Mainstreaming sustainable adaptation to climate change into municipal planning: An analysis from the Eastern Cape,South Africa

Municipalities are well positioned to support adaptation of vulnerable people to climate change; however, they seldom integrate climate change into their planning for social development. The building of adaptive capacity for sustainable adaptation requires that municipalities understand and mainstream climate change into their plans, and develop context-specific adaptation strategies that address existing social development issues. A desktop analysis was conducted to compare the planning landscape in six District Municipalities in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, focusing on Municipal Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). A scoring system was developed for comparing the IDPs of the municipalities, based on levels of context-specific information about climate change, mainstreaming of climate change with other development concerns, and vertical integration across district and local municipalities, amongst other themes. Overall, the mainstreaming of climate change in municipal IDPs in the Eastern Cape remains weak, and requires critical attention if sustainable adaptation is to be achieved.     

消费结构升级与技术进步

文章将技术进步分解为技术效率与技术创新,并沿着成果转化、自主创新和技术模仿等路径,探讨了消费结构升级对技术进步的影响及条件。文章认为,消费结构升级引导着资源的配置方向;沿着不同的路径,消费结构升级带来了不同形式的技术进步。一方面,消费结构升级可促进科技成果转化,在生产前沿不变的条件下提高技术效率。当发明专利得到更好的保护时,生产者推动成果转化的积极性会提高,这时,可用的科技成果越多,消费结构升级越能推动技术效率提升。另一方面,消费结构升级还能推动企业突破现有的生产前沿,实现技术创新。由于小企业运营更灵活、竞争压力更大,在企业平均规模较小的市场结构中,消费结构升级更能推动技术创新;而政府主导的研发往往缺乏行业需求等信息,可能与消费者的实际需求脱节,因此,政府主导的研发投入越多,消费结构升级越难拉动技术创新。不仅如此,在开放条件下,企业还可以通过模仿去满足消费结构升级带来的新需求,进口越多,模仿的空间越大,这种模仿会提升技术效率,但可能会不利于技术创新。基于1999-2015年的省级面板数据,文章对上述假说进行了检验,结果表明上述论断成立。     

Examining technological competition between BMW and Hyundai in the Korean car market

The Korean car market has increased in size. BMW and Hyundai are the top-ranked imported and domestic vehicle brands in Korea, respectively. Thus, it is important to understand these companies and the Korean car market, because technology is most significant in the vehicle industry. In this paper, we compare BMW with Hyundai from the technological perspective. Our research is focused on an analysis of the technological competition between BMW and Hyundai based on their developed technologies. We use all BMW and Hyundai patents from worldwide patent databases to analyse the two companies’ technologies. In addition, we apply statistical methods and machine learning algorithms to the patent analysis. In our conclusion, we show the technological differences and competition between BMW and Hyundai, and find their relative strengths and weaknesses.     

Life Cycle Price Trends and Product Replacement: Implications for the Measurement of Inflation

The paper explores the extent to which products follow systematic pricing patterns over their life cycle and the impact this has on the measurement of inflation. Using a large U.S. scanner data set on supermarket products and applying flexible regression methods, we find that on average prices decline as items age. This life cycle price change is often attributed to quality difference in the construction of CPI as items are replaced due to disappearance or during sample rotations. This introduces a systematic bias in the measurement of inflation. For our data we find that the life cycle bias leads to the underestimation of inflation by around 0.30 percentage points each year for the products examined.     

Offset carbon emissions or pay a price premium for avoiding them? A cross-country analysis of motives for climate protection activities

This article contributes to the economic literature on pure and impure public goods by considering two alternatives for contributing to the public good climate protection: offsetting carbon emissions from conventional consumption or paying higher prices for climate-friendly products. We empirically examine a wide range of motives and their impact on individuals’ choice in favour of these two alternatives relying on data from representative international surveys. Our results indicate that environmental awareness, warm glow motives and the desire to set a good example have the most robust effects on both climate protection activities in Germany and the United States. However, some motives differ considerably between both alternatives and the two countries. A green identity enhances the willingness to pay a price premium for climate-friendly goods or services in Germany, while social norms seem to be of much higher relevance in the United States. Our results further suggest that the choice of climate protection activities, especially of carbon offsetting, entails a high degree of uncertainty.     

三大技术创新主体科技成果与经济增长关系研究

在探讨技术创新主体构成、主体不同研究性质及对应经济效益的基础上,对产学研合作背景下的三大技术创新主体与经济增长关系进行了梳理。基于中国1986-2011年的时间序列数据,采用VAR模型,综合运用格兰杰因果检验、脉冲响应函数和方差分解,对中国不同技术创新主体的科技成果与经济增长进行了动态分析。研究表明,企业科技成果对经济发展成效较好,其次是高校,而科研机构科技成果对经济增长的促进作用比企业和高校小得多。结合中国不同技术创新主体的科技成果产出效应进行实证分析,为不同技术创新主体协同实现科技成果对经济增长的正向影响提出了对策建议。     

The erosion of personal norms and cognitive dissonance

In this article, we study how personal norms and behaviour interact and evolve when agents try to reduce cognitive dissonance, and how this dynamic relates to Nash equilibrium. We find that in long run, agents play, and norms prescribe, Nash equilibrium in material payoffs (in the absence of norms). Our model captures two main facts: (i) norms erode along the play of the game; (ii) the erosion of norms depends on the set of possible economic choices, so that the policy maker can potentially influence them.     

Innovation and industrial renewal in Sweden, 1970–2007

This study explores the question of whether the Swedish innovation output of the 1970s and 1980s (and the following decades) indicates structural lock-in or renewal. It is motivated by inconsistent explanations in the current literature about the relation between the economic slowdown and subsequent industrial renewal, as well as a lack of research focusing, in this context, on the primary driver of economic growth and structural change: innovation. By observing the number and type of innovations as they hit the market, the data in this paper tell a real time story about micro level innovation activity during the time that the economic crisis unfolds. The analysis considers Swedish innovation output between 1970 and 2007, characterising the number of significant innovations, their novelty, and their origin (including size of firm and industry sector). Three central findings emerge, defined by both the time period and the character of innovations. First, the magnitude of innovation activity peaks in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Second, starting in the late 1970s, small firms begin to outperform large firms in terms of both innovation quantity and quality (i.e. world market novelties). Third, the 1980s saw a distinct shift in the industrial origin of innovations, with software and telecom becoming the leaders in innovation output. The findings suggest that the observed industrial renewal is more nuanced than what has emerged from previous research.     

Community resilience to long-term tourism decline and rejuvenation: a literature review and conceptual model

Studied for decades in disciplines such as ecology, psychology, engineering and sociology ‘resilience’ can be defined as a system's ability to withstand and respond to change. The tourism literature has embraced the concept of community resilience by harnessing concepts of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. Many of these studies have focused on the tourism system's ability to respond to short-term disasters and hazards. With the growth of resilience studies in tourism, it is timely to take stock of the core premise of resilience as it is applied to tourism and to identify key gaps in current research. Consequently, this research aims to identify the core concepts of community resilience, with a focus on its application within tourism. The findings reveal that many studies have been conceptual, although there are an increasing number of empirical studies underpinned by resilience theory. Therefore, a conceptual model is presented to broaden existing resilience research and to guide future research into community resilience to tourism decline and rejuvenation.     

China’s reform and opening process: a new model of political economy?

The reform and opening process has led to an impressive economic development which saw China becoming the second-largest economy in the world. This development resulted in an ongoing discussion about the nature of the Chinese state and reinvigorated the discussion of the role the state plays in national development. Addressing the challenges of how to interpret the contemporary Chinese state, it will be argued that a particular institutional setting has a strong impact on future developments, and China’s reform process provides an insightful example in this regard. Indeed, we should remember that in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution the Communist Party of China faced both a fundamental political crisis and an economic crisis of underperformance. In order to develop a deeper insight into the political-economic changes, we can observe during the reform process, a comprehensive analysis is required, one which focuses on the changes in China’s political-economic regime.