Policy Geographies

• Peter Kedron – Arizona State University – Peter.Kedron@asu.edu
• Sarah Bardin – Arizona State University – sfbardin@asu.edu

How policies are made, what impacts they have when they are implemented, and whether they can be successfully transferred from one location to another are enduring, but challenging, questions. Each of these questions is also fundamentally geographic. Geography shapes economic policies, decision-making, and outcomes, and the effects of geography on policy contribute to uneven patterns of economic development and growth. Given the complex relationship between geography, policy, and economic activity, economic geographers are well-positioned to address questions about policy and the policymaking process. To act as a catalyst for that project, this theme seeks contributions from scholars developing, evaluating, or otherwise analysing the geography of policy and its impacts.

This theme leaders invite submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Data- Emerging Sources and Streams of Geographic Data for Policy Analysis
  • Novel spatial datasets
  • Methods and techniques for data integration across geographies
  • Data quality assessment and quality control
• Evidence - Evidenced-based Policy Evaluation across Geographies or Regions
  • Identification of successful policy interventions
  • Spatial methods for policy evaluation
  • Transfering or scaling policies to new geographies/regions
  • Comparative policy analysis
• Methods - New Ways of Approaching and Studying Policy
  • Methodological challenges to the spatial evaluation of policy
  • New approaches to the study of policies in and across regions
  • Spatial data science techniques for policy analysis
  • Meta-Analyses and Replication Studies of Economic Processes
• Interventions - Identifying Economic Effects Across Geographies
  • Causal evaluation through intervention-based research
  • Reviews of economic interventions
  • Geographic factors affecting economic interventions