On ‘creative cities’ governance models: a comparative approach

The implementation of ‘creative cities’ projects all over the world in recent years has been characterised by a great diversity of institutional frameworks and governance mechanisms.

Departing from the contemporary debates on ‘creative industries’ and ‘creative cities’, this article aims to discuss this diversity of regulatory mechanisms and forms of governance. Some tentative typologies of case studies and governance mechanisms are drawn in order to improve the understanding of those dynamics, to build up knowledge on suitable ‘creative cities’ governance models, and to develop ideas to support a strategy for public intervention in the Portuguese case.     

How Does the Market Value Corporate Sustainability Performance?

This study provides empirical evidence on how corporate sustainability performance (CSP), as proxied by membership of the Dow Jones sustainability index, is reflected in the market value of equity. Using a theoretical framework combining institutional perspectives, stakeholder theory, and resource-based perspectives, we develop a set of hypotheses that relate the market value of equity to CSP. For a sample of North American firms, our preliminary results show that CSP has significant explanatory power for stock prices over the traditional summary accounting measures such as earnings and book value of equity. However, further analyses suggest that we should not focus on corporate sustainability itself. Our findings suggest that what investors really do is to penalize large profitable firms with low level of CSP. Firms with incentives to develop a high level of CSP not engaging on such strategy are, thus, penalized by the market.     

Competitive and Cooperative Behavior in Embedded Markets: Developing an Institutional Perspective on Bazaars

In an ethnographic study of a retail setting, we examine relationships among competitors. We find that competitors often emphasize various forms of cooperation, and we describe socio-economic behaviors that illustrate how cooperation transcends or mediates competition among retailers. Retailers selectively cooperate and compete for customers in ways that alter our understandings of concepts such as loyalty and market stability, and practices such as marketing communications and pricing. We highlight the significance of these institutional practices and the role they play in forming and maintaining community in a bazaar.     

Targeted versus nontargeted multispecies fishing

In multispecies fisheries, different technological harvest conditions imply different long-run bioeconomic equilibria. Optimal and open access exploitation by a single fleet of two ecologically independent species is considered. Two polar cases are studied: Targeted fishing, when fishermen have to choose at any moment which species to target; and Nontargeted fishing, when more than one species is caught at the same time. The relative efficiency of several policy measures is examined for both cases.     

The Location of New Firms and the Life Cycle of Industries

Small Business Economics - Why does the location of new firms differ according to the characteristics of the industry? Is there a relation between a technologically dense base of firms and the...     

Pensions and Retirement Among Black Union Army Veterans

I examine the effects of an unearned income transfer on the retirement rates and living arrangements of black Union Army veterans. I find that blacks were more than twice as responsive as whites to income transfers in their retirement decisions and 6 to 8 times as responsive in their choice of independent living arrangements. My findings have implications for understanding racial differences in rates of retirement and independent living at the beginning of the twentieth century, the rise in retirement prior to 1930, and the subsequent convergence in black-white retirement rates and living arrangements.