Agricultural productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean: an analysis of climatic effects,catch‐up and convergence*

This paper investigates whether climatic adjusted total factor productivity (CATFP) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is converging, converging to different steady states or exhibit absolute convergence, that is the process does not require (government) interventions to reach its equilibrium path. We use data from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and from the Food and Agriculture Organization for 28 LAC countries over a 54‐year period (1961–2014) to estimate random parameters stochastic production frontier models to calculate CATFP and then use cross‐sectional regressions and an error correction model to analyse CATFP convergence across countries in the region. The results show that technological progress is the main driver of CATFP growth in the region and there is no absolute convergence, that is CATFP gaps across countries will not decrease over time and least performing countries will not grow faster than better performing ones without targeted policies. However, CATFP across LAC exhibits conditional convergence towards different steady states. Technological progress plays a critical role in raising the steady state level of CATFP with an overall average of 2.22 per cent per annum.     

区域关联视角下的人力资本 与地区经济发展*

本文通过空间拓展卢卡斯（Lucas）模型的生产函数，讨论了区域关联视角下人力资本与地区经济发展的互动关系。主要结论为：（1）相同劳动力在人力资本总量更高的地区享有更高的收入；（2）人力资本总量的增加能提高地区实际产出，而其均量的提高能提升地区产出潜力；（3）综合考虑辐射效应和转移费用，经济高地的人力资本转出会优先惠及邻近地区。空间计量的实证还表明，人力资本对地区经济增长的区域间交叉影响正在加强，且其均量而非总量是造成地区间经济差异的主因。     

Do regional house prices converge or diverge in China?

This paper aims to test whether the regional house prices are convergent or divergent in China using a monthly panel data set of China’s 70 large and medium-sized cities from July 2005 to December 2010. This issue is closely related to understanding the efficiency of the country-level housing policies made by China’s central government. The test results suggest that the regional house prices in China are generally divergent, and thereby the country-level policies may be inefficient since they do not explicitly take the strong heterogeneity of China’s regional housing markets into consideration. As a consequence, it may be better for China’s central government to further decentralize and devolve its governance toward the housing market to the local governments.     

Social-economic Development of Small West European Peripheral Countries

In the framework of different countries＇ international comparison, the objective of this paper reflects research topic of investigation--the identification of small countries, revealing features of economic development and business growth in economic history context of small economies classification. The object of investigation focuses on West European and Nordic countries＇ small economies. The hypothesis of the article is that small states under consideration are developing as the business competitive peripheries areas due to the special Scandinavian capitalist model development characterized by high level of social capital. The statistical data base includes Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development indicators, World Bank parameters and Nordic transnational corporation＇s annual reports. The paper considers the following research questions： （1） the critical overview of the mainstream academicians opinions concerning different-scaled economies, （2） classification of small states and clarification of different groups of the small-scaled countries role in the world and regional economy through historical context, （3） estimates and variants of small countries＇ social-economic development in accordance with different parameters, （4） consideration of Nordic European countries coming to the business model of the competitive peripheral social-economic development. The main summing up conclusion is that small economies of Nordic Europe are converting nowadays into the experimental laboratory of the European and world economy due to the specific model of their social-oriented economic and business growth, their geopolitical location between developed European integration complex embracing presumably small-scaled states from one side and large-scaled emerging market economy of Asian continent from the other side.     

Neighborhood as Spatial Project: Making the Urban Order on the Downtown Brooklyn Waterfront

This article argues for a reconceptualization of one of the most basic concepts in urban studies: the neighborhood. Traditionally neighborhoods have been understood as clearly bounded, quasi‐Westphalian containers or as ‘natural areas’ of urban community. But this approach is widely acknowledged to be under‐theorized. And it fails to account for the ways in which the production of neighborhood is inherently political and often conflictual. After reviewing the ways in which neighborhood has been used in urban sociology and urban planning, this article offers a critical conception of neighborhoods as ‘spatial projects’ on the submetropolitan scale. This approach captures the ways in which neighborhoods are not abstract spaces on a city map, but the uneven, unequal products of complex, ongoing struggles between various groups and institutions. This approach is developed through an ethnographic and historical case study of neighborhood formation in one part of Brooklyn, New York. The article concludes with a discussion of how the language of spatial projects refocuses urban research on the political and economic forces that produce neighborhood in the contemporary city.     

Advocacy and political convergence under preference uncertainty

We study the formation of advocacy groups and how they can impact policy outcomes by revealing information about voters׳ preferences to uninformed political candidates. We conduct a laboratory experiment based on a two-candidate spatial electoral competition setting where the policy preferences of voters are (initially) unknown and change over time. In the control treatment candidates learn about the preferred policy of the median voter through the voting outcome of elections. In the advocacy treatments, voters can organize themselves into advocacy groups in order to reveal their policy preferences. We find that voters often overcome the collective action problem of forming an advocacy group. In fact, we observe the formation of both informative advocacy groups, which convey new information, and uninformative advocacy groups, which do not. Overall, advocacy groups significantly speed up the convergence to the preferred policy of the median voter. However, advocacy does not lead to higher earnings as the gains from faster convergence are offset by the costs of group formation.     

DEFINING RELEVANT MARKETS FOR PHARMACEUTICALS

To identify the relevant product markets for Swedish pharmaceuticals, a spatial econometrics approach is employed. First, we calculate Moran's Is for different market definitions and then we use a spatial Durbin model to determine the effect of price changes on quantity sold of own and competing products. As expected, the results show that competition is strongest between close substitutes; however, the relevant product markets for Swedish pharmaceuticals extend beyond close substitutes down to products included in the same class on the four‐digit level of the Anatomic Therapeutic Chemical system as defined by the World Health Organization. The spatial regression model further indicates that increases in the price of a product significantly lower quantity sold of that product and in the same time increase the quantity sold of competing products. For close substitutes (products belonging to the same class on the seven‐digit level of the Anatomic Therapeutic Chemical system), as well as for products that, without being close substitutes, belong to the same therapeutic/pharmacological/chemical subgroup (the same class on the five‐digit level of the Anatomic Therapeutic Chemical system), increased competition is also visible after 1 July 2009 when the latest policy changes with regards to pharmaceuticals have been implemented in Sweden.     

传统媒体的转型与融媒生态圈构建研究——以杭州二更网络科技有限公司为例

当前融媒体的发展已成为一股不可逆转的潮流。传统媒体的转型需要媒体行业整合自身优势,从资源、内容、宣传、价值等方面入手,对生产运营进行改革,重建媒体与用户之间、新媒体与传统媒体之间的“链条”。论文以杭州二更网络科技有限公司为例,具体阐述了“二更”的传统媒体转型,将新媒体融入“二更”文化,打造属于“二更”的融媒体生态圈。