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Last week, our colleague Zoltán Elekes gave a keynote at the EconNet Workshop in Pécs, presenting recent research on regional diversification and labour mobility.
In his talk, “Feasible, Attempted and Inclusive Regional Diversification through the Occupation Space,” Zoltán explored two extensions to how we think about regional branching in evolutionary economic geography.
First, observed changes in regional employment structures tell us which diversification processes ultimately materialise. But behind these outcomes are many attempts by economic actors to reshape local specialisations — some successful, others not. Looking beyond realised diversification to these “attempted” changes may offer a richer picture of how regional economies evolve. Empirical work on this is coming soon!
Second, the talk considered how inclusive the opportunities for related diversification actually are. New economic activities are more likely to emerge when they can draw on capabilities already present in a region. Yet access to those capabilities — and the possibilities for redeploying them — may differ substantially across groups of workers. Because groups such as men and women tend to be concentrated in different occupations, they may also face different opportunities to transfer their accumulated skills and expertise into new occupations. Our research finds systematic differences in labour-mobility networks across groups, as well as in the extent to which observed mobility corresponds to similarities in occupational skill demand.
Interested in the research behind the keynote? Two recent working papers develop these ideas further:
