From co-operative to competitive localism? The changing balance between equity and efficiency in local government under the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition

This paper considers whether there has been a shift in the balance between equity and efficiency in respect of decentralised public policy in England since the election of the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010. Drawing on the literature on policy decentralisation and fiscal federalism from both Political Science and Economics, reasons are discussed why a trade-off between equity and efficiency might be expected. The context of English local government then outlined, and consideration is then given to four areas of policy: business rate localisation, the ‘New Homes Bonus’, council tax benefit and social housing, and regional economic development. In each case, some shift in the balance away from concern with equity towards one with efficiency is discerned: whether or not this is desirable will prove a matter of political and moral, as well as scientific judgement.

Technological diversification and new innovators in European regions:evidence from patent data

This paper assesses the impact of regional technological diversification on the emergence of new innovators across EU regions. Integrating analyses from regional economics, economic geography and technological change literatures, we explore the role that the regional embeddedness of actors characterised by diverse technological competencies may have in fostering novel and sustained interactions leading to new technological combinations. In particular, we test whether greater technological diversification improve regional ‘combinatorial’ opportunities leading to the emergence of new innovators. The analysis is based on panel data obtained merging regional economic data from Eurostat and patent data from the CRIOS-PATSTAT database over the period 1997–2006, covering 178 regions across 10 EU Countries. Accounting for different measures of economic and innovative activity at the NUTS2 level, our findings suggest that the regional co-location of diverse technological competencies contributes to the entry of new innovators, thereby shaping technological change and industry dynamics. Thus, this paper brings to the fore a better understanding of the relationship between regional diversity and technological change.

The global competitiveness of regions

The aim of this book is to consider theoretically the notion of the global competitiveness of regions, as well as giving attention as to how such competitiveness may be empirically measured. With this in mind, the book has three specific objectives: first, to place the concept of regional competitiveness within the context of regional economic development theory; second, to present a rationale and method for quantifying the global competitiveness of regions; and, third, to undertake the most geographically widespread analysis of regional competitiveness differences across the globe. With regard to the third goal, the analysis incorporates more than 500 regions across Europe, North and South America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the so-called BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The importance of the concept of competitiveness has increased rapidly in recent years, with the issues surrounding it becoming, at the same time, more empirically refined and theoretically complex. The focus on regions reflects the growing consensus that they are the primary spatial units that compete to attract investment, and it is at the regional level that knowledge is circulated and transferred, resulting in agglomerations, or clusters, of industrial and service sector enterprises. This growing acknowledgement of the region’s role as a key spatial unit of organisation has led to attention turning to competitiveness at a more regional level. The book explores the results of the World Competitiveness Index of Regions (WCIR), covering the rankings and results of the 2014 edition. The WCIR provides a tool for analysing the development of a range of regional economies across the globe. It enables an illustration of the changing patterns of regional competitiveness on the international stage to be generated. In fundamental terms, the WCIR aims to produce an integrated and overall benchmark of the knowledge capacity, capability, and sustainability of each region, and the extent to which this knowledge is translated into economic value and transferred into the wealth of the citizens of each region.

Helyhez kötött kapcsolatok. Egy társadalmi kapcsolathálókon alapuló magyarázat a földrajzi munkamegosztás kialakulására = Ties of locality. An explanation of the development of the geographical division of labour based on social networks

A „földrajzi munkamegosztás” vagy „elhelyezkedés probléma” arra a kérdésre utal, miért alakulnak ki egy-egy gazdasági tevékenységre szakosodott földrajzi egységek, regionális gazdasági rendszerek. A hagyományos közgazdasági megközelítések a területek racionálisan kalkulálható komparatív előnyeit, a nyersanyagok vagy a piac közelségét, infrastrukturális adottságokat, útfüggőséget stb. szokták hangsúlyozni. A tanulmány szerzője a társadalmi kapcsolatok jelentőségét emeli ki, azt sugallja, hogy a területi specializálódás az egymással kapcsolatban álló, hasonlóan specializálódott többi szereplő nyomására alakul ki. A hipotézist két külföldön végzett eset tanulmány tapasztalatai alapján járja körül. ______________________ The question of "regional economic systems", "geographical division of labour" or "location problem" has an important literature. Economic approaches emphasize the rationally calculated advantages of the specialized industrial areas: the benefit of the exploitation of discovered resources, more cooperative relations, etc. The paper stresses the role of social networks in the location problem: economically specialized areas formed because of the suggestions and tips of connected enterprises, cooperative partners. The hypothesis is based on the experiences of two case studies, made in a Peruvian rural area and a Mexican modern industrial area.

The European Parliament, membership expansions, and organizational change

The European Union (EU) is an extraordinary achievement. From a regional economic organization, it grew into a polity within fifty years. The original EU of six members expanded incrementally to 27 over forty years, and it now comprises a population of almost 500 million people. While the five expansions of the European Economic Community/European Community/European Union (EU) have received considerable scholarly attention, surprisingly little attention has been given to their impacts on "Europe's" only legislative body, currently known as the European Parliament (EP). More specifically, little is known about how waves of new members (from widely diverse parties and national backgrounds) affected—and were affected by—the EP's organizational structure and its internal processes. The purpose of this study therefore is to help fill this gap by describing and explaining how the various EEC/EC/EU expansions or "membership shocks" (1973, 1981, 1986, 1995, and 2004) affected the EP's organizational structure and its internal Rules of Procedure (RoP). The central research question of this dissertation is the following: What were the major structural and procedural effects of the five membership expansions of what eventually became the European Union on the European Parliament? This dissertation answers this question by using concepts and measures drawn from organizational theory. While other studies have applied concepts and hypotheses from organizational theory to legislatures, such an approach has never been used to analyze the EP, which is conceptualized here as a "membership organization." This study, through an analysis of the EP, demonstrates that organization theory can help us fully understand the effects of membership expansions on any membership organization. That is, understanding how this particular organization responded to change can inform not only how others in this class (legislatures) do so, but how this process unfolds in a variety of times and places. The principal findings of this study are as follows: (1) EP staff growth revealed an interesting pattern: Staff did not increase concurrently with EP membership. That is, it turned out that the rate of membership growth exceeded the rate of staff increase, suggesting professionalization of EP staff and their relative empowerment vis-à-vis MEPs; (2) The number of rules and the precision within them increased; (3) the largest number of EP rule changes focused on increasing EP efficiency; and (4) The authority was centralized in the hands of EP leadership, that is, the EP President, the Conference of Presidents and also two major political groups.

Dynamics of investment negotiations between China and Japan : the China-Japan-Korea trilateral investment treaty and beyond

The investment agreement relationship between China and Japan is complex. The many intersecting and overlapping agreements can rightly be described as a "noodle bowl of agreements." The 1989 bilateral investment treaty (BIT) between China and Japan still stands. Japan can also free-ride on the negotiation outcome of China's BITs and free trade agreements (FTAs) with other countries by using the most-favored-nation (MFN) provision in the 1989 China-Japan BIT, which does not contain regional economic integration organization (REIO) exception rules. However, because the China-Japan BIT does not have investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), it may face implementation problems. The China-Japan-Korea trilateral investment treaty (CJK TIT), in force since 2014, made improvements upon the 1989 BIT, but Japan is not entirely satisfied with the outcome. For Japan, pre-establishment national treatment (NT) and prohibition of various types of performance requirements are the most important negotiation items, but the CJK TIT insufficiently addressed those problems. Moreover, because the CJK TIT has MFN provisions with an REIO exception rule, better access to investment markets brought about by future FTAs such as the China-Korea FTA and the EU-China FTA cannot be imported into CJK TIT. Hence, in the long run, Japan needs to pursue an FTA investment chapter with China that covers both MFN and ISDS.

Three Essays on Taxation, Growth and Consumption

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine three distributional issues in macroeconomics. First I explore the effects fiscal federalism on economic growth across regions in China. Using the comprehensive official data set of China for 31 regions from 1952 until 1999, I investigate a number of indicators used by the literature to measure federalism and find robust support for only one such measure: the ratio of local total revenue to local tax revenue. Using a difference-in-difference approach and exploiting the two-year gap in the implementation of a tax reform across different regions of China, I also identify a positive relationship between fiscal federalism and regional economic growth. The second paper hypothesizes that an inequitable distribution of income negatively affects the rule of law in resource-rich economies and provides robust evidence in support of this hypothesis. By investigating a data set that contains 193 countries and using econometric methodologies such as the fixed effects estimator and the generalized method of moments estimator, I find that resource-abundance improves the quality of institutions, as long as income and wealth disparity remains below a certain threshold. When inequality moves beyond this threshold, the positive effects of the resource-abundance level on institutions diminish quickly and turn negative eventually. This paper, thus, provides robust evidence about the endogeneity of institutions and the role income and wealth inequality plays in the determination of long-run growth rates. The third paper sets up a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents to investigate the causal channels which run from a concern for international status to long-run economic growth. The simulation results show that the initial distribution of income and wealth play an important role in whether agents gain or lose from globalization.

Spatial patterns of manufacturing clusters in Vietnam

The formation of industrial clusters is critical for sustained economic growth. We identify the manufacturing clusters in Vietnam, using the Mori and Smith (2013) method, which indicates the spatial pattern of industrial agglomerations using the global extent (GE) and local density (LD) indices. Spatial pattern identification is extremely helpful because industrial clusters are often spread over a wide geographical area and the GE and LD indices—along with cluster mapping—display how the respective clusters fit into specific spatial patterns.

Spatial structures of manufacturing clusters in Cambodia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Thailand

Examining the spatial structure of clusters is essential for deriving regional development policy implications. In this study, we identify the manufacturing clusters in Cambodia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Thailand, using two indices—global extent (GE) and local density (LD)—as proposed by Mori and Smith (2013). We also analyze four different combinations of these indices to highlight the spatial structures of industrial agglomerations. Since industrial clusters often spread over administrative boundaries, the GE and LD indices—along with cluster mapping—display how the detected clusters fit into specific spatial structures.

The political economy of industrial policy in Peru and Ecuador: 1980-2010

This dissertation focuses on industrial policy in two developing countries: Peru and Ecuador. Informed by comparative historical analysis, it explains how the Import-Substitution Industrialization policies promoted during the 1970s by military administration unravelled in the following 30 years under the guidance of Washington Consensus policies. Positioning political economy in time, the research objectives were two-fold: understanding long-term policy reform patterns, including the variables that conditioned cyclical versus path-dependent dynamics of change and; secondly, investigating the direction and leverage of state institutions supporting the manufacturing sector at the dawn, peak and consolidation of neoliberal discourse in both countries. Three interconnected causal mechanisms explain the divergence of trajectories: institutional legacies, coordination among actors and economic distribution of power. Peru’s long tradition of a minimal state contrasts with the embedded character of Ecuador long tradition of legal protectionism dating back to the Liberal Revolution. Peru’s close policy coordination among stakeholders –state technocrats and business elites- differs from Ecuador’s “winners-take-all” approach for policy-making. Peru’s economic dynamism concentrated in Lima sharply departs from Ecuador’s competitive regional economic leaderships. This dissertation paid particular attention to methodology to understand the intersection between structure and agency in policy change. Tracing primary and secondary sources, as well as key pieces of legislation, became critical to understand key turning points and long-term patterns of change. Open-ended interviews (N=58) with two stakeholder groups (business elites and bureaucrats) compounded the effort to knit motives, discourses, and interests behind this long transition. In order to understand this amount of data, this research build an index of policy intervention as a methodological contribution to assess long patterns of policy change. These findings contribute to the current literature on State-market relations and varieties of capitalism, institutional change, and policy reform.

A interseccionalidade de gênero, raça e classe no Programa Ciência sem Fronteiras : um estudo sobre estudantes brasileiros com destino aos EUA

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Educação, Departamento de Pós-Graduação, Mestrado Profissional em Educação, 2015.

A self-inducible heterologous protein expression system in Escherichia coli

International audience

The Regulation of Competition and Innovation in the European Union and Spain: Opportunities for the Philippines and the ASEAN

The Philippines are currently facing a process of regional economic integration inside the ASEAN, in some way similar to the process undertaken by Spain and the European Union decades ago. Since January 2016, the ASEAN has become a Common Market, for whose effective achievement Competition and Innovation Law and Policies may play a crucial role. The scope of these pages is to overview the importance of the regulation in these issues and the promotion of competition within the member States throughout the process of regional economic integration. Then, we will consider the role that Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policies have played in the construction of the European Union, and we will point out some current challenges that are still to be faced. Finally, we will offer some comparative conclusions considering the importance that these norms and policies will have in the construction of the ASEAN as an economic integrated area, and the way the ASEAN might follow the footsteps set by the European Union in its integration process.

Reforço do capital social de um território através de uma abordagem de estruturação da reflexão colectiva em torno dos processos de reconstrução produtiva: O caso do projecto ReADAPT no concelho da Covilhã

As teorias e políticas de desenvolvimento regional sofreram grandes alterações nas duas últimas décadas. Os factores que impulsionam o crescimento económico sustentado já não se relacionam apenas com o capital físico, nem sequer com o capital humano regional. As novas condições de competitividade enfatizam a importância do “capital social”, normas e regras sociais, formais ou informais que promovem a compreensão recíproca e a confiança mútuas entre os agentes da economia da região. Este artigo demonstra a forma como as instituições de uma região se podem organizar em torno dos processos de reestruturação produtiva e encorajar as empresas na região a adoptar normas, expectativas, valores, atitudes e práticas comuns, em suma, uma cultura comum de inovação reforçada pelo processo de aprendizagem social. A acção política dinamizada pela autarquia da Covilhã no projecto ReADAPT, a acção da Associação Nacional dos Industriais de Lanifícios ao promover as condições que sustentam e levam ao aparecimento de redes ou agrupamentos de empresas com actividades relacionadas nas áreas de maior potencial de desenvolvimento da região, e o estabelecimento de relações entre essas redes e as restantes instituições (centros de formação, universidade, sindicatos, etc.) constituem o chamado Sistema Regional de Inovação deste território. Num contexto de depressão económica sectorial e regional, o papel da ANIL e das restantes entidades parceiras assumiu-se como de “animadores e facilitadores” do desenvolvimento. A aprendizagem e a reflexão institucional conseguidas contribuíram também para o que ANIL e as restantes entidades parceiras e o sector público com o qual interagem, tenham adquirido uma nova capacidade de inovação estratégica. Neste contexto, instituições de carácter regional/local assumem-se como um elemento essencial na construção de racionalidades e no condicionamento de comportamentos reflexivos e de cooperação, indicando os caminhos possíveis a seguir aos restantes actores da região. Em suma, as dinâmicas de associação entre actores regionais são um ingrediente fundamental na receita para o desenvolvimento das regiões, no sentido em que podem ajudar outros a ajudar-se na criação de significados, na construção de capacidade para agir e no suporte à construção de redes através das quais os agentes económicos e sociais podem colaborar em benefício comum.