Selected Land Reforms in East and Southeast Asia: Their Origins and Impacts

Agrarian reforms in the four case study countries examined here came about by outside influence (Korea and Taiwan), revolutionary uprising (People's Republic of China), and legislation (Philippines). In the last case, the reforms remain very incomplete. In Taiwan and South Korea, reforms initially promoted a more equitable distribution of resources and income. This widened the domestic market, lessened underemployment and joblessness in both agriculture and industry, increased profitability in manufacturing, and established more equitable development patterns. In these economies, a national market has preceded (or accompanied) development of world markets. Land reform is not a once-and-for-all phenomenon. Resources and incomes can concentrate again in the absence of proper government policies. There is no necessary correlation between land reform, economic improvement, and democratic forms of government.     

Analysing post-apartheid poverty trends by geo-type, 1997–2012: The understated role of urbanisation and social grants

This article investigates poverty trends in post-apartheid South Africa with an explicit focus on differences between rural and urban areas. Using nationally representative household survey data from 1997–2012, I first describe changes in population characteristics and household access to different income sources and services, by urban–rural geo-type. Income data are then used to generate poverty statistics, which cast light on divergent trends in rural and urban areas. Next, I employ a poverty decomposition method to further explore some potential reasons why the poverty trends in rural and urban areas have differed. Data from the Afrobarometer are then used to probe how subjective non-monetary welfare has changed over time across geo-types. The evidence from all surveys suggests that the dramatic increase in access to services and social grants in rural areas has played a vital role in poverty reduction.     

A review of spatial localization methodologies for the electric vehicle charging infrastructure

With view to the high share of the transport sector in total energy consumption, e-mobility should play an important role within the transition of the energy systems. Policymakers in several countries consider electric vehicles (EV) as an alternative to fossil-fueled vehicles. In order to allow for the development of EV, the charging infrastructure has to be set up at locations with high charging potential, identified by means of various criteria such as demand density or trip length. Many methodologies for locating charging stations (CS) have been developed in the last few years. First, this paper presents a broad overview of publications in the domain of CS localization. A classification scheme is proposed regarding modeling theory and empirical application; further on, models are analyzed, distinguishing between users, route or destination centricity of the approaches and outcomes. In a second step, studies in the field of explicit spatial location planning are reviewed in more detail, that is, in terms of their target criteria and the specialization of underlying analytical processes. One divergence of these approaches lies in the varying level of spatial planning, which could be crucial depending on the planning requirements. It is striking that almost all CS locating concepts are proposed for urban areas. Other constraints, such as the lack of extensive empirical EV traffic data for a better understanding of the driving behavior, are identified. This paper provides an overview of the CS models, a classification approach especially considering the problem’s spatial dimension, and derives perspectives for further research.     

The Recipe for the Perfect Review?

Online product reviews, originally intended to reduce consumers’ pre-purchase search and evaluation costs, have become so numerous that they are now themselves a source for information overload. To help consumers find high-quality reviews faster, review rankings based on consumers’ evaluations of their helpfulness were introduced. But many reviews are never evaluated and never ranked. Moreover, current helpfulness-based systems provide little or no advice to reviewers on how to write more helpful reviews. Average review quality and consumer search costs could be much improved if these issues were solved. This requires identifying the determinants of review helpfulness, which we carry out based on an adaption of Wang and Strong’s well-known data quality framework. Our empirical analysis shows that review helpfulness is influenced not only by single-review features but also by contextual factors expressing review value relative to all available reviews. Reviews for experiential goods differ systematically from reviews for utilitarian goods. Our findings, based on 27,104 reviews from Amazon.com across six product categories, form the basis for estimating preliminary helpfulness scores for unrated reviews and for developing interactive, personalized review writing support tools.     

Is there a life cycle in all industries? First evidence from industry size dynamics in West Germany

We propose a novel nonlinear regression approach to test whether the size of industries develops over time along the stylized pattern assumed by the industry life cycle theory. We apply our model on data covering the full spectrum of 205 NACE industries including services in West Germany between 1976 and 2009 and four indicators describing industry size (employment, establishments, entries and exits). The results of our large scale analysis show that in most industries indeed size develops along a cyclical path, albeit this development is not universal. Furthermore, we provide first empirical evidence on service industries where we show that the number of establishments and employees frequently develop in line with what is found for most (product) industries.     

The Influence of Sense of Community on the Perceived Value of Physical Activity: A Cross-Context Analysis

As the physical activity marketplace becomes increasingly diversified, strategies for recruiting and maintaining participants have become especially salient. Accordingly, the current study examined the use of a commonly reported outcome of fitness participation, sense of community (SOC), as an antecedent in generating both value and the perception of progress for participants. Three fitness contexts, CrossFit, traditional group fitness activities, and individual gym goers, were chosen based on varying levels of explicit commitment to community building. SOC was first measured in three contexts to explore differences among settings. After establishing differences between groups, multiple regression analysis was employed to understand the ways in which SOC affected dimensions of value. Results indicated that an explicit commitment to community building was positively associated with higher value of the fitness product and perceptions of individual progress. Strategy and benefits for encouraging the development of SOC in a fitness context are discussed.     

Commentary on Politics of Urbanism: Seeing Like a City by Warren Magnusson

Politics of Urbanism: Seeing Like a City is Warren Magnusson's most recent book. It will find a permanent place as a key contribution in the annals of urban studies, urban politics, political and state theory and international relations, marking a turning point in the way scholars, activists and policymakers see the world. In particular, Magnusson fundamentally questions how we understand and analyse our world from the perspective of the state (the illusion of the sovereign), suggesting we shift instead to the perspective of the city (with its multiplicity of authorities). ‘How welcome should this be?’ is the question that I put to three Canadian colleagues — Roger Keil, Andrew Sancton and Zack Taylor — at the 2011 meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Waterloo, ON, Canada. Their answers follow a summary of this rather concise and very readable book that Serena Kataoka and I prepared to introduce those commentaries.     

The optimal diffusion of mitigation options for environmental management

A new direction for evaluating pollution policy is proposed, focused on optimal investment pathways for mitigation capital. The approach allows practitioners to draw directly from key principles in the diffusion literature. A two‐stage, policy‐development framework is introduced. The first stage consists of empirical modelling to assess optimal diffusion pathways for diverse mitigation options. The second involves determining the relative strengths of different policy actions to address diffusion rates or maximum levels of adoption that diverge from optimal levels. The advantages of this new approach are demonstrated in an agri‐environmental context, concerning the off‐site impacts of intensive agriculture on water quality. The viewpoint provided by the novel approach establishes the importance of adoptability – alongside the traditional measures of abatement effectiveness and cost – for mitigation practices in policy assessment. The key role that durable mitigation capital plays in addressing dynamic externalities is demonstrated, alongside the importance of structured diffusion cascades for alternate mitigation options.