Geographies of injustice: the socio-spatial determinants of energy poverty in Poland,the Czech Republic and Hungary

Falling real incomes, rising utility prices and the historically poor thermal quality of the housing stock are some of the main factors that have driven the rise of systemic injustices surrounding energy poverty in the post-communist states of Eastern and Central Europe (ECE). We undertake a socio-spatial and temporal assessment of energy poverty in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, using Household Budget Survey micro-data and the consolidated national results of the EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions. Our results indicate that increases in domestic energy prices and expenditures during the last decade have not been offset by purchasing power gains or energy efficiency improvements, resulting in sustained and growing levels of energy poverty. Capital city regions have fared better than rural areas even if traditional macroeconomic performance indicators do not easily match domestic energy deprivation metrics. We thus question policy approaches that favour income-based solutions and fail to recognise housing- and demography-related vulnerabilities.     

How different is Africa? A comment on Masanjala and Papageorgiou

Masanjala and Papageorgiou (Rough and lonely road to prosperity: a reexamination of the sources of growth in Africa using Bayesian model averaging, Journal of Applied Econometrics 2008; 23 (5): 671–682) use Bayesian model averaging to evaluate the existence of parameter heterogeneity between African and non‐African countries in the framework of cross‐country growth regressions. We show that their results are not robust to the use of a prior over the model space that respects the strong heredity principle put forward by Chipman (Chipman HA. 1996. Bayesian variable selection with related predictors. Canadian Journal of Statistics 24 : 17–36) for models including interaction terms. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Low‐Carbon Gentrification: When Climate Change Encounters Residential Displacement

This article focuses on the emergence of ‘low‐carbon’ gentrification as a distinct urban phenomenon, a process that we see as the outcome of efforts to change the social and spatial composition of urban districts under the pretext of responding to climate change and energy efficiency imperatives. The article develops a conceptual framework for scrutinizing low‐carbon gentrification, predicated upon insights from literatures on ecological gentrification and displacement. It documents the existence of an ‘eco‐social paradox’ associated with new patterns of socio‐spatial segregation and energy efficiency retrofits. We interrogate the discursive and policy frameworks, socio‐spatial implications and political contestations of low‐carbon gentrification. Evidence is drawn from case study research in an inner‐city district of the Polish city of Gdańsk, where such processes have been unfolding since 2006 due to the implementation of a targeted urban regeneration programme. This investigation is positioned within a wider analysis of secondary written sources about similar developments in other geographical contexts across Europe and North America, where anecdotal evidence suggests that low‐carbon gentrification may be widespread and common.     

Okun's Law Revisited*

In the light of modern theoretical studies, the negative relationship between output and unemployment may take a nonlinear form, in the sense that changes in output can cause asymmetric changes in the unemployment rate. A regime‐dependent specification of Okun's law, where the inverse relationship between cyclical unemployment and cyclical GDP is allowed to differ across recessions and expansions, is estimated for the US economy. Using both the Hodrick–Prescott filter and a bivariate structural time series model to isolate the cyclical component of the variables of interest, the nonlinear specification is highly significant when tested against the linear alternative independently of the method used for extracting the cycle of unemployment and GDP. The estimation results imply that the contemporaneous effect of growth on unemployment is asymmetric and significantly higher in recessions than in expansions, and shocks to unemployment tend to be more persistent in the expansionary regime.     

Aggregravity: estimating gravity models from aggregate data

This article considers alternative methods to estimate econometric models based on bilateral data when only aggregate information on the dependent variable is available. Such methods can be used to obtain an indication of the sign and magnitude of bilateral model parameters and, more importantly, to decompose aggregate into bilateral data, which can then be used as proxy variables in further empirical analyses. We perform a Monte Carlo study and carry out a simple real world application using intra-EU trade and capital flows, showing that the methods considered work reasonably well and are worthwhile being considered in the absence of bilateral data.     

The monetary approach to exchange rates in the CEECs1

A panel dataset for six Central and Eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) is used to estimate the monetary exchange rate model with panel cointegration methods, including the Pooled Mean Group estimator, the Fully Modified Least Square estimator and the Dynamic Least Square estimator. The monetary model is able to convincingly explain the long‐run exchange rate relationships of a group of CEECs, particularly when this is supplemented by a Balassa–Samuelson effect. Our estimated long‐run monetary equations are used to compute equilibrium exchange rates. Finally, we discuss the implications for the accession of selected countries to the European Economic and Monetary Union.     

The ontology of 'the economic': an Aristotelian analysis

Tony Lawson's and Uskali Mäki's respective realist projectsrely on an ontology of the economy. This paper will not focuson these research projects but will instead try to shed lighton them by introducing an ontology of the economy accordingto Aristotle. Oikonomiké, the seminal term used by him,is not a noun but an adjective. For Aristotle, nouns expressentities or beings, both self-sufficient beings and accidentalproperties. Adjectives almost always express accidents. Whatkind of being is ‘the economic’? This analysis willsuggest some conclusions about the constraints of economic scienceand the need for institutions according to the peculiar ontologicalcondition of ‘the economic’ as conceived by Aristotle.     

Explaining the Persistence of Profits: A Time-Varying Approach

The present paper analyzes the determinants of profit persistence using a newly developed methodology that allows the persistence parameter to vary with time. It therefore addresses a significant limitation of previous persistence models, which have assumed unrealistically that persistence is fixed over relatively long periods of 20 years and upwards. The concentration of the industry is found to have a significant positive impact on profit persistence. However, at firm level, market share and risk have a surprisingly negative impact