Colin Wren
Biographic Data
| ID | 369544 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Colin Wren |
| GIVEN NAMES | Colin |
| FAMILY NAME | Wren |
| SIGNATURE | WREN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Newcastle University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5117-9379 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Benchmarking methods and data for the whole-outline geometric morphometric analysis of lithic tools
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Cultural Evolution Society for funding this workshop. Additional costs were covered by funds made available by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science (project COMPARCH, Grant Number 1113-00015B). David N. Matzig and Felix Riede's contributions are part of CLIOARCH, an ERC Consolidator Grant project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and …
Motives for foreign direct investment location in Europe and EU enlargement
European Union (EU) enlargement of the mid-2000s is likely to have changed the motives for foreign direct investment (FDI) location between the existing Member States (the EU15) and the new entrants of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs), but it is poorly understood. This paper uses the framework of Dunning’s eclectic paradigm and data for 35,105 foreign investments in Europe not only to examine if the motives differ between these, but also how th…
Does Service FDI Locate Differently to Manufacturing FDI? A Regional Analysis for Great Britain
Jones J. and Wren C. Does service FDI locate differently to manufacturing FDI? A regional analysis for Great Britain, Regional Studies. This paper analyses the location of foreign direct investment (FDI) in services at the NUTS-2 region level for Great Britain over 1996–2005, covering the period of growth in FDI. It finds strong differences in service FDI location compared with manufacturing FDI. Unlike manufacturing, service FDI location is dete…
Evaluation of European Union Cohesion policy: Research questions and policy challenges
Inward foreign direct investment and employment: A project-based analysis in north-east England
The paper examines the pattern of jobs in projects implemented by foreign-owned plants in the north east of England over the period 1985–1998. It analyses the characteristics of projects generating a greater or smaller number of jobs. The paper finds a substantial concentration of investment in a relatively small number of projects, but that the jobs are much less so. At the project level, the characteristics that are important for determining th…
Investment Scale as a Signal in Industrial Assistance Schemes with Employment Objectives
The paper examines the implications of asymmetric information for the existence and efficiency of automatic industrial assistance schemes with employment objectives, based on UK regional policy experience. Firms differ in productivities and factor intensities, about which the government is uninformed. The more capital‐intensive firms generate few jobs but implement larger project scales, and the use of this signal for the design of efficient assi…
The industrial policy of competitiveness: A review of recent developments in the UK
The article reviews the recent developments in UK competitiveness policy, and explores its relationship with industrial policy, including regional industrial policy. It argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth, but that while four Competitiveness White Papers of the 1990s potentially broadened the scope of UK industrial policy, the shift from 'sectoral' to 'horizontal' measures has in fact helped much reduce th…
Subsidies for Job Creation: Is Small Best
UK Regional Policy: An Evaluation
INTRODUCT ION ities in unemployment during the recession of the early 1990s, which bit deeply in the southern regions. However, the convergence of regional unemployment rates UK regional policy has existed at varying levels of intensity for nearly seven decades. Throughout its conceals persistent spatial disparities in unemployment at a higher level of disaggregation. Fig. 2 shows that existence, the overriding objective has been to provide econo…
Gross Expenditure on Uk Industrial Assistance: A Research Note
A bstract This note presents annual figures for gross expenditure on UK central government assistance to industry over the period 1960‐90. This is part of onging research on the determinants and effects of UK industrial assistance. All figures are at corrent prices and a breakdown is provided between various components of policy, comprising national assistance, industrial and firm specific assistance, technology support, civil aircraft aid, shipb…
Fund Substitution and the Incentive Effect of Public Investment Subsidies
This paper analyses the observed phenomenon of public for private fund substitution in industrial assistance, by examining the public and private sector funding of investment under different assumptions about the nature of the private capital market. This bears on the effectiveness of industrial subsidies, and has implications for welfare and the design of optimal assistance contracts. It is shown that fund substitution depends crucially on the e…
Some Anatomy of Job Creation: The Role of Firm Size, Age, and the Nature of Opening
In this paper firm-level data on British regional policy instruments are used to examine the role of different forms of assistance and the characteristics of recipient establishments in determining the time profile of assisted employment up to five years after the date of receiving aid. The establishment characteristics considered are the number of employees, age, and, in the case of new establishments, the nature of the opening, be it a new firm…
Job Duration and the Macro-evaluation of Employment Policy: The Example of UK Regional Policy
The paper argues that in order to use macro-evaluation techniques to calculate the employment effect of a policy over some sub-period after policy commencement, it is necessary to determine the rate at which policy jobs are lost. Crucially, it is the rate at which jobs cease to be attributable to policy which is relevant, rather than the rate at which jobs are lost to firms. This point is demonstrated for the case of UK regional policy over the p…
VisuaLearning Intermediate Microeconomics
Journal Article VisuaLearning Intermediate Microeconomics Get access VisuaLeaming Intermediate Microeconomics. By Sandford Borins and Cheryl Gladstone, National Collegiate Software, Duke University Press, 6697 College Station, Durham, North Carolina 27708, U.S.A. Colin Wren Colin Wren University of Newcastle upon Tyne Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 102, Issue 413, 1 July 1992,…
An Economic Analysis of the Revised Regional Development Grant Scheme
This paper examines the factors underlying the take-up and effectiveness of the revised Regional Development Grant scheme, an instrument of U.K. regional policy operated between 1984 and 1988. Assistance under this scheme was available either as a proportionate capital grant or as a lump-sum marginal employment subsidy. Using a cost function approach and a Cobb-Douglas production function, conditions are derived determining take-up. Simulation su…
The Revised Regional Development Grant Scheme: A Case Study in Cleveland County of a Marginal Employment Subsidy
WREN C. (1989) The revised Regional Development Grant scheme: a case study in Cleveland County of a marginal employment subsidy, Reg. Studies 23, 127–137. In 1984 substantial changes were made to the primary instrument of UK regional industrial policy, the Regional Development Grant, in order to improve the cost-effectiveness of this measure. Subsequently, in 1988, it was decided to abandon the scheme because of the deadweight spending associated…
Closure Rates among Assisted and Non-Assisted Establishments
WREN C. (1988) Closure rates among assisted and non-assisted establishments, Reg. Studies 22, 107–119. Few studies of plant closure have specifically explored the relationship between the receipt of financial assistance and establishment survival. In this paper, the survival of establishments receiving assistance from three sources—Regional Development Grant, Regional Selective Assistance and local authority assistance schemes—are compared with t…
The Relative Effects of Local Authority Financial Assistance Policies
The provision of financial assistance to industry has formed a growing and important part of the economic development policies of many local authorities. However, assessments of these policies have suffered from a number of drawbacks. In particular, they have tended to focus on the employment effect of the local authority's assistance policy as a whole, and there have been few attempts to isolate the factors bearing on the success of these polici…
Evaluating the impact and effectiveness of financial assistance policies in the Newcastle Metropolitan region
Evaluation of European Union Cohesion policy: Research questions and policy challenges
UK Regional Policy: An Evaluation
INTRODUCT ION ities in unemployment during the recession of the early 1990s, which bit deeply in the southern regions. However, the convergence of regional unemployment rates UK regional policy has existed at varying levels of intensity for nearly seven decades. Throughout its conceals persistent spatial disparities in unemployment at a higher level of disaggregation. Fig. 2 shows that existence, the overriding objective has been to provide econo…
Inward foreign direct investment and employment: A project-based analysis in north-east England
The paper examines the pattern of jobs in projects implemented by foreign-owned plants in the north east of England over the period 1985–1998. It analyses the characteristics of projects generating a greater or smaller number of jobs. The paper finds a substantial concentration of investment in a relatively small number of projects, but that the jobs are much less so. At the project level, the characteristics that are important for determining th…
Benchmarking methods and data for the whole-outline geometric morphometric analysis of lithic tools
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Cultural Evolution Society for funding this workshop. Additional costs were covered by funds made available by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science (project COMPARCH, Grant Number 1113-00015B). David N. Matzig and Felix Riede's contributions are part of CLIOARCH, an ERC Consolidator Grant project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and …
Evaluating the impact and effectiveness of financial assistance policies in the Newcastle Metropolitan region
The Revised Regional Development Grant Scheme: A Case Study in Cleveland County of a Marginal Employment Subsidy
WREN C. (1989) The revised Regional Development Grant scheme: a case study in Cleveland County of a marginal employment subsidy, Reg. Studies 23, 127–137. In 1984 substantial changes were made to the primary instrument of UK regional industrial policy, the Regional Development Grant, in order to improve the cost-effectiveness of this measure. Subsequently, in 1988, it was decided to abandon the scheme because of the deadweight spending associated…
Closure Rates among Assisted and Non-Assisted Establishments
WREN C. (1988) Closure rates among assisted and non-assisted establishments, Reg. Studies 22, 107–119. Few studies of plant closure have specifically explored the relationship between the receipt of financial assistance and establishment survival. In this paper, the survival of establishments receiving assistance from three sources—Regional Development Grant, Regional Selective Assistance and local authority assistance schemes—are compared with t…
Motives for foreign direct investment location in Europe and EU enlargement
European Union (EU) enlargement of the mid-2000s is likely to have changed the motives for foreign direct investment (FDI) location between the existing Member States (the EU15) and the new entrants of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs), but it is poorly understood. This paper uses the framework of Dunning’s eclectic paradigm and data for 35,105 foreign investments in Europe not only to examine if the motives differ between these, but also how th…
Does Service FDI Locate Differently to Manufacturing FDI? A Regional Analysis for Great Britain
Jones J. and Wren C. Does service FDI locate differently to manufacturing FDI? A regional analysis for Great Britain, Regional Studies. This paper analyses the location of foreign direct investment (FDI) in services at the NUTS-2 region level for Great Britain over 1996–2005, covering the period of growth in FDI. It finds strong differences in service FDI location compared with manufacturing FDI. Unlike manufacturing, service FDI location is dete…
Gross Expenditure on Uk Industrial Assistance: A Research Note
A bstract This note presents annual figures for gross expenditure on UK central government assistance to industry over the period 1960‐90. This is part of onging research on the determinants and effects of UK industrial assistance. All figures are at corrent prices and a breakdown is provided between various components of policy, comprising national assistance, industrial and firm specific assistance, technology support, civil aircraft aid, shipb…
Fund Substitution and the Incentive Effect of Public Investment Subsidies
This paper analyses the observed phenomenon of public for private fund substitution in industrial assistance, by examining the public and private sector funding of investment under different assumptions about the nature of the private capital market. This bears on the effectiveness of industrial subsidies, and has implications for welfare and the design of optimal assistance contracts. It is shown that fund substitution depends crucially on the e…
An Economic Analysis of the Revised Regional Development Grant Scheme
This paper examines the factors underlying the take-up and effectiveness of the revised Regional Development Grant scheme, an instrument of U.K. regional policy operated between 1984 and 1988. Assistance under this scheme was available either as a proportionate capital grant or as a lump-sum marginal employment subsidy. Using a cost function approach and a Cobb-Douglas production function, conditions are derived determining take-up. Simulation su…
The Relative Effects of Local Authority Financial Assistance Policies
The provision of financial assistance to industry has formed a growing and important part of the economic development policies of many local authorities. However, assessments of these policies have suffered from a number of drawbacks. In particular, they have tended to focus on the employment effect of the local authority's assistance policy as a whole, and there have been few attempts to isolate the factors bearing on the success of these polici…
Evaluating the impact and effectiveness of financial assistance policies in the Newcastle Metropolitan region
Closure Rates among Assisted and Non-Assisted Establishments
WREN C. (1988) Closure rates among assisted and non-assisted establishments, Reg. Studies 22, 107–119. Few studies of plant closure have specifically explored the relationship between the receipt of financial assistance and establishment survival. In this paper, the survival of establishments receiving assistance from three sources—Regional Development Grant, Regional Selective Assistance and local authority assistance schemes—are compared with t…
The Revised Regional Development Grant Scheme: A Case Study in Cleveland County of a Marginal Employment Subsidy
WREN C. (1989) The revised Regional Development Grant scheme: a case study in Cleveland County of a marginal employment subsidy, Reg. Studies 23, 127–137. In 1984 substantial changes were made to the primary instrument of UK regional industrial policy, the Regional Development Grant, in order to improve the cost-effectiveness of this measure. Subsequently, in 1988, it was decided to abandon the scheme because of the deadweight spending associated…
An Economic Analysis of the Revised Regional Development Grant Scheme
This paper examines the factors underlying the take-up and effectiveness of the revised Regional Development Grant scheme, an instrument of U.K. regional policy operated between 1984 and 1988. Assistance under this scheme was available either as a proportionate capital grant or as a lump-sum marginal employment subsidy. Using a cost function approach and a Cobb-Douglas production function, conditions are derived determining take-up. Simulation su…
VisuaLearning Intermediate Microeconomics
Journal Article VisuaLearning Intermediate Microeconomics Get access VisuaLeaming Intermediate Microeconomics. By Sandford Borins and Cheryl Gladstone, National Collegiate Software, Duke University Press, 6697 College Station, Durham, North Carolina 27708, U.S.A. Colin Wren Colin Wren University of Newcastle upon Tyne Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 102, Issue 413, 1 July 1992,…
Job Duration and the Macro-evaluation of Employment Policy: The Example of UK Regional Policy
The paper argues that in order to use macro-evaluation techniques to calculate the employment effect of a policy over some sub-period after policy commencement, it is necessary to determine the rate at which policy jobs are lost. Crucially, it is the rate at which jobs cease to be attributable to policy which is relevant, rather than the rate at which jobs are lost to firms. This point is demonstrated for the case of UK regional policy over the p…
Some Anatomy of Job Creation: The Role of Firm Size, Age, and the Nature of Opening
In this paper firm-level data on British regional policy instruments are used to examine the role of different forms of assistance and the characteristics of recipient establishments in determining the time profile of assisted employment up to five years after the date of receiving aid. The establishment characteristics considered are the number of employees, age, and, in the case of new establishments, the nature of the opening, be it a new firm…
Gross Expenditure on Uk Industrial Assistance: A Research Note
A bstract This note presents annual figures for gross expenditure on UK central government assistance to industry over the period 1960‐90. This is part of onging research on the determinants and effects of UK industrial assistance. All figures are at corrent prices and a breakdown is provided between various components of policy, comprising national assistance, industrial and firm specific assistance, technology support, civil aircraft aid, shipb…
Fund Substitution and the Incentive Effect of Public Investment Subsidies
This paper analyses the observed phenomenon of public for private fund substitution in industrial assistance, by examining the public and private sector funding of investment under different assumptions about the nature of the private capital market. This bears on the effectiveness of industrial subsidies, and has implications for welfare and the design of optimal assistance contracts. It is shown that fund substitution depends crucially on the e…
UK Regional Policy: An Evaluation
INTRODUCT ION ities in unemployment during the recession of the early 1990s, which bit deeply in the southern regions. However, the convergence of regional unemployment rates UK regional policy has existed at varying levels of intensity for nearly seven decades. Throughout its conceals persistent spatial disparities in unemployment at a higher level of disaggregation. Fig. 2 shows that existence, the overriding objective has been to provide econo…
Subsidies for Job Creation: Is Small Best
The industrial policy of competitiveness: A review of recent developments in the UK
The article reviews the recent developments in UK competitiveness policy, and explores its relationship with industrial policy, including regional industrial policy. It argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth, but that while four Competitiveness White Papers of the 1990s potentially broadened the scope of UK industrial policy, the shift from 'sectoral' to 'horizontal' measures has in fact helped much reduce th…
Investment Scale as a Signal in Industrial Assistance Schemes with Employment Objectives
The paper examines the implications of asymmetric information for the existence and efficiency of automatic industrial assistance schemes with employment objectives, based on UK regional policy experience. Firms differ in productivities and factor intensities, about which the government is uninformed. The more capital‐intensive firms generate few jobs but implement larger project scales, and the use of this signal for the design of efficient assi…
Inward foreign direct investment and employment: A project-based analysis in north-east England
The paper examines the pattern of jobs in projects implemented by foreign-owned plants in the north east of England over the period 1985–1998. It analyses the characteristics of projects generating a greater or smaller number of jobs. The paper finds a substantial concentration of investment in a relatively small number of projects, but that the jobs are much less so. At the project level, the characteristics that are important for determining th…
Evaluation of European Union Cohesion policy: Research questions and policy challenges
Does Service FDI Locate Differently to Manufacturing FDI? A Regional Analysis for Great Britain
Jones J. and Wren C. Does service FDI locate differently to manufacturing FDI? A regional analysis for Great Britain, Regional Studies. This paper analyses the location of foreign direct investment (FDI) in services at the NUTS-2 region level for Great Britain over 1996–2005, covering the period of growth in FDI. It finds strong differences in service FDI location compared with manufacturing FDI. Unlike manufacturing, service FDI location is dete…
Motives for foreign direct investment location in Europe and EU enlargement
European Union (EU) enlargement of the mid-2000s is likely to have changed the motives for foreign direct investment (FDI) location between the existing Member States (the EU15) and the new entrants of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs), but it is poorly understood. This paper uses the framework of Dunning’s eclectic paradigm and data for 35,105 foreign investments in Europe not only to examine if the motives differ between these, but also how th…
Benchmarking methods and data for the whole-outline geometric morphometric analysis of lithic tools
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Cultural Evolution Society for funding this workshop. Additional costs were covered by funds made available by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science (project COMPARCH, Grant Number 1113-00015B). David N. Matzig and Felix Riede's contributions are part of CLIOARCH, an ERC Consolidator Grant project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and …
Economics (15 works) · Regional Development and Policy (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Geography (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Finance (5 works) · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality (5 works) · Macroeconomics (5 works) · Economic growth (4 works)