It is widely known that optimal control techniques are useful to measure the performance of macroeconomic policy. This paper examines how the method could be applies them to the evaluation of the public investment expenditures conducted by the local government of Choongbook Province in Korea. The numerical example illustrates the usefulness of the methods for the evaluation of the regional economic policies suggesting the main findings as follows: (1) If the local government of Choongbook Province had increased the public investment expenditures allowing the budget deficits for the first three to four years during the period between 1985 and 1990, its GRDP would have early risen to the ratio of more than three percent of Korea's total GDP. (2) The additonal welfare losses incurred by not following the optimal policy were 0.191 in 1986, 0.607 in 1987, 1.585 in 1988, and 0.132 in 1989, indicating that the public investment policy proves to be the best in 1989 and the worst in 1988.

The strategy of regional industrial specialization is empirically evaluated by examining the relationship between regional industrial structures and economic performances. The regional industrial structure is measured by three industrial diversity indices such as ogive approach, entropy maximizing approach, and economic growth and employment instability in 12 regions is analyzed. According to the time series analysis, we found that the region with more diversified industrial structure experiences more stable in employment. Otherwise, the growth rate of the region with more simplified industrial structure is higher. Therefore, the strategy of industrial specialization is implemented in order to pursuit a rapid economic growth in the short run.

A rapid growth of science parks worldwide since 1980s is caused by both the widespread perception that technological innovation is the essential element for the economic development and the notified cases of successful high technology cluster like Silicon Valley. Analyzed in terms of R & D employment and expenditure, new product launches, patent registration, qualifications of the founder, self-rated technological level and the like, the technological level of the science parks in the U.K. reveals very high. While nealy half of the firms on the science parks are represented to be formally linked with universities, the use of the library is referred most frequently among the types of the linkages. R & D links such as contract research, sponsored research, test and analysis were rarely mentioned. Summing up, science parks play an important role for the development of high-tech industries with superior technological characteristics. But in reatlity, there remains so much difference among the individual parks and their location. In addition the individual parks and their location. In addition, institutionalization of the technology transfer with univeristies that only when the science parks are based on the innovative environment they can be successful in the capability of the technological innovation.

It is generally believed that there is a trade-off between economic growth and environmental quality since pollutants are generated in the process of production and consumption of commodities. Several researchers have shown this prevailing belief using the short-term input-output models. The literature, however, shows that there have been few attempts to investigate the relationship using long-term forecasting models. This motivates the current paper. This paper attempts to build a reginal growth model in a partial equilibrium framework taking into consideration the requirements of capital invested for pollutant abatement. Model is largely neoclassical. Labor is assumed to move a region with high utility specified in regional per capita average was income and pollution level while capital is partially mobile to a region with high returns. The regional growth is explored in a phase diagram. The paper shows that there are two stable growth equilibria which a region can converge over time and that the equilibria are distinguished by the initial threshold capital stock that a region holds. If the initial capital stock of a region is over(under) than the threshold size, the region converges to the higher (lower) growth equilibrium over time. Moreover, based on this result an environmental quality enhancing policy is analyzed in the phase diagram. It has revealed that the policy calls for the relocation of growth equilibrium points, specifically speaking, it stimulates an increase in labor stock and a decrease in capital stock. Hence the paper has suggested that the prevailing belief which the environmental policy negatively impacts on a regional economic growth is not always true.

In this study, the present state of fiscal crisis for local governments after IMF is analyzed, firstly. its implications Characteristics of structural reform of finance after IMF bailout in Korea are examined, secondly. Since Korea was shocked by the currency crisis at the end of 1997, its local governments have also faced fiscal difficulties. The Depression of national and local economies led to decreases in tax revenues of local governments. And these shrunken revenues led to their expenditure cuts. Many investment plans were curtailed, and ordinary expenditures were also reduced sharply. The negative influences of the currency crisis on local government's finances can be examined in terms of fiscal revenue, fiscal spending, and debt burden. As a result many local governments are now experiencing fiscal stress, and some of them are even faced with fiscal crisis although the possibility of extreme measures, such as moratoriums or bankruptcies, is very slim. This is due in part to the weight of debt in local governments' budgets having remained small since the debt of local governments has been controlled by the central government. Another reason is that, central government, which functions as a lender of last resort for the local governments, will pay the debt for them. Also, without a legal system which stipulates the adjudication of bankruptcy for municipalities in Korea, local Korean governments have no legal right to declare bankruptcy. Although not a single municipality has fallen into insolvency, yet, this trend will continue to deepen as the recession continues and may lead to a situation where manu local governments fall into virtual bankruptcy in the near future, and its effects on society, as a whole, will be serious. Therefore, measures to prevent and overcome such an extreme situation are necessary, but both short-and long-term policies should be to cope with the current fiscal crisis and to prevent the deepening of the current situation.

Recently the concept of learning has become very fashionable among academics from different economic disciplines. Economic geographers and spatial planners joined this fashion by increasingly speaking about the 'learning region'. This paper makes clear that this learning region'. This paper makes clear that this learning region concept has been launched from three angles; as spatial outcome of grand societal changes, as spatial concentration of entrepreneurial learning for innovation and as regional development concept. Despite the deficits and flaws such a young concept is faced with, such as vague definitions, the lack of empirical research and an insufficiently clear separation from existing concepts, the learning region concept might provide economic geography with more insight in agglomeration effects, stronger links with policy-making and more knowledge on path dependency and thus on unravelling the distinction between 'good' and 'bad' industrial agglomerations.