Regional development and migration in the Lower Basin of the Zambezi River. The importance of property rights

Globalization is associated with pressures and conflicts over natural resources, with migration, urbanization and development. The analyzes these phenomena focusing the Lower Basin of the Zambezi River in Mozambique where external demand over natural resources have been associated with huge projects on transport infrastructures, coal mining and agroforestry, somehow correlated with recurring conflicts. The approach proposes and uses a regional development model that highlights the impacts of the spatial allocation of property rights on income and migration. Results show the importance of resources ownership in the spatial profile of development and social unrest.     

Using principles of justice to assess the modal equity of regional transportation plans

While equity has been an important consideration for transportation planning agencies in the U.S. following the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI specifically) and the subsequent Department of Transportation directives, there is little guidance on how to assess the distribution of benefits generated by transport investment programs. As a result, the distribution of these benefits has received relatively little attention in transportation planning, compared to transport-related burdens. Drawing on philosophies of social justice, we present an equity assessment of the distribution of accessibility in order to define the rate of “access poverty” among the population. We then apply this analysis to regional transportation plan scenarios from the San Francisco Bay Area, focusing on measures of differences between public transit and automobile access. The analysis shows that virtually all neighborhoods suffer from substantial gaps between car and public transport-based accessibility, but that the two proposed transportation investment programs reduce access poverty compared to the “no project” scenario. We also investigate how access and access poverty rates vary by demographic groups and map low-income communities within access impoverished areas, which could be the subject of further focused investments.     

Speculative bubbles or market fundamentals? An investigation of US regional housing markets

This paper investigates the existence of speculative bubbles in the US national and 21 regional housing markets over three decades (1978–2015). A new method for real-time monitoring exuberance in housing markets is proposed. By taking changes in the macroeconomic conditions (such as interest rate, per-capita income, employment, and population growth) into consideration, the new method provides better control for housing market fundamentals and thereby it is expected to significantly reduce the chance of false positive identification. Compared with the method of Phillips et al. (2015a, 2015b), the new approach finds a dramatic reduction in the number of speculative housing markets and shorter bubble episodes in the US. It locates only one bubble episode in the early-to-mid 2000s over the whole sample period in the national housing market. At the regional level, it identifies two periods of speculation: late 1980s and early-to-mid 2000s. The early-to-mid 2000s bubble episode lasts longer and involves 16 metropolitan statistical areas.     

Ghanaian school-going adolescents’ self-perceived barriers of access to quality education: A qualitative study

Social equality has emerged as one of the important ideals of human society, especially for development. Moreover, education has featured prominently among the many key drivers of equality. However, in developing nations like Ghana, education represents one of the areas in which gross inequality has eroded the country’s potential for attaining equality and development. The aim of the current study was to explore adolescents’ self-perceived barriers regarding access to quality education in the Northern Region of Ghana and provide suggestions on the way forward. A sample of 18 school-going adolescents from six secondary schools within the Northern Region of Ghana was purposively selected to participate in face-to-face interviews. The barriers identified included limited resources, gender disparities and a multi-dimension nature of poverty. Implications for policy and research are discussed.     

Job Polarization and Task‐Biased Technological Change: Evidence from Sweden, 1975–2005

In this paper, we show that between 1975 and 2005, Sweden exhibited a pattern of job polarization with expansions of the highest‐ and lowest‐paid jobs compared to middle‐wage jobs. The most popular explanation for such a pattern is the hypothesis of task‐biased technological change, where technological progress reduces the demand for routine middle‐wage jobs but increases the demand for non‐routine jobs located at the tails of the job–wage distribution. However, our estimates do not support this explanation for the 1970s and 1980s. Stronger evidence for task‐biased technological change, albeit not conclusive, is found for the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, there is both a statistically and economically significant growth of non‐routine jobs and a decline of routine jobs. However, results for wages are mixed; while task‐biased technological change cannot explain changes in between‐occupation wage differentials, it does have considerable explanatory power for changes in within‐occupation wage differentials.     

The source of global stock market risk: A viewpoint of economic policy uncertainty

This study explores the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in four countries or regions (China, Japan, Europe, and the United States) on the contagion risk of investments in the global stock market. The stock returns of 22 stock markets worldwide are analyzed to determine which region’s EPU exhibits the greatest effect on regional systematic risk in the global stock market and on volatility risk in individual stock markets. First, all of the samples, the markets of different continents and the spillover indices of the developed and emerging markets, are calculated to observe the dynamic correlation among these markets with the aim of quantifying regional systematic risk and further examining the contagion risk effect of EPU. The results indicate the following: EPU in China is the most influential, and its contagion risk spreads to different regional markets, except for Europe; the effect of EPU in the United States is inferior to that in China; EPU in Japan merely influences contagion risk in emerging markets; contagion risk in European markets is not influenced by the four EPU indices; and EPU in Europe is not influenced by contagion risk in the global stock market. However, according to the volatility risk in each market, the EPU in Europe and China respectively influence Asian countries and European countries the most. These results may be attributable to the extremely high trade dependence among these countries because the performance of international enterprises is mainly determined by the economic policies of their trading partners.     

“嵌入性”约束下的产业转移制度安排——江苏省南北挂钩共建产业园区的经验借鉴

产业转移不仅是一种典型的经济行为,而且是一种社会行为。遵循经济学逻辑,当不同区域间的生产要素价格差距较大时,受市场信号指挥的企业就会自发采取适应性行为——向要素成本较低的区域进行梯度转移。现实中,尽管我国区域间的要素价格差距悬殊,但产业转移步伐远远落后于预期。从新经济社会学视角论证这种"经济悖论",发现嵌入本地的生产性、服务性、制度性、社会性网络制约着企业的异地转移行为,进一步提出产业转移是企业社会关系网络和协力合作网络"脱嵌-再嵌入"的过程,并以江苏省南北挂钩共建产业园区为例,验证了两地政府通力合作有利于降低"脱嵌"对企业异地生产的冲击,并能够帮助企业"再嵌入"异地社会关系网络和协力合作网络,从而有力地解释了我国区域间产业转移需要政府介入的新经济社会学逻辑。     

融资渠道与中国区域技术创新

运用2011-2016年中国内地31个省份面板数据，通过固定效应模型检验不同融资渠道对全国以及东中西部地区技术创新的影响。结果表明：①债权融资在整体上对技术创新影响不显著，分地区看，其在东部地区发挥了促进作用，而在中西部地区则起到抑制作用；②从整体及中西部地区看，股权融资对技术创新的影响不显著，且抑制了东部地区技术创新；③对股市板块进行细分后，整体上股权融资中只有创业板股权融资显著促进了技术创新水平提升，主板和中小板的作用均不显著。     

地方政府人才引进政策促进了区域创新吗？——来自准自然实验的证据

高技能人力资本对于我国经济转型的重要性不言而喻。本文以2009—2012年间39个城市集中出台的地方人才引进政策为准自然实验,采用多期政策的双重差分法,结合机制分析和异质性分析,探究了人才政策出台前后区域创新能力的变化及其背后的机制和深层次原因,并分析政策效应在不同的地区营商环境、科教事业投入力度、知识产权保护程度下的差异。本文主要结论包括,地方人才引进政策总体上提高了当地的专利授权总量和专利价值总量;显著增加了研发投入的规模,但创新效率没有得到明显提升;在营商环境较差的地区,政策的效应侧重于提高专利数量,营商环境较好的地区则侧重于提升专利价值;在科教投入力度本身就很大的地区,政策效果较小,在科教投入弱的地区效果会更明显;在知识产权保护程度弱的地区,政策效果更多地表现为提高专利数量,保护程度强的地区,则侧重于提升专利价值。上述结论对地方政府优化人才激励政策、实施创新驱动发展战略具有一定的政策启示。     

Financial openness and Chinese regional growth imbalance: New insight from spatial spillovers

This paper uses spatial panel methods and Chinese provincial data from 2003 to 2017 to study the spatial spillovers of financial openness on economic growth. The results show, first, a positive direct effect and an overall negative spatial spillover of financial openness on provincial growth. Second, there are two spatial spillover channels: a positive growth externality and a harmful resource competition among provinces. Third, we estimate the state dependence and dynamics of spatial spillover, and find that the negative spatial spillover is smaller in provinces with high levels of financial openness and in the long term; thus, the negative spatial spillover declined over time. These results are robust to the choice of SDM and GNS spatial econometrics methods and under different spatial weight matrices.