Frank van Oort

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Verified

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• PhD
• Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam

While many countries introduced regionally differentiated policy measures for Covid-19, such as social distancing, lockdowns and working from home, the Netherlands opted for national binding policies already in the early stages of the pandemic. Using detailed data on the impacts of the first lockdown on consumers’ and producers’ behaviour, as well...

Among Polish cities facing socioeconomic difficulties are the former regional capitals which lost their administrative status due to the 1998 reform, reducing the number of regions. Making use of this quasi-experimental setting, we assess the impact of the loss of administrative status on the affected cities with difference-in-differences estimatio...

Urban agglomeration and accessibility advantages can quickly turn into disadvantages in a pandemic. In a globalized world of international trade and travel, a virus can spread at light speed, akin to the high rate of information and knowledge diffusion attributed to highly urbanized locations. In this chapter, we discuss how cities may be affected...

Among Polish cities facing socioeconomic difficulties are the former regional capitals which lost their administrative status due to the 1998 reform, reducing the number of regions from 49 to 16. Making use of this quasiexperimental setting, we assess the impact of the loss of administrative status on the affected cities with difference-indifferenc...

Evidence abounds that agglomeration patterns have changed over time, but little is known about changes in the underlying determinants of agglomeration. We analyze 44 years of coagglomeration patterns of U.S. manufacturing industries and show that over time, input-output linkages and labor market pooling have become less important determinants of in...

Dit opiniestuk zet vraagtekens achter de aloude planningdoctrine 'Nederland Distributieland', onder meer vanwege de overschatting van de economische impact en de onderschatting van met name de negatieve effecten op omgevingskwaliteit (congestie, emissies en 'verdozing).

Through an analysis of total factor productivity for European regions using an econometric identification strategy, we find that significant impacts exist for both urban size and structure. A larger urban size positively affects regional productivity. Polycentric urban structures have no directly identified impacts on productivity. We find that an...

This study examines the relationship between regions’ spatial organization and subjective well-being in North-West Europe. Combining data on life satisfaction with data on the spatial structure of regions, we find that the degree of polycentricism is positively associated and dispersion is negatively associated with life satisfaction. At the same t...

The attention given to the Randstad Holland as a key concept in urban and regional development strategies of the Dutch national government has come in waves over decades. This chapter presents a selection of some of the most important studies that have been exploring functional coherence in the Randstad at different points in time, culminating in a...

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...

In this manuscript, we relate regional structural composition—related and unrelated variety—to firm-level productivity in European regions, applying a Cobb–Douglas production function framework and using firm-, industry- and regional-level mixed hierarchical (multilevel) models. Our analyses indicate that regional-related variety has a positive imp...

This paper investigates the link between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and employment in their host regions by cross-fertilizing the literature on MNE externalities with the emerging body of research on industrial relatedness. The link between employment and MNE presence in the same and related industries is tested for European regions. The resu...

Productivity across European regions is related to three types of networks that mediate R&D-related knowledge spillovers: trade, co-patenting and geographical proximity. Both our panel and instrumental variable estimations for European regions suggest that network relations are crucial sources of R&D spillovers, but with potentially different featu...

How can we explain why some regions experienced large decreases in subjective well-being during the 2008 recession, while in other regions, the changes were only very modest? Building on the literature on resilience in subjective well-being during periods of crisis, this article explores a related but undervalued factor that moderates the localized...

In this chapter, we discuss the use of gravity models in the study of spatial structure. Using the recent discussion on functional polycentricity as a background, we argue that the gravity model approach has one obvious advantage when examining spatial structure: it can simultaneously assess functional polycentricity and spatial interdependencies w...

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...

Developing and transitional countries devote considerable funds to selected areas to stimulate local growth and firm productivity. We examine the impact of place‐based interventions due to the opening of science parks in Shenzhen, China, on firm productivity and factor use. Our identification strategy, exploiting spatial and temporal differencing i...

This paper examines the opportunities and risks of employment, skills and education that are related to a circular economy (CE) in the United States. Combining occupational skills and education data with a newly introduced definition of CE employment, we compare circular- and non-circular-oriented occupations in terms of skills and abilities. Build...

Gentrification in China is intertwined with urban redevelopment, which causes the large‐scale displacement of rural–urban migrants from ‘villages in the city’ (ViCs). Because of the informality of ViCs, migrant renters have very insecure tenancy and during redevelopment they are treated as a negligible (‘invisible’) social group. As they are very d...

Sustainable urban transformation is a socially inclusive process in which urban residents, including the most marginalized groups, have a representative voice in planning and redevelopment. Nevertheless, the redevelopment of ‘villages in the city’ (ViCs) in China is often an exclusive process in which rural migrants are absent from decision-making,...

Large-scale residential displacement is occurring in many Chinese cities, with migrants living in ‘Villages in the City’ (ViCs) as the main groups affected. This study uniquely captures a situation in Baishizhou village in Shenzhen, where people live under a threat of imminent displacement. We elucidate the (social) heterogeneity of the affected po...

In this paper we employ an extension of the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) with regional detail for EU countries to study the degree to which EU regions and countries are exposed to negative trade-related consequences of Brexit. We develop an index of this exposure, which incorporates all effects due to geographically fragmented production proc...

Industrial diversification is crucial for economies to prosper. Recent studies have shown that regional economies tend to diversify into sectors that are related to those already present in the region. However, no study yet has investigated the impact of regional institutions. The objective of the article is to analyze how formal and informal insti...

Many Chinese cities are undergoing large-scale property-led redevelopment, which can result in both direct and indirect residential displacement. Although a number of studies on direct displacement have been carried out, insights into the mechanisms underlying indirect displacement are lacking. The present research investigated property-led redevel...

The sustainability challenge requires various forms of experimentation with inventions, which may lead to an upscaling process in which the invention and its applications will spread to other users and regions in the world. However, many experiments fail. In this paper, we explore the success factors for sustainability experiments in their contribu...

Smart specialisation is the new policy approach to the development of regional innovation systems across Europe and it involves fostering innovative and entrepreneurial initiatives which are well tailored to the local context. The different technologies, skills profiles, business activities, institutions and sectors which reflect a region’s economi...

Overseas Chinese communities are an important determinant in the location choice of greenfield investments made by mainland Chinese multinational enterprises across European regions. Conceptually embedded in a relational approach, this effect is shown through an empirical analysis of an exhaustive set of investment projects across NUTS-1 regions in...

In this paper, we introduce network dependence in European regional growth analyses in two new ways. First, we use detailed trade-flow data across European regions to decompose regional economic growth into two components: demand-led growth due to growing export markets and structural growth due to growing market shares in those export markets. Onl...

We analyse the economic impacts of place-based policies that aim to enhance economic development by stimulating growth and productivity of firms in designated areas. We use unique panel data from China with information on manufacturing firms’ production factors, productivity and location, and we exploit temporal and spatial variation in place-based...

In this paper, we aim to reduce the ambiguity surrounding the agglomeration–performance relationship. We do so by taking firm-level and agglomeration-level heterogeneity into account simultaneously and focusing on the interactions between these two levels of analysis in explaining the effect of agglomeration on firm performance. Our central argumen...

Guastella G. and van Oort F. G. Regional heterogeneity and interregional research spillovers in European innovation: modelling and policy implications, Regional Studies. In agglomeration studies the effects of various regional externalities related to knowledge spillovers remain largely unclear. To explain innovation clustering, scholars emphasize...

Deze publicatie staat in het teken van de concurrentiekracht van Nederlandse steden en stedelijke regio's. De positie van de steden - in het bijzonder Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag, Utrecht, Eindhoven en Groningen-Assen - in internationale, nationale en regionale netwerken van handel, kennis en buitenlandse investeringen wordt hierin uitgelicht. V...

This book is based on a study by Ronald Wall, with an introduction by Frank van Oort. The research explores how to strengthen the economic resilience of the Rhine region in relation to other parts of Europe and the world. The central focus is on Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), its spatial structures, industries and the urban factors that attract...

In this paper, we analyse the sectoral and functional division of labour in Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions within the convergence debate. By analysing the investment decisions of multinational corporations in 49 NUTS 2 regions across six European CEE countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria), we show th...

Brownfields are spatial manifestations of previous economic activities, and their redevelopment may contribute to a more sustainable urban land-use in the rapidly urbanising environment of post-reform China. Owing to China's unique institutional background, two types of brownfields can be distinguished in China, namely of brownfields in urban areas...

Measuring functional coherence in metropolitan regions, in particular polycentric ones, requires taking the issues of multiplexity and individual level heterogeneity more explicitly into account, as the spatial organisation of functional linkages is not necessarily identical. Based on the analysis of one type of functional linkage a region can appe...

The importance of network structures for the transmission of knowledge and the diffusion of technological change has been recently emphasized in economic geography. Since network structures drive the innovative and economic performance of actors in regional contexts, it is crucial to explain how networks form and evolve over time and how they facil...

Using a newly assembled, consistent and disaggregated dataset (12 goods and 7 services) on internal and bilateral trade for 25 European countries, we analyze the difference between trade in goods and services. The measurement of both trade in goods and trade in services is improved over earlier research, allowing us to compare trade in goods and se...

This paper introduces indicators of regional related variety and unrelated variety to conceptually overcome the current impasse in the specialization-diversity debate in agglomeration economics. Although various country-level studies have been published on this conceptualization in recent years, a pan-European test has been missing from the literat...

This chapter provides an overview of current theories and empirical research on cities and the knowledge economy. Two recent and interrelated streams of literature are discussed: the first focusing on agglomeration economies related to increasing returns and knowledge spillovers of firms in cities and the second highlighting the role of knowledge w...

Inland ports have been put forward as crucial linkages for efficient global freight transport and corridor development. However, the present understanding of inland ports appears to be limited to network-based views with a maritime port focus (Outside-In), in which inland ports play second fiddle. We argue that inland ports as independent structure...

Science parks (SPs) have received special attention as a policy tool to facilitate localised economic growth by attracting high-tech firms, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The effectiveness of this strategy has been called into question. Empirical studies suggest that the benefits of SPs for high-tech firms are limited. While...

It has been argued that the relationship between knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and multinational enterprises (MNEs) within the regional economy is advantageous for urban and regional dynamics. It is likely that KIBS aim to locate proximate to (internationally operating) MNEs because of agglomeration externalities. The impact of MNEs...

The largest regional disparities in CEE countries are between capital and non-capital city regions. MNCs invest in these regions for various reasons, contributing to regional development exogenously. In this paper we analyse location decisions of FDI investments in the period 2003-2010. We find that the most important location factors for FDI are m...

In this paper, we analyse the sectoral and functional division of labour in Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions within the convergence debate. By analysing the investment decisions of multinational corporations in 49 NUTS 2 regions across six European CEE countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria), we show th...

Regions economically differ from each other - they compete in different products and geographical spaces, exhibit different strengths and weaknesses, and provide different possibilities for growth and development. What fosters growth in one region may hamper it in another. This highly original book presents an accessible methodology for identifying...

Burger M. J., Meijers E. J. and van Oort F. G. Regional spatial structure and retail amenities in the Netherlands, Regional Studies. This paper examines how the presence of retail amenities in Dutch regions is dependent on their spatial structure. Retail amenities, in particular those specialized retail functions that require a large urban support...

Transport corridors are viewed as a promising way forward in European Union (EU) transport policy, assumed to contribute positively to regional economic development. However, the validity of this assumption is not evident. The aim of this paper is to empirically test whether agglomeration economies in European transport corridor regions are positiv...

After half a century of corridor development in Europe, the corridor concept is well-established in the academic discourse on transportation. Transport corridors have also been common practice in European transport policy since the creation of a borderless Europe in the 1990s. What is largely lacking in present-day research on European transport co...