Spatial dynamics and metropolitan change

"This special issue presents contributions to a collaborative effort to analyze 'the dynamics of metropolitan processes and policies'....[It] contains four papers which focus on industrial change and economic restructuring; two papers deal with population relocation and migration processes; one paper contains a study of economic cycles in space and one paper treats the assessment of urban investment and urban renewal projects." The geographic focus is on the developed countries.     

Short notes on Charlier's method for expansion of frequency functions in series

Abstract

1. In 1905 Charlier outlined some methods for the expansion of functions in series. ¹ C. V. L. Charlier, Über die Darstellung willkürlicher Funktionen (Meddelanden från Lunds Observatorium, Ser. I, nr 27). Particularly he was dealing with frequency functions, but the method has a more general application. As is well known there were two kinds of developments considered, namely in terms of the differentials and in terms of the differences of a conveniently chosen developing function. The outstanding examples are — respectively — the expansions of the so called types A and B. The difference series has later gained a special attention by its deduction being attached to the theory for generating functions. ² I. V. Uspensky, On Ch. Jordan's Series for Probability (Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 32, 1931). The true pivotal function in this respect seems, however, to be the moment generating function. In the following notes it will be shown that the differential series as well as difference series built up by the advancing and the central differences are obtainable in a similar way. By employing some convenient cumulants the different expansions can be written down compactly in symbolic forms which reveal their mutual formal relations. It will further be observed that Charlier's method of expansion is the inversion of a method indicated by Abel.     

Multiprofessional Cooperation and Accountability Pressures

Abstract

This article examines how multiprofessional healthcare teams, working as a post-New Public Management (post-NPM) reform, respond to accountability pressure resulting from the implementation of NPM reforms. The team members use three strategies to respond to this pressure: responsibility avoiding that results in conflict; responsibility ignoring that results in parallel work and responsibility sharing that results in cooperation. Depending on how the professionals respond to different contextual factors, the choice of strategies can either foster or inhibit cooperation in multiprofessional teams. Achieving holistic patient care is threatened when accountability pressure increases for teams that have not yet developed their internal routines of cooperation.     

Sealed bid auctions versus ascending bid auctions: an experimental study

This paper considers two multi-item auction formats (ascending and sealed bid) which both identify the minimum Walrasian equilibrium prices and where truthful preference revelation constitutes an equilibrium. Even though these auction formats share many theoretical properties, there are behavioral aspects that are not easily captured. To explore this issue in more detail, this paper experimentally investigates what role the design of the auction format has for its outcome. The results suggest that the sealed bid mechanism performs weakly better in all of the investigated measures (consistent reporting, efficiency etc.). In addition, we find that the performance of the ascending auction is increasing over time, whereas the sealed bid auction shows no such tendency.     

The role of accident theory in injury prevention - time for the pendulum to swing back

Injury prevention is a branch of safety sciences. While comprehensive theoretical developments occurred in the wider field in the last decades, little of these developments reached and influenced the injury prevention community. Instead, a clear retro trend 'back to basics' is seen among injury prevention scholars, especially to Dr William Haddon's pioneering work some 50 years ago. This paper intends to draw attention to this polarisation and discuss possible explanations. It is argued that the strong campaign against the accident concept among leading injury prevention groupings became a serious hindrance for theoretical exchange. The underlying process is interpreted in terms of a struggle for ownership over this truly interdisciplinary field of research, unfortunately at the expense of theoretical stagnation in injury prevention circles and lessened interest in collaboration from other scientific areas. This paper is written as a tribute to Professor Leif Svanstr?m and his scientific contributions, with special regard to his genuine interest in interdisciplinary research.     

When is your experience valuable? Occupation-industry transitions and self-employment success

The literature on employee spinoffs has, for a long time, stressed the importance of industry-specific skills and experiences in explaining the success of new firms. We argue that employees also develop skills that are associated with their occupation within an industry, and that success as an entrepreneur, therefore, is also contingent on the relation between the entrepreneurs’ previous occupation and the industry in which they operate as self-employed. Using matched employer-employee data, we develop a measure, occupational spin-offs, that accounts for this relation. An occupational spin-off is defined as a start-up in the most common industry, given the previous occupation of the founder. We then show that entrepreneurs starting occupational spinoffs enjoy above average income from self-employment and have longer spells as business owners.     

Opportunity Cost for Free Allocations of Emissions Permits: An Experimental Analysis

An important feature of emissions trading is how emissions permits are allocated. The choice between an auction and free allocation should not influence firms’ production choices nor consumer prices according to economic theory. However, many parties expect the method of allocation to affect product prices. This paper describes an experimental investigation into price determination under a cap-and-trade program with different allocation methods. Participants initially display diverse pricing strategies. However, given a simple economic setting in which earnings depend on behavior, we find that subjects learn to consider the opportunity cost of permits and overall behavior moves toward the economic prediction.     

Empirical Evidence on the Relationship between Mobile Termination Rates and Firms' Profits

The theoretical literature on mobile termination rates (MTRs) is inconclusive on how the level of MTRs affects overall consumer charges and firms' profits. We show that when firms offer bundles with fixed included usage – a tariff structure that has become more common in recent years – an identical change in all MTRs does not affect firms' retail prices or profits. We use a panel dataset from saturated European markets to estimate the effect of MTRs on mobile operators' profits. As predicted by the theoretical model, we cannot reject the fact that firms' profits are unaffected by an identical change in all MTRs.     

Using traffic data to estimate wildlife populations

Wildlife populations are threatened worldwide by, among others, habitat fragmentation and hunting pressure. An important impediment for the large scale, national and regional, management of the populations is the difficulty to quantify population dynamics. The purpose of this study is to present a tool for such estimations which is based on available data in several countries; traffic load and traffic accidents with wildlife. An econometric model is developed, which accounts for landscape characteristics. It is applied to wild boar in Sweden, for which data on traffic load and accidents for different counties and years are available. Landscape characteristics are introduced with direct or indirect effects on population growth. The indirect landscape model gives the best statistical performance, and the results show relatively small differences in calculated intrinsic growth rate among counties but considerable differences in predicted population developments.