Regional Science is the study of regional economies and their interactions with each other. Central issues include capital flows, trade, location of economic activity, growth, and regional conflicts.

What is RSERN and its mission

The Regional Science & Economic Research Network (RSERN) is a non-profit undertaking affiliated with the Graduate Program of Regional Science at Cornell University. The Network is intended to build a strong relationship with other economic and social research institutes around the world that share a similar goal. The goal and basic tenet of RSERN activities is to promote the “objective” and “scientific” approach of socio-economic analysis and policy with relevant spatial dimension.

Research, seminars, and trainings conducted by the RSERN are focused on economic and social research concerned with both analytical approaches and policy implications to problems that are specifically global, international, national, regional, urban or rural. The Network is intentionally designed to put the emphasis on policy formation and implementation to raise the welfare of the poor society under the increasingly more complex interrelations among economic agents in different countries and various regions.

Research topics in RSERN basically lay emphasis on any social science analysis that has a spatial dimension. They include, but are not limited to spatial dynamics, industrial complex, interregional flows and migration, regional impact, location theory and land use analysis, transportation and rural-urban economics, conflict and mediation analysis, environmental economics, social development, institutional economics, and geographical information systems.

From the early work of spatial analysis in 1930s, notably by Walter Christaller, to the work of Walter Isard from 1950s until today, the field of Regional Science has been growing steadily in developed and developing countries alike. Many of the regional science-based analysis have been applied by policy makers around the world, highlighting the recognition that spatial dimension is very important to account in any socio-economic policy. The political and economic realities of regional governments and local communities in the wake of globalization and growing regional decentralization can no longer rely on the analysis of a single discipline. They require a strongly multi-disciplinary approach.

This is the reason why a regional science-based analysis has been proven useful, and this is also the rationale why the work of RSERN goes beyond the rather restrictive world of economists.

RSERN global network

The global network of RSERN is built on the current and past research relations developed by the founding members of RSERN.

The institutions with which they have relations include the World Bank, the United Nations, National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, New York State government, Asian Development Bank, Triangle Institute, Tienbergen Peace Science Conference, Regional Science Association, American Economic Association, Social Science Research Council of Puerto Rico, Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics in Sao Paolo, Resource for the Future, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, International Food Policy Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Development Research Center of China’s State Council, Beida University in Beijing, Institute for Advanced Study at the United Nations University in Japan, Gakhusuin University in Tokyo.

The RSERN continues to expand the network, particularly with institutions in developing countries.

Founding members

Professors Iwan J. Azis, Kieran P. Donaghy, Walter Isard, and Sidney Saltzman