Meetings of the Spatial Productivity Lab

SPL workshop| 13 November 2023 | Paris, France & DIGITAL
New approaches to understand business conditions and links between firms

Understanding the regional and spatial nature of the economic links between businesses is crucial for many policy domains, yet as of today little systematic knowledge is collected and shared. Through their supply chain, firms transmit their success and their downturns to a wider network of suppliers or customers with likely strong spatial connotations as firms depend on their local network of suppliers, customers, service and finance providers.

The workshop built upon insights from academics, policy practitioners and other OECD teams working with firm-to-firm link data to provide an opportunity to discuss how different approaches and sources of data can generate new analyses and indicators to inform policy makers and other stakeholders, such as the business community.

21st SPL meeting | 18 October 2023 | DIGITAL
Rebooting regional productivity: from analysis to policy

In an effort to improve regional economic growth, several subnational governments across the OECD have initiated productivity  reviews for their territories, similar to country level reviews conducted by national productivity commissions. Moreover, subnational productivity differences within a country are gaining prominence at the national level too. This webinar focused on recent initiatives from the Basque Country in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Trentino in Italy, where the analysis of subnational economic data is used to compare productivity performance across regions, understand which economic and social factors drive regional productivity, and how regional productivity links to other economic and social outcomes.

20th SPL meeting | 20 June 2023 | DIGITAL
Skills across jobs: addressing local labour shortages

Employers across cities and regions throughout the OECD are experiencing severe difficulties in hiring workers with the necessary skills. This webinar looked at the latest evidence and discussed how labour and skills shortages can affect firm productivity. It also considered how a skills-based approach can improve the matching of workers more flexibly across jobs, as compared to educational background and work experience, and better address needs for up-skilling, reskilling and adult learning.

19th SPL meeting | 14 December 2022 | Trento, Italy
Socioeconomic trends in the host region Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol (Italy)

The last SPL meeting of the year is traditionally devoted to the host region of the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development, the Autonomous Region Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol. The meeting brought together local SPL partners and other local stakeholders to present and discuss recent economic and social trends, as well as empirical research focused on the territory. 

18th SPL meeting |  6 December 2022 | DIGITAL
Productivity and resilience in regions and cities

Regional economic resilience is the ability of places to withstand, recover and to reorganise in response to a negative shock. Resilience can be thought of as a short-term characteristic, for example employment performance during a specific crisis, or as a long-term phenomenon, when a lagging place emerges over time as a centre of high productivity and economic prosperity. What factors are linked to greater economic resilience both short-term and long-term? How can places strengthen their resilience? The webinar offered some answers drawing on academic research and practical examples of places that “turned-around”.

17th SPL meeting | 14 September 2022 | DIGITAL
Business dynamism and regional productivity

Business dynamism, turnover or churn – the rate of firm entry and exit in the economy – is robustly linked to increased industrial productivity. In more dynamic industries, greater competition pushes companies to innovate and improve efficiency while less productive firms are more likely to exit. As a result, resources are reallocated quicker to more productive uses. Do these mechanisms work spatially? Does regional business dynamism increase productivity and, if so, how can regions better tap the potential of this process to stimulate growth?

16th SPL meeting | 10 March 2022 | DIGITAL
Regional institutions and productivity: Implications for policy

Institutions matter. Decades ago, Douglass North called institutions the underlying determinant of economic performance and growth prospects (North D. (1991). Institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(1), pp. 97-112). Since then, the appreciation for the role of institutions, and of governance arrangements in particular, in economic performance of nations and regions only grew. This meeting brought together resent research and offers policy perspectives on the link between regional quality of government and productivity.

15th SPL meeting | 14 December 2021 | Trento, Italy
Recent trends in Trentino and Alto-Adige/South Tyrol (Italy)

The last SPL meeting of the year is traditionally devoted to the host region of the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development, the Autonomous Region Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol. The meeting brought together local SPL partners and other local stakeholders to present and discuss recent economic and social trends, as well as empirical research focused on the territory. 

14th SPL meeting | 8 September 2021 | DIGITAL
Innovation diffusion: How can regions benefit?

Innovation is the most important contributor to long-term economic growth. It is not just about “pushing the frontier”, but also about the spread of ideas and technologies throughout the economy. Innovation diffusion can help regions to catch up by integrating and building on existing ideas and technologies. Yet, the spread of innovation seems to be slow. What are the mechanisms of innovation diffusion, what are the barriers and how can regions more actively and successfully learn in order to increase their productivity, competitiveness and wellbeing?

13th SPL meeting | 11 May 2021 | DIGITAL
Adoption of advanced technologies: Productivity and labour market implications

Firms make continuous capital investments. Some of these investments have the potential to completely change the production process, in terms of productivity and in the role for existing employees. This SPL meeting collected insights on the implications of the adoption of advanced technologies for firms and workers, with a specific focus on the use of micro data and through local lens. The meeting combined empirical evidence from Canada and the US, as well as an OECD-wide perspective. The presentations served as a foundation for a panel discussion with the speakers.

12th SPL meeting | 4 February 2021 | DIGITAL
Spatial productivity in the post-COVID world 

As the world is changed by the pandemic, the mechanisms defining productivity of firms and regions are likely to be reshaped. What will stay the same and what will be different? How the crisis can be used as an opportunity to leap forward to a more productive, but also more inclusive, world with no places left behind? The webinar offered an opportunity to explore these and other pressing questions through the lens of labour markets, regional innovation systems and resilience.

11th SPL meeting | 10 December 2020 | DIGITAL
Recent socioeconomic trends in Trentino and Alto-Adige/South Tyrol (Italy)

This meeting brought together the SPL and its partners to discuss the social and economic situation during the COVID-19 pandemic in our host region, Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol. Representatives of the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development, the Bank of Italy Trento Branch, the European Research Institute on Cooperatives and Social Enterprises (EURICSE) and the University of Trento presented recent analyses of the trends in contagion, mobility, industrial output, credit, labour markets and labour demand, as well as social economy.

10th SPL meeting | 29 October 2020 | DIGITAL
Business incentives and firm entry: The past, the present and the future

The effectiveness of business incentives is a subject of debate among researchers but is a popular tool of supporting regional and local economic development. This seminar offered different perspectives on the link (established in the past) between policy-mandated business support and new firm entry. The differing points of view served as a background for a roundtable discussion among academics and practitioners on the ways to make incentives more effective, to bridge academic research and policy practice and to boost firm formation during and after the pandemic.

9th SPL meeting | 3 September 2020 | DIGITAL
The new reality of teleworking: People, firms, places

The webinar brought together experts from academia, policy and policy research to share insights and discuss the impact of COVID-19 on teleworking/ homeworking and how the increase in working from home has affected mobility, productivity, wellbeing and local public policy.

8th SPL meeting | 7 May 2020 | DIGITAL
The world changed by COVID-19: Policy, economy, society

The impacts of the global Covid-19 pandemic are highly localised. What are the regional dimensions of the crisis – from economy to policy to society – and how will regions emerge from the current crisis? Profound economic effects of the spread of coronavirus are already sorely felt across the world. The geographic pattern of the impacts on regional economies will not necessarily follow the pattern of the virus hot spots. Indeed, both geography and sectoral specialisation play a key role. Analyses of the pandemic’s labour impacts and regional policy responses together with a discussion of the ways to shape people’s expectations were presented at this SPL meeting.