Geoffrey J.D. Hewings

Geoffrey J.D. Hewings' is Professor of Geography and Regional Science, of Economics, of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is also the Director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory.

Early life and education

Geoffrey Hewings was born in Wales into a family where successive generations had worked in the coal mines near Cwmbran. He grew up in post-war London, attending high school there and spending several weeks each summer with his grandparents in Wales. His passion for football (soccer) was such that he became the youngest qualified referee in England at the age of 16. He also spent vacation time in Scotland, working as a grouse beater (although often directing the birds away from the folks who were there to shoot them) and helping in the preservation of the endangered osprey. His parents and sisters emigrated to Canada in 1958, but he remained behind to in London to finish high school.Before going to university, he took a year off, working in a bookstore in Fleet Street and spending almost all that he earned attending symphony concerts and opera two to three times each week. After graduating from the University of Birmingham, he moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington where he obtained his MA and PhD. While there, he also worked as an announcer and Seattle Symphony reviewer on KRAB-FM, a community-owned radio station. For the last three years in Seattle, he commuted from Bainbridge Island to the campus by ferry on an ancient Vespa motorcycle.

In 1968, Geoffrey taught summer school at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where he first met Adrianna; they were married in 1970 in England during an 18-month tenure at the University of Kent in Canterbury. In 1971, they emigrated to Canada where Geoffrey taught at the University of Toronto; in 1974, Adrianna and Geoffrey adopted her children, John, Matthew and Aaron and later that year moved to Urbana where he was appointed to the University of Illinois.

Academic career and contributions

He was promoted to full professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983. He assumed the headship of the geography department the same year. He was later appointed in the departments of urban and regional planning and in economics. In 2006, he moved half his line to the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. In 1989, with Philip Israilevich from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Geoffrey Hewings formed the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL), a graduate students research center in regional science and a cooperative venture between the Fed and the University of Illinois until 2004. REAL is Geoffrey’s dearest achievement. Since its inception, REAL has provided at least two years (and usually more) support for 38 doctoral students from agricultural economics, economics, geography and urban and regional planning, welcomed 8 "bolsa sandwiche" PhD students from Brazil who spent one year at REAL working on their doctoral dissertations and hosted over 100 international visitors (visiting students, visiting scholars and visiting professors) who stayed three months or more. At any one time, from 15-30 people will be in residence.REAL's mission is to provide timely, high quality analytical economic information for a variety of uses such as public policy decision making by public sector agencies and for strategic marketing in the private sector. REAL's capabilities revolve around comprehensive state and metropolitan models that integrate econometric and input/output analysis to provide for both impact and forecasting analyses. While REAL's primary focus has been on the economies of the Midwest, REAL has collaborated in the development of models for several regions on the east coast. In addition, two models have been constructed for various states in Brazil and a third is under construction. A model for the Jakarta Metropolitan region is also under construction. REAL draws its staff from both cooperating institutions. Advanced graduate students in the fields of economics, geography, urban and regional planning, computer science and mathematics are also employed on projects, many of which become the basis for theses and dissertations. While Geoffrey has a profound respect for the wide range of regional science techniques, his specialty lies in the field of general equilibrium and input/output analysis. These techniques allow him to build regional economic models that serve as valuable tools for public sector agencies and for strategic marketing in the private sector by analyzing economic conditions and providing forecasts at the local level.

Geoffrey Hewings has served as President, Executive Director and Executive Secretary of the Regional Science Association International in the past. In order to recognize Geoffrey’s academic works and more especially his devotion to introducing numerous graduate students to Regional Science and mentoring them as young scholars, the North American Regional Science Council bestows every year an award in his name to a scholar who has recently completed his doctoral studies and has made distinguished contributions to Regional Science research.

elected works

*Geoffrey Hewings, Michael Sonis, David E. Boyce (eds.): Trade, Networks and Hierarchies : Modeling Regional Interregional Economies [Advances in Spatial Science] (Springer Verlag, 2002)
*Joaquim J. M. Guilhoto, Geoffrey J. D. Hewings (eds.): Structure and Structural Change in the Brazilian Economy (Ashgate Publishing Company ,2001)

*Geoffrey Hewings, Michael Sonis, Moss Madden (eds.): Understanding and Interpreting Economic Structure [Advances in Spatial Science] (Springer Verlag, 1999)

*Moss Madden, Geoffrey J. Hewings (eds.): Social and Demographic Accounting (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

*Geoffrey J.D. Hewings and Moss Madden (eds.) Social and Demographic Accounting [Collection of original articles in honor of the 1984 Nobel Laureate in Economics] (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

*John J. Ll. Dewhurst, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings and Rodney C. Jensen (eds.): Regional Input-Output Modelling: New Developments and Interpretations (Avebury, 1991)

*Isao Orishimo, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Peter Nijkamp (eds.): Information Technology : Social and Spatial Perspectives : Proceedings [Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Vol 315] (Springer Verlag, 1988)

*Geoffrey J.D. Hewings: Regional Input-Output Analysis [Scientific Geography Series, Vol 6] (Sage Publications, 1986)

*John Rees, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, and Howard A. Stafford (eds.): Industrial Location and Regional Systems (Greenwood Publishing Group ,1981)

*Geoffrey J.D. Hewings: Regional Industrial Analysis and Development (Palgrave, 1977)

*Ricardo Gazel, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings and Michael Sonis, "Trade, sensitivity and feedbacks: interregional impacts of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement," in J.C.J.M. van den Bergh, P. Nijkamp and P. Rietveld (eds) Recent Advances in Spatial Equilibrium Modeling (Springer-Verlag, 1996)

*Geoffrey J.D. Hewings and Ramamohan Mahidhara, "Economic impacts: lost income, ripple effects and recovery," in S. Changnon (ed.) The Great Flood of 1993, (Westview Press, 1996)

*Michael Sonis, Jiemin Guo and Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, "Comparative analysis of China's metropolitan economies: an input-output perspective" in M. Chatterji and Y. Kaizhong (eds) Regional Science in Developing Economies (Macmillan, 1997)

*Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Philip R. Israilevich, Michael Sonis and Graham R. Schindler, "Structural change in a metropolitan economy: the Chicago region, 1975-2010," in S. Bertuglia, S. Lombardo and P. Nijkamp (eds) Spatial Effects of Innovative Behaviour (Springer-Verlag, 1997)

*Michael Sonis, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings and Eduardo Haddad, "The region versus the rest of the economy: the extraction method," in H. Kohno, J. Poot, P. Nijkamp (eds) Regional Cohesion and Competition in the Process of Globalization (forthcoming, Springer-Verlag, 1997)

ources

*http://www.real.uiuc.edu/ [http://www.real.uiuc.edu/]

*http://www.regionalscience.org/CompNAwards/hewingsaward.htm [http://www.regionalscience.org/CompNAwards/hewingsaward.htm]

*http://www.igpa.uiuc.edu [http://www.igpa.uiuc.edu]