Trapped in the Logic of the Modern State System? European Integration in the Wake of the Financial Crisis

In the wake of the Single European Act of the mid-1980s and a series of follow-on initiatives aimed at fostering greater integration in Europe, a number of commentators began describing Europe as a truly novel political-territorial arrangement. By the middle of the 1990s, however, the adoption of a common currency came to dominate the European integration agenda. The embrace of monetary union reflected a view of European integration that was firmly embedded in the logic of the modern territorial state system. That logic led many commentators to view the success or failure of integration in terms of the degree to which powers were being transferred from state governmental and economic institutions to the central decision-making bodies of the European Union. Such an approach cast the EU as a super-state rather than as a new type of political-institutional entity. As a result, the integration project was less subversive of the state system than it might otherwise have been – bolstering the view of the European Union as a distant bureaucracy not adequately attuned to the needs of everyday Europeans and fueling nationalist sentiments: a social force with deep roots in the modernist territorial order. Moving the European integration process forward will likely require embracing conceptions of progress that are less tethered to modernist territorial ideas and assumptions.     

An Open Source Web-Mapping System for Tourism Planning and Marketing

Core retail management functions include defining market areas and profiling customers. For tourism enterprises, market areas are geographically dispersed with many customers residing beyond the immediate area surrounding the attraction. Visualization and analysis of these distributed market areas are significantly enhanced by the capabilities of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and help to support management objectives. Unfortunately, many businesses are unable to utilize GIS due to its complexity and expense. This study develops a decision support tool for tourism planning and marketing that is customized and easy to use, employs open source software to reduce expense, and allows for broad accessibility via web delivery. Users can easily visualize and examine the spatial distribution of their own United States (US) client origins and visitation patterns along with relevant tourism-specific and general demographic information. This functionality can be beneficial in developing or augmenting business plans or marketing strategies, and for informing tourism theory.     

Die Demografi estrategie der Bundesregierung — ein Weg zu mehr Wohlstand?

How can Germany maintain its high standard of living as its workforce decreases in number and there are ever fewer skilled workers available? The economic challenge associated with demographic change is to achieve a productivity increase large enough to prevent a decline in the principal indicator of prosperity — per capita GDP. Does the demographic strategy pursued by Germany in 2012 refl ect this central challenge? Only to a certain extent. The core message of this paper is that qualifi cation — in the form of lifelong learning — is a central driver of increased productivity and is, by extension, the sustainable solution for Germany.     

Die Verkehrsinfrastruktur in Deutschland: marode und unterfinanziert

In German transport infrastructure provision, political decision-making and a lack of user charges are the main reasons for inefficiencies, such as underinvestment, misallocation of funds and congestions. In the last decades, transport policy in Germany has focused on network extensions, while maintaining and renewing the infrastructure have been neglected. Additional financial resources will be needed to restore the quality of the federal, state and local transportation networks, in order of magnitude of yy7.2 billion p.a. in the next 15 years. Although the government collects about yy45 billion in taxes and infrastructure charges from road transport, it is unable to fund the transport infrastructure adequately. Several committees have suggested new concepts to provide sufficient funding, continuity and efficiency for renewing the transport infrastructure, and different options of raising more funds are under discussion (launching a fund, increasing general or energy taxes, extending road charges). Special attention is paid to the political economy of public funding and both tax and charge resistance which are considered to be the main obstacle rather than a lack of ideas or scientific knowledge. In the end, German transport infrastructure does not only need additional money but also structural reforms to increase efficiency in the infrastructure sector.     

Effect of Exchange Rates and Gasoline Prices on US Imports of Japanese Automobiles

We analyze the effects of gasoline prices and exchange rates on Japanese automobile imports to the United States between 1970 and 2004. We test the relationships before, during, and after the Voluntary Restraint Agreement placed on Japanese imports between 1981 and 1988. We also control for general demand for automobiles and domestically manufactured Japanese vehicles. As expected, we found that demand for Japanese imports is positively correlated with the price of gasoline. Before 1988 the demand for Japanese imports contributed to a strengthening of the yen. But after, a positive relationship between the yen-for-dollar exchange rate and imports has prevailed.     

Response to Garegnani,Pivetti and Vianello

The paper begins with a critical evaluation of the modelling of the individual supply function of labour in orthodox economics. The varying ways in which the aggregate labour supply curve has been represented in macroeconomics texts is then outlined. A proposal for a simple representation of the aggregate labour supply curve based on economic, social and institutional realities is then provided. Finally the implications of our discussion for macroeconomic analysis are drawn.     

A Simple Model to Teach Business Cycle Macroeconomics for Emerging Market and Developing Economies

The canonical neoclassical model is insufficient to understand business cycle fluctuations in emerging market and developing economies. The author reformulates the model proposed by Aguiar and Gopinath (2007 Ahumada, I., and F. Butler. 2009. La enseñanza de la economía en México. Working Paper 672. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. [Google Scholar]) in a simple setting that can be used to teach business cycle macroeconomics for emerging market and developing economies at the undergraduate level. The simplified model is employed for qualitatively explaining facts such as the highly countercyclicality of the trade balance and the higher volatility of output and consumption compared with those observed in advanced countries.     

Management regimes in science-based innovation: control and uncertainty during early phases of new drug development

The international pharmaceutical industry is facing a challenge in terms of being able to deliver new and innovative drugs at lower cost. During the last 10 years, a range of new scientific procedures and technologies has been introduced into the industry, partially derived from the advancement of genomics research. However, to date, few have resulted in new registered drugs. In addition to the new technologies, various managerial techniques and methods have been introduced with the intention of increasing the transparency of operations. This paper reports on a study of how scientists during the early phases of new drug development conceive of this present management regime emphasising quantitative output. Thinking of new drug development as an intellectual pursuit in order to understand the elementary mechanisms of the biological organisms on the molecular level, scientists call for an understanding and adjustment of the managerial techniques structuring this work, accompanied by ambiguities and uncertainty.     

Contributions of the Galbraith “Technostructure” to the Growing Crisis of the U.S. Economy

This paper lays the methodological foundations of an analytical framework that may help shed some new light on the issue of territorial inequalities in the digital economy. It opposes the recent tendency to build up an evolutionary economic geography as an alternative not only to the so-called "New Economic Geography" (namely "geographical mainstream economics") but also to the institutional economic geography. The paper advocates the development of an evolutionary and institutional approach in economic geography, which would be meso-focused. Finally, it presents some insights that highlight the heuristic potential of this approach in reappraising the territorial features of the digital economy.