Economic Geography

It is critically important to engage in research that has
value to the applied research community (including in 
a service capacity), as well as to be expanding our basic
research understanding
I have enjoyed having one foot in the basic research community, and one foot in
the applied research community, but also a third foot in the community in a serv-
ice capacity. Readers who follow the link to my website will find lists of publica-
tions, and also a long list of consulting reports. Not listed on this website are my
efforts in the community as a member of a task force, board, or committee, where
my expertise in the academic side of my research has been extended into the
world of community service. It may be my department or this region, but there
has always been a strong pull to work with the community on research projects,
and these have informed my scholarly research and classroom teaching. These
types of community involvement have continuously led me to have types of knowl-
edge and understanding that I have used in the classroom, and in my publications,
as in my 2002 paper on cultural services (Beyers 2002).
A good example of this is the work that I’ve done with Dick Conway (a local
economic researcher) as a consultant on the economic impact of the Mariner’s
baseball team. The Mariner’s have threatened to leave Seattle several times, and
these threats precipitated King County (where Seattle is located) to hire us to do
economic impact studies of the team and its fans spending (Conway and Beyers
1994). We’ve done this several times, but a key point is that this analysis has been
focused upon by people in many other regions, by students, by writers, and
people are constantly calling to see if we’ve done an update, as they have hunger
for information about the economic impact of baseball. We have not done an
update since 1994. However, the point here is that doing work of this type leads
to public interest in your work, and as economic geographers we need to keep a
sharp eye on being in the press. Several years ago the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour
came to interview me about this study, at a time when there was a strike of the
major league players. After taping their show in my office, I got a call just before
they were to air my ten second sound bite worrying about labeling me as a geog-
rapher, as they said that would confuse their audience. So, after a long discussion,
we agreed that I’d be labeled ‘economic geographer’. It would be great if more
Approaching research methods in economic geography
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of us were engaged with our communities, so that the press would naturally turn
to us for information on the regional economy.