Progressing road safety through deep change and transformational leadership

In an earlier paper in this journal, we argued that current road safety programs and thinking are constructed within a paradigm that tends to accept existing cultural arrangements. The current paper is a sequel to the earlier one, and outlines significant policy themes emerging from a research project on a holistic approach to road safety. Two overarching themes include the importance of leadership for policy change and implementation, and addressing the more transformative aspects of intervening in a system. A distinction can be drawn between “deep” sustainable change, which usually requires fundamental redesign of the systems involved, and “shallow” adaptive change. Examples of deep change discussed include the much wider application of mobility management, a strong shift to active travel and public transport, and a reconsideration of how time is structured in society, as with the adoption of “Slow Cities” principles. Transformational leadership can draw on a variety of “knowledge cultures”, which can all share in collective decision-making and possible actions for the future. We discuss especially leadership at the worldview, organisational, and community levels. Vision Zero approaches are valuable, but need to be integrated with a common vision for a sustainable transport system developed in conjunction with energy, transport, health, environment, and education agencies. In addition, Vision Zero approaches can be assisted by greater attention to and questioning of embedded cultural practices and behaviour.     

The broader economic consequences of transport infrastructure investments

A major question in Economic Geography relates to the scale and nature of transport infrastructure’s contribution to the broader economy. While Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is the most widely used of the three potential approaches, the recent interest in the wider economic benefits of transport infrastructure has spawned a variety of macroeconomic models. However, the estimates of magnitudes and direction of economic impacts of infrastructure by various macroeconomic models are sharply different, and these models shed little light on causal mechanisms linking transport and the economy. This paper has two aims: first, to highlight the wider economic benefits of transport infrastructure from the observed role of railroads and waterways in economic development, and two by reviewing recent theoretical developments to identify the multiple causal mechanisms which link transport and economic growth such as : market expansion, gains from trade, technological shifts, processes of spatial agglomeration and processes of innovation and commercialization of new knowledge in urban clusters (made possible by transport improvements). Hence the need for developing general equilibrium analyses of transport-economy linkages.     

Selecting container port via a fuzzy ANP-based approach: A case study in the Marmara Region,Turkey

In this case study, a real world problem of a production firm in the Marmara Region, Turkey was considered. In the current situation, the firm works with different third-party logistics firms and uses different ports each time. However, they have some quality problems and decided to work with a logistics firm by using the most convenient port alternative. A number of conflicting qualitative and quantitative criteria exist for evaluating alternative ports. Qualitative criteria are often accompanied by ambiguities and vagueness. To cope with this problem, the fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) method is used in this study. First, we defined the region specific criteria consisting of the twenty sub-criteria under the six main criteria clusters that influence the selection of container port. Then seven alternative container ports located in the Marmara Sea were determined. The results showed that the most convenient district for the container port is Istanbul District, which is one of the biggest economical centers in Eastern Europe.     

The Impact of Financial Crises on Labor Markets, Household Incomes, and Poverty: A Review of Evidence

The 1990s have witnessed several financial crises, of whichthe East Asia and Mexico tequila crises are perhaps the mostwell known. What impact have these crises had on labor markets,household incomes, and poverty? Total employment fell by muchless than production declines and even increased in some cases.However, these aggregates mask considerable churning in employmentacross sectors, employment status, and location. Economies thatexperienced the sharpest currency depreciations suffered thedeepest cuts in real wages, though deeper cuts in real wagesrelative to GDP were associated with smaller rises in unemployment.To some extent, families smoothed their incomes through increasedlabor force participation and private transfers, though thelimited evidence available suggests that wealthier familieswere better able to smooth consumption. The initial impact ofthe crises was on the urban corporate sector, but rural householdswere affected as well and in some instances suffered deeperlosses than did urban families. School enrollment declined,especially among poorer families, as did use of health facilities,but he impact on children's nutrition levels appears to vary.Crises have typically proved short-lived, but whether householdsplunged into poverty during a crisis are able to recover asthe economy does remains an open question.      

Has International Financial Integration Increased?

This paper compares the behavior of real interest rate differentials across the major countries under the Bretton Woods regime and the regime of floating exchanges that replaced it. The primary object is to investigate both the extent of market integration and its changes over time. For all fifteen possible country pairs real interest differentials are mean reverting, and in two-thirds of these cases indistinguishable from zero statistically. For all country pairs on average and for most such pairs individually, moreover, the estimated differentials are not appreciably different in absolute value than the differentials that we estimate for various money-market rates within the United States. Additional evidence points to a narrowing of differentials under floating rates over time and an increase in speeds of convergence.     

Technological interweavement: a means of achieving innovation success

In this paper, results are presented of an empirical study of the Lake Constance region covering a sample of 848 manufacturing companies. Based upon multivariate analyses, the paper documents that the mobilization of external resources and know-how is a critical factor for a firm's technological innovation success which in turn is the main determinant of commercial innovation success. The findings show that there are three kinds of technology-oriented external relationships, which prove to be of special importance: close contacts with customers, linkages to universities and research institutes and R&D-cooperations with other companies.