Every two years, the German-speaking economic geography community is invited to Rauischholzhausen Castle in Hesse, this time at the end of April for the 17th Rauischholzhausen Symposium on Economic Geography. The three-day event with a good 70 participants offered an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and information, framed by several very good presentations on papers about to be published.
Our Institute was represented with two presentations. Lennart Grün has presented his completed research work on the topic of hydrogen-powered aviation. The results of the research project show how emergent start-ups, in producing their own hydrogen-powered aircraft, follow distinctively different innovation processes than incumbent aircraft manufacturers. With the aim of enabling rapid market entry and achieving early learning effects, these start-ups rely on retrofits, gradual product scaling and feedback from technology users. The paper is currently in the review process.
Rolf Sternberg presented an empirical and largely completed but not yet submitted paper on the development of internal migration in Germany before, during and after the pandemic. The paper, written jointly by Anne Otto (IAB Saarbrücken and IWKK Hannover), Louis Knüpling (University of Utrecht) and the speaker, pursues two objectives: the typification of spatial migration patterns and the testing of three hypotheses on pandemic-related changes in these patterns (in particular with regard to remote working and the increased preference to live “in the country”). A few years after the pandemic, there are indeed empirical indications that migration patterns are becoming more stable in favour of rural areas.
