Miguel Dols Fellows' Workshop Winter Term 2023-4

Each term the Cañada-Blanch Centre at LSE organises a Fellow Workshop in which its visiting LSE-Miguel Dols Fellows present their ongoing research.

Meet our speakers

Prof. Burhan Can Karahasan, Professor in Economics at the Department of Economics at MEF University (Turkey). His main area of research is regional and spatial analysis of economic development.

The Turkish geography of discontent: Territorial inequalities and political polarization

The main narrative of "left-behind places" departs from the decline in economic conditions, rise in socio-economic problems (e.g. poverty, unemployment) and massive discontent affecting voting preferences. Rising Euroscepticism in the EU, the Brexit process in the UK and Donald Trump’s political victory in the 2016 US presidential elections are the main examples. In this research, I focus on a developing country with massive territorial disparities, Turkey and examine the entrance of Justice and Development Party (JDP) to the Turkish political spectrum. Unlike the prior studies which analyze the economic and social consequences of the 2000s, I focus on the historical evolution of territorial income gaps across the Turkish regions and argue that economic decline from 1980s is the main source of JDP’s success in the 2002 parliamentary elections. Moreover, I also argue the existence of sizable heterogeneities to explain the impact of the “left-behind places”.

Min Zhang, Associate Professor at the Business School, Soochow University (China). Her research interests include government institutions, firm and regional innovation drivers, population ageing, amenities, digital economy, regional inequality and fiscal policy.

Returns of Private and Public R&D Investments at Firm Level: Does Government Institutional Quality Matter?

This work assesses whether the return of R&D investments differs by its origin, innovation outcomes and quality of government institutions based on 2011-2013 Chinese firm-level data. The results suggest that private R&D has a higher return in new product sales and patenting innovation, whereas public R&D has a higher return in scientific publications. The returns of R&D, regardless of its type, are higher in regions with better government quality. Also, China’s small and privately owned firms earn higher profits from public R&D investments in places with better government institutions. Our work underlies the necessity to specialize in innovation outcomes when assessing the efficiency of private and public R&D. It highlights the importance of improving government institutional quality in lifting the innovation returns of R&D investments.

Dr. Giacomo Rella, Postdoctoral researcher at Roma Tre University and an associated researcher with the GC Wealth Project at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, City University of New York. 

A Balancing Act? Local Fiscal Resilience After Mine Closures (with Clara Lea Dallaire-Fortier)

The provision of public services in Canada is intrinsically linked to the capacity of the state to mobilize revenues and to the division of responsibilities among federal, provincial, and municipal governments. The provision of these services depends on economic conditions at the macro and micro levels and on shocks at these different levels. Resource-dependent municipalities provide a rare opportunity to better understand the resilience of the current administrative and fiscal structure to shocks such as the scaling down and closure extractive industries. Using a difference-in-difference local projections method, we estimate the dynamic impact of mine closures on municipal fiscal capacity in the mining region of Northern Ontario between 2001 and 2020. We show that mine closures have sizeable effects on the components of municipal revenues and expenditures, taxation, and public service provision. This study informs broader concerns about the implications of the ecological transition for local governments in resource-dependent economies.

Clara Lea Dallaire-Fortier is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Economic History, Lund University.

Provisioning in Ghost Towns: The Mediating Effect of Social Policies after Mine Closure

This study aims to assess to which extent and in which ways social policies address the structural obstacles faced by mining communities after closure. I contrast the rationale behind the provision of social services like cash transfers and unemployment benefits with the lived experiences of workers and their families in mining towns. This contrast informs us about the structural complexity of extractive towns and the barriers that have historically been sustaining hardship in mono-industrial communities. Alongside reports analysis, fieldwork in the region of northern Ontario allowed us to get insights from various stakeholders e.g., social workers, ex-miners and their spouses. With their perspectives, we critically assess the effects of social policies and uncover the structure of the extractive economy. The novelty of this article stands from its analytical strategy based on theoretical triangulation using the resource curse literature, the emerging literature on Left Behind Places and the System of Provision approach.

Assist. Prof. Pedro Fierro, Assist. Professor at the Adolfo Ibañez University (Chile). His research is focused on digital politics and territory.

Feeling the Split: Territorial Divide and Political Emotions in the Chilean Constituent Processes (2022-2023)

This study explores how territorial marginalisation shapes negative political emotions during the 2022 and 2023 Chilean Constituent Processes. Using two waves of face-to-face surveys in the Valparaíso region (with 3,324 participants), the findings reveal that residents in distant urban areas from the political centre tend to harbour negative sentiments towards the constitutional conventions. Employing a discrete emotions methodology, the research highlights a greater likelihood of residents in peripheral regions experiencing emotions like distrust, uncertainty, and confusion during both constituent processes, whether linked to the left-wing or right-wing. This work contributes significantly in two ways. First, it expands research on space and discontent, traditionally centred on voting behaviour, by showing how territorial disparities affect underlying emotions and attitudes. Second, it underscores the often-overlooked role of territorial context in shaping public perception during a critical phase in Chilean society. This phase is marked by the rejection of two distinct constitutional proposals via plebiscite—a unique event in the global context of political transformation and civic participation.

Doglas Nunes de Sousa is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Comparative Political Economy, Europa-Universität Flensburg (Germany).

Higher Education in Europe’s knowledge economies: Implications of national and regional stakeholders for higher education policies

Technological change has had far-reaching repercussions for national economies and societies in the scope of the knowledge economy. Against this backdrop, higher education schemes are today regarded as central to the economic growth of advanced economies. However, the analysis of the intersection between higher education policies and technological changes is commonly confined to debates on the complementarity of national institutional designs. Drawing from the varieties of capitalism (VoC) and growth models literature, this research claims that skill specificity may no longer be associated with a particular institutional design. Alternatively, it suggests that both size and the breadth of activities of knowledge-intense sectors play a significant role in shaping higher education systems. Based on 31 semi-structured interviews and secondary data, it analyses the interaction among employers, universities and governments operating at different levels of governance in varying regions of Ireland and Spain. This research argues that higher education systems tend to be more adaptable to technological change when core knowledge intense activities majorly contribute to economic growth.

Irakli Barbakadze, Postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Business Research at Cambridge Judge Business School, where he is involved in the POPBACK project.

Are Populist Governments Really Pro-People and Anti-Elite? (with Simon Deakin)

The paper studies the effect of populist governments on labor regulation and shareholder protection. Using large country-level panel data covering 60 countries between 1970-2018 and various Difference-in-Difference estimators, we find a positive effect of populist transition on individual labor rights, including those relating to fixed-term employment and unjustifiable dismissal. No treatment effect, by contrast, is observed for collective labor rights, relating to employee representation and industrial action. Most features of shareholder protection are not affected by periods of populist government. There are changes in the mandatory bid rule (a proxy for laws preventing hostile takeover bids) and the disclosure of major share ownership which are sizable and statistically significant, but they are in opposite directions: populist transition is associated with loosening mandatory bid requirements, and tightening disclosure rules. Our analysis throws light on the nature of populist government, which is selectively pro-worker, conferring individual protections while avoiding legal changes which might empower independent sources of labor power such as trade unions.  Populist governments appear to be lukewarm towards corporate governance rules that promote shareholders’ interests at the expense of workers (hostile takeovers) but are happy to deploy such rules to control rival concentrations of private economic power (disclosure rules).

Meet our chair

Prof. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is the Princesa de Asturias Chair and a Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics. He is the Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre LSE. He is a former Head of the Department of Geography and Environment between 2006 and 2009. He is a past-President of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) (2015-2017) and served as Vice-President of the RSAI in 2014. He was also Vice-President (2012-2013) and Secretary (2001-2005) of the European Regional Science Association.

More about this event

The Cañada-Blanch Centre at LSE is the vehicle to achieve the objective of the Fundación Cañada Blanch: developing and reinforcing the links between the United Kingdom and Spain. This is done by means of fostering cutting-edge knowledge generation and joint research projects between researchers in the United Kingdom, and at the LSE in particular, on the one hand, and Spain, on the other.

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Or the speakers and chair, , Prof. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose.