type data from the Finnish high technology sector, our analysis demonstrates that the influence of different regional features varies for different types of job changes and labor mobility and also according to the industry life…
Capital shocks, the great recession, and UK regional divergence
This paper uses uniquely detailed large-scale commercial real estate investment data to examine how financial markets perceived the attractiveness of investing in UK regions during the last two decades. Our analysis demonstrates that prior to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis all regions of the UK were perceived similarly in terms of risks, whereas the crisis engendered a flight to safety of capital into London. Other UK regions shifted rapidly in…
Levelling Up UK regions: Scale-related challenges of Brexit, investment and land use
This paper discusses three of the key reasons why productivity growth in the UK is both so weak and also so regionally unbalanced.These reasons are Brexit, low levels of public and private investment, and the operation of the land-use planning system.In each case the national implications of these issues also have direct regional corollaries and causal mechanisms, which unless comprehensively addressed, heavily constrain the ability of Levelling …
Capital shocks and the great urban divide
This article exploits signals of capital pricing and availability in US cities which are obtained from uniquely detailed data on real estate investments. We identify how places were differently affected by the global financial crisis and provide insights which offer an alternative explanation of why US economic growth continues to experience spatial divergence after many decades of convergence. Investment pricing uncovers that before the crisis c…
Levelling up: The need for an institutionally coordinated approach to regional and national productivity
The paper argues that the UK’s endemic regional–national productivity problems cannot be addressed by the UK’s current institutional and governance set-up. This paper argues that the establishment of an appropriate institution, body or forum is essential in order to fill the current governance vacuum. The appropriate nature, form and logic of such a body can be gleaned by observing various international comparator bodies which undertake different…
The response of regional well-being to place-based policy interventions
Enhancing the well-being of its citizens is the central remit of the EU's regional policy, but as yet, there is no analysis of the effects of EU regional policy on local well-being. The aim of this paper is to examine this relationship. To do this, we define a novel regionalised well-being measure and we exploit a dataset on regional expenditure in a continuous treatment framework. Based on both parametric and semi-parametric approaches, our anal…
Disaster governance and institutional dynamics in times of social-ecological change: Insights from New Zealand, the Netherlands and Greece
The UK ‘geography of discontent’: Narratives, Brexit and inter-regional ‘levelling up’
This paper explains the background to the notion of the ‘geography of discontent’ in the context of UK interregional inequalities and political shocks. The paper then examines how the geography of discontent has bound conflicting political and economic narratives together in ways, which makes the correcting for these regional imbalances all the more difficult, and results in ambiguity and a lack of clarity regarding the nature and form which Leve…
Rebalancing UK regional and industrial policy post-Brexit and post-Covid-19: Lessons learned and priorities for the future
In this paper, we examine the challenges and opportunities facing the UK’s industrial and regional policy in the context of the policy decisions made over recent decades. We argue that the overly centralized and sectoral logic of the UK governance systems has led to a lack of clarity in thinking through place-based issues. This, in turn, has resulted in policy ambiguity, confusion and contradictions, and successfully moving industrial policy and …
The vulnerability of European regional labour markets to job automation: The role of agglomeration externalities
Automation is expected to have strong implications for labour-saving technologies. We calculate the proportion of jobs at high risk of automation across European regions using data from the 2018 Labour Force Survey (LFS). We examine the relationship between regional vulnerability to job automation, specialization, related (and unrelated) variety and agglomeration. The results indicate that regions at low vulnerability to job automation benefit fr…
The Covid-19 shock in European regions
We examine the regional mortality rates associated with the spread of Covid-19 in Europe. In particular, we analyse the potential contribution of the country’s geographical and institutional features in shaping the virus's interregional spread and resulting local death rates. Our analysis is based on information from both pandemic waves from March to the end of November 2020. In a multilevel hierarchical regression estimation setting, covering in…
Internal migration in Indonesia: New insights from longitudinal data
This study examines the roles of individual and household characteristics in internal migration in Indonesia for the first time using the five waves of Indonesia Family Life Survey. Our analysis extends previous research by using a longer period to capture mobility behaviour, by comparing changing of residence across three spatial scales, by incorporating the interaction of relation to household head and gender, and by differentiating migration i…
Japanese contributions to regional science
UK analysts’ and policy-makers’ perspectives on Brexit: Challenges, priorities and opportunities for subnational areas
This paper explores the perspectives of expert analysts and policy-makers on the implications of Brexit for different parts of the UK economy. For local and regional areas, the need for such expert voices to be heard is urgent, given the fact that UK subnational and substate governance authorities have been effectively blocked out of all Brexit-related negotiations, and as such, are wholly unprepared for the post-Brexit realities. The issues disc…
Smart Specialisation on the move: Reflections on six years of implementation and prospects for the future
Six years have passed since Smart Specialisation was incorporated in European Cohesion Policy and became the reference framework for innovation policy in European regions and countries. One year before the beginning of the new Cohesion Policy cycle, it is now the right time to strike a balance in the Smart Specialisation experience and support the design of the upcoming generation of policy strategies with sound evidence on what has worked and wh…
The Implications of Brexit for UK and EU Regional Competitiveness
Any form of Brexit will impact heterogeneously in terms of sectors and regions on the competitive position of firms in both the UK and Europe. The ongoing uncertainty about the conditions under which the UK will be leaving the EU creates difficulties in structurally estimating these impacts. Using uniquely detailed interregional trade data on goods and services for the EU, we apply a novel methodology that disentangles region-sector sensitivities…
Promoting regional growth and innovation: Relatedness, revealed comparative advantage and the product space
We adapt the product-space approach of Hausmann-Hidalgo et al. to the case of Italian provinces, examining the extent to which network connectedness and centrality of a province's exports is related to its economic performance. We construct a new Product Space Position (PSP) index which retains many of the Hausmann-Hidalgo et al. features but which is also much better suited to handling regional and provincial data. The PSP index is found to outp…
A multi-sector model of relatedness, growth and industry clustering
This article builds an understanding of regional innovation specialisation by developing a multi-sector model with endogenous growth through quality improving innovations and spillovers from related technologies. The model provides an approach to incorporate the relatedness literature within the mainstream theoretical frameworks of endogenous growth and economic geography. Each firm’s technology sector and the location of other firms play a role …
The Nordic contribution to regional science: People, principles and empirics
The Neighbour’s Effect on well‐Being: How Local Relative Income Differentials Affect Resident's Subjective Well‐Being
Studies relating income to subjective well‐being have found that both absolute and relative income determine individual well‐being. This paper assesses the effect of relative income on subjective well‐being, and the spatial scale on which this comparison takes place. This study employs spatial data on individual well‐being, health, socio‐economic status, and psychometrics. The findings suggest that relative income is a significant predictor of su…
Perceptions of regional inequality and the geography of discontent: Insights from the UK
This paper examines the issue of whether the UK displays high levels of interregional inequality or only average levels of inequality. The question arises due to major differences in public perceptions. Following on from recent UK public debates, the UK evidence is examined in the context of 28 different indicators and 30 different Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Answering this question involves a careful …
Perceptions of regional inequality and the geography of discontent: Insights from the UK
This paper examines the issue of whether the UK displays high levels of interregional inequality or only average levels of inequality. The question arises due to major differences in public perceptions. Following on from recent UK public debates, the UK evidence is examined in the context of 28 different indicators and 30 different Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Answering this question involves a careful …
Smart Specialization, Regional Growth and Applications to European Union Cohesion Policy
McCann P. and Ortega-Argilés R. Smart specialization, regional growth and applications to European Union Cohesion policy, Regional Studies. The aim of this paper is to achieve two objectives. Firstly, it examines the smart specialization concept and explains the challenges involved in applying this originally sectoral concept to an explicitly spatial and regional setting. Secondly, it explains the ways in which this might be achieved so as to mak…
The mismatch between local voting and the local economic consequences of Brexit
The mismatch between local voting and the local economic consequences of Brexit. Regional Studies. This paper reveals that in the 2016 UK referendum regarding whether to remain in or leave the European Union, the regions that voted strongly for leave tended also to be those same regions with greatest levels of dependency on European Union markets for their local economic development. This observation flies in the face of pro-leave narratives that…
Industrial Clusters: Complexes, Agglomeration and/or Social Networks
The concept of industrial clusters has attracted much attention during the past decade, both as descriptive of an increasingly important phenomenon and as a basis for effective public intervention in the economies of lagging city-regions. However, there is much ambiguity in the way in which this concept is used, presenting an obstacle both to empirical testing and to realistic assessments of policy relevance. In this paper, we distinguish three i…
Introduction: Place, space and organization-- economic geography and the multinational enterprise
This article discusses the current links between international trade theory, economic geography and strategy and international business. We offer a way forward for building further links between these literatures that focusses on the notions of place, space and organization, and we document how the papers in this special issue contribute to this debate
Globalization: Countries, Cities and Multinationals
McCann P. and Acs Z. J. Globalization: countries, cities and multinationals, Regional Studies. This paper explores the relationship between the size of a country, the size of its cities, and the importance of economies of scale in the modern era of globalization. In order to do this, it integrates three different literatures, namely the literature on the optimal size of a country, the literature on historical processes of urbanization and the per…
The continental divide? Economic exposure to Brexit in regions and countries on both sides of The Channel
The effects of the global financial crisis on European regions and cities
Growth before and especially after the crisis differed from large-city-led growth pattern. The crisis has led to big contractions especially in urban regions and in remote rural regions, while intermediate and rural regions close to a city displayed more resilience. In some countries, the capital metro region had much higher economic growth prior to the crisis, but this pattern was inverted by the crisis. Capital cities are now central to the pro…
Analytical Differences in the Economics of Geography: The Case of the Multinational Firm
In this paper we argue that the various discussions of the regional location behaviour of the multinational firm by the different fields of analysis which deal with these issues are all rather at a tangent to each other. Only economic geography and regional economics discuss firm-location behaviour at the subnational regional level, whereas international trade theory and traditional international business analysis focus only on firm locations at …
Innovation, agglomeration, and regional development
This paper provides a critical examination of the widely disseminated view that innovation in all or most activities is favoured by certain common characteristics in the local ‘milieu’, involving a cluster of many small firms benefiting from flexible inter-firm alliances, supported by mutual information exchanges of both an informal and formal nature. The general applicability of this model, and the localness of crucial linkages, is questioned in…
The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Industrial Location Theory
M CCANN P. and SHEPPARD S. (2003) The rise, fall and rise again of industrial location theory, Reg. Studies 37 , 649-663. In this paper we will argue that new academic fashions, new international institutional arrangements, new communications technology and new developments in data availability, have all renewed the need for a redevelopment of analytical industrial location theory. Our paper will argue that the microeconomic foundations of indust…
The UK ‘geography of discontent’: Narratives, Brexit and inter-regional ‘levelling up’
This paper explains the background to the notion of the ‘geography of discontent’ in the context of UK interregional inequalities and political shocks. The paper then examines how the geography of discontent has bound conflicting political and economic narratives together in ways, which makes the correcting for these regional imbalances all the more difficult, and results in ambiguity and a lack of clarity regarding the nature and form which Leve…
Interregional inequalities and UK sub-national governance responses to Brexit
This paper discusses the various potential impacts of Brexit on UK regions and outlines the sub-national governance challenges these potential impacts raise. In the light of these, the types of activities that UK sub-national governance bodies have initiated in preparation for Brexit are then reviewed. The conclusions suggest that the UK sub-national institutional system is largely unprepared for the post-Brexit realities
Universities, Agglomerations and Graduate Human Capital Mobility
In this paper we examine one aspect of agglomeration, namely the geography of human capital. In some contexts, human capital may be very mobile, and understanding local agglomeration processes therefore requires us to consider inter‐regional flows of human capital. In particular, here we discuss the flows of students in Great Britain from domicile into university and then the flows of graduate human capital from university into first employment. …
The trade, geography and regional implications of Brexit
Globalization and economic geography: The world is curved, not flat
This paper analyses the argument put that the world is becoming flatter from the perspective of economic geography and spatial economics. In order to do this, we consider the variety of empirical evidence available, much of which appears to be prima facie rather paradoxical. However, it is possible to reconcile all of the seemingly conflicting the evidence by adopting the argument that the global economy simultaneously exhibits trends towards bot…
Rethinking the Economics of Location and Agglomeration
Fundamental problems exist with the classical characterisation of agglomeration economies, since such definitions do not reflect the various cost issues on which firms may wish to economise. A lack of understanding of the relationship between the notions of market hierarchies and locational behaviour leads to confusion not only in applied economic interpretation, but more fundamentally in the construction of theoretical location models. In partic…
Human Capital, Higher Education and Graduate Migration: An Analysis of Scottish and Welsh Students
This paper reports on a model of the sequential migration behaviour of some 76 000 Scottish and Welsh students, from their domicile location to the location of their higher education and on to their employment location. A logit model methodology is employed to analyse the choice of the location of the university attended, whether inside or outside Scotland or Wales. Then, within a GIS framework, migration-on-migration correlations and elasticitie…
Transport costs and new economic geography
This paper uncovers some little-known properties of the iceberg transport cost functions which are employed in some new economic geography models. In particular the behaviour of the delivered prices generated by the Krugman iceberg specification is very different to those generated by the original Samuelson iceberg model, and these differences require careful interpretation of the outcomes of the explicitly spatial versions of new economic geogra…
Location, agglomeration and infrastructure
The future of regional policy
Modern regional innovation policy
This paper analyses the evolution of regional innovation policy into the mainstream of public policy. The paper examines the empirical and theoretical developments which have shifted much of the focus on innovation-related issues to matters of economic geography. As well as academic material we also review the literature on the subject produced by the international development institutions. In terms of policy, special attention is devoted to the …
Observational Equivalence? Regional Studies and Regional Science
McCann P. (2007) Observational equivalence? Regional studies and regional science, Regional Studies 41, 1209–1221. This paper considers the methodological and empirical issues raised by the adoption of stylized constructs in the development of regional policy. Public policies invariably require funding, and the greater levels of public data availability and press scrutiny nowadays have led to increasing requirements for policy transparency driven…
Smart Specialisation on the move: Reflections on six years of implementation and prospects for the future
Six years have passed since Smart Specialisation was incorporated in European Cohesion Policy and became the reference framework for innovation policy in European regions and countries. One year before the beginning of the new Cohesion Policy cycle, it is now the right time to strike a balance in the Smart Specialisation experience and support the design of the upcoming generation of policy strategies with sound evidence on what has worked and wh…
Migration and inter-industry mobility of UK graduates
New university graduates are highly geographically mobile, but, as the literature has shown, often struggle in the labour market, working in non-graduate level jobs or in a field different from the one for which they are qualified. In this context, inter-industry moves can act as complements or substitutes for geographical moves, with graduates reacting to job mismatches by either changing location, industry, or both. Self-selection is also likel…
Popular Education and Socialization in the Nineteenth Century
Popular Education and Socialization in the Nineteenth Century
Popular Education and Socialization in the Nineteenth Century
Popular Education and Socialization
Radicalism and Education in Britain
Samuel Wilderspin and the Infant School Movement
Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836-1871
Journey and Transactions Frequency: An Alternative Explanation of Rent-gradient Convexity
This paper contends that in many real-world situations, the frequency with which transactions take place is central to the relationship between land prices and location. It will therefore be argued that an approach which makes the transactions and journey frequency endogenous to the cost problem is the correct way in which time should be incorporated into many urban rent-distance models. Under these conditions, it can be shown that a convex dista…
Rethinking the Economics of Location and Agglomeration
Fundamental problems exist with the classical characterisation of agglomeration economies, since such definitions do not reflect the various cost issues on which firms may wish to economise. A lack of understanding of the relationship between the notions of market hierarchies and locational behaviour leads to confusion not only in applied economic interpretation, but more fundamentally in the construction of theoretical location models. In partic…
Schooling in a Fishing Society: Education and Economic Conditions in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1836-1986
How Deeply Embedded is Silicon Glen? A Cautionary Note
MCCANN P.(1997) How deeply embedded is Silicon Glen? A cautionary note, Reg. Studies 31, 695-703. On the basis of case study and empirical evidence the Scottish electronics industry has been characterized as corresponding more to a simple dependent model of linkage structure than to a developmental model (TUROK, 1993). This paper suggests that the empirical evidence presented does not necessarily support this contention. The picture seems to be r…
Regional Size, Industrial Location and Input‐Output Expenditure Coefficients
MCCANN P. and DEWHURST J. H. LL. (1998) Regional size, industrial location and input-output expenditure coefficients, Reg. Studies 32 , 435-444. This paper develops some of the themes raised in a recent paper by FLEGG et al. , 1995. The question we explore is the relationship between the size of a region and the values of the expenditure coefficients, as estimated using location quotients. By using hypothetical examples we show that there is no t…
A note on the meaning of neo-classical location theory and its usefulness as a basis for applied research
A note on the meaning of neo‐classical location theory and its usefulness as a basis for applied research
Industrial Clusters: Complexes, Agglomeration and/or Social Networks
The concept of industrial clusters has attracted much attention during the past decade, both as descriptive of an increasingly important phenomenon and as a basis for effective public intervention in the economies of lagging city-regions. However, there is much ambiguity in the way in which this concept is used, presenting an obstacle both to empirical testing and to realistic assessments of policy relevance. In this paper, we distinguish three i…
The Continuing Growth of London Stansted Airport: Regional Economic Impacts and Potential
(2000). The Continuing Growth of London Stansted Airport: Regional Economic Impacts and Potential. Regional Studies: Vol. 34, No. 9, pp. 875-882
A Comparison of Measures of Industrial Specialization For Travel-to-work Areas in Great Britain, 1981-1997
That industrial specialization is inversely correlated with regional size is an established empirical finding. However in establishing this relationship, authors have used several different measures of regional industrial specialization or diversification. This review paper investigates whether the choice of measure is important in such work. Eleven different measures found in the literature are compared with respect to their distributions, their…
Location, agglomeration and infrastructure
The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Industrial Location Theory
M CCANN P. and SHEPPARD S. (2003) The rise, fall and rise again of industrial location theory, Reg. Studies 37 , 649-663. In this paper we will argue that new academic fashions, new international institutional arrangements, new communications technology and new developments in data availability, have all renewed the need for a redevelopment of analytical industrial location theory. Our paper will argue that the microeconomic foundations of indust…
Global Village or Global City? The (Urban) Communications Revolution and Education
This paper argues that the global communications revolution of the last twenty years has been mainly confined to the wealthy, urbanised and educated countries of the world, to the detriment of the development of education, culture and progress in the largely rural Third World. Advances in communications technology have, almost by definition, been confined to urban areas with developed infrastructures and a skilled and educated workforce. The glob…
Innovation, agglomeration, and regional development
This paper provides a critical examination of the widely disseminated view that innovation in all or most activities is favoured by certain common characteristics in the local ‘milieu’, involving a cluster of many small firms benefiting from flexible inter-firm alliances, supported by mutual information exchanges of both an informal and formal nature. The general applicability of this model, and the localness of crucial linkages, is questioned in…
Transport costs and new economic geography
This paper uncovers some little-known properties of the iceberg transport cost functions which are employed in some new economic geography models. In particular the behaviour of the delivered prices generated by the Krugman iceberg specification is very different to those generated by the original Samuelson iceberg model, and these differences require careful interpretation of the outcomes of the explicitly spatial versions of new economic geogra…
Agglomeration, economic geography and regional growth
Innovation, knowledge spillovers and local labour markets
Analytical Differences in the Economics of Geography: The Case of the Multinational Firm
In this paper we argue that the various discussions of the regional location behaviour of the multinational firm by the different fields of analysis which deal with these issues are all rather at a tangent to each other. Only economic geography and regional economics discuss firm-location behaviour at the subnational regional level, whereas international trade theory and traditional international business analysis focus only on firm locations at …
Economics (76 works) · Geography (55 works) · Political science (52 works) · Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis (50 works) · Economic geography (49 works) · Sociology (44 works) · Regional science (37 works) · Regional Development and Policy (33 works) · Business (27 works) · Computer Science (27 works)