Patricia Rice

Patricia Rice
REF Impact Lead
01865 271047
patricia.rice@economics.ox.ac.uk

  • Economic Linkages across Space

    February 2010
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    Journal article
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    Regional Studies
    Overman H. G., Rice P. and Venables A. J. Economic linkages across space, Regional Studies. A diagrammatic framework is developed to study the economic linkages between regions or cities. Hitherto, such linkages have not been a focus of the literature. The framework is used to analyse the impact of shocks that occur in one region (for example, productivity improvements or increases in housing supply) on other regions, highlighting the key adjustment mechanisms and their long-run implications for incomes, the cost of living, and the spatial distribution of population. The approach is linked to both the New Economic Geography and urban systems literatures and empirical studies are reviewed that quantify the key mechanisms that are identified. © 2010 Regional Studies Association.

  • Geography and economic performance: Exploratory spatial data analysis for Great Britain

    June 2007
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    Journal article
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    Regional Studies
    This paper uses the techniques of exploratory spatial data analysis to analyse patterns of spatial association for different indicators of economic performance, and in so doing it identifies and describes the spatial structure of economic performance for Great Britain. This approach enables one to identify a number of significant local regimes - clusters of areas in which income per worker differs significantly from the global average - and to investigate whether these come about primarily through spatial association in occupational composition or in productivity. The results show that the contributions of occupational composition and productivity vary significantly across local regimes. The 'winner's circle' of areas in the south and east of England benefits from both above-average levels of productivity and better-than-average occupational composition, while the low-income regime in the north of England suffers particularly from poor occupational composition.

  • Spatial determinants of productivity: Analysis for the regions of Great Britain

    November 2006
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    Journal article
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    Regional Science and Urban Economics
    This paper uses NUTS3 sub-regional data for Great Britain to analyse the determinants of spatial variations in income and productivity. We decompose the spatial variation of earnings into a productivity effect and an occupational composition effect. For the former (but not the latter) we find a robust relationship with proximity to economic mass, suggesting that doubling the population of working age proximate to an area is associated with a 3.5% increase in productivity in the area. We measure proximity by travel time, and show that effects decline steeply with time, ceasing to be important beyond approximately 80 min. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  • The Geography of Intra-Industry Trade: empirics

    September 2003
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    Journal article
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    The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
    This paper uses bilateral trade data for OECD countries at the 3-digit industry level to investigate the geography of intra-industry trade (IIT). IIT diminishes with distance and much of the existing empirical literature suggests that this is an inherent characteristic of such trade, arguing that trade in sectors intensive in IIT is choked off rapidly by distance. We show that the dependence of IIT on geography arises not because of any inherent feature of the effects of distance on such trade, but because of the spatial structure of countries’ supply and demand characteristics; close countries do a lot of IIT because they have similar economic structures.

  • Equilibrium regional disparities: Theory and British evidence

    August 2003
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    Journal article
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    Regional Studies
    Regional inequalities in many countries, including the UK, are large and persistent. They show up in a number of economic variables, most of them endogenous, making it difficult for the researcher to identify the underlying causes of the disparities. This paper uses sub-regional data for Great Britain to identify spatial patterns of disparities. It then compares these patterns with those predicted by a theoretical model under a number of alternative hypotheses about the underlying cause of the disparities. The approach lays the groundwork for theory based econometric modelling of the causes of regional inequalities.
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  • Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series

    The persistent consequences of adverse shocks: how the 1970s shaped UK regional inequality

    September 2020
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    Working paper
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    Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
    The economic shocks experienced by the UK economy in the 1970s brought major changes in the spatial distribution of employment rates in the UK. This paper traces out the long run implications of these changes, suggesting that they were highly persistent and to a large extent shape current UK regional disparities. Most of the Local Authority Districts that experienced large negative shocks in the 1970s have high deprivation rates in 2015, and they constitute two-thirds of all districts with the highest deprivation rates. We conclude that neither economic adjustment processes nor policy measures have acted to reverse the effect of negative shocks incurred nearly half a century ago.
    Regional inequality, de-industrialisation, employment
  • Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series

    Minimum Wages and Schooling: Evidence from the UK's Introduction of a National Minimum Wage

    April 2010
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    Working paper
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    Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
    This paper uses the introduction of the national minimum wage in the UK in April 1999 as a 'natural experiment' to analyse the impact of minimum wages on enrolment in schooling. At the time of its introduction, only workers aged 18 years or more were covered by the legislation. The paper uses panel data for a sample of young people in a given school-year cohort, some of whom were aged 18 years in spring 1999 and therefore eligible to receive the national minimum wage, and others who were aged only 17 years. We compare participation in post-compulsory schooling for the two groups, both before and after the enactment of the legislation and find robust evidence that eligibility for the national minimum wage significantly reduces the probability of participation in post-compulsory schooling for young people living in areas where the national minimum is high relative to local earnings.
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