Dear Colleagues

Family and Regional Development has been identified and explored by the Portuguese Regional Science Association in two consecutive workshops . Fatima 2014 http://www.apdr.pt/congresso-workshops/historico-de-encontros/20o-workshop/  and in Viana do Castelo 2015 http://www.apdr.pt/evento_22/index.html. The idea to create a special session is to attract researchers from all over the world that could be interested in building up on the seminal challenge put forward by Gilles Duranton and Andres Rodriguez-Pose article (Economic Geography 85 (1) :23-47) 2009 that concludes that, with other control variables, family typologies do play a major role in regional development indicators. I am proposing five subtopics and eventually we can reach five consecutive sessions in the ERSA Congress of 2015 in Lisbon, www.ersa.org:

1. Family, education and development of people and places
2. Labor Market, Migration and Family
3. Family, social security and welfare
4. Regional family models and regional competitiveness
5. Spatial and temporal evolution of family businesses

I would like to join spatial/temporal network analysis on family trees from our NECTAR colleagues, SAM and CGE models that highlight family links from REAL excellency, spatial econometrics to explain regional development as dependent on family structures, explorative work on poverty and family, systematization thinking on special and temporal evolution of family businesses.

I will read your ideas and try to organize a good debate along the sessions that we will be able to fulfill. Eventually we will reach an interesting special issue in some of our journals. Who knows the world can be better after this.

Many thanks for your attention. Write a title, risk an abstract, pick up some means and put some time to develop the idea.

Have a nice day

Tomaz Ponce Dentinho

ERSA CONFERENCE – World Renaissance: Changing rules for people and places

SPECIAL SESSION – Family and Regional Development

This special session will focus on the role families in regional development.

In Gilles Duranton and Andres Rodriguez-Pose article (Economic Geography 85 (1) :23-47) 2009 say that while the literature recognizes the role of institutions in development there are less common studies on regional development and the family. And although that article reaches some interesting correlations there is a great space to explore that challenges us.

The Portuguese Regional Science Association launched recently two workshops on the theme and the in Fatima 2014 http://www.apdr.pt/congresso-workshops/historico-de-encontros/20o-workshop/ and in Viana do Castelo 2015 http://www.apdr.pt/evento_22/index.html and the interest is great since the reference to space (regions) and time (development) provides some common ground for dialogue and interconnection between various perspectives and disciplines.

This special session aims, on the one hand, to introduce the family dimension in the analysis of regional development and, on the other hand, to take in spatial reflections on family and development. There is definitely a starting point since much has been said about family and regional development. This meeting is a cross road for prospective cognitive models that integrate family and regional development, methods of observation that allow to test ideas and decision support tools that consider the dynamics and effectiveness of family capital.
Topics

1. Family, education and development of people and places
2. Labor Market, Migration and Family
3. Family, social security and welfare
4. Regional family models and regional competitiveness
4. Spatial and temporal evolution of family businesses

Organizer: Tomaz Ponce Dentinho (tomazdentinho@uac.pt)