Unbalanced Growth in the Labourscape: explaining regional employment divergence

This paper investigates the role of human capital in explaining divergent employment growth within advanced economies. It adds a spatial dimension to William J. Baumol’s theory of ‘unbalanced growth’ by linking it with the concept of ‘job polarization’. We develop a theory of ‘geographical unbalanced growth’ that explains divergent employment trajectories in terms of skill restructuring. The theory is operationalized via a novel shift–share extension, which is applied to Australian data. We find evidence of ongoing regional divergence and for our proposed mechanism. The findings reinforce the importance of active policies to attract high-skilled jobs to non-metropolitan regions.

The estimation of sectoral contribution to regional divergence in Poland and Ukraine

The research aims to identify industrial and other economic sectors’ contribution to the regional divergence in Eastern European countries, particularly Poland and Ukraine. The ambiguity of the results of previous studies on the factors of regional convergence indicates the need for further research, considering the peculiarities of distinct economies’ development. The countries selected for analysis – Ukraine and Poland – had similar starting conditions for market transformation, have a common border, and a comparable population. The analysis of regional inequality in Ukraine revealed a tendency of asymmetric regions’ growth in 2010–2017. In Poland, divergent trends in regional development in 2009–2017 were significantly less pronounced. The statistical method to identify the impact of the industrial, agricultural, and service sectors on regional σ-convergence based on coefficients of variation measuring the differences in regional economies’ sectoral structure was used. The analysis demonstrated that, in general, the uneven structure of regional economies does not significantly impact any of the analyzed countries, which confirmed the results of some other studies. Simultaneously, it highlighted that the industrial sector had the greatest impact on regional divergence in Poland. Despite the dominant role of services in regional divergence in Ukraine, most researchers emphasize the importance of the industrial sector for regional development. To consider this factor in the regional divergence of Ukrainian regions, some regional policy implications were considered.

Labour market polarisation as a localised process: evidence from Sweden

The present article creates a link between contemporary labour market polarisation and regional divergence and analyses the spatial patterns of labour market polarisation in Swedish municipalities during the period 2002–2012. The results show that the national pattern of labour market polarisation is driven by polarisation in clusters of previously manufacturing-dominated municipalities with low- and medium-skill production, as well as increasing labour market polarisation and spatial selection within the fast-growing top-tier metropolitan regions. Outside these polarising spaces, most municipalities still experience job upgrading. The much-discussed abandonment of the traditional Western European job-upgrading model towards a polarising trajectory is thus not unequivocal. Regional labour market change and metropolitan selection cause great variation in labour market trajectories across space.

NITROGEN MANAGEMENT – AN IMPORTANT DETERMINANT OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

The aim of the paper is to identify changes in nitrogen management in individual agriculture and result assessment in the context of sustainable development. The paper showed the essential elements of nitrogen balancing on agricultural area. Research was conducted at a national as well as voivodship level, making it possible to determine the scale of diversity of regional nitrogen management in individual agriculture and verify the regional divergence process in this scope. Analysis was based on data collected during the Farm Structure Survey in 2007 and 2016 prepared by the Statistical Office in Olsztyn, for individual farms with at least 1 ha of UAA in GAEC. The period of research captured the trend of changes in nitrogen management on farms over a 10 year-period. Nitrogen gross balance was calculated on the basis of OECD and EUROSTAT methodology. The results indicated the need to improve nitrogen management to optimize it in relation to crop nutritional needs and local soil conditions. Not only environmental considerations but, above all, economic ones, are an important prerequisite for increasing farmer interest in such activities. Regional diversification of nitrogen economy is progressing, indicating an ongoing divergence (polarization) process. This process is the result of a number of different factors, including organizational and environmental ones.