Regional Science Policy & Practice

Illuminating inequality: Heterogeneous effects of financial inclusion on urban-rural economic performance and economic resilience in Papua

Tuesday, Feb 10, 2026 by Ragdad Cani Miranti and Sri Juli Asdiyanti Regional Science Policy & Practice

This paper examines the spatial linkage between financial inclusion, economic performance, and economic resilience across 42 districts of Papua Island, integrating remote-sensing (nighttime lights) data with official statistics and PCA-based indices. It finds strong spatial heterogeneity and persistent within-district inequality, and recommends spatially targeted, sector-specific strategies.

Mapping obesity in women and chronic malnutrition in children across the municipalities of Bolivia: Spatial clusters and regionalization

Friday, Nov 1, 2024 by Katerine Restrepo Regional Science Policy & Practice

This paper investigates the spatial distribution of two nutritional indicators—obesity prevalence in women and chronic malnutrition in children—across the municipalities of Bolivia, identifying spatial clusters and deriving a regionalization to inform targeted policy.

Spatiotemporal analysis of regional inflation in an emerging country: The case of Indonesia

Saturday, Jan 1, 2022 by Harry Aginta Regional Science Policy & Practice

This study analyzes the spatiotemporal dynamics of regional inflation across Indonesian regions, characterizing how inflation co-moves over space and time and quantifying the role of spatial dependence and common factors. The findings inform the regional dimension of price stability and monetary policy in a large, heterogeneous archipelagic economy.

Regional Convergence, Spatial Scale, and Spatial Dependence: Evidence from Homicides and Personal Injuries in Colombia 2010-2018

Saturday, Nov 7, 2020 by Felipe Santos-Marquez and Carlos Mendez. Regional Science Policy & Practice

This paper studies regional convergence and spatial dependence of homicides and personal injuries in Colombia. In particular, through the lens of both classical and distributional convergence frameworks, two spatial scales are contrasted: municipalities and states. For both homicides and personal injuries, sigma convergence is only found at the state level. In contrast, beta convergence is found at both state and municipal level. The non‐parametric convergence framework highlights further contrasting patterns. For homicides at the state level, four convergence clusters are found, while two clusters are present at the municipal level.

Regional Convergence and Spatial Dependence across Subnational Regions of ASEAN: Evidence from Satellite Nighttime Light Data

Thursday, Aug 27, 2020 by Carlos Mendez and Felipe Santos Regional Science Policy & Practice

Satellite nighttime light data are increasingly used for evaluating the performance of economies in which official statics are non-existent, limited, or non-comparable. In this paper, we use a novel luminosity-based measure of GDP per capita to study regional convergence and spatial dependence across 274 subnational regions of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) over the 1998-2012 period. Specifically, we first evaluate the usefulness of this new luminosity indicator in the context of ASEAN regions.