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Open research questions in Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis

102 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 4,042 Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Although the digital economy (DE) and sustainable urban systems have drawn growing attention, how DE drives urban energy transition (UET) remains insufficiently understood.

    Does the Digital Economy Promote Urban Energy Transition? Evidence from China · 2026 · DOI

  • note that the specific producers driving analogous to the of Venice, where elites this change, and the details of the 1990s technological [44] permitted new institutions that facilitated creative de- [4] intensification [33] , are not fully understood (pp.

    Agricultural Economic Growth in Immediate Regions of Mato Grosso, Brazil: The Impact of Institutional Changes since the Military Regime · 2026 · DOI

  • The following limitations of this study should be noted: official statistics do not fully capture informal employment; the impact of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was not adjusted in the panel data; the direction of causality was assumed to be one-way (industry → employment), but the reverse effect may also exist [5].

    ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF REGIONAL INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION ON POPULATION EMPLOYMENT BASED ON A REGRESSION MODEL · 2026 · DOI

  • To validate and extend these results, future research could explore the non-income effects of village roads; for example, whether improved connectivity draws manufacturing firms, or facilitates human capital accumulation by increasing access to educational facilities. 8 Conclusions and limitations This study has examined the relationship between village roads and both the level and growth rate of GDP per capita across a panel of 51 non-metropolitan Turkish provinces from 2011 to 2021.

    Rural-urban connectivity and sustainable development: village roads, market access, and agglomeration in emerging Turkish provinces, 2011-2021 · 2026 · DOI

  • The results classify provinces into three clusters: metropolitan cities, characterised by higher education levels, stronger knowledge-intensive service capacity and a larger working-age population; medium-sized cities, with relatively balanced labour market structures but more limited knowledge-intensive service development; and disadvantaged regions, marked by lower labour force participation, higher unemployment and weaker human capital conditions.

    Determination of Human Resoruces Policies Based on Regional Labour Dynamics by Cluster Analysis · 2026 · DOI

  • Consequently, the characterisation of its deeper implications remains insufficient. Consequently, the generalisability of the findings is limited, and they may not fully reflect the impact of APAZs on the sustainable income growth of farmers in different types of former revolutionary base areas nationwide.

    From ‘blood transfusion’ to ‘blood production’: can the development of agricultural product advantage zones drive sustainable income growth for farmers in revolutionary base areas · 2026 · DOI

  • This implied that the structural upgrading effect might be more evident at the macro level (Amjadi et al, 2025), suggesting that future research should explore the differences in and mechanisms of transmission paths across micro-, meso-, and macro-level scales.

    Impact of low-carbon development on urban employment based on a dynamic spatial Durbin model · 2026 · DOI

  • We argue that economic geographers should engage with the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept because (1) it describes a shift in spatial socio-economic organisation that has thus far been underexplored by economic geographers and (2) it is an inherently chaotic concept that requires significant conceptual development, not least in relation to the cluster concept.

    Entrepreneurial ecosystems and clusters: How can economic geographers advance debates for regional development? · 2023 · DOI

  • The question of how urbanization affects the urban–rural equalization of basic public services (BPS) remains unexplored, although BPS equalization is an important means of achieving common prosperity.

    Does urbanization promote the urban–rural equalization of basic public services? Evidence from prefectural cities in China · 2023 · DOI

  • Due to the unclear definition of UAs, coupled with an insufficient understanding of the UA formation mechanism, however, an objective and effective method for the spatial identification of UAs on an urban theoretical basis is still lacking.

    Identifying Urban Agglomerations in China Based on Density–Density Correlation Functions · 2022 · DOI

  • It will take as its point of departure the proposition - often heard, but rarely examined - that since service activities are more concentrated in big cities than other activities and in recent decades have shown higher growth rates than other economic activities, it follows that the economic development is now pulled towards big city regions.

    SERVICES AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT · 2020 · DOI

  • As some authors note, since most of the research is limited to the assessment and analysis of global trends, this does not allow to distinguish the situation in which regions maintain their relative position from the situations in which the general distribution of income changes slightly while the location of some regions changes significantly.

    Quantitative Assessment of the Dynamics of Changes in the GDP Per Capita Index in the Regions of Bulgaria and Slovakia · 2019 · DOI

  • Chinese suburbs are dominated by extensive high-density projects around transit-oriented development (TOD), but the form of development and the role of rail transit have not been fully investigated.

    Paving the way to growth: transit-oriented development as a financing instrument for Shanghai’s post-suburbanization · 2019 · DOI

  • While research has explored the economic importance of principal cities on regional economies, little is known about the short-run and long-run dynamic relationships between principal cities and their neighboring cities as it pertains to their sales tax revenue elasticities and the subsequent affect this has on horizontal tax competition.

    Investigating Sales Tax Revenue Competition Among Principal Cities and Their Neighboring Cities in Texas · 2019 · DOI

  • (2011) that differences in long-run economic performance of German states stem from differences in externally imposed French and domestic German institutions needs to be investigated further.

    Externally imposed institutions and regional growth differences: Evidence from France and Germany · 2017 · DOI

  • This study fills this gap in the literature by comprehensively investigating the possible factors associated with population projection accuracy in 2010 for the continental US counties.

    Population projection accuracy: The impacts of sociodemographics, accessibility, land use, and neighbour characteristics · 2017 · DOI

  • Even though this notion has gained quick and ardent acceptance from practitioners, 
\nthe related literature shows contradictory results;this has induced a heated debate in academic circles, because it has raised serious doubts about the “bigger is better” theory.

    The impact of urban concentration on countries' competitiveness and entrepreneurial performance · 2015 · DOI

  • This paper explores whether and to what extent inward FDI is able to affect regional employment, a complex issue often discussed in policy debates but still scarcely explored in the scientific literature.

    THE EFFECTS OF INWARD FDI ON REGIONAL EMPLOYMENT IN EUROPE · 2014

  • Abstract Although urban growth boundaries ( UGB s) are increasingly used as a containment policy to promote contiguous and compact urban forms, little is known about how UGB s affect development within the designated area or how development is displaced to other cities.

    Measuring the Containment and Spillover Effects of Urban Growth Boundaries: The Case of the<scp>P</scp>ortland Metropolitan Area · 2013 · DOI

  • His inquiry suggested a related but conceptually distinct issue: how does the extent to which a regional industry or industrial sector is concentrated in a small number of firms affect the local performance of that industry? The question has not been addressed systematically in empirical research other than case studies, principally because accurately measuring regional concentration requires firm‐level information.

    Regional Industrial Structure Concentration in the United States: Trends and Implications · 2011 · DOI

  • We expand the set of common determinants of FDI with urban agglomerations and ask the question whether the accessibility of market potential and the number of potential investment locations, in the shape of urban concentrations, matters, since the importance of urban agglomeration economies for FDI has not been investigated before.

    FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT AND URBAN CONCENTRATIONS: UNBUNDLING SPATIAL LAGS* · 2009 · DOI

  • Following an application of the clusters to a comparison of labour pools in a selected 38 metropolitan economies, the paper discusses the clusters' general value for regional economic analysis, especially their utility as an intermediate step in applied industry cluster analyses where necessary regional occupation data are limited.

    What Regions Do Rather than Make: A Proposed Set of Knowledge-based Occupation Clusters · 2003 · DOI

  • Despite the numerous political and economic asymmetries that exist between the United States and Mexico, many people in both countries have gained some advantage by moving freely to the border area that extends for 2,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico-an area that was scarcely in-habited at the beginning of this century.

    Development Problems and Opportunities in the U.S.-Mexico Border Area · 1994 · DOI

  • Although our results are not conclusive and are limited by our application, we find that in terms of several indirect performance criteria, IMPLAN's outcomes, on balance, are somewhat more plausible than those for REMI.

    Evaluating Alternative Regional Planning Models · 1991 · DOI

  • Moore The economic development efforts of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) have met with their most mixed results in Kentucky and West Virginia.

    Development and Change in Appalachian Kentucky's Economy: 1870-1890 · 1990 · DOI

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102 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 4,042 Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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