Midterm - Quiz # 3 (Geog.207)

PART I (Mini-Questions) 15 Points

Select 5 (five) from the following 7 items/individuals (3 points each) for "two-sentence answers". First, please identify the term's conceptual meaning or one of the person's conceptual contributions. In a second sentence, please suggest why this concept(-ualization) may be relevant or how it may be used in Economic Geography. (Use the back of this page if needed)

(1) Engel's Curve Effect or "Engel's Law"

Goodall, p.153 and class notes: With rising incomes, the share of expenditures for food (and, by extension, other) products declines. The resulting shift in expenditures affects demand patterns and employment structures.

(2) Edward L. Ullman

This VIP was not merely a geographer in this Department, but has contributed greatly to the development of transportation and urban geography. In class, we discussed his suggestion that "spatial interaction" is based on

1. complementarity between regions and locations
2. transferability
3. the (lack of) intervening opportunities

see also: Goodall, p.485

(3) "Product Cycle"

-- was discussed in assigned readings from H&I in various places. -- associated with observed regularities in the way in which the production and marketing of products change during the life of a product and thereby change their interaction with and demands on their environment... from innovation through mass production and mass marketing to decline and replacement.

(4) Explain the 2 meanings of "economies" by referring to the difference between "local economies" and "localization economies".

(1) the economies of regions (as aggregates of interrelated economic activities) "The economy of Seattle"
(2) in the sense of economizing, savings, cost reductions etc, as used in: agglomeration economies, scale economies, localization economies.

(5) "General Fertility Rate"

see Goodall, p.170

(6) "Backward Linkages"

p.270 in Goodall
linkages to suppliers of inputs (as different from forward linkages to customers of outputs)
part of economic interdependence system; useful concept to differentiate direction of flows in complex economies.

(7) What is a "theory"?

Goodall, p.469;
something like: an explanatory statement comprising a deductively connected set of laws or propositions which relate (dependent and independent) variables to each other based on combinations of observations and deductions.

PART II (Mini-Essay) 15 Points

Please respond to one of the following two questions: (Use the back of this page for your answer; please write legibly)

1. Change: It could be argued that social scientists' ultimate interest is in understanding "change" in all its complexity, and that geographers' assigned task is to inject the notion of "spatial differentiation" into this effort to understand societal changes.

Discuss the role which "we" (including our textbook authors) have assigned to
(a) the concept of "structure" and/or
(b) the distinction between the "short-run" and the "long-run"
as auxiliary, intermediate conceptual tools supposed to help us (i.e. economic geographers) to sort out processes of complex economic change.

[A variety of issues and facets related to this questions were discussed in class (with a lot of backup discussion in the text). The emphasis was on the need to recognize "patterns" and regularities in the way in which the economy changes over time. A major example was the "three-sector-hypthesis" or, more generally, the observed regularities in employment shifts between economic sectors. Differences between different "perspectives" of "structure" (e.g. composition versus interdependence) and different time-horizons (short versus long-run) needed for adjustments (and thereby change) in the economy could be useful ways in achieving some depth in the answer.]

or

2. Location: Selecting appropriate locations and suitable sites for private and/or public activities and facilities involves numerous variables. Thus, satisfactory explanations of locational behaviors have less to do with instantaneous decisions or points in triangles and more with sequential processes of learning, sorting and narrowing.

Make a concerted attempt to combine insights and analytical steps derived from Alfred Weber's theory of industrial location with some other ideas and approaches to the location problem (as extensively covered in your readings) in search of a process-oriented locational explanation that is suited to capture some of the complexity of real-world locational behaviors.

[we have had extensive coverage of a variety of locational perspectives in class, but the emphasis so fgar was on what we called "classical" location theory which emphasizes the role of spatial frictions, land use and scale/ agglomeration effects. I selected this question since so many of our 207 members have selected location problems for their projects and therefore have (or should have) read the assigned readings in Healey + Ilbery on Location (e.g. pp.23 and thereafter; and ch.10 -- as well as many other parts) particularly carefully. There were two strong hints in the question (parallel to our discussion on Wednesday, February 12 -- please compare your classnotes), namely that (a) the classical, heavily geometrical (Alfred) Weber model might be a good start in explaining certain types of location outcomes, but that other, for example behavioral or organizational explanations have to take over where the classical model finds its limitations, for example as we have to deal with the questions of corporate/organizational structure or with uncertainty. (b) The second hint related to the "process" nature of locational behavior, namely that constraints evolve over time, that decision-makers are gathering information, learning, setting intermediate constraints, narrowing down locational solutions etc. etc., i.e. are involved in a "process over time" rather than making a quick, computer-generated decision at a point in time.]

BONUS:

Briefly suggest in what way your planned "case study" will not just amplify and continue the preparation of your "concentration" but will permit you to explore one of the important issues or questions which you delineated during the past weeks in more depth with the help of a "real-world" context:

[To be totally honest, I wanted to keep alive the topic of how to move from your more general and conceptual "concentration" level of discourse to the much narrower perspective of a particular issue or question to be investigated in a specific "real-world" context. I suppose I wanted to remind you to return to this specification issue over the long weekend. Thanks for doing so!]