The Rocky Road to Legacy: Lessons from the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Stadium Program

This article describes how the management and organization of the South African 2010 FIFA World Cup stadium program shaped the current legacy of an oversupply of overdesigned and underutilized stadiums. The article identifies seven key factors that explain the differences between expected benefits and the actual legacy. Identification of these factors contributes to the increasing academic interest in explaining the poor legacy outcomes of mega‐events. In conclusion, we recommend that future host country governments defragment their stadium programs by establishing a World Cup Delivery Authority (WCDA), with responsibility for the leadership and coordination of the stadium program.     

Land consolidation,customary lands,and Ghana's Northern Savannah Ecological Zone: An evaluation of the possibilities and pitfalls

Land fragmentation has been identified to greatly undermine crop production in many countries. In the case of Ghana’s customary tenure system, household farmlands are relatively small and are highly fragmented. Recent agricultural drives, however, have focused on farm level interventions that are ad hoc with short-term benefits. A sustainable long-term application of land consolidation which reorganises farmlands may improve yields, reduce the cost of production and improve the incomes of farmers. The successful implementation of land consolidation depends greatly on the suitability of local conditions with respect to land tenure and land use. However, in Ghana’s customary lands, the alignment between the requirements for land consolidation and existing conditions remains unexplored. This study investigated the feasibility of land consolidation within the customary tenure by juxtaposing the local conditions of the study areas with the baseline conditions for land consolidation outlined in literature. Using both qualitative and spatial data, the study revealed some traits of convergence and divergence with respect to the baseline conditions in the study areas. For example, conditions such as the existence of land fragmentation, suitable topography and soil distribution were fully met. Conditions such as the existence of a land bank, technical expertise, and infrastructure and supportive legal frameworks were partially met. The remaining conditions such as the willingness to participate, availability of a land information system and favorable land ownership structure were non-existent. The circumstances surrounding these unmet conditions are deeply embedded in customs and traditions that hardly yield to change. Since these conditions are fundamental for land consolidation, their absence negates the feasibility of land consolidation under the current tenure system of the study areas.     

Does ethnic diversity decrease economic interactions? Evidence from exchange networks in rural Gambia

Using a unique dataset collected in 59 rural Gambian villages, we study how ethnic heterogeneity is related to the structure of four economic exchange networks: land, labour, inputs and credit. We find that different measures of village‐level ethnic fragmentation are mostly uncorrelated with network structure. At a more disaggregated level, household heads belonging to ethnic minorities are not less central than those from the predominant ethnicity in any of the networks and, at the dyadic level, the fact that two households share ethnicity is not an economically significant predictor of link formation. Our results indicate that, in the particular setting of our study, the structure of the exchange networks is better defined by other variables than ethnicity and that ethnic heterogeneity is unlikely to be a driver for sub‐optimal economic exchanges.     

Monetary Policy Transmission with Interbank Market Fragmentation

This paper shows how interbank market fragmentation disrupts the transmission of monetary policy. Fragmentation is the fact that banks, depending on their country of location, have different probabilities of default on their interbank borrowings. Once fragmentation is introduced into standard theoretical models of monetary policy implementation, excess liquidity arises endogenously. This leads short-term interest rates to depart from the central bank policy rates. Using data on monetary policy operations, I show that this mechanism has been at work in the euro area since 2008. The model is used to analyze conventional and unconventional monetary policy measures.     

农村土地细碎化治理及制度变革启示——安徽省怀远县“一户一块田”的实践探索

土地细碎化是当前我国农业生产的基本格局，也是农业适度规模经营和农业现代化的主要障碍之一。土地细碎化表面上是地块的细碎化。实质上是土地产权的细碎化，而无论是土地流转还是土地整治，都未能从根本上整合细碎化的土地产权。怀远县基于方便农民耕种的需要，在基层大胆创新的基础上，充分发挥集体组织调整土地的功能，通过“三不变、两提倡、一调整”形成了“一户一块田”的耕种模式，有效解决了土地细碎化难题。我国农村土地细碎化治理及制度变革，必须强化集体组织的土地统筹权利和能力，赋予其相应的土地（地块）调整职能，并加强农村基层组织建设；要立足于小农经济为主的基本国情，保护耕作者的利益，为满足现代化小农生产提供服务；既要尊重各地群众的意愿和创造性，也要规范指导，有序推进。     

Vertical Specialization and Trade Growth in Northeast Asia

As the global economy has become further integrated, the international production chain has become more sophisticated, with diversified stages of production located in different countries. Economic theorists have argued that the fragmentation of the global production chain is partly attributable to the high growth in international trade over the past several decades. In this study, we examine vertical specialization in China, Japan and Korea, and its contribution to these nations' trade. Using a multilevel model, it is illustrated that vertical specialization has encouraged increases in trade among all three countries. In particular, China's outcome is remarkable considering how recently it became a member of the WTO.     

FDI的产品内贸易效应研究——理论及对中国的经验分析

在Helpman（1984）关于垂直一体化跨国公司的理论分析基础之上,构建了旨在解释FDI与产品内贸易关系的理论模型和计量模型。之后以中国为例,利用中国与其七大外资来源国的双边总贸易、产品内贸易以及FDI等数据,对流入中国的FDI所产生的产品内贸易效应进行实证分析。结果表明,流入中国的FDI对双边总贸易和产品内贸易均有显著影响,但前者的影响要甚于后者。据此认为,如何抓住产品内分工下的产品价值增值环节国际梯度转移的历史机遇,通过利用FDI进一步融入产品内国际分工体系,实现向产品价值链高端攀升、提升国际分工地位、获取更多的贸易利益,应是中国今后进一步大力利用外资的重要方向。     

What Determines the Size of Aid Projects?

Over the last few years, considerable attention has focused on aid fragmentation, the proliferation of donors and projects in developing countries. Aid fragmentation has continued to increase despite international efforts to foster donor coordination. One possible implication of fragmentation is smaller aid projects, potentially with the result of more administrative work for overtaxed recipient governments per dollar of aid received.This paper makes use of AidData data on bilateral aid commitments, sector, and funding agencies to explore the determinants of project size and to better understand the forces driving aid fragmentation. To the extent that project size is driven by the sectoral composition or purpose of aid, the associated administrative costs may be justified. Variations due to other factors, e.g. a donor’s administrative structure or bureaucratic interests, provide a stronger case for reforms.     

经济地理与外资企业的区位选择

本文利用2004～2008年我国546类制造行业的省级面板数据,从新经济地理学的视角,研究了外资企业进入中国各省市区的决定因素。结果表明,各地的市场潜力、贸易成本、地理位置等新经济地理的因素对现阶段外资企业的区位选择有显著的影响,而传统FDI理论所关注的因素如工资成本、优惠政策等对外资企业的区位选择影响不显著。另外,本文还发现了各地区间还普遍存在着不同程度的市场分割现象,这会阻碍外资企业和FDI在省际的自由流动。这些结论对我国各地区今后有针对性地实施吸引外资企业和FDI的政策有一定借鉴意义。     

Landscape fragmentation in Mediterranean Europe: A comparative approach

Maintaining ecosystem continuity has become a central element in spatial planning policies. Several authors acknowledge the environmental, also known as landscape, fragmentation due to human action as one of the main causes which have negative effects on biodiversity. The phenomenon consists of the transformation of larger patches of habitat in smaller ones, or fragments, which tend to be more isolated than in the original condition. It is extremely evident in urban areas, including settlements and various transport and mobility infrastructures, whose main ecological effects include loss of habitat, increased mortality of plants, and isolation of animal and vegetal species. In this paper, we assess landscape fragmentation dynamics of six landscape units belonging to two European regions, i.e. Sardinia in Italy (from 2003 to 2008), and Andalusia in Spain (from 2005 to 2009). We developed on three indices: the Infrastructural Fragmentation Index (IFI), the Urban Fragmentation Index (UFI), and the Connectivity Index (CI). We found that coastal areas generally suffer from an higher pressure due to the demand of longer or faster transport infrastructures and new settlements and less fragmented areas tend to show the most relevant dynamics in a sort of convergent pattern. Even though landscape fragmentation and connectivity are intuitively complementary phenomena, in this paper we did not found any statistical evidence of this associative property.