Human Capital Spillovers Productivity and Regional Convergence in Spain

This paper analyses the differential impact of human capital, in terms of different levels of schooling, on regional productivity and convergence. The potential existence of geographical spillovers of human capital is also considered by applying spatial panel data techniques. The empirical analysis of Spanish provinces between 1980 and 2007 confirms the positive impact of human capital on regional productivity and convergence, but reveals no evidence of any positive geographical spillovers of human capital. In fact, in some specifications the spatial lag presented by tertiary studies has a negative effect on the variables under consideration.

Human Capital and Regional Wage Gaps

This paper uses micro-level data to analyse the effect of human capital on regional wage differentials. The results for the set of Spanish regions confirm that they differ in the endowment of human capital, but also that the return that individuals obtain from it varies sharply across regions. Regional heterogeneity in returns is especially intense in the case of education, particularly when considering its effect on the employability of individuals. These differences in endowment and, especially, in returns to human capital, account for a significant proportion of regional wage gaps.

The use of future-oriented knowledge in regional innovation processes: Research on knowledge generation, transfer and conversion

The importance of the regional level in research has risen in the last few decades and a vast literature in the fields of, for instance, evolutionary and institutional economics, network theories, innovations and learning systems, as well as sociology, has focused on regional level questions. Recently the policy makers and regional actors have also began to pay increasing attention to the knowledge economy and its needs, in general, and the connectivity and support structures of regional clusters in particular. Nowadays knowledge is generally considered as the most important source of competitive advantage, but even the most specialised forms of knowledge are becoming a short-lived resource for example due to the accelerating pace of technological change. This emphasizes the need of foresight activities in national, regional and organizational levels and the integration of foresight and innovation activities. In regional setting this development sets great challenges especially in those regions having no university and thus usually very limited resources for research activities. Also the research problem of this dissertation is related to the need to better incorporate the information produced by foresight process to facilitate and to be used in regional practice-based innovation processes. This dissertation is a constructive case study the case being Lahti region and a network facilitating innovation policy adopted in that region. Dissertation consists of a summary and five articles and during the research process a construct or a conceptual model for solving this real life problem has been developed. It is also being implemented as part of the network facilitating innovation policy in the Lahti region.

Spatial and Temporal Trends in Sunshine Duration over Western Europe

This work analyzes sunshine duration variability in the western part of Europe (WEU) over the 1938– 2004 period. A principal component analysis is applied to cluster the original series from 79 sites into 6 regions, and then annual and seasonal mean series are constructed on regional and also for the whole WEU scales. Over the entire period studied here, the linear trend of annual sunshine duration is found to be nonsignificant. However, annual sunshine duration shows an overall decrease since the 1950s until the early 1980s, followed by a subsequent recovery during the last two decades. This behavior is in good agreement with the dimming and brightening phenomena described in previous literature. From the seasonal analysis, the most remarkable result is the similarity between spring and annual series, although the spring series has a negative trend; and the clear significant increase found for the whole WEU winter series, being especially large since the 1970s. The behavior of the major synoptic patterns for two seasons is investigated, resulting in some indications that sunshine duration evolution may be partially explained by changes in the frequency of some of them

Digitaalisen sisältöliiketoiminnan ja viestinnän klusterin synty ja menestystekijät

Kiinnostus digitaalista sisältöliiketoimintaa ja viestintää kohtaan on kasvanut suuresti viimeisten kymmenen vuoden aikana. Niin alan yritysmäärä kuin tuotteet ovat lisääntyneet entisestään viestinnän siirtyessä yhä enemmän tietoverkkoihin. Myös Suomen valtion ja Euroopan unionin tasolla tähän kehitykseen on reagoitu voimakkaasti eri ohjelmien ja hankkeiden kautta. Suomi on tehnyt kolmannen tietoyhteiskuntastrategiansa ja Euroopan unionillakin on laadittuna omat strategiansa ja tavoitteensa tuleville vuosille. Kouvolan kaupunki on nostanut digitaalisen sisältöliiketoiminnan ja viestinnän yhdeksi tulevaisuuden kärkialueikseen, minkä vuoksi tämä tutkimus on tilattu. Tutkimuksessa selvitettiin digiklusterin nykytilaa, mahdollisuuksia ja menestystekijöitä. Tutkimusmenetelminä käytettiin syvähaastatteluita avaintoimijoille sekä vertailua aiemmin menestyneisiin ICT- ja sisältöliiketoiminnan klustereihin. Tutkimuksessa perehdytään ensin aihealueeseen teoriatiedon ja aiempien tutkimustulosten kautta. Tämän jälkeen tarkastellaan tutkittavaa aluetta tilastotiedon, hankkeiden ja haastatteluiden kautta. Lisäksi alueen osaamispääomaa on kartoitettu haastatteluiden ja selvitysten perusteella. Tutkimustuloksena havaittiin, että menestyäkseen klusterin tulee panostaa olemassa olevaan yrityskantaan sekä houkutella alueelle erityisesti kasvuvaiheen yrityksiä. Lisäksi kävi ilmi, että klusterikehitys on mahdollista vain yhteisten päämäärien ja tavoitteiden kautta. Mukana kehittämisessä tulee olla niin alueen yrittäjät kuin julkisen hallinnon edustajat. Kehitys onnistuu parhaiten, mikäli hankkeissa kiinnitetään huomiota yritysnäkökulmaan ja toimijat tietävät oman roolinsa. Korkean osaamisen klusterissa keskeisellä sijalla on alueen koulutus- ja tutkimuslaitosten, yritysten ja julkisen hallinnon saumaton yhteistyö.

Approximation to the theory of affinities to manage the problems of the groupping process

New economic and enterprise needs have increased the interest and utility of the methods of the grouping process based on the theory of uncertainty. A fuzzy grouping (clustering) process is a key phase of knowledge acquisition and reduction complexity regarding different groups of objects. Here, we considered some elements of the theory of affinities and uncertain pretopology that form a significant support tool for a fuzzy clustering process. A Galois lattice is introduced in order to provide a clearer vision of the results. We made an homogeneous grouping process of the economic regions of Russian Federation and Ukraine. The obtained results gave us a large panorama of a regional economic situation of two countries as well as the key guidelines for the decision-making. The mathematical method is very sensible to any changes the regional economy can have. We gave an alternative method of the grouping process under uncertainty.

Cross-national neighbouring effects on European regional specialization

In undertaking an analysis of neighbouring effects on European regional patterns of specialization, this paper makes two main contributions to the literature. First, we use a spatial weight matrix that takes into consideration membership of an EU cross-border regional association. We then compare our results with those obtained using a contiguity matrix and constitute an upper bound for our parameter of interest. In a further stage, we divide the CBR associations on the basis of their longstanding and the intensity of their cooperation to determine whether the association type has a significant impact. Second, we examine the sensitivity of our results to the use of alternative relative specialization indices.

Analysis of a Plant Complex Resistance Gene Locus Underlying Immune-Related Hybrid Incompatibility and Its Occurrence in Nature

Mechanisms underlying speciation in plants include detrimental (incompatible) genetic interactions between parental alleles that incur a fitness cost in hybrids. We reported on recessive hybrid incompatibility between an Arabidopsis thaliana strain from Poland, Landsberg erecta (Ler), and many Central Asian A. thaliana strains. The incompatible interaction is determined by a polymorphic cluster of Toll/interleukin-1 receptor-nucleotide binding-leucine rich repeat (TNL) RPP1 (Recognition of Peronospora parasitica1)-like genes in Ler and alleles of the receptor-like kinase Strubbelig Receptor Family 3 (SRF3) in Central Asian strains Kas-2 or Kond, causing temperature-dependent autoimmunity and loss of growth and reproductive fitness. Here, we genetically dissected the RPP1-like Ler locus to determine contributions of individual RPP1-like Ler (R1R8) genes to the incompatibility. In a neutral background, expression of most RPP1-like Ler genes, except R3, has no effect on growth or pathogen resistance. Incompatibility involves increased R3 expression and engineered R3 overexpression in a neutral background induces dwarfism and sterility. However, no individual RPP1-like Ler gene is sufficient for incompatibility between Ler and Kas-2 or Kond, suggesting that co-action of at least two RPP1-like members underlies this epistatic interaction. We find that the RPP1-like Ler haplotype is frequent and occurs with other Ler RPP1-like alleles in a local population in Gorzów Wielkopolski (Poland). Only Gorzów individuals carrying the RPP1-like Ler haplotype are incompatible with Kas-2 and Kond, whereas other RPP1-like alleles in the population are compatible. Therefore, the RPP1-like Ler haplotype has been maintained in genetically different individuals at a single site, allowing exploration of forces shaping the evolution of RPP1-like genes at local and regional population scales.

Development a distributed simulation environment on a cluster of workstations

Simulation has traditionally been used for analyzing the behavior of complex real world problems. Even though only some features of the problems are considered, simulation time tends to become quite high even for common simulation problems. Parallel and distributed simulation is a viable technique for accelerating the simulations. The success of parallel simulation depends heavily on the combination of the simulation application, algorithm and message population in the simulation is sufficient, no additional delay is caused by this environment. In this thesis a conservative, parallel simulation algorithm is applied to the simulation of a cellular network application in a distributed workstation environment. This thesis presents a distributed simulation environment, Diworse, which is based on the use of networked workstations. The distributed environment is considered especially hard for conservative simulation algorithms due to the high cost of communication. In this thesis, however, the distributed environment is shown to be a viable alternative if the amount of communication is kept reasonable. Novel ideas of multiple message simulation and channel reduction enable efficient use of this environment for the simulation of a cellular network application. The distribution of the simulation is based on a modification of the well known Chandy-Misra deadlock avoidance algorithm with null messages. The basic Chandy Misra algorithm is modified by using the null message cancellation and multiple message simulation techniques. The modifications reduce the amount of null messages and the time required for their execution, thus reducing the simulation time required. The null message cancellation technique reduces the processing time of null messages as the arriving null message cancels other non processed null messages. The multiple message simulation forms groups of messages as it simulates several messages before it releases the new created messages. If the message population in the simulation is suffiecient, no additional delay is caused by this operation A new technique for considering the simulation application is also presented. The performance is improved by establishing a neighborhood for the simulation elements. The neighborhood concept is based on a channel reduction technique, where the properties of the application exclusively determine which connections are necessary when a certain accuracy for simulation results is required. Distributed simulation is also analyzed in order to find out the effect of the different elements in the implemented simulation environment. This analysis is performed by using critical path analysis. Critical path analysis allows determination of a lower bound for the simulation time. In this thesis critical times are computed for sequential and parallel traces. The analysis based on sequential traces reveals the parallel properties of the application whereas the analysis based on parallel traces reveals the properties of the environment and the distribution.

The scrutiny of the principle of subsidiarity by autonomous regional parliaments with particular reference to the participation of the Parliament of Catalonia in the early warning system

The purpose of this article is to offer a practical approach to the new European dimension for regional parliaments signified by the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. The parliamentary scrutiny of subsidiarity by way of the early warning system has assigned a new mission to legislative assemblies with the aim of reinforcing the intervention of regions in the drafting of policies by Union institutions. In the Spanish case, the institutionalisation of this mechanism came about with Act nº 24/2009, which attributes to the Joint Committee for the European Union, in the name of the Cortes Generales [the Spanish Parliament], the function of receiving the proposals for legislative acts by the EU and transferring them to the regional parliaments in order for the latter to issue, in a brief period of four weeks, a report on compliance with the principle of subsidiarity. The majority of regional parliaments have also carried out normative reforms to regulate the procedure of participation in the early warning system.

Aspectos técnicos envolvidos na construção de um "cluster beowulf"

Beowulf cluster is perhaps the cheapest way to construct a high performance computers. The strategy of reaching a high power computing isn't so difficult, but buying and configurating should be done carefully. Technical aspects of hardware components and message-passing libraries are considered, with some results given as examples.

Internet Banking in Europe: a comparative analysis

A key strategic issue for banks is the implementation of internet banking. The ‘click and mortar’ model that complements classical branch banking with online facilities is competing with pure internet banks. The objective of this paper is to compare the performance of these two models across countries, so as to examine the role of differences in the banking system and technological progress. A fuzzy cluster analysis on the performance of banks in Finland, Spain, Italy and the UK shows that internet banks are hard to distinguish from banks that follow a click and mortar strategy; country borders are more important. We therefore explain bank performance by a group of selected bank features, country-specific economic and IT indicators over the period 1995-2004. We find that the strategy of banking groups to incorporate internet banks reflects some competitive edge that these banks have in their business models. Extensive technological innovation boosts internet banking.

Regional variability in the impact of human capital on regional growth

The first objective of this study is to furnish new evidence concerning the aggregate profitability of the accumulation of human capital. In addition to the traditional measure of the return to human capital, combining the information on its shadow price with the social cost of providing education allows us to confirm the profitability of human capital investments as a tool for promoting economic growth. The possibility of obtaining estimations of these effects for each Spanish region enables us to empirically evaluate the amount of heterogeneity across economies in the effects of human capital. As a second objective, we provide evidence on the indirect effect of human capital in making private capital investment more attractive. Among the main explanations for this process, we observe that higher worker skill levels enable higher returns to be extracted from investment in physical capital.

Logistiikkayrityksen kuljetussuunnittelun kehittäminen

Työn tavoitteena oli selvittää Transpoint Cargon kuljetussuunnittelun nykytila ja kuljetussuunnittelijoiden välisten vastuiden jakaantuminen. Työn tavoitteena oli lisäksi rakentaa kuljetussuunnittelulle alueellinen toimintamalli yrityksen asettamien rajoitteiden mukaisesti. Kuljetussuunnittelun tilaa tutkittiin haastatteluiden, visuaalisen analysoinnin, oman työkokemuksen ja tuotevirta-analyysin avulla. Kuljetussuunnittelun suurimmat kehitystarpeet löytyivät vastuiden loogisemmasta jakamisesta ja suunnittelijoiden tavasta ohjata autoja. Kehitysehdotuksena nykytilanteen parantamiseksi työssä esitetään kuljetussuunnittelijoiden työtehtävien jakaminen klusteri mallin mukaisesti. Klusteri malliin perustuen työssä esitetään kolme eri vaihtoehtoa kuljetussuunnittelun alueellisen toimintamallin toteuttamiseksi.

Regional returns to physical capital: are they conditioned by educational attainment?

This paper provides novel empirical evidence of the indirect effect of educational attainment on regional economic growth, through its influence on the profitability of investment in physical capital. We test the hypothesis that the regional heterogeneity of the return to physical capital can be directly related to the existing heterogeneity in the educational attainment of workers. The results for the Spanish case support our hypothesis that the higher the educational attainment of workers the greater the returns on investment in physical capital. In fact, this effect seems to be sufficiently strong to have counterbalanced the traditional mechanism of decreasing returns to capital accumulation.