Ann Reg Sci (2009) 43:1–3 DOI 10.1007/s00168-007-0202-y EDITORIAL Editorial note: special issue on regional prices Georg Hirte Accepted: 5 December 2007 / Published online: 11 January 2008 © Springer-Verlag 2008 For more than one century regional scienctists have been working on spatial prices. This research has generated a rich world of theoretical results and empirical evidence clearly showing that regional price differences affect all kinds of economic activi- ties. This concerns, for example, the location decision of firms (e.g., Launhardt 1885, Weber 1909), the internal structure of cities (e.g., Alonso 1964) or the spatial pattern of economic activities including flows of goods and services (e.g., Krugman 1991). On the other hand there is a large literature in regional science focusing on the causes of explaining spatial price differences such as differences in technology, local costs and taxes, price setting behavior of firms (e.g., Hotelling 1929), differences in local amenities (e.g., Roback 1982) or transportation costs and differences in agglomeration effects (e.g., Krugman 1991). Despite this excellent body of knowledge and the well established importance of regional prices, data on regional prices are hardly available, except for wages and prices for building land or, sometimes, housing prices. This constitutes an obstacle for empirical research in regional science and other fields of economics, such as fis- cal federalism or social policy. Against this background the German speaking section (GfR) of the European Regional Science Association International (ERSA) and the Institute of Employment Research (IAB) of the German Federal Labour Office jointly organized a workshop on “Regional Prices”, which took place in Dresden in July 2006. The idea was, first, to collect some stimulating papers on regional prices and, second, to bring together empirical researchers from the Statistical Offices and empiri- cal scientists to discuss how to deal with the problem of lacking price data. Tönu Puu accepted the invitation to give the keynote speech. The papers collected in this special issue were all presented at this workshop and were peer-reviewed. They are connected to different and prominent fields of research in regional prices. G. Hirte (B ) Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany e-mail: georg.hirte@tu-dresden.de 123