Chapter 14 The geography of contemporary racial hate crime: Place and space

Understanding the spatial structure of productivity: a hierarchical approach

Productivity is unevenly distributed across space, yet hierarchical approaches have rarely been used to study its spatial organization. This paper proposes a spatially explicit framework that applies the size–rank relationship to productivity and operationalises three complementary new indicators to answer: (i) whether the national productivity hierarchy is reproduced locally (vertical integration), (ii) how productivity is organized within local systems (core–periphery structure), and (iii) ...

Can’t shake it off: Earthquakes and social cohesion in Italy

Do earthquakes strengthen social cohesion or undermine it? While some theories suggest they strengthen social bonds, others suggest they lead to social disintegration. We add to the limited causal evidence on this phenomenon using the 2012 Northern Italy earthquake, and ex- ploit a unique dataset that captures different earthquake characteristics and multiple dimensions of social cohesion through behavioral measures. Difference-in-differences and event-study esti- mates show that the earthqua...

Delivering E-Nequalities: The Hidden Costs of Amazon and Logistics Development for Vulnerable Communities

As e-commerce has rapidly expanded worldwide, reshaping global logistics, municipalities facing economic decline have increasingly turned to logistics-led development strategies as a pathway to economic revitalisation. Yet, the sector’s local socio-environmental impacts remain understudied. This paper analyses Amazon’s logistics expansion in Italy to identify the predictors of facility location and the resulting local impacts. Using municipal-level data from 2006 to 2023, the analysis reveals...