Original Thinking Lecture with Raquel Ortega-Argilés

Our Original Thinking Lecture series showcases some of the world-leading research from colleagues at Alliance MBS.

This event will be hosted by Professor Raquel Ortega-Argilés, Chair Regional Economic Development, and Director of the The Productivity Institute (TPI) Productivity Laboratory, at Alliance Manchester Business School.

Data-driven academic research for supporting Smart Specialisation, Industrial Policy, and Levelling-Up.

In recent decades, and especially because of the major shocks that our economies have suffered, there has been an increasing need for more data-driven academic work to help support policies. 

The Global Financial Crisis, globalisation, digitalisation and automation trends, Brexit, and Covid-19, all have, and are having, profound effects on our economies and societies.

However, the impacts of these shocks and trends are unevenly distributed between and within geographies, sectors and their value chains and labour markets. These uneven effects have been affecting the ways that societies operate, in some case creating social scarring, and examples of these can be found in narratives around the geographies of discontent, Brexit or left-behind places.  

Understanding these trends and their effects is important for improving the resilience of our countries and regional economic systems and ensuring a more balanced economic growth and prosperity that works for everyone.

In her inaugural lecture, Raquel will be presenting a series of data-driven tools and their applications designed to support and provide policy recommendations for the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the latest policy initiatives in Europe (Smart Specialisation, as part of the EC Cohesion Policy) and the UK (UK Levelling Up Strategy).  

From the construction of datasets and indicators to the implementation of novel techniques such as multiregional input-output or big data, the original thinking lecture will critically examine the advantages and limitations of academic data-driven research for preparing our economies for new challenges.  

Raquel Ortega-Argilés

Professor Raquel Ortega-Argilés was appointed Chair of Regional Economic Development at Alliance Manchester Business School in June 2022. She is based in the Innovation, Management and Policy (IMP) Division and is a member of both The Productivity Institute (TPI), and the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR). She is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

The award-winning academic previously held the Chair in Regional Economic Development at the City-REDI research institute at Birmingham Business School, and her current research work focuses on urban and regional inequalities and development, innovation and entrepreneurship. She also researches topical, current issues such as the regional impacts of Brexit and Covid-19 and the regional effects of the digital economy and automation.

Professor Ortega-Argilés has also previously held positions at the University of Birmingham, the University of Groningen, Technical University of Lisbon, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the Max-Planck Institute of Economics, and the University of Barcelona.

She is the holder of the 2019 Martin Beckmann Prize for the Best Paper published in Papers in Regional Science for her work on the economic exposure to Brexit in European regions, the 2016 Regional Studies Best Paper Award, and the 2021 Martin Beckmann Prize for the Best Paper published in Papers in Regional Science for her work on the regional dimensions of smart specialisation and the measurement of regional entrepreneurship ecosystems.

This event will be facilitated by Bart van Ark, Professor of Productivity Studies & Director of the Productivity Institute at Alliance MBS.