Spotlight on the region analytical contributions on regional development.

Regional science has, in its great history since the 1950s, made a decisive contribution to a better scientific understanding of spatial development issues and dynamics and to a more effective implementation of knowledge-based regional policy in many countries of the world, in both developed and developing nations on our planet. This special issue of the annals of regional science, titled "Spotlight on the Region", celebrates the scholarly importance and impact of the late Roger Stough on regional science. The issue is comprised of fourteen self-standing on regional and urban development and highlights the critical importance of regional and urban dimensions in sustainable development. They confirm once more the seminal significance of the contributions of one of the great giants in regional science, Roger Stough.

Unemployment in Rural Europe: A Machine Learning Perspective.

This paper aims to provide policy-relevant findings that can contribute to the resilience of rural regions by discovering the main individual-level factors related to unemployment in those areas through the use of a set of machine learning techniques. Unemployment status is predicted using tree-based classification models: namely, classification tree, bootstrap aggregation, random forest, gradient boosting, and stochastic gradient boosting. The results are further analyzed using inferential techniques such as SHAP value analysis. Results suggest that access to training programmes can mitigate the labor market inequalities caused by differences in education levels, gender, age, alongside with parental education levels. The results also show how such inequalities are even larger for various subgroups detected by the employed algorithms.