This year’s ERSA congress was held in the vibrant city of Cork and the great facilities of University College Cork. Below, is my experience of it.
Four days of very interesting speeches, lots of information to absorb and countless new avenues to progress my research. This would be one sentence summarising my involvement in the latest ERSA congress. Three research papers I am involved in were presented and received positive feedback and promising ideas for the way forward. I’ll start with these.
I have presented my working paper with Dr Antonis Proestakis on electoral politics in Greece. In this, we find evidence of political considerations interfering in the allocation of funding from the central to the local government in Greece and make the case for greater revenue autonomy at the local level. Dr Emmanuel Tranos from the University of Birmingham has presented our work with City-REDI’s Professor Raquel Ortega-Argiles on the effects of early adoption of digital technologies on later stage productivity differences whilst Professor Raquel Ortega-Argiles has presented our work in progress with our colleagues at Colorado State University (Professor Stephan Weiler, Nick Kacher, Jake Moore and Luke Petach) on the impact of entrepreneurship on economic resilience in the UK and the US. All three papers were well received with useful suggestions of taking the work forward.
In addition to this, I have seen a lot of presentations on economic resilience from Professor Ron Martin and numerous other contributors. This is the topic of my PhD (and publication on economic resilience in UK local authority districts) and hence sits very close to heart and to my academic interests. Further work on the subject is upcoming so stay tuned!
Of great interest were also the presentations of City-REDI colleagues Professor Raquel Ortega-Agiles on BREXIT and Dr Andre Carrascal-Incera on the production location and the role of natural resources using Input-Output modelling as well as his joint work with Dr Diana Gutierrez-Posada on the spatial impact of the economic crisis on youth unemployment in Europe.
The congress closed with a presentation by Professor Andres Rodrigues-Pose stressing the need to look at the institutional quality within regions to explain the differences in their growth. The idea behind the proposition is that investing in infrastructure or other resources is not enough if the institutional framework is inadequate. The proposition resonates with the lack of effectiveness in decreasing regional disparities and it is something I will be taking forward as part of my research.
Overall, the conference was very enjoyable with plenty of well-attended sessions, very interesting presentations and lots of fruitful discussions during the breaks. The hard work of the organisers among which Declan Jordan, Justin Doran and Frank Crowley has paid off! I am looking forward to the next one held in Lyon next year!