Sustainable economic growth in the European Union: The role of ICT,venture capital,and innovation

Over the past 30 years, the economies in Europe have undergone major transformations that have been powered by diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT), intensification of innovation, and reforms in the financial sector to support innovative endeavors. The primary objective of this study was to examine the causal relationships among ICT diffusion, innovation diffusion, venture capital investment, and economic growth for 25 countries in Europe for the period from 1989 to 2016. Using a vector error‐correction model, the study examines the underlying short‐run and long‐run relationships for the above variables. The empirical analysis shows that in the long run, venture capital investment, ICT diffusion, and innovation diffusion have significant impacts on economic growth in Europe. However, in the short run, the direction of the causality varies depending on the specific measures of ICT diffusion and innovation diffusion that are utilized. Results from this study provide valuable insights into the types of policies that will contribute to sustainable economic growth in Europe.     

Incomplete property rights, exposure to markets and the provision of environmental services in China

This paper uses data from a 2003 rural survey to examine the determinants of household provision of environmental services under China's Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), the largest payments for environmental services program in the developing world. The paper examines the determinants of plot-level survival rates of program-planted trees and grasses. It finds that household rights over retired land as well as autonomy in program decision-making (which we argue on the basis of supportive evidence are plausibly exogenous to post-retirement outcomes) have important and potentially countervailing impacts on the provision of environmental services targeted by the program. Households permitted to select what to plant obtain better program outcomes, but do not make the choices that the government would like them to, while those permitted to decide what land to retire perform worse. The analysis also finds that households more vested and experienced in agriculture and with less exposure to off-farm labor markets fare better in managing their planted trees. Significant learning-by-doing effects are also evident, suggesting that greater technical support to farmers could improve outcomes and lower program costs.     

The potato's contribution to population and urbanization: evidence from a historical experiment

We exploit regional variation in suitability for cultivating potatoes, together with time variation arising from their introduction to the Old World from the Americas, to estimate the impact of potatoes on Old World population and urbanization. Our results show that the introduction of the potato was responsible for a significant portion of the increase in population and urbanization observed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to our most conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato accounts for approximately one-quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. Additional evidence from within-country comparisons of city populations and adult heights also confirms the cross-country findings.     

Sustainability to support end-to-end value chains: the role of supply chain management

Many firms are increasing their focus on sustainability. However, this focus has primarily emphasized environmentalism and ethics. Enterprise value chains must develop and support a broader sustainability perspective to ensure that its consumer, business, supply chain, community and environmental relationships and interactions remain viable. Using public documents and Internet sites of major global firms, this article suggests a framework to define the dimensions of sustainability and the categories of initiatives within each dimension. The article then offers examples regarding how major firms are implementing each sustainability dimension to enhance their competitiveness. Building on the framework, the article illustrates the sustainability initiatives applied by different categories of sustainability leaders.     

Learning to Be Job Ready: Strategies for Greater Social Inclusion in Public Sector Employment

‘Learning to be job ready’ (L2BJR) was a pilot scheme involving 16 long-term unemployed people from a range of backgrounds being offered a 6-month paid placement within the care department of a city council in Northern England. The project was based on a partnership with the largest college in the city specialising in post-16 education and training for residents and employees. The college targeted people as potential candidates for the programme through their prior attendance on or interest in care courses at the college, rather than the council employing more traditional methods of recruitment. Surveys, focus groups and interviews were utilised to capture the views and experiences of the participants, project workers and line managers, and also evidence of the project’s impact on service delivery in the care department. The article adds to our conceptual and practical knowledge of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the public sector in three distinct ways. From a social and business perspective, the findings of the research highlight a potentially more robust strategy for matching long-term unemployed citizens to training and job opportunities in the public sector than is otherwise possible through the more conventional route of the job centre. Secondly, through this approach and with appropriate pre-training, a greater understanding of and empathy for the service users can be developed in the new organisational members, strengthening the subsequent ethical delivery and quality of the service. Finally, a re-conceptualisation of Carroll’s influential model of CSR, which also specifically incorporates the ethical and social inclusion duties of public sector organisations not only as service providers but also as potential employers, offers a more tailored paradigm for understanding this unique yet under-researched element of CSR theory and practice.     

How China Sees the Arctic: Reading Between Extraregional and Intraregional Narratives

In May 2013, China gained observer status in the Arctic Council, exemplifying its growing legitimacy as a regional actor in the eyes of the eight countries with territory north of the Arctic Circle. Yet since China remains an extraregional state without territory in the Arctic, Chinese officials continue to bolster their state’s legitimacy as an Arctic stakeholder through two spatially inconsistent but mutually reinforcing grand regional narratives. On the one hand, Chinese officials recognize the salience of territory and presence in the Arctic, underscoring their country’s “near-Arctic” location and polar scientific expeditions. On the other hand, officials depict the Arctic as a maritime, global space where climate change has potential ramifications for the entire planet. Significantly, these reframings are affecting intraregional states’ perceptions of the Arctic, demonstrating how a region’s territorial extent, symbolic meaning, and institutional form emerge through the ongoing conversation between extraregional and intraregional narratives.     

Analysing the risks of individual and collective intentionality

The risk assessment of complex systems often seems to neglect the way in which intentions, collective and individual, are central to our explanations of how risk arises in such systems. Contradictions among the intentions of different actors, for example, are typically an important part of our understanding of how organizations break down. Moreover, risk assessment practice pays little attention to the reflexive problem of how intentions for the risk assessment itself can themselves become problematic. This study was an attempt to develop a framework to support reasoning about intentionality, both individual and collective, during risk assessment. The framework broadly follows a process of 1) identifying the main social objects in a system, 2) asking what are the collective intentions for these objects in terms of the functions that are conferred on them, 3) asking what obligations and powers these create, and 4) asking what risks of organizational dysfunction can then arise. The approach was applied in a case study of aviation ramp operations. Its main value is as a formative rather than a summative kind of analysis.     

Preference uncertainty in stated preference studies: facts and artefacts

The ordinal scale and polychotomous choice methods are two widely used techniques for estimating preference uncertainty in stated preference studies. This article presents the results of two experiments that apply these estimation techniques. The first experiment was designed to compare and contrast the scores of the ordinal scale and polychotomous choice method. The second experiment was conducted to test a scale that combines verbal expressions with numerical and graphical interpretations: a composite scale. The results of the study can be summarized in three key findings. First, the polychotomous choice method generates a higher proportion of ‘yes’ responses than the conventional dichotomous choice elicitation format. Second, the composite scale generates a significantly higher proportion of certain responses. Finally, the ordinal scale performs poorly on the ground of construct validity.