Spatial Inequalities and Economic Growth

Abstract

In this editorial, we summarise and comment on the five articles published in issue 9.2. The five articles are a selection of papers presented at the ‘Workshop on Inequality and Regional Growth and Cohesion’ organised by the Regional Quantitative Analysis research group (AQR-IREA) of the University of Barcelona in November 2011. The first two articles, by De Dominicis and by Monastiriotis, focus on the analysis of regional growth and examine the influence of agglomeration and national development, respectively. The article by Ezcurra and Rodríguez-Pose looks instead at how trade openness impacts on within-country regional disparities, while the article by Kyriacou and Roca-Sagalés examines in turn how regional disparities impact on the quality of government at the national level. The final article by Sacchi and Salotti examines the impact of different forms of decentralisation on income inequalities at the household level. From our perspective, these articles contribute to a better understanding of the complex link between inequality and economic growth, while they also leave open several questions that could clearly stimulate future research on the topic.     

Exploring multiple eco-routing guidance strategies in a commuting corridor

The introduction of eco-routing systems has been suggested as a promising strategy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and criteria pollutants. The objective of this study is to scrutinize the impacts of an eco-routing guidance system on emissions through the use of a case study in a commuting corridor. This research aims at assessing the potential environmental benefits in terms of different pollutant emissions. Simultaneously, it addresses the extent of variations in system travel time (S_TT) that each eco-routing strategy implies. The methodology consists of three distinct phases. The first phase corresponds to the adjustment of a microsimulation platform of traffic and emissions with empirical data previously collected. Second, to volume-emission-functions (VEF), developed based on the integrated modeling structure. Final, to different scenarios of traffic flow optimization performed at the network level based on a simplified assignment procedure. The results show that if the traffic assignment is performed with the objective to minimize overall impacts, then the total system environmental damage costs can be reduced up to 9% with marginal oscillations in total S_TT. However, if drivers are advised based on their own emissions minimization, total system emissions may be higher than under the standard user equilibrium flow pattern. Specifically, environmentally friendly navigation algorithms focused on individual goals may tend to divert traffic to roads with less capacity affecting the performance of the remaining traffic. This case study brings new insights about the difficulties and potentials of implementing such systems.     

The flow-performance relationship around the world

We use a new dataset to study how mutual fund flows depend on past performance across 28 countries. We show that there are marked differences in the flow-performance relationship across countries, suggesting that US findings concerning its shape do not apply universally. We find that mutual fund investors sell losers more and buy winners less in more developed countries. This is because investors in more developed countries are more sophisticated and face lower costs of participating in the mutual fund industry. Higher country-level convexity is positively associated with higher levels of risk taking by fund managers.     

An empirical study of inbound tourism demand in China: a copula-GARCH approach

This paper proposes new models for analyzing the volatility and dependence of monthly tourist arrivals to China applying a copula-GARCH approach. A desegregation of the top six origins of China inbound tourists from the period January 1994 to December 2013 is used in this study. The empirical results show that there is a strong seasonal effect in all cases and ?????? some habit persistence on monthly tourist arrival growth rate for South Korea, Russia, the United States (US), and Malaysia. Second, the volatilities of arrival growth rates to China are impacted significantly by their own short- and long-run effects, except for Russia and South Korea. Only short-run shock affects Russian arrivals while only long-run shocks are affecting South Korea arrivals. Third, the conditional dependence among different source countries is found to be positive and significant, but the conditional dependence for all considered pairs is low. Moreover, there is extreme co-movement (tail dependence) between the six major tourism source countries, suggesting the pairwise of international tourist arrivals shows a related increasing or decreasing pattern during extreme events. Implications are discussed and recommendations provided.     

Clinical and economic impact of mirabegron compared with antimuscarinics for the treatment of overactive bladder in Canada

Background: The β₃-adrenoceptor agonist, mirabegron, and antimuscarinic agents provide similar efficacy for the treatment of overactive bladder (OAB), but mirabegron appears to be associated with better persistence, perhaps due to an absence of anticholinergic side-effects. This study estimated the expected costs associated with the management of OAB in Canada from a societal perspective by utilizing real-world evidence.

Methods: An economic model with monthly cycles and a 1-year time horizon was developed to depict a treatment pathway for a hypothetical cohort of 100 patients with OAB. At model entry, patients receive mirabegron or an antimuscarinic. Patients who do not persist may switch treatment, undergo a minimally invasive procedure, or remain symptomatic (uncontrolled). The model includes direct costs (e.g. physician visits) and indirect costs (e.g. lost productivity). A one-way univariate sensitivity analysis assessed a ±20% variation in each of the key model inputs.

Results: At 1 year, a greater proportion of patients persisted on treatment with mirabegron compared with antimuscarinics (33% vs 15–23%), and a smaller proportion switched treatment (17% vs 20–22%). The number of healthcare visits (292 vs 299–304), pads used (74,098 vs 77,878–81,669), and work hours lost (4,497 vs 5,372–6,249) were all lower for mirabegron vs antimuscarinics. The estimated total annual cost of treatment per patient with mirabegron was $2,127.46 Canadian dollars (CAD) ($5.82 CAD/day) compared with $2,150.20–$2,496.69 CAD ($5.89–$6.84 CAD/day) for antimuscarinics. The one-way sensitivity analysis indicated the results are robust.

Conclusions: Improved persistence observed in routine clinical practice with mirabegron appears to translate into benefits of reduced healthcare resource use, and lower direct and indirect costs of treatment compared with antimuscarinics. Overall, these data suggest that mirabegron may offer clinical and economic benefits for the management of patients with OAB in Canada.     

Seeking for Solutions within a Project Setting

There has been increasing attention focused on the importance of ‘solution selling’ in the often very close relationships that characterize business-to-business marketing. While an extant predominantly product-centric view of solutions prevails in the literature, this has recently been juxtaposed with a more process-oriented view. We review such a process-oriented solution model briefly, and focus on the managerial challenge of how firms make this process-oriented approach work in practice. We argue that, in parallel to adopting a process-oriented approach, companies also have to focus their attention specifically on how to mobilize the different parties in order to amalgamate the perspectives and orientations between the interacting counterparts. We propose an interaction process model of how this ‘collective mind’ is achieved, using as an example a study of the United Kingdom’s Lean Aerospace Initiative (UK LAI), a large project with a specific solution in mind – improving the global competitiveness of the UK’s Aerospace industry. We use our model to show how the three main groups of actors (Government bodies, four Universities, and the aerospace companies themselves) interact in their pursuit of co-creating their collective solutions.     

Modelling inbound international tourism demand to Portugal

In this paper the Johansen cointegration analysis of time series is used to model the Portuguese inbound international tourism demand from five countries of origin—France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and UK. This approach examines the long‐run relationships between the demand for holiday visits and the variables that affect holiday travel such as income, destination prices and travel costs (airfares and road costs). Demand functions, for each country of origin, are estimated using annual data on tourism flows from 1975 to 1997. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Movements toward holism in futures inquiry

This article takes up the question of the various movements toward holism in futures inquiry. The Ken Wilber inspired integral futures, developed by Richard Slaughter and others, and put forth as the most comprehensive approach to-date, is critiqued and assessed. While Wilber's integral and the variant it has inspired in futures represent significant innovations, it also contains the tendency to un-necessarily close down, lock out or to sub-ordinate alternative conceptions of holism, what I term ‘Wilber-ism’. Wilber's ‘theory of everything’ and integral futures are analysed, re-assessed and re-situated in the context of the alternative approaches to holism that exist. What emerges is a rich view of potential genealogies and ontogenies as movements toward holism. One variant from the action research tradition, which I call ‘integrative foresight’, is put forward as an example of an alternative. The article concludes by proposing a process of dynamic dialogue between diverse conceptions of holism, which can at once honour the great diversity of approaches, while likewise continuing the journey of creating shared meaning and common understandings of the complex contexts in which futures inquiry works.     

Correction to: From stand-up to start-up: exploring entrepreneurship competences and STEM women’s intention

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - The author included the name of her University in English “Technical University of Madrid” and it seems that to validate it for...