The objectives of the European Union for rail freight are clearly expressed in successive White Papers, particularly the one published in 2011. This expected modal shift, mainly in favour of rail transport, reflects a desire to reverse past trends, in which road transport has become very dominant. In order for this ambition to amount to more than wishful thinking, the EU has sought to develop intra-modal competition to revitalise this sector.

However, in light of the unrelenting strong intermodal competition, mainly from road transport, one cannot help but question the European Union’s objectives. To what extent will rail freight transport be able to expand its relevance?

These topics will be addressed in the 4th TransportNet Railway Seminar “Rail Freight: the Thwarted Ambitions of EU” on March 11, 2016, in Karlsruhe. Presentations will be given by practitioners as well as academics, with ensuing discussions by all participants.

The seminar is free of charge, but registration is compulsory. Full information and registration possibilities are available on the seminar website.

URBAN DIALOGUES: CREATING INCLUSIVE URBAN SPACES IN UNCERTAIN GLOBAL TIMES

UK coordinator: Dr Sarah Ayres (University of Bristol, UK)

Brazilian coordinator: Professor Clélio Campolina Diniz (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)

Dates and venue: 3-6^th May 2016 at Center for Regional Development and Planning at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horitonte, Brazil

Workshop details:

This workshop will explore the construction of inclusive urban spaces in uncertain global times. One of the major impacts of the global economic crisis is the way it has deepened inequalities at a time when the state’s capacity for public intervention to tackle inequality has diminished. These developments raise questions about what forms of governance step in when the state withdraws and how urban policy can be developed to reflect the interests of all. To address these issues further research is needed to evaluate the opportunities and challenges ahead. There is a need to reflect on the usefulness of previous urban development approaches and explore the potential for alternative structures in both established (UK) and emerging (Brazil) economies. This multi-disciplinary workshop will promote scientific excellence and international collaboration in the field of urban governance with a view to informing future policy in a way that will enrich the lives and wellbeing of all those living in cities.

The workshop is being coordinated by Dr Sarah Ayres (University of Bristol, UK) and Professor Clélio Campolina Diniz (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) and will have contributions from other researchers, including Professors Roberto Luís de Melo Monte-Mór and Heloísa Soares de Moura Costa (Federal University Minas Gerais, Brazil), and Dr John Harrison (Loughborough University, UK) and Dr Stephen Hincks (University of Manchester, UK).

The workshop will provide a unique opportunity for sharing research expertise and networking. During the workshop early career researchers will have the opportunity to present their research in a multi-disciplinary setting and discuss this with established researchers from the UK and Brazil. There will be a focus on building up links for future collaborations. Participants will be selected on the basis of their research potential and ability to pursue longer term research partnerships.

Available funding:

The British Council and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) will cover the costs related to the participation to the workshop, including accommodation and meals and will provide travel and visa expenses up to £1000 (for UK participants) and £250 (approximately 1400 Brazilian Real for Brazilian participants).

Application and Deadline: The full application from must be completed and submitted by Friday 19^th February 2016 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Full details about the workshop and the application form can be found here: https://www.britishcouncil.org/education/science/current-opportunities/workshop-inclusive-urbanisation

Eligibility Criteria:

- Applications must be submitted using the Researcher Links application form

- Applications must be submitted before the above deadline

- Participants must be early career researchers: Early Career Researchers are defined as holding a PhD (or having equivalent research experience) and having up to 10 years post-PhD research experience.

- Participants must have a research or academic position (either a permanent post, research contract, or fellowship etc) at a recognised research institution either in the UK or in Brazil. 

Dear colleagues,

We are organizing the next INFER Annual Conference as part of the scientific activities supported by the CREIP research center (www.urv.cat/creip). INFER AC will take place in Reus, at the Faculty of Business and Economics of the Rovira i Virgili University in June 2016 (8th, 9th and 10th).

The INFER Annual Conference will include 15 special sessions with a wide variety of topics. Here you have the list of these sessions and the organisers.
 

1. SIMBIEN Network "Sustainability of the welfare state and intra and intergenerational redistribution of income": Hèctor Sala (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona & Xarxa de Recerca en Economia i Polítiques Públiques) and Ció Patxot (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona & Xarxa de Recerca en Economia i Polítiques Públiques).
2. “Fiscal Policy and Financial Markets”: Andreea Stoian (Bucharest University of Economic Studies) and David Duffy (University of Ulster).
3. “Firm Location and Relocation Processes”: Camélia Turcu (Université d’Orléans) and Josep-Maria Arauzo-Carod (Universitat Rovira i Virgili).
4. “Economic History”: Jordi Guilera (Lisbon University).
5. “The Eurozone crisis: how will it end?”: Alberto Bagnai (Università degli Studi "G. d'Annunzio").
6. “Spatial Econometrics”: Miguel Manjón (Universitat Rovira i Virgili), Oscar Martínez (Universitat Rovira i Virgili) and Karen Miranda (Universitat Rovira i Virgili).
7. “Creative Industries”: Rafael Boix (Universitat de València) Josep-Maria Arauzo-Carod (Universitat Rovira i Virgili).
8. “University Spin-offs. Results of entrepreneurship in academia”: Pere Segarra (Entrepreneurship Chair: Universitat Rovira i Virgili) and Judit Albiol (Entrepreneurship Chair: Universitat Rovira i Virgili).
9. “The Financial Cycle: Assessment by Early Warning Systems and Consequences”: Virginie Coudert (Banque de France and University of Paris West Nanterre la Défense).
10. “Economic Culture of Industry Companies”: Miguel Ángel Pérez Benedito (Universitat de València).
11. “Fiscal Policy Convergence in the European Union”: Bernd Theilen (Universitat Rovira i Virgili).
12. “Policy regimes and forecasting”: Peter Claeys (Vrije Universiteit Brussel).
13. "Network Configurations, Location, Innovation and Time": F. Xavier Molina-Morales (Universitat Jaume I), Angeles Montoro-Sánchez (Complutense University of Madrid) and Isabel Díez-Vial (Complutense University of Madrid).
14. “Energy Economics”: Maria Llop (Energy and Development Chair: Universitat Rovira i Virgili)
15. “Growth prospects and trends in terms of entrepreneurial typology”: Pere Segarra (Entrepreneurship Chair: Universitat Rovira i Virgili) and Judit Albiol (Entrepreneurship Chair: Universitat Rovira i Virgili).

The INFER Annual Conference will include keynote speeches by Prof. Guillem López Casasnovas (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Prof.Thierry Mayer (SciencesPo), and Prof.Diego Puga (CEMFI).
 
Remember that submissions to special and ordinary sessions must be send to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 29th February. For further updates please visit:
 
http://wwwa.fundacio.urv.cat/congressos/infer-conference/
 
Kind regards,
Josep-Maria Arauzo-Carod
Universitat Rovira i Virgili & CREIP

Dear NECTAR friends,

The deadline for submission of abstracts to the NECTAR Cluster 1 workshop on “The wider economic and social impacts of transport networks” has been extended. The organizers are accepting abstracts till the 29^th of January 2016. Please find enclosed the updated call for papers.

Best wishes,

Ana Condeço-Mehorado

NECTAR secretary

Call for Submissions

PRSCO Award for Best Paper by a Young Regional Scientist [PDF][MS-Word]

The Pacific Regional Science Conference Organisation (PRSCO) offers a Best Paper Award annually. The Award is aimed at encouraging young regional scientists within the Asia-Pacific region to participate in research within the PRSCO community and to achieve research excellence. The best paper prize was first awarded in 2015, and PRSCO now invites submissions for the 2016 Award.

The 2016 Award will be made for the best submission to the PRSCO Best Paper competition by a young regional scientist, under the age of 33 (on July 1, 2016), who is from a PRSCO-relevant part of the world.The Award rules can be found on the PRSCO web site.

The author of the winning paper will be expected to present their paper at the 2016 PRSCO Summer Institute to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, June 27-29, 2016. The winning paper will be announced by May 6, 2016. The decision of the selection committee will be final.

Eligible authors who wish to submit a paper to the 2016 PRSCO Best Paper competition should email a pdf copy of their paper to the PRSCO Executive Secretary (Hiroyuki SHIBUSAWA at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) by no later than Thursday, March 24, 2016.

Submissions should include a cover page with the paper’s title, the author’s full name, affiliation, and contact details. Award applicants should either: state that the paper is single-authored; or provide the name of the co-author(s), together with evidence that the applicant is the lead author and has contributed over 70 per cent of the paper’s content. The applicant should also affirm that they meet the Award’s age criterion.


List of Winners
2015 Andrés Castaño Zuluaga (the Catholic University of the North at Antofagasta, Chile)
Paper Title “The effect of the spatial density of firms on gender wage gap”

The call for abstracts for the 45th Annual Conference of the RSAI-BIS is displayed below.  For a PDF copy please click here.  Online abstract submissions can be made here.  A call for a special session on "Spatial analysis and coastal economies" is available here.

Dear NECTAR friends,

The deadline for submission of abstracts to the NECTAR Cluster 8 workshop on “Big data: a new opportunity for urban transport and mobility policies” has been extended. The organizers are accepting abstracts till the 31^st of January, 2016. Please find enclosed the updated call for papers.

Best wishes,

Ana Condeço-Melhorado

NECTAR secretary

Dear NECTAR friends,

The deadline for submission of abstracts to the NECTAR Cluster 8 special session on “Mobile phones, travel and transportation” at the Mobile Tartu International Conference has been extended. The organizers are accepting abstracts till the 29th of January, 2016. Please find enclosed the updated call for papers.

Best wishes,

Ana Condeço-Mehorado

NECTAR secretary

Job opportunity for a Senior Research Assistant based in the School of Computing, Engineering and Science at the University of South Wales and funded by the ESRC (WISERD Civil Society).

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AMQ294/senior-research-assistant-wiserd/

The post is funded for 3 years from April 2016 in the first instance and the appointed person will be part of a pan-university ESRC-funded research programme focusing on Civil Society (WISERD) with the principal aim of deriving small area estimates of social capital in Wales.

Further details regarding the post can be found at:

https://jobs.southwales.ac.uk/vacancies/2577/senior_research_assistant_wiserd

The closing date is 22^nd January 2016. Informal enquiries should be made to Professor Gary Higgs (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

ERSA/RSAI Workshop 2015 Barcelona Workshop on Regional and Urban Economics:

Spatial Perspectives of Human Capital

November 26^th-27^th 2015, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Barcelona,

On November, 26^th and 27^th 2015, AQR-IREA hosted the ERSA/RSAI Workshop 2015 Barcelona Workshop on Regional and Urban Economics on Spatial Perspectives of Human Capital at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Barcelona. The workshop benefited from the support of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) and the European Regional Science Association (ERSA).

Several cutting-edge research papers focused on the interconnections between Space and Human Capital were presented in Barcelona by both Senior and Young researchers. Overall, around 60 scholars and researchers attended the workshop. Its aim was to bring together researchers in urban and regional economics, as well as in other interrelated disciplines such as labour and education economics. This year the AQR’s workshop was focused on the broad concept of human capital and its interrelations with space play a fundamental role.

In the sixth edition of the AQR’s workshop, among the presenters, we had the pleasure to host up to six PhD students from different European Institutions. They presented and discussed their works with senior researchers in the field. Thanks to the financial support of the RSAI’s “Nurturing New Talent Initiative”, the workshop covered all expenses of talented young researchers and fostered their participation in this unique international scientific meeting.

Over two days twelve exciting and high quality papers were scheduled. Together with researchers from several countries, Stephen Gibbons (Department of Geography and Environment, SERC and CEP, LSE) contributed to the workshop with a Keynote Speech where he showed his worldwide recognized expertise on the topic.

On the 26^th, the agenda of the event started with an opening ceremony, chaired by the vice-dean of research of the University of Barcelona, Dr. Jesús Marín. The Director of the AQR Research Group, Dr. Enrique López-Bazo and the coordinator of the workshop, Dr. Antonio Di Paolo, introduced the workshop to all attendants.

The first contributed session was focused on “schools and neighbourhoods” and included two presentations, by Marco Bertoni (Università degli Studi di Padova) and Konstantinos Tatsiramos (University of Nottingham), respectively. Next, the second contributed session was centred on the issue of mobility of human capital and comprised three works on the topic, which were presented by Massimiliano Bratti Università degli Studi di Milano), Umut Turk (a PhD student at the University of Verona) and Elise Brezis (Bar-Ilan University).

In the third session we had two papers on the strictly related issue of migration, which were presented by a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute, Zhiling Wang, and by a very recent PhD graduated from Università degli Studi Sapienza, Dr. Stefania Borelli. The fourth and last contributed session of the day covered research issue that go beyond the labour market. Specifically, Ylenia Brilli (University of Gothenburg) presented a paper on the relationship between education and crime across Italian regions, while Rui Dang (a PhD student at RWI) presented a work on the effect of education on health.

On the 27^th, the workshop started with the presentation of the 2015 Keynote Speaker, Stephen Gibbons (Department of Geography and Environment, SERC and CEP, LSE), who gave a very interesting talk about one of the many issues that he covered in his research activities: the estimation of neighbourhood effects on education and human capital formation. After reviewing some of the existing evidence on the issue that was presented in his previous works, Professor Gibbons highlighted the main empirical challenging in the estimation of neighbourhood effects and then concluded discussing some recent results obtained by other researchers. The fifth and last contributed session contained three papers related to issues of agglomeration and spatial sorting, which were presented by Joan Monràs (Sciences Po), Francesco Berlingeri (PhD student at ZEW) and Anja Rossen (PhD student at HWWI).

The ERSA/RSAI 2015 Barcelona Workshop on Regional and Urban Economics has been, in our view, not only a success but also a further step towards the expansion of high impact activities of Regional Science. This year’s meeting has also achieved the key objective of Nurturing Talent by investing in the next generation of Regional Scientists.

More detailed information about this last edition of the workshop is available at the website: http://www.ub.edu/aqr/anterior/workshop2015/ .

We hope to meet you again in Barcelona for the 2016 edition, which will be focused on another hot topic related with Urban and Regional Economics.