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Papers in this special issue offer a wide range of political economy and sociological perspectives to explain the development and impacts of short-term rentals (STRs) in European cities. Empirically, they provide insights regarding STR providers, socio-spatial impacts, and regulation. Authors reveal the professionalization of the sector vis-à-vis the connection between STRs and the wider financialization of housing. STRs are predominantly supplied by professional property managers as well as by middle-class individuals for which renting on digital platforms is their main professional activity. Furthermore, the increasing professionalization of hosts and the intrinsic competition among them is largely stimulated by the business model of digital platforms which has progressively favoured professional operators. Understanding how STRs are shaped by platform capitalism helps to explain the socio-spatial impacts of this market as well as why current regulations have not mitigated such impacts. In terms of impacts, contributions to this special issue document processes of displacement, gentrification, and how the penetration of visitors in neighbourhoods is experienced by residents as a process of loss and dispossession. However, due to the lobbying campaigns of professional operators and industry players, regulation has led to the legitimization of this new market rather than to the limitation of the activity. Therefore, the special issue challenges the use of a 'sharing economy' and 'peer-to-peer platforms' as analytical categories, and, instead, provides evidence of why the STR market should be seen as part of the wider expansion of platform capitalism, consolidating the neoliberal and financialized urban paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solitude is a rising phenomenon in the western world. The share of people affected by solitude has been rising for some time and the Covid-19 pandemic has further brought this trend to the fore. Yet, we know next to nothing about the aggregate subnational economic impact of the rise in solitude. In this paper, we analyse the consequences of solitude on regional economic performance across Europe, distinguishing between two of its key dimensions: alone living, proxied by the regional share of single-person households and loneliness, proxied by the aggregate share of social interactions. We find that solitude has important implications for economic development, but that these go in different directions. While alone living is a substantial driver of economic growth across European regions, high shares of lonely people undermine it. The connection of loneliness with economic growth is, however, dependent on the frequency of in-person meetings, with large shares of the population meeting others socially on a weekly basis, alongside a small percentage of people who never meet others, yielding the best economic returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2010s, collateralized loan obligations rapidly became a trillion-dollar industry, mirroring the growth profile and peak value of its cousin—collateralized debt obligations—in the 2000s. Yet, despite similarities in product form and growth trajectory, surprisingly little is known about how these markets evolved spatially and relationally. This paper fills that knowledge gap by asking two questions: how did each network adapt to achieve scale at speed across different jurisdictions; and to what extent does the spatial and relational organization of today's collateralized loan obligation structuration network, mirror that of collateralized debt obligations pre-crisis? To answer those questions, we draw on the global financial networks approach, developing our own concept of the networked product to explore the agentic qualities of collateralized debt obligations and collateralized loan obligations—specifically how their technical and regulatory "needs" shape the roles and jurisdictions enrolled in a global financial network. We use social network analysis to map and analyze the evolving spatial and relational organization that nurtured this growth, drawing on data harvested from offering circulars. We find that collateralized debt obligations spread from the US to Europe through a process of transduplication—that similar role-based network relations were reproduced from one regulatory regime to another. We also find a strong correlation between pre-crisis collateralized debt obligation- and post-crisis collateralized loan obligation-global financial networks in both US$- and €-denominations, with often the same network participants involved in each. We conclude by reflecting on the prosaic way financial markets for ostensibly complex products reproduce and the capacity for network stabilities to produce market instabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shifts discussion on social diversity from ethnic diversity to broader social diversity. We explore spatial social diversity and assess opportunities to encounter diversity in an urban context. In doing so, we prepared a description of diversity in the residential communities of two cities, Leeds and Warsaw, using census data for small areas (UK 2001, Poland 2002). Selected variables were used to represent the key social dimensions of difference: demographic, socioeconomic, ethnic, and disability. A cluster analysis using a k-means algorithm was implemented for each city separately and for the two cities combined using harmonized indicators. We selected eight cluster solutions for each city which had diff erent profiles and spatial distributions. A combined cluster analysis showed that there was little overlap in community types across the two cities. The paper illustrates that Leeds and Warsaw residents experience very different opportunities to encounter difference which need to be taken into account when local diversity policies are implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report and analyse, for 83 European cities, the share of respondents aged 65 years or older agreeing that the city where they live is a good place to live for elderly people. Results contribute to identify common patterns and inform policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, votes registered by parties with a high anti-elite and anti-European salience are mapped, in order to identify potential geographical patterns in European regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foucault's account of the emergence of biopolitics in the late 18th century helps frame the political economy of 'improvements' as an environmental project linked to the well-being of the population. Since the 1970s, biopolitical concerns have shifted towards non-human populations and the reproduction of natural resources and ecosystems. This has become evident in the European fisheries, where after decades of exploitation greatly intensified since the 1960s, the extractive demands of the fishing industry have caught up with the reproductive capacities of most commercially targeted fish stocks. This contradiction has given rise to a new political economy of 'improvements' that seeks to sustain the biological health of commercially targeted fish populations while maintaining an economically profitable fishing industry. Central to this transition is the active role that fishers are expected to play in sustainably managing the fish stocks they exploit while adapting to 'green' market opportunities. Tradeable quota systems, eco-accreditation schemes and community-based resource management have all emerged as managerial strategies for inciting the active participation of fishers in this 'common' project of sustainable development. Drawing on Foucault's perspective of governmentality, this paper argues that these strategies represent distinct but overlapping apparatuses of neoliberal governmentality that are representative of broader tendencies within environmental governance today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although an expanding literature on university-industry linkages has suggested that proximity to academia can increase the innovative performance of firms, the role of academic research in the R&D location choices of multinational firms has received surprisingly little attention. In this paper we analyze the extent to which academic research in host regions of EU-15 countries attracts R&D investments by multinational firms. We analyze the determinants of the location of 394 multinational R&D projects in NUTS-1 regions of EU-15 countries during the period 2003-08. We construct precise measures of the academic research strengths of regions from annual publication data from Thomson Reuters Web of Science. University publications are counted at the level of regions and science fields, and measure academic research relevant for investing firms by linking science fields to the industries in which firms are active. We find that the probability of R&D projects being located in a host region is positively affected by the host region's academic strength--after controlling for industry agglomeration, the technological strength of the region, R&D tax incentives, and other characteristics of host locations. Our results further suggest that a major mechanism through which academic research attracts foreign R&D is the supply of PhD graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the effect of globalization on the implicit tax rates (ITRs) on capital income, labor income, and consumption, and the share of social protection expenditures in total public expenditures in Western and Eastern Europe. It tests the coexistence of efficiency and compensation effects of globalization on the expenditure and the revenue sides of government budgets. In Western Europe, globalization leads to an increase in social expenditures; however, these expenditures are to an increasing extent financed by taxes on labor. There are important differences between the welfare states. In the conservative regimes, both social expenditures and taxes on labor increase due to globalization. In the social-democratic regimes social expenditures are not affected by globalization, but the ITR on labor increases, whereas ITRs on capital and consumption decrease as a result of globalization. In the liberal regimes, the ITR on labor is rising, while social expenditures are declining. In the southern welfare regime globalization does not have any significant effects on the distribution of taxes or social spending. In Eastern Europe, in the Baltic states globalization leads to a decrease in social spending, whereas in the other Central and Eastern European New Member States (postcommunist European regimes) there is an upward convergence in social spending due to globalization. The ITRs on consumption decrease due to globalization in the postcommunist European regimes, whereas in the Baltic states there is no robust significant effect of globalization on taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years considerable progress has been made in the understanding of urban land-use change and its dynamic interrelationships with economic, social, and environmental systems. From a quantitative perspective, advancements in GIS technologies, the increased availability of high-resolution remote sensing data, and new GIS-based spatial metrics of urban form and urban growth have helped to establish methods for comparative spatial analysis. However, due to the lack of homogeneous data, very few empirical studies have systematically addressed urbanisation and urban growth at a cross-national level. With this background, this paper presents a comparative assessment of urban land-use change across twenty-six European countries. On two scales of analysis, country and 20 km cells, we found a surprising variability in terms of urban growth and its territorial shape. We argue that these diff erences cannot be explained by varying demographic or economic growth pressures alone. Indicators on the composition, pattern, and density of urban growth illustrate that country-specific drivers of urban land-use change play an important role for the shaping of Europe's settlement structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent rounds of anti-neoliberal mobilizations in Europe have shown to be rooted in cities. Whereas Madrid has become a central hub in Spain's social movement, Athens has assumed a central and centralizing role in Greece. Through a case study on Athens, Greece, this paper aims to show how cities have become the driving force of these national movements. The argument maintains that political institutional factors and local networking processes among activists contributed to making Athens a central hub of this national movement. First, weak state traditions in Greece undermined the abilities of government officials to mitigate the most egregious effects of urban neoliberalism during the 1990s and 2000s. As this triggered a proliferation of struggles throughout Athens, weak state traditions also denied local authorities the capacities to co-opt and control aggrieved inhabitants. Second, as urban grievances spurred countless localized struggles, participants formed new ties to one another, learned how to engage in their broader public worlds, and discovered new ways to become political. At the same time, well-networked activists within these particularistic struggles assumed the role of brokers between localized mobilizations and the wider social movement space. This networking process permitted the city of Athens to become an important staging ground in national mobilizations. In sum, we maintain that political opportunities and urban networking processes combined in ways to make Athens a driving force of the country's anti-neoliberal social movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU policies seek to bring the EU territory closer to resembling a 'level playing field'. The paper first discusses efforts to inject a territorial dimension into EU policies, including the European Spatial Development Perspective. During its preparation, the same issue of national sovereignty has been dominant as in the subsequent debate concerning the European Constitution. Had it been ratified, the Constitution would have given European planning a boost. The paper discusses its rejection and reviews literature that presents views of the EU as an unprecedented, dynamic construct, with transnational learning as the engine. Next, the paper discusses the application of the European Spatial Development Perspective, during which planners have been learning about territory and territorial governance in the context of an integrating Europe. Like with European integration generally, European planning can thus be understood as a learning machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within Europe and North America the integration of environmental concerns into agriculture has become a domain almost exclusively defined by public policy. In this paper it is contended that we are currently witnessing a new direction in attempts to reconcile agricultural production and environmental protection, in which the market is playing an increasingly important role. The paper takes as its focus the rapidly expanding number of what are termed ‘market-oriented initiatives for environmentally sustainable food production’ (MOIs), in which the incentive for food producers to manage the environment positively comes directly through the market. The number of MOIs, in both Europe and North America, has proliferated recently, although some have been established for many years. However, both older and newer forms of these MOIs appear to be the focus of a new rural development, food quality, and sustainable farming agenda. In an attempt to make a contribution to this emergent debate, this paper sets out to address the extent to which these MOIs are capable of contributing to the development of more environmentally sustainable food production. In this paper we consider the drivers of this new approach, review the various types of MOI that are emerging in both Europe and North America, and examine the different approaches to environmental management that MOIs adopt. The paper also offers a reflection upon the potential contribution of MOIs to the delivery of environmental goods in food production and the implications of this for public sector approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to compare the topology and the emerging urban geographies of two infrastructural networks across European cities: the international intercity Internet backbone and aviation networks. Both of them are facilitators of the knowledge economy and contribute to what was identified by Castells as the first layer of the space offlows, supporting the world city process. In order to compare them, network analysis methods and complex networks theory are employed. The results indicate the different attributes of these networks, the lack of scale-free characteristics but also the different roles different cities perform in these networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing in neo-institutional perspectives, this paper investigates the recent corporatisation process of three seaports in Asia and Europe. We focus on whether the newly established seaport governance structures follow a path largely affected by the local/national institutional frameworks and the political traditions in place. Findings confirm that path-dependent decisions largely preserve the institutional characteristics of local/national systems, resulting in implementation asymmetries when different countries seek generic governance solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the late Carboniferous period, the continents that today make up North America and Europe collided with the southern parts of Gondwana to form the western half of the last super-continent Pangea. From this moment on, North America and Europe have steadily been drifting apart, as was initially described by Alfred Wegener in 1915. In this paper a cognitive counterpart of this continental drift is described-which progresses much faster than the phenomenon of plate tectonics. Distance estimations between cities of Europe and the USA were strongly modulated by an interactive effect of the social attitude towards the Iraq War in 2003 and towards US citizens in general, letting America and Europe drift apart hundreds of kilometers for those who disliked the war but were meanwhile sympathetic to US citizens. Possible implications for the relationship between Europe and the US are discussed and perspectives for a cognitive rapprochement of Europe and the USA are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discretionary subsidies are the primary instruments for regional policy in Europe. Such aid is typically targeted at `additional' projects: that is, projects that would not have been implemented without the subsidy, with the subsidy set at the minimum for the project to be implemented. This contrasts to automatic subsidies, where many of the aided projects are nonadditional and all eligible projects receive the same subsidy rate. The present paper builds on previous studies to compare three subsidy schemes: an automatic scheme and two types of discretionary scheme, one with accurate appraisal and the other with appraisal error. These schemes are assessed on their expected welfare impacts. The particular focus is the reduction in welfare gain imposed by the interaction of appraisal error and the requirements for accountability. This is potentially substantial and difficult to detect with conventional evaluation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Procedures for the ex ante assessment of public policies are currently in vogue across the OECD. Their design is typically informed by a rational-instrumental model of problem solving, which assumes that knowledge is collected, evaluated, and then translated straightforwardly into 'better policies'. But this model has been little affected by more than three decades of academic research which has demonstrated that the reality of everyday policy making is far messier. In this paper we analyse whether the uptake of ex ante assessment of policies is nonetheless capable of creating opportunities for policy deliberation and learning informed by new assessment knowledge. Drawing on an analysis of policy assessment procedures in three countries and the European Union, we find that there are several ways in which assessment knowledge is used in the policy process. Moreover, we argue that policy learning occurs despite, rather than because of, the instrumental design of new assessment procedures, which tends to act as a barrier to open deliberation and knowledge utilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the global trend of total factor productivity, efficiency, and technological change in the European Union regions over the period 1986-2004, using the Malmquist index computed by data envelopment analysis. The results reveal the important role played by technical efficiency in explaining total factor productivity growth in the European Union. For this reason, in a second stage, we investigate existing regional disparities in efficiency levels across the European regions, using a nonparametric methodology that allows us to study the dynamics of the entire cross-sectional distribution. Estimates show the presence of a process of convergence in efficiency levels over the sample period, despite a relatively low degree of intradistribution mobility. In order to complete these results, factors such as the geographical location of the various regions, country-specific characteristics, or the sectoral composition of economic activity were examined for their role in explaining the observed disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to tackle the question of what the European territory will look like over the next fifteen years by providing quali-quantitative territorial scenarios for an enlarged Europe, under different assumptions about the future direction in which the driving forces affecting development will move. Based on an econometric model, called MASST, two scenarios are built on the bases of alternative strategies put in place by the EU 15, the New 12, and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries, on which alternative behavioural patterns in the driving forces of change depend. The scenarios presented are not policy scenarios: a more general approach is chosen, and more general issues of external competitiveness and global confrontation are emphasised and placed in the forefront of reflection, in an endeavour to define, through the use of the MASST simulation model, their likely impact on territorial trends, regional convergence, and general economic performance. Major determinants of territorial trends are attributed to the competitive game between the three above-mentioned blocks of countries. The model is able to provide the simulations for twenty-seven countries (the 'Old 15' EU members and the 'New 12' Eastern EU members) and for their 259 regions of GDP and population in 2015 in the two scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'multifunctionality' has developed partly in response to the threat which trade liberalisation presents to European agriculture. In this paper we outline different approaches to multifunctionality and consider whether, and to what extent, the concept may be applied more widely outside its home of origin in Western Europe, and specifically whether it is relevant to liberalised agricultural economies, such as Australia. The focus is on government agricultural and rural policies which contribute to the maintenance or enhancement of the multifunctional characteristics of agriculture and other land uses. We suggest that, despite differences in views of the importance of farming and rural areas, a convergence is appearing between Australia and European countries in the development of policies aimed at the promotion of multiple outcomes from agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s the largest transnational temporary staffing agencies have progressively expanded the geographical extent of their operations. Moving beyond the established Dutch, French, UK, and US markets in which the majority are headquartered, and encouraged by supportive supranational and national reregulation, they have entered a number of countries in Southeast Asia, Southern Europe, and Latin America. Moreover, in the run-up to, and since, the accession often new member states to the EU on I May 2004, the leading transnational agencies have turned their attentions to establishing and expanding operations in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper offers an initial assessment of the state of temporary staffing and its regulation in two leading markets in the region, the Czech Republic and Poland. It explores how temporary staffing markets are being forged through the interactions between regulators, transnational agencies, local agencies, trade bodies, and inward investors. Both countries legalized temporary staffing in 2004, having begun the legalization process prior to accession. Rather than these developments heralding the start of a period of sustained growth, however, our research suggests that there are still significant constraints on expansion in markets where the pressure to neoliberalize labour markets intersects with postsocialist expectations, norms, and economic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clear-cut definitions of strategic spatial planning are rather exceptional. Therefore in this paper I use building blocks from literature (planning and business) and my experience in practice to construct a workable normative definition of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of strategic spatial planning. Five main characteristics (selective, relational annex inclusive, integrative, visioning, and action orientated) that constitute the hard core of the ‘strategic’ in the normative view are confronted, in a first broad scan, with nine so-called strategic plans from different planning traditions in Europe (Italy, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Belgium, and the Netherlands) and in Australia (Perth). The confrontation highlights some hesitant shifts towards the normative view but also makes it clear that there is still a long way to go. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For some, networks have ontological status, being associated with the embeddedness of social life in general and the necessary embeddedness of firms in their industries and regions in particular. For others less certain about ontology, networks are vital ingredients in firm-specific competitive strategies and long-term growth prospects. In this paper we approach the issue with reference to firm-specific competitive strategies, reporting the results of a large-scale pan-European survey of small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) network-related responses to changing market conditions. Distinguishing between different types of production network (supply and distribution) operating at various geographical scales (regional, national, EU, and global), it is shown that the scope and scale of firm networks are strategic issues. All things being equal, firms adopt advanced technologies in response to changing market conditions, enabling their networks to change in scope and geographical scale. We also show that the significance of local as opposed to national and EU networks is changing with less 'localism' and wider geographical scope becoming increasingly important. Using probit models for different types of networks, we identify and distinguish between predictive variables driving network formation, including the type of SME ownership. Implications are drawn for the theoretical status of networks in industrial organisation and their significance for European economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on a research paper by Gordon Clark concerning the increasingly precarious nature of solidaristic old-age insurance as a solution to old age poverty in Europe. Impact of demographic developments; Lack of a viable alternative to capital market investment; Exigencies implied by market investment.

In this paper we explore the development and incidence of alternative food networks within a European-wide context. By developing a consistent definition of short food supply chains, we address both the morphology and the dynamics of these, and then examine empirical evidence concerning their incidence and rural development impact across seven EU member states. These developments need to be seen as one significant contribution to the current transitions in rural Europe concerning the crisis of conventional intensive and productivist agriculture and the public consumer pressure for a larger variety of distinctive 'quality' food products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of a perceived 'crisis' within the field of Anglo-American regional science, in this paper we offer a brief overview of the early engagement of regional science with the regional concept, while placing its theoretical formulations within the wider sociohistorical context of the Cold War period and the rise of positivist social science. With regard to the development of regional science as a field of enquiry with its own theoretical and empirical postulates, attention focuses on what David Harvey has referred to as a "utopianism of spatial form", defined by the idea that spatial constructs can serve to control social processes in positive ways, thus using space to evade historical change. In building bridges from the Isardian promise of the past of regional science to its multiple futures, we suggest that the field today may break out of its current 'isolated state' by entering into creative dialogue with the metaphors animating three research streams: (1) an 'analytical turn' in Marxist economic geography; (2) a Marshallian 'New Regionalism'; and (3) a 'cultural turn' perceived to be occuring within the field of radical political economy. Each stream, addressed here as a successive and broader departure from the more orthodox "utopianism of spatial form" in spatial and regional science, is briefly surveyed in turn. Drawing on the metaphor of borders and borderlands, we conclude by arguing that rather than view each research strand as an 'improvement' on its predecessor they should be viewed as the grounds for a potentially rich cross-fertilization between spatial science and various fields of nonorthodox economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant cluster policy research has largely ignored the particular role that cluster organizations play in reifying cluster policies in practice. Based on a survey of 163 cluster organizations in the European life sciences sector, this study explores the heterogeneity of cluster organizations in geographic space and examines whether and where revealed competition – defined as the combined overlap in service offerings, sub-sectoral focus and funding sources – between life science cluster organizations within European regions is most apparent. The findings indicate that the degree of functional and sectoral substitutability of cluster organizations differs substantially across Europe, though some regions, particularly in Spain, Denmark, France and Estonia, are more prone to revealed competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the concept of infrastructuring the social by analyzing the uses of local community work in Danish marginalized residential areas. Infrastructuring the social is a concept to describe how spaces are designated as problematic and marginalized and then remade through the creation and materialization of normative and instrumental relations. The article empirically demonstrates how infrastructuring the social works through enacting relations between residents, local community workers and professionals from municipalities, relations which are used to move people along normative trajectories. These trajectories are meant to transport people out of problematic areas, and into closer contact with “regular society,” such as Danish institutions, education, and the labor market. Infrastructuring the social is thus enacted from the outside in, imbued with the normative imperatives of the welfare state, seeking to rework the agency of residents and improve the marginalized residential area. The concept of infrastructuring the social nuances the trope of the “network” by highlighting the normative imperatives embedded in making relations, and goes beyond frameworks of governmentality by highlighting the practical messiness and on-going work of everyday governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many young people in Europe face employment insecurity, a condition which will likely persist following the global economic downturn that started with the financial crisis of 2007-08. Previous research has shown that employment insecurity impedes the entry into homeownership. It is, however, less clear how this delayed entry into homeownership is filtered by contextual arrangements at the country level. Using longitudinal data from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2007-11), we confirm prior findings on the negative effect of employment insecurity across European countries. We also find contextual variations. In more marketised housing provision systems in Northern and Western Europe, where mortgages are readily available to those in secure employment, the negative effect of employment insecurity (relative to having secure employment) on the transition into homeownership is accentuated. In more familialistic systems with strongly regulated labour markets in Southern Europe, the difference between young people in different employment situations is smaller, yet still significant. We find similarsized differences between those in insecure and secure employment in the Baltic States, but not in the other Eastern and Central European countries, where housing shortages impede the entry into homeownership for young people across different employment positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border cooperation to promote economic development and political integration has been among the EU's key themes since the 1990s, and contemporary policy networks are considered useful organisational solutions. Focusing on transport policies in the border regions of Basel and Luxembourg, we analyse the persistency of national preferences among policy actors, mapping their perceived 'policy spaces of action' and conceptualising these policy spaces as relational. We discuss that the networks' various actors on either side of the border appear to perceive the actual 'policy spaces' very differently. Therefore, and due to the networks' terminability, these policy spaces are highly contested and frequently negotiated between the actors. Based on a combination of in-depth interviews, sketch maps, and social network analysis, we show that large spatiocultural differences still prevail among network actors, potentially impacting on the decisions taken in cross-border policy networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the combined effect of formal (FSK) and informal (ISK) sources of knowledge on European regional innovation performance. Our findings show that the effect of the two sources of knowledge on innovation performance is not simple and linear. First, both sources of knowledge have an interaction effect on innovation performance (ie, the effect of FSK on regional innovation depends on the level of access to ISK in the region, and vice versa). Second, while the effect of ISK is linear (although different for each region), the effect of the FSK (which is more intensive in monetary, time, effort, and opportunity costs) has a diminishing-returns form, and achieves a saturation point at high levels of use of FSK. Our findings also show that the balanced access to both types of sources is important and that, for instance, regions with limited access to ISK should not expect miraculous effects from high levels of FSK. To the best of our knowledge, no previous research has been reported which has empirically studied the combined effect of both sources of knowledge at a European regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of financial crisis and geographical inequalities on morality rates in various nations across Europe. Many reports based on financial crisis suggests that economic downturn in European countries has resulted into increase in mental health disorders and worsening of normal health. Selective migration which leads to geographical inequalities has resulted from change in social policies.

It is a truism that environmental management has experienced a significant change in the locus of governing, in which centralised forms of steering have been gradually replaced by more collaborative management approaches organised at the ecosystem scale. Whereas much research capital has been expended on informing their design and promoting their uptake, surprisingly little systematic comparative empirical research exists on the precise nature and extent of what is often described as a 'paradigm shift' in governing. We address this gap by examining how one issue often deemed to require deeper 'collaboration', namely, catchment management, has been addressed in three comparable federal political systems: the European Union; the USA; and Australia. On the basis of a fresh and more comparable account of the forms and modalities of collaboration, we reveal that, although collaboration has undoubtedly grown in recent decades, its depth and extent remains highly variable both across and within the three cases. We also examine what these subtly different geographical 'contours of collaboration' imply for future research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people leave the parental home at different ages, and differences exist both between and within societies. International comparisons have emphasised the importance of institutions, in particular the welfare regime, the educational system, and the labour market, as well as of long-standing cultural differences. Here we focus on subjective age norms ('age deadlines') for leaving home-a key determinant of actual behaviour. We analyse the data of a unique multicountry dataset, the third round of the European Social Survey, through a series of multilevel regression models where simultaneously country, regional, and individual-level factors come into play. We find strong normative differences between countries, and significant, though lower, regional-level variation. Norms are significantly influenced by country-level 'institutional' factors, as well as by regional-level 'cultural' factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of cell phone base stations on prices of condominiums in Hamburg, Germany. This is the first hedonic study on this subject for housing prices in Europe and the first ever to examine the price impact of base stations within a whole metropolis. We distinguish between individual masts and groups of masts. On the basis of a dataset of over 1000 base stations set up in Hamburg, we find that only immediate proximity to groups of antenna masts is perceived as harmful by residents of nearby condominiums. For individual masts no effect on residential property prices in the surrounding areas was observed, indicating that cell phone service providers should prevent installation of groups of masts in a single location. We control for spatial dependence and show that the influence of cell phone base stations on adjacent residential property prices can be overestimated, if other negative externalities that are typically correlated with the proximity to base stations are neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]