Cluster-mapping procedure for tourism regions based on geostatistics and fuzzy clustering: example of Polish districts

ABSTRACT

In tourism, the phenomenon of spatial agglomeration (concentration of economic activity) spreads beyond the borders of the territorial units. It is referred to as geographic ‘spillovers’ that enhances spatial interdependence and functional relationship of neighbouring regions. Within the standard procedure of cluster-mapping, only concentration inside a territorial unit may be analysed which is a source of biased results in tourism studies. However, tourist agglomeration centres sometimes occur at the juncture of territorial units and the economic entities located in them form spatial clusters with a different degree of membership to several centres of agglomerations located in the neighbourhood. Therefore, we propose to measure ‘inter-regional’ agglomeration in tourism providing modification of spatial autocorrelation measures (regarding neighbourhood and distance). In order to measure neighbourhood more precisely, we use geostatistical information (global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of tourism entities) and geographically weighted fuzzy clustering approach (FGWC). We examine the method on the example of Polish districts (NUTS-4) using database of 131,338 firms registered in section I (accommodation and food services) of Polish Classification of Activity in 2015. The results proved that a novel method of cluster-mapping considering spatial dependency combined with geographic information system (GIS) and FGWC method increases the accuracy of the identification of tourism clusters (inter-regional agglomeration).     

Macroeconomic Effects of an Ageing Population in Mauritius

The economic literature focuses mostly on faster ageing of population among developed countries; however, many developing countries experience even more dramatic pace of this process. Mauritius, with the median age of population higher than the world average since 1990s, represents a prominent example of such a case. In this paper, we analyse demographic developments in Mauritius and discuss their macroeconomic implications using an open-economy OLG model with demographic shocks. We project that a decline in the Mauritian interest rate and net foreign assets to GDP resulting from ageing will be accompanied by a temporary increase in GDP, consumption and investment.     

Demographic impacts in central and eastern European countries

All countries undergoing socioeconomic transformation in the central, eastern, and southeastern parts of Europe, regardless of the progress made in systemic transformation, have witnessed significant changes in their population. This paper presents some of these demographic changes and considers the dynamics produced by a drop in reproduction rates and the declining frequency of marriages. The intensity of these changes tended to vary. All of the countries, with the exception of Albania, are characterized by low birth rates approaching nominally the level of death rates. Infant mortality rates in the majority of the countries were relatively high at the beginning of the 1990s compared with their minimum.     

Cross-country linkages as determinants of procyclicality of loan loss provisions

Procyclicality in banking may result in financial instability and therefore be destructive to economic growth. The sensitivity of different banking balance sheet and income statement variables to the business cycle is diversified and may be prone to increasing integration of financial markets. In this paper, we address the problem of the influence of financial integration on the transmission of economic shocks from one country to another and consequently on the sensitivity of loan loss provisions (LLPs) to the business cycle. The application of the seemingly unrelated regression equations (SURE) approach to 13 OECD countries in 1995–2009 shows that the procyclicality of LLPs is statistically significant almost in the whole sample of countries. Regardless of the econometric specification, the income-smoothing, capital management and risk management hypotheses are hardly supported by the data. However, in SURE specification, the relationship of bank-specific variables is of higher statistical significance than in the country regression approach. Hence, cross-country interconnectedness is not only economically, but also empirically important when analyzing cross-country diversifications of LLPs.     

MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION OF FACTOR MODELS ON DATASETS WITH ARBITRARY PATTERN OF MISSING DATA

In this paper we modify the expectation maximization algorithm in order to estimate the parameters of the dynamic factor model on a dataset with an arbitrary pattern of missing data. We also extend the model to the case with a serially correlated idiosyncratic component. The framework allows us to handle efficiently and in an automatic manner sets of indicators characterized by different publication delays, frequencies and sample lengths. This can be relevant, for example, for young economies for which many indicators have been compiled only recently. We evaluate the methodology in a Monte Carlo experiment and we apply it to nowcasting of the euro area gross domestic product. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

School competition and the quality of education: introducing market incentives into public services

Existing research indicates that introducing school choice and competition into the public education system might improve the quality of schooling. Yet, up to date most empirical work on school choice has concentrated on developed countries and it is far from obvious that the experience of these countries can be of any guidance for transition economies. Our work intends to fill this gap. We concentrate on the case of Poland. We argue that in Poland, school choice and competition tends to improve average education quality and efficiency of public education expenditure.     

Representations of Hosts in Travel Writing: The Guardian Travel Section

In this paper, we examine representations of hosts to tourist destinations covered in journalistic travel reports published in the Travel Section of the Saturday edition of the British broadsheet newspaper The Guardian in 1997. Methodologically, the paper is anchored within the constructionist view of discourse, i.e. we assume that in the linguistic representation of people, places, or events, discursive choices not only describe the reality but also construct its ideologically preferred version. We demonstrate that in the travel reports examined here, local people tend to be represented in three principal categories: (1) homogeneous ethnic or social group; (2) observed bearers of the 'national' or 'community' characteristics; or (3) as 'featureless' helpers to the travellers. Arguing that these representations are constitutive of Foucauldian regimes of truth we propose that the reports are a means of constructing a known and tamed reality that is safe for the readers/prospective tourists to travel to.     

Institutional investors and stock returns volatility: Empirical evidence from a natural experiment

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence on the impact of institutional investors on stock market returns dynamics. The Polish pension system reform in 1999 and the associated increase in institutional ownership due to the investment activities of pension funds are used as a unique institutional characteristic. Performing a Markov-switching-GARCH analysis we find empirical evidence that the increase of institutional ownership has temporarily changed the volatility structure of aggregate stock returns. The results are interpretable in favor of a stabilizing effect on index stock returns induced by institutional investors.