Climate change and its marginalizing effect on agriculture

The agriculture of some areas considered marginal in the EU agricultural context is being questioned due to its low productivity and growing dependence on economic aid programs Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This study shows that climate change increases these areas marginalisation of since worsens crop growth conditions. The influence of climate change on the agricultural sector is analyzed using the Multicriteria Decision Paradigm with information provided by the Erosion-Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) and a General Circulation Model (GCM) as inputs for multicriteria mathematical programming models. The results obtained show climate change effects on the crop portfolio. Further results suggest that climate change effects are not only economics and environmental, reducing the suitable area for crops, but also social as it causes loss of jobs in the agricultural sector.     

Raising the bar (11)

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 14(2) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper deals with past and current challenges for regional science research. The second paper investigates whether people living in deprived neighbourhoods have less chance of succeeding in a job application. The third paper finds evidence that real estate firms can avoid price competition when market shares of their allies increase in the vicinity. The fourth paper is methodological: it considers a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model with heterogeneous coefficients and extensively analyzes the impact of this extension on the direct and indirect effects estimates. The fifth paper proposes an innovative method to estimate the elements of the spatial weight matrix in a spatial econometric model. The final paper is econometric–theoretical: it proposes a new generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator of the coefficients of a SAR model if the error terms are heteroskedastic of an unknown form.     

Spatial income and public capital: a case of a Spanish region

The objective of this paper is to analyse major determinants of disposable per capita income at a local municipality level for a territory of Spain: the Valencian region. A cross-sectional spatial study for an averaged period (2010–2013) will allow us to control for intraregional correlation, paying special attention to the role of real public investment and its possible effects on disposable personal income. A reference framework for economic and social policymakers will be provided by the specification of the model.     

Robustness issues regarding content-corrected tolerance limits

This article reviews the content-corrected method for tolerance limits proposed by Fernholz and Gillespie (2001) and addresses some robustness issues that affect the length of the corresponding interval as well as the corrected content value. The content-corrected method for k-factor tolerance limits consists of obtaining a bootstrap corrected value p ^* that is robust in the sense of preserving the confidence coefficient for a variety of distributions. We propose several location/scale robust alternatives to obtain robust corrected-content k-factor tolerance limits that produce shorter intervals when outlying observations are present. We analyze the Hadamard differentiability to insure bootstrap consistency for large samples. We define the breakdown point for the particular statistic to be bootstrapped, and we obtain the influence function and the value of the breakdown point for the traditional and the robust statistics. Two examples showing the advantage of using these robust alternatives are also included.     

Technological adaptation, trade, and growth

Technological Adaptation, Trade, and Growth. — Based on Grossman and Helpman’s 1991 seminal work, the authors provide a simple model extension where innovations created in the high-tech sector may be assimilated or adapted by the lowtech sector, thus generating nondecreasing returns in the production function of the latter. When applying a Heckscher-Ohlin framework the authors find that the effects of technological diffusion allow a country relatively scarce in human capital to benefit from nondecreasing rates of growth through its low-tech sector. They test this idea by using a dynamic panel data approach in order to deal with simultaneity and country heterogeneity. Their results are consistent with the predictions of the model and robust to a broad range of definitions of technological intensity.     

Interindustry wage differentials in dummy variable models

Normalized interindustry wage differentials à la Krueger and Summers [Krueger, A.B., Summers, L.H., 1988. Efficiency wages and the inter-industry wage structure. Econometrica 56, 259–293] derive from a general specification of wage equations with dummy variables which cannot be directly estimated. This note illustrates how they can be obtained from the coefficients of a more specific parameterization and how their estimated variances can be transformed accordingly.     

Equity ownership and control of international joint ventures in the retail sector

Abstract

This study examines the relationships that exist between consumers' perceptions of a retail environment and their emotions, satisfaction and behavioural intentions with respect to that shopping setting. A model of these relationships is developed and then tested in two distinct retail settings—shopping centres and traditional retailing areas. The results show that, in general, positive perceptions of a retail environment have a positive influence on positive emotions, on repatronage intentions, and on the desire to remain longer in the shopping area in both retail settings. However, some interesting differences emerge between shopping centres and traditional retailing areas: (i) the internal environment has a stronger effect on emotions in shopping centres than in traditional retailing areas; and (ii) the internal environment has a negative effect in shopping centres on the disposition to pay more.     

The dark side of the sharing economy: Balancing value co-creation and value co-destruction

The sharing economy disrupts the marketplace and brings both benefits and disadvantages into service ecosystems. We discuss principles of the S-D logic and transformative service research and explore the processes of value co-creation and co-destruction of well-being within the ecosystem of the accommodation sharing economy. Following a brief period of euphoria, the dark side of the sharing economy emerges, defined as the socially, environmentally, or economically undesirable effects introduced by the sharing economy. Airbnb introduced new realities for visitors, neighborhoods, the accommodation industry, and city councils, whereby some stakeholders are frequently found to maximize their own value at the expense of others. Value co-destruction prevails often due to uncontrolled and rapid expansion. We seek to promote a more balanced process, and the optimization of value co-creation, while seeking to prevent value co-destruction. Using a literature review, netnography, and a case study, we investigate co-creation and co-destruction, as expressed by different stakeholders, and focus on the socio-psychological implications in the use of sharing platforms that affect the well-being of individuals and community. A conceptual framework is proposed to manage future research addressing well-being, value co-creation and co-destruction in complex ecosystem service networks.     

Effects of uncertain lifetime and annuity insurance on capital accumulation and growth

Summary.  This paper studies the effects of uncertain lifetime on capital accumulation and growth and also the sensitivity of those effects to the existence of a perfect annuities market. The model is an overlapping generations model with uncertain lifetimes. The technology is convex and such that the marginal product of capital is bounded away from zero. A contribution of this paper is to show that the existence of accidental bequests may lead the economy to an equilibrium that exhibits asymptotic growth, which is impossible in an economy with a perfect annuities market or with certain lifetimes. This paper also shows that if individuals face a positive probability of surviving in every period, they may be willing to save at any age. This effect of uncertain lifetime on savings may also lead the economy to an equilibrium exhibiting asymptotic growth even if there exists a perfect annuities market. Received: April 17, 1996; revised version: December 9, 1997