Project 2: REGIO ECON

Dynamics of regional economic developments

Project 2 is devoted to the interplay between regional economic opportunity structures (labor markets), regional policies and individual economic outcomes. The first part of the project will be devoted to the empirical analysis. The goal is to investigate the role of sentiments and expectations about regional perspectives as determinants of economic activity (e.g., investment by firms, labor market decisions by workers).

The obtained time series of locally varying sentiment and expectation indicators will then be used to identify relationships with the time series of regional economic activity and individual economic outcomes.

Based on this extensive empirical analysis, a major goal of the project is to investigate and forecast the impact of potential regional policy changes on economic outcomes of individuals by using large-scale simulations calibrated using SOEP data. By examining the economic effects of policies as drivers of changes in individual attitudes and sentiments, mechanisms will be developed that will provide a key to understanding the interdependencies among regional structural development, individual economic behavior, and political polarization. Capturing such interdependencies, which have been shown to generate dynamics that can potentially reinforce inequalities between regions, in a dynamic modelling framework will allow us to study emerging long-term effects of policies in a systematic way.

The innovative use of SOEP in simulation models of regional development will make it possible in particular to investigate the differentiated group-specific effects of local policies as well as impacts on political preferences, and will lay the groundwork for a micro-founded analysis of feedback effects.

Doctoral Students

Katrin Rickmeier

Research employee
Bielefeld University
Project 2: Regio Econ

Copyright: Private

Mariya Afonina

Research employee
Bielefeld University
Project 2: Regio Econ

Copyright: Private

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