Unpacking systemic innovation capacity as strategic ambidexterity: How projects dynamically configure capabilities for agricultural innovation

Problems in agriculture and land use are increasingly recognised as complex, uncertain, operating at multiple levels (field to global value chains) and involving social, economic, institutional, and technological change. This has implications for how projects navigate complexity to achieve impact. However, few studies have systematically evaluated how project actors engage with other actors to configure capabilities and resources across multiple levels in agricultural innovation systems (AIS), from the individual to the network, to mobilise and build systemic innovation capacity. An analytical framework conceptualising the nested configuration of capabilities at multiple levels in the AIS is applied to two projects that successfully tackled agricultural and land management problems of differing complexity: (i) improving lamb survival; and (ii) sustainable land management in New Zealand. Findings indicate that innovation capacity constitutes project actors interacting with other AIS actors to configure capabilities and resources at different levels of the AIS in order to leverage positive project path dependencies and break path dependencies that are created by existing and historical capability configurations. Project actors also balance exploiting existing innovation capabilities, as well as using adaptive capability for exploring and creating new capability configurations to respond to emerging circumstances. This implies that projects should have strategic ambidexterity in terms of how they combine exploiting existing and exploring new networks to access, combine, create, or disconnect certain capabilities to address ‘capability voids’ in AIS. This requires support to projects to constantly scrutinise, through reflexive monitoring by dedicated facilitators, specific agriculture and land use policies connected to major sustainable development models (e.g. climate smart agriculture, urban farming, smart farming). The can help assess whether the AIS provides the right mix of capabilities and whether this is adequately supported by innovation policy, to realize transformative policy objectives.     

Population,pensions, and endogenous economic growth

We study the effect of a declining labor force on the incentives to engage in labor-saving technical change and ask how this effect is influenced by institutional characteristics of the pension scheme. When labor is scarcer it becomes more expensive and innovation investments that increase labor productivity are more profitable. We incorporate this channel in a new dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous economic growth and heterogeneous overlapping generations. We calibrate the model for the US economy and obtain the following results. First, the effect of a decline in population growth on labor productivity growth is positive and quantitatively significant. In our benchmark, it is predicted to increase from an average annual growth rate of 1.74% over 1990–2000 to 2.41% in 2100. Second, institutional characteristics of the pension system matter both for the growth performance and for individual welfare. Third, the assessment of pension reform proposals may depend on whether economic growth is endogenous or exogenous.     

Assessment of regulation of legal relations of territorial planning: A case study in Lithuania

Land management is inevitably linked to the regulation of activities of its proprietor or operator stipulated by legislation and documents of territorial planning. In Lithuania, as in many European countries, territorial planning is a key measure for the formation of landscape and the alteration of its elements. With the help of territorial planning documents, governing authorities has the opportunity to orderly regulate the layout of long-term stable elements of landscape and the sustainable territorial development. However, in comparison with other European Union (hereinafter – EU) countries, territorial planning system valid in Lithuania until January 1, 2014 is still “young” and having specific features with former countries of the Soviet bloc legal regulation. The system did not provided a consistent and sustainable territorial development mechanism: there was the lack of measures allowing to manage the development processes of residential areas and implementation of territorial planning documents (especially the municipal master plans) solutions for the creation of a harmonious functional spatial system. The aim of the present paper is to assess the regulation of legal relations of territorial planning in Lithuania and the EU member states. The assessment summarizes processes of the formation of a landscape during the territorial planning, introduces new opportunities to more accurately predict the results of the current process of landscape planning, and highlights legal and sustainable elements of territorial planning system optimization. As can be seen from the assessment carried out, one of the most important territorial planning objectives was and still remains the balance of mutual relations (hierarchy of plans) of territorial planning documents in shaping the cultural landscape to ensure the rational distribution of the land fund, combining a variety of activities as well as often different land users’ and public interests. Therefore, the implementation of the territorial planning reform of Lithuania capacitates for the transition to an integrated territorial planning, ensuring sustainable development.     

Searching for empirical linkages between demographic structure and economic growth

Demographic structure could affect economic growth through many channels. However, little is known about how demographic structure affects economic growth since no study has examined an extensive collection of channels through which demographic structure could affect economic growth in a single context. This paper overcomes this limitation by examining 45 potential mediating variables between demographic structure and economic growth. A causal search algorithm is used to identify channels through which demographic structure affects economic growth. Our results suggest that demographic structure affects economic growth differently between developed and developing countries. For developed countries, we find that an increase in the share of middle-aged workers has a positive effect on economic growth through institutions, investment and education channels. On the other hand, an increase in the share of the senior population has a negative effect on economic growth through institutions and investment channels. For developing countries, we find (but with weak evidence) that an increase in the share of young workers has a negative effect on economic growth through investment, financial market development and trade channels.     

A Proposed Sustainable Rural Development Index (SRDI): Lessons from Hajij village,Iran

While there are many indices to gauge growth and development, there remains an ambiguity on how best to measure the development of tourism in rural locations. Current thinking emphasizes the specific characteristics of a given location and the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas depicts a requirement for participatory processes in local development. This study is inspired by implementation of the European Charter in Northern Italy, using it as a guideline. The context for this study is Hajij Village in Iran, and the approach adopted differed from that undertaken in Italy with regards to the main target, time and procedures of implementation. The study proposes the novel index based on the weighted averages of 20 variables as used with a sample of 87 members of the Hajij Community. The study explores the possibility of quantitative measurements between the weaknesses, strengths, threats, and opportunities associated with development plans.     

Designing and evaluating sustainable development pathways for semi‐subsistence crop–livestock systems: lessons from Kenya

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in African agriculture requires a better understanding why high levels of poverty and resource degradation persist in African agriculture despite decades of policy interventions and development projects. In this article, we hypothesize that policies need to account for the key features of the semi‐subsistence crop–livestock systems (CLS) in the region to become effective. The semi‐subsistence CLS are characterized by a high degree of biophysical and economic heterogeneity and a complex, diversified production system involving a combination of subsistence and cash crops with livestock. We investigated the potential for interventions proposed by the Government of Kenya to meet the SDGs by 2030. The analysis uses an integrated modeling approach designed to deal with the key features of these systems. A strategy that stimulates rural development, increases farm size to a sustainable level, and reduces distortions and inefficiencies in input and output markets could lead to a sustainable development pathway and achieve the SDGs for rural households dependent on CLS.     

数量驱动或创新驱动：异质型人力资本对经济增长的机制演进

基于1987-2017年中国省际面板数据，运用SYS-GMM模型研究异质型人力资本对经济增长的影响。在区分高级与基本人力资本基础上，基于招生率和收入维度，从全局和阶段差异视角剖析异质型人力资本对经济提速的机制演进。研究发现：全局而言，两种测度下基础和高级人力资本各自以数量及创新方式驱动经济增长，并呈现以数量驱动为主，数量、创新双驱动的增长模式；从演进视角看，两种测度均表明，高级人力资本创新驱动是新常态阶段经济增长的核心动力，但相比旧常态阶段，基础人力资本数量驱动日趋弱化并呈异质性；进一步研究表明，产业结构、城镇化及开放程度均对创新驱动有不同程度激励效应，而城镇化是挤出数量驱动的主要推手。     

Sustainable entrepreneurship and the Sustainable Development Goals: Community-led initiatives,the social solidarity economy and commons ecologies

The social solidarity economy is an approach to the production and consumption of goods, services and knowledge that promises to address contemporary economic, social and environmental crises more effectively than business as usual. The paper employs the concept of commons ecologies to examine the practices, relationships and interactions among actors and organisations in the social solidarity economy, as well as between them and the mainstream economy, which shape the field and its degree of autonomy in relation to capitalism, through a process defined as boundary commoning. Such process shapes both local and regional commons ecologies, as well as the participation of local and regional actors in wider networks at national, international and global levels. The paper takes a case study-based approach to identify practices, relationships and interactions of commons ecologies in relation to selected community-led initiatives in the UK, Portugal, Brazil and Senegal. Each case study illuminates different qualities of local/regional commons ecologies and their forms of engagement with wider networks. Further, the paper shows that these cases demonstrate how the social solidarity economy may facilitate delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals in a distinctive way. In each case, SSE acts as a vehicle for expressing participants' values and principles consistent with those underlying the SDGs. Local implementation of SDGs is thus an in-built feature of these commons ecologies. The participation of community-led initiatives in international and global networks offers opportunities to learn from local level experiences and successes, potentially strengthening SDG implementation more generally.     

The effects of private equity and venture capital on sales and employment growth in small and medium-sized businesses

We study the effects private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) financing have on small and mid-sized single entity business establishments from 1995 to 2009. We focus on single entity establishments to cleanly examine the impact of PE and VC financing on establishments’ organic growth. This study reveals that PE and VC financing have positive impacts on single entity business establishments’ net sales and employment growth. The impact of PE financing on establishments’ growth is slower and smaller than VC financing. However, we find that the benefit of PE financing lasts longer than VC financing. We also find that ethnic minority, female, and foreign business owners are less likely to receive PE and VC financing. Finally, we find evidence that although establishments with government contracts are more likely to receive PE and VC financing, those contracts fail to produce marginal post-funding growth and employment benefits.     

Fear of climate change consequences and predictors of intentions to alter meat consumption

Reducing or altering meat consumption has the potential to significantly lower the impact humans have on climate change. Consumers, however, are unlikely to break their food habits unless they are aware of the problem and motivated by the solutions. Fear appeals are often used to overcome this, however, their effectiveness in the context of meat reduction and climate change is unclear. Given the widespread use of fear appeals in information policy, it is important to understand more. The aim of this study was to explore fear—or more specifically—the danger control process in a climate change—food context in order to understand the factors which motivate consumers to reduce or alter their meat consumption. Using a stratified random sample of 222 respondents in Southern Sweden, we develop a model for predicting intentions to adopt specific and general actions to reduce or alter meat consumption. Our results suggest that the general key to motivating consumers is through increasing their self-efficacy towards adopting meat alternatives and educating them on the importance their actions have in reducing the threat. We also found that appraising the threat to self (or those close) was significant, but surprisingly the effect size was greater when the threat concerned others (e.g. others in impoverished nations, animals).