Karl-Johan Lundquist

• Head of the Department
• Teaches on 5 courses

Presentation

Karl-Johan Lundquist is a professor in Human Geography and the head of department. He is since 2005 member of the board of Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund representing the faculties of Social science, Laws and School of economics and business administration in Lund. His research has been directed to fields in economic geography primarily focusing on different aspects of localization dynamics of economic activities; regional resources and international competitiveness of firms and regions; changing roles of externalities in the product life cycle, the role of new technologies and its diffusion pattern in time and space; technology shifts and regional development; regional welfare dimensions on long term structural change; and finally different aspects of growth, transport and emissions. In addition, since 2008 he has been visiting professor at Vienna school of Economics and Business working on theoretical and empirical aspects on European cross-border integration processes.

Lundquist teaching includes supervising of thesis and lectures on undergraduate, master and PhD level. His is course convener for the candidate level in economic geography and for the course in economic geography at the Candidate program in service management at Campus Helsingborg.

Current research projects

Lundquist current research activities fall mainly into three areas:

1) Explaining long term growth in regions (in cooperation with Lars-Olof Olander). Based on endogenous characteristics of regions, hierarchies and distances in regional systems and the systemic effects from national and international growth cycles and technology shifts, a conceptual framework and methods are developed to estimate expected growth in regions over time. Expected growth can be sorted out from unexpected, thereby displaying reasons for a surprising stability in regional hierarchies over long time and an understanding of mechanisms behind incremental regional change.

2) Cross-border regionalization processes (in cooperation with Michaela Trippl). This research has a special focus on innovation-driven integration processes and related policy implications. Conceptual frameworks as well as empirical analysis (comparative studies of the Centrope area and the Öresund region) has been developed and will be further developed the coming years.

3) Decomposing and forecasting freight transport CO2 emissions (in cooperation with Lars-Olof Olander and cross-disciplinary). This project focuses on the dynamic interrelations between GDP, structural change, technological factors and final effects on CO2-emissions during specific eras of economic development. Growth cycle theory is used to explain the relations between GDP variations over long time and underlying economic behavior. The aims is to find out whether this theory could contribute to the understanding of variations of GDP, freight transport work, technological investments and CO2-emissions over long time.