A tale of two Italies: ‘access-orders’ and the Italian regional divide

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the ‘access orders’ paradigm developed by North, Wallis, and Weingast [(2009). Violence and social order: A conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] to analyse the case of the Italian North–South economic divide. In line with their framework, we collect and discuss several social and political indicators over the long-run, at the regional level. Firstly we looked at data on the pre-conditions for the establishment of an open-access order, such as murders per capita (a proxy for control over violence), voting turnout and referendums participation (proxies for political legitimacy), and the impersonality of exchange. We then showed evidence of different access orders in the North and in the South, using the information on human capital formation, women participation in the labour market, and referendum results. On the basis of this evidence, we argue that, despite being part of the same State and subject to the same formal institutions, the North of the country progressively developed into an open-access order, while the South remained a form of limited access order.

Institutional differences are linked to specific aspects of the economic performance of the two areas, thus the ‘access order’ paradigm appears to be an effective conceptual scheme to explain the North–South economic divide.     

Large scale infrastructure investment and economic performance – a case study of Oresund

We analyse the effect of a large scale infrastructure investment, namely the construction of the Oresund bridge, on the local and supra-regional economy. We employ the synthetic control method to construct counterfactual regions that mimic the trajectory of Malmo and Southern Sweden without treatment. Our results point to a positive effect. However, placebo tests in space and time only reveal statistical significance at a larger regional level. The results suggest that spillover effects are eminent.     

Technological leadership and sectorial employment growth: A spatial econometric analysis for U.S. counties

This paper studies the determinants of technological catch‐up considering spatial and sectoral aggregation of industries. We investigate how geographical and technological proximity to the technology leader impact regional employment growth. We model technological progress by means of a hierarchical process of catch‐up to the technology leader. We also incorporate measures for knowledge spillover effects to test the roles of competition, specialisation, and diversity at the industry level. Empirical results using data at the county level for different economic sectors (2‐dig NAICS) for the United States indicate that human capital plays a crucial role in promoting sectoral employment growth. The association between technological/geographical distance to the technology leader and employment growth varies across sectors.     

杭州湾都市圈利用FDI的地域差异分析及其对策研究

近年来外商直接投资(FDI)已经成为带动杭州湾都市圈出口增长,推动区域经济发展的重要因素。但由于各个地方利用外资的市场基础和投资环境的差异,杭州湾各个城市利用FDI很不平衡。本文通过运用因子分析的方法,对杭州湾都市圈利用FDI的水平进行综合评价,并提出了相对的对策建议,对促进杭州湾经济的平衡发展具有一定的现实意义。     

河南省高铁经济发展研究及对策

高铁经济是加快中原经济区建设、实现中原崛起、河南振兴的重要保障。论文针对2014-2019年河南省高速铁路的发展状况进行调研分析,选取2014-2019年高速铁路营业里程与河南省国民生产总值统计数据,用回归分析法构建高铁营业里程和河南省GDP总量的回归方程。通过回归分析法,对比高速铁路带来的各指标的变化,分析高速铁路开通后对河南省经济的具体影响。     

Pandemic (COVID‐19) Policy,Regional Cooperation and the Emerging Global Production Network†

In this paper, we explore the possible policy responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic shock as well as the related economic (financial crisis) shocks on trade and global value chains (GVC) in East Asia. We find that regional policy coordination is critical to mitigate and isolate the pandemic shock. It is important to identify the pandemic events early to flatten the pandemic curve at the national and regional level. This supports a recent study by the World Bank (2020), which highlights the importance of early mitigation policies during the pandemic shock. The cost of the pandemic and economic shocks will increase significantly when several countries in the region experience the pandemic shock concurrently. In this case, flattening the regional pandemic curve becomes important. The results also indicate the need for greater coordination in East Asia to mitigate the pending economic shock in terms of unemployment, corporate bankruptcy and financial market fragility. The paper also highlights that the stability of the GVC network is critical during the pandemic in terms of hedging the risk of disruptions to the procurement of critical medical and health products as well as maintaining service linkages to manufacturing, such as the logistics sector. Regional policy coordination and the stability of GVC will be valuable in the post‐pandemic recovery of the region.     

“海丝”背景下福州市县域经济空间格局分析

福州市作为“21世纪海上丝绸之路”核心区建设支点城市获得快速发展，各区县之间的经济联系逐步加深，区域经济格局不断演变。以福州市13个区县作为研究对象，测度“海丝”核心区建设实施前后各区县的经济潜力与经济联系强度，通过分析区域经济格局演变，对福州市在“海丝”背景下的经济发展方向提出建议，为今后加快建成支点城市提供参考。     

A Framework for the Simultaneous Measurement of Spatial Variation and Temporal Movement in Prices in a Heterogeneous Country: The Dynamic Household Regional Product Dummy Model

This paper contributes to the growing literature on spatial prices in large heterogeneous countries. While the literatures on spatial variation and temporal movement in prices have grown in parallel, this study marks a departure by providing a unified treatment and proposing a comprehensive framework that allows both approaches. The proposed model is based on twin extensions of the household version of the “country product dummy model” by allowing for a dynamic stochastic specification and interdependence of spatial prices of geographically adjacent regions. Tests of temporal stability and regional independence of the estimated spatial prices are proposed and applied in this paper. The paper shows that the introduction of an autoregressive error process of order one, AR(1), improves the efficiency of the estimates of parameters, urban‐rural and temporal price indices under certain conditions. The Indian application points to a rich potential for using the proposed framework in cross country comparisons such as the International Comparison Program (ICP) exercises.     

Financing the sustainable management of Rwanda's protected areas

Rwanda's Nyungwe National Park is a biodiversity hotspot with the most endemic species in the ecoregion and the highest number of threatened species internationally. Nyungwe supplies critical ecosystem services to the Rwandan population including water provisioning and tourism services. Tourism in the Park has strong potential for financing enhanced visitor experiences and the sustainable management of the Park. This paper explores quantitatively the economic impacts of adjustment in Park visitation fees and tourism demand as a source of revenues to improve Park tourism opportunities and ongoing operations and maintenance. The methods developed in this paper are novel in integrating the results of stated preference techniques with a regional computable general equilibrium modelling approach to capture multisectoral, direct, indirect and induced impacts. Such methods have strong potential for assessing revenue generation alternatives in other contexts where park managers are faced with the need to generate additional revenue for sustainable park management while facing diminishing budget allocations. Results of this analysis demonstrate that adjustment of Park fees has a relatively small impact on the regional economy and well-being when compared with a strategy aimed at generating increased tourism demand through investment in improving the visitor experience at Nyungwe National Park.     

粤港澳大湾区城市群区域治理机制的架构思考:从政府治理权出发

推进建设粤港澳大湾区城市群,尤其应当重视各级政府在该区域治理机制架构中的地位。协调不同法域、不同层级和不同类型地方政府之间的治理权,是推进该城市群协调发展,并率先推进实现新型城镇化转型的基础和保障。就该区域而言,政府治理权的架构可以分为三个层次:根据中央顶层设计的区域布局,推动地方政府转换行使治理权的视阈,合理安排不同地方政府治理权,并建立权力协作机制;由此机制出发,协调区域内各地方的发展方向,深化彼此之间利益共生关系;最后,与利益共享对应,还应当配合财政供给改革,实现区域治理责任的成本共担。