The coronavirus pandemic has brought industrial relations policy to the centre of attention in many countries. In 2020, the Australian government convened tripartite bodies to address policy in several areas, one being for agreement-making to cover labour on ‘megaprojects’. This initiative revisited criticisms of unions for driving costs up and productivity down on these worksites, the most expensive of which had been Chevron’s Gorgon site, a liquefied natural gas project off the north-west Australian coast. Drawing on four usually siloed literatures – on industrial relations policy, megaprojects, the economic geography of resources and labour process – this article explains concerns about costs, delays and productivity in terms of project work itself. This approach leads to a different understanding of the merits of changing policy to address megaproject’s problems and productivity more broadly.

The Swedish North is sometimes described as a resource periphery, while others choose to label it a pleasure periphery. Regardless of the terms used, the region is characterised by problems such as out-migration and demographic issues. This study investigates why there are such different perceptions of the same area, and whether there is any contradiction between extractive resource industries and the tourism industry. This is done by collecting visitor data from mining companies and conducting interviews with a variety of respondents in three mining communities in northern Sweden. Mining tourism is a phenomenon occurring in this region and can be regarded as a context in which the two main narratives meet while being a rather overlooked form of tourism. This is partly due to the low level of knowledge regarding its impacts, but also to a somewhat established idea of mining tourism as a “bad” form of tourism. Individuals’ perceptions of mining tourism as a phenomenon seem to be highly value-related and influenced by both location and occupation. As such, various opinions can be explained by social exchange theory, which proposes that attitudes will be influenced by individuals’ evaluation of outcomes for themselves and their community. In this paper, the emergence of mining tourism is understood as knowledge creation rooted in a regional path dependency on mining and tourism. Hence, mining tourism becomes a new regional tourism product that contributes to tourism, at least in terms of standard technical visits and, at best, a well-developed tourist attraction that appeals to visitors in quantities similar to iconic regional attractions such as the Icehotel. Then again, a tourism industry selling dreams of “untouched nature” argues that this tourism product produces “bad imaging”.

This article examines the economic influence activities (EIAs) of firms. We argue that firms invest in jobs and establishments in districts of congressional committee members that have oversight over their businesses and industries. This investment increases as legislators’ power rises in Congress. Our theory makes three predictions. First, EIAs by firms will be higher in congressional districts where the legislators have substantial political influence over the firm, relative to districts where legislators have little influence over the firm. Second, EIAs will increase with the legislators’ power on the focal committee. Third, when a legislator exits the committee, EIAs will diminish, but previous investments in the district will remain. We test these predictions by analyzing the Trinet census of establishments, mapped into the committee structure of the US Congress, by tracking the investment and employment of firms in each industry in each congressional district over time. Using fixed-effects models, we show the predictions of the theory find substantial support in the US Senate but not the House. We explore causality by using exogenous exits of politicians by death and scandals to further complement our analysis, and discuss why EIAs may be less likely to occur and detect in the House.

Although globalization and the world trade regime have reduced the significance of distance between countries, within countries geography matters now more than ever. Inside countries’ borders, economic activities, such as production and employment, occur unevenly across space. As a result, international trade impacts parts of a country differently. Some areas benefit from rising trade, while others experience reductions in local wages and employment as a result of increased import competition. Because regions’ experience of globalization varies, public opinion about trade differs across geographic areas within countries. Voters living in regions advantaged by trade are more likely to support economic openness, while voters living in regions negatively impacted by trade are more skeptical of the benefits of globalization. The geographic disparities in public attitudes towards trade often align with salient political cleavages. As a result, debates over trade have become increasingly polarized in many countries, which may threaten states’ continued economic openness as well as their engagement with, and even support for, the world trade regime.

This paper considers the degree to which the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ accurately describes the political economy of Nunavut’s commercial fisheries. Offshore fisheries adjacent to Nunavut were initially dominated by institutions based in southern Canada, and most economic benefits were captured by southern jurisdictions. Decades of political struggle have resulted in Nunavut establishing a role for itself in both the management of offshore resources and the operation of the offshore fishing industry. However, key decisions about fishery management are made by the federal government, and many benefits from Nunavut’s offshore fisheries continue to accrue to southern jurisdictions. The concept of internal colonialism is therefore a useful concept for understanding the historical development and contemporary conflicts over offshore fisheries. By contrast, Nunavut’s inshore fisheries were established as community development initiatives intended to promote economic well-being and stability. While inshore fisheries primarily benefit Inuit community economies, the growth of inshore fisheries has been hampered by small profit margins, inadequate marine infrastructure, and a dearth of baseline data. The federal government’s failure to support the expansion of inshore fisheries is a manifestation of internal colonialism, insofar as it reflects an unequal distribution of public infrastructure and research.

In this article, I draw from organizational imprinting theory to illuminate the impact of the Soviet legacy on contemporary Russian economic geography and regional policy. I argue that central coordination in the creation and regulation of Russian urban agglomerations is connected to a socialist imprinted paradigm associated with the Soviet economic regionalization model and territorial-production complexes (TPCs). I conduct a qualitative historical study to analyze the role of the foundational environment and the dynamics in the development of this imprint. I propose that this imprint effect is prone to reproduction in contemporary regional development strategies and community-based paradigms due to exaptation and cultural-cognitive persistence. The article extends the literature of socialist imprinting by demonstrating how imprints may emerge, transform, and affect localized organizational communities in transition economies and highlights the role of imprinted paradigms in policymaking and regional development.

What motivates politicians and political parties to shift their positioning on an issue? Focusing on the case of trade policy in countries with advanced economies and plurality electoral systems, I argue that the relative positioning of parties on an existing issue can change even when the preferences of the key actors (voters and politicians) are held constant, and even when party leaders continue to represent the same constituencies. In advanced plurality countries, college-educated voters support free trade, and high-density constituencies are predominantly represented by Left incumbents. As college-educated workers migrate to high-density constituencies in pursuit of higher wages, Left incumbents increasingly embrace free trade, while Right incumbents take more protectionist positions. I provide empirical support for several observable implications of my theory.

Recent studies have shown a strong link between the complexity of economies and their economic development. There remain gaps in our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning these links, in part because they are difficult to analyse with highly aggregated, official data sources that do not capture the emergence of new industrial activities, a potential benefit from complexity. We seek to address some of these gaps by calculating two indices of economic complexity for functional local economies (Travel to Work Areas) in Great Britain, and explore their link with these locations’ economic performance. Seeking to gain a better understanding of the mechanism connecting economic complexity with economic performance, we create a measure of emergent technological activity in a location based on a combination of novel data sources including text from UK business websites and CrunchBase, a technology company directory, and study its link with economic complexity. Our results highlight the potential value of novel, unstructured data sources for the analysis of the links between economic complexity and regional economic development.

The Atlantic Sea Scallop fishery has grown tremendously over the past twenty years. The location and magnitude of harvestable biomass fluctuates dramatically due to both natural variation and the explicitly spatial management system designed to allow small individuals to grow larger and more valuable. These fluctuations in natural advantages can have profound effects on fishing ports. We use methods from economic growth literature to show that ports with lower initial scallop landings have grown the fastest. Furthermore, good access to biomass influences long-run changes in landings, although this effect exhibits considerable variability across ports. We also find evidence of returns to scope, suggesting that ports with other fishing activities could be well positioned to attract new scalloping activity when stock conditions are favorable. Further investigation of the largest ports using time-series methods also shows a high degree of variability; there are long-run relationships between scallop fishing and harvestable scallop stock in some ports, short-run relationships in some ports, and no relationship between the two in others. We interpret this as evidence that heterogeneity in the natural productivity of the ocean combined with explicitly spatial fisheries management has induced a spatial component to the port-level response to changes in biomass availability.

Coal has fueled China's rapid growth in recent decades, but it also severely pollutes the air and causes many health issues. The magnitude of the health damage caused by air pollution depends on the location of emission sources. In this paper, we look into the spatial distribution of coal-fired power plants, which are the major emission sources in China, and investigate the determining factors behind the distribution. We find that the driving factors are economic development and expansion of electricity grid coverage; the latter factor plays a key role in provinces that are less developed but have abundant coal resources. This suggests a way to reduce health damages caused by air pollution without harming the economy: attracting coal-fired plants to less populated areas by developing trans-province electricity trade and grid coverage.