Regional science: What matters? which matters?

Abstract

It is often taken for granted that the year 1956 heralds the birth of regional science. In this year Walter Isards classic Location and Space-Economy was published. Admittedly, Isard had already published some noteworthy articles in preceding years. In 1949, he published a first major contribution to the foundations of early regional science, in his article The General Theory of Location and Space Economy, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. His article Interregional and Regional Input-Output Analysis: A Model of a Space-Economy, published in1951 in the Review of Economics and Statistics (vol. 33, pp. 318-328), was also a remarkable scholarly achievement. The same holds for his article Location Theory and Trade Theory: Short-run Analysis, published in 1954 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (vol. 68, pp. 305-320).