Search

Against the backdrop of the current political developments in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, such as Ukraine, Poland, and Romania, the question arises as to the role played by economic transformation and the resulting innovation linkages in these countries over the last 20 years. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of economic and institutional dimensions on the development of CEE countries, explicitly distinguishing between European Union (EU) members and non‐members, and thus reflecting the differences in institutions and path dependency. Furthermore, the paper contrasts the performance of CEE countries with that of Western European countries. To achieve these objectives, the impact of factors such as innovation, institutions, and political practices on the economic development of 37 European countries from 2000 until 2020 is followed using fixed effects regression and Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The results of the analysis show the importance of institutional factors such as low levels of corruption, political freedoms, and intellectual property. The effect of institutional variables was particularly pronounced in the case of non‐EU countries, which indicates the particular importance of the development of stable institutions for achieving higher levels of economic development for this category of countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the political hierarchies of cities in China from different perspectives. First, we examine the economic disparities between prefectural cities and municipalities. Furthermore, this paper draws upon a quasi‐ experiment to analyze the impact of upgrading Chongqing to a municipality in 1997 using the synthetic control method. The city‐upgrading policy significantly increased Chongqing's gross domestic product (GDP) in the following 4 years. Finally, we find that the policy increased GDP in treated cities within 1200 km of Chongqing by about 10%–13% relative to the control cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern communication technologies make information more easily and quickly accessible, leading to more transparent and competitive markets. Based on a theoretical model, this paper provides new empirical evidence on the potential impact of online search intensity on asymmetric cost pass‐through. Prices often move as 'rockets and feathers': they rise quickly in response to cost increases and they fall slowly in response to cost reductions. A panel threshold error correction model is applied to weekly producer and retail prices of chicken and mutton in Iran. The results suggest that the volume of online searches is associated with a more complete and less asymmetric cost pass‐through from farmgate to retail prices. Thus, online platforms and search engines have the potential to increase competition by bringing prices closer together and reducing profit margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frankish customs regulations recorded in the tenth‐century 'Inquest on the tolls of Raffelstetten' have long formed a cornerstone of traditional arguments about slavery's role in the early medieval European economic revival. This paper experiments with the application of a more‐than‐human lens to the Raffelstetten record and other evidence to generate new insights into the intimate experience of enslavement and the interspecies networks of relations that shaped the slave trade and slave markets in early medieval Europe. Human and animal entanglements, as revealed in the Raffelstetten record, determined how enslaved people experienced capture, transport, and sale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic impact of resource investments into higher education has been the focus of considerable research in recent years. Many contributions analyse the strength of the connection between economic development and higher education at the local level and the conditions which make certain systems more effective and efficient than others. In this paper, we provide a systematic bibliometric review of the available literature on the subject, various dimensions of this complex issue, constructing and analysing a map of variables used by selected researchers in the field. A summary of knowledge gaps, research limitations, topics explored and applied methods is provided to envisage future research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China holds the distinction of being the foremost global consumer of water resources and contends with a significant level of water scarcity. In light of this quandary, China has been assiduously endeavoring to foster water conservation practices with the ultimate objective of reaching a peak point in water use. In this paper, we construct a framework for forecasting China's total water use (TWU) peak path. In this framework, we select influencing factors in terms of both economy and technology to forecast the peak path of China's TWU under six different scenarios, and analyze the economic and technological circumstances at the peak. Our findings indicate that China's TWU will persist in its upward trend based on both the high growth and business as usual scenarios. The projected peak period is estimated to transpire in 2037, 2032, 2030, and 2028, respectively, with the corresponding peak levels amounting to 644.03, 633.93, 625.79, and 620.92 billion m3. However, in the low growth scenarios, China's TWU reached its peak in 2013. The extent of economic development plays a pivotal role in determining the timing and manner of water usage peaking. Early peaking of water usage could potentially result in a loss of gross domestic product (GDP). Furthermore, technological advancements hold the potential to facilitate a reduction in water use without requiring a significant trade‐off between resource conservation and economic development. The results of sensitivity analysis show that the average acreage of water used for irrigation on cropland, GDP, water use efficiency, and population contribute the most to TWU, while the increase in the proportion of industrial, service, and water‐saving irrigation area can reduce water use. Our analytical framework provides a commonly applicable solution for the water use forecast in areas seeking to reach the water use peak or to achieve sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the processes of market liberalization and globalization increase the confidence of international actors involved in national third sectors, there exists a cosmopolitan tension between ‘mobile elites’ and ‘locked in’ nationals. This paper explores the impact of these tensions on the social enterprise ecosystem in the Republic of Poland and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Focused on the internationalized mechanisms of support, the relationship between the social enterprise incubators and international stakeholders, and power distance inherent to the global versus local debate, the findings suggest that normative isomorphic pressures are causing a fundamental ecosystem shift. The monopolization of support and terms of reference have led to entrepreneurs detrimentally being treated as ‘organizational heroes’ risking burnout, the primacy of international voices within the local context, and the transference of nationals from being ‘locked in’ to national processes to being ‘locked out’ of national support. The research suggests the cosmopolitan‐led transformation of activists into entrepreneurs needs to be more carefully considered, to ensure that enforced alignment to international system does not alienate them from other sources and means of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fifth‐generation (5G) technology is seen to be a solution for developing countries to improve their quality of services in terms of transportation, education, health, agriculture, and other fields, thereby holding the promises of economic transformation by improving productivity and the quality of life. The paper considers some of the challenges that face operators, investors, and providers when planning to introduce 5G technology to developing countries. The main focus of this paper is the 5G transport network, in particular, the backhaul network. The 5G transport network architectural options and scenarios are discussed based on several standards and previous studies, the problems of existing infrastructures of developing countries are investigated, and new proposed technologies that may help to address those challenges are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores migrant Black African youths' experiences of looking for and finding work in Newcastle, a deindustrializing Australian city. Data for this paper were drawn from interviews conducted with young people who migrated to Australia as temporary and permanent residents. Drawing on concepts of coloniality, racialization, bodywork, and hidden labor, this paper demonstrates how, when looking for work, participants' names get attached to their racialized bodies—a situation which deems them as suitable or not for specific kinds of work. Their strategies of finding work differ according to their migration status; that is, temporary residents draw on their personal networks, whereas some permanent residents with full citizenship rights rely on social welfare support services to find work. However, irrespective of the different strategies used to find work, they all end up doing jobs that they described as "work which others do not wish to do." I argue that these experiences re‐articulate the coloniality of labor because, as workers in these jobs, they play a crucial role in the economic transformation taking place in the city due to deindustrialization. This is not merely because they form part of the workforce responsible for working in unwanted jobs, but because they are also consumers of Newcastle's emerging welfare support and educational services sectors. The paper contributes to an understanding of how race shapes the labor market experiences of racialized youth in deindustrializing labor markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City officials are continuously working to attract airlines willing to fly to new destinations. The inherent expectation is that a more extensive aviation network stimulates economic growth. This paper investigates empirically the causal implication of this hypothesis. Using data on nonstop flights by origin and destination over the period 1984–2013, we propose a new measure for a metropolitan area's connectivity to the national aviation network. We then use this measure to investigate its contribution to local economic development, as captured by the growth in population, in total employment, in per‐capita income, and new firm entry. To ensure causality, we use instrumental variable methods that exploit geography and destination airports growth as a way to capture the exogenous variation in the likelihood to add new travel routes. Our results suggest that a metropolitan area's air connectivity, resulting from an expansive local aviation network, has a positive effect on population, on employment and on the number of businesses established in that location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the short‐ and long‐run impacts of gasoline price, macroeconomic factors and road length on road traffic crashes, injuries and fatalities in Nigeria. Annual data from 1995 to 2019 and autoregressive distributed lag approach were employed. Results suggest that gasoline price, per capita income, road length and population density significantly influence road safety outcomes. Gasoline price has a positive short‐run impact on crashes, injuries, and fatalities contrary to findings in developed countries. Road crashes tend to decrease when income increases in the short term. Population density leads to improvement in road safety outcomes while road length exacerbates it. Government's policy on gasoline price increase could worsen road safety outcomes unless it is accompanied by improvement in road infrastructure, safe public transport and economic growth, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of financial development on domestic investment in West African countries. The study uses data from 1985 to 2019 and employs the pooled mean group technique. The main finding of the study is that financial development has a positive effect on domestic investment in the long run but an insignificant effect in the short run. Furthermore, remittances, real GDP per capita and trade openness increase investment rate. The results of causality tests support the view that investment is a channel through which financial development stimulates economic growth. Therefore, it is reasonable for the selected countries to formulate policies that promote domestic credit to the private sector in order to ease liquidity constraints and increase investment and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radically new economic arrangements are needed for just and sustainable transitions to a more environmentally and ecologically resilient world. Yet little progress is being made to imagine the new economy‐environment relations around which resources, actors, and ethics might be configured to enact the novel economic forms needed. This article uses a Social Studies of Economisation and Marketisation (SSEM) approach to examine a suite of differently scaled and structured environmentally focused economic development initiatives in New Zealand. We explore how the initiatives have assembled diverse actors and investment projects into experimental economy‐environment relations. Our account highlights experimentation as a pivotal mode of economisation, and we argue that the initiatives studied by us expose a new experimentation‐led agenda for transitioning to more environmentally and economically just futures. Working with the idea of experimentation in an SSEM framework, we also argue that the diverse initiatives are creating an experimentation infrastructure that provides a more generative platform for novel economy‐environment relations than top–down models of change such as transition pathways. The article opens up a critical politics of environmental economy that focuses attention on emergence, agency, and practice and allows us to reimagine processes of transitioning. This paper brings the Social Studies of Economisation and Marketisation to a suite of diverse environmentally‐focused economic development initiatives in New Zealand. We argue that the initiatives register an experimentation‐led agenda for societal transitioning and that not only is experimentation a pivotal mode of economisation, but it can cohere into an experimentation infrastructure that has a wider collective potentiality, offering us other ways to stimulate processes of transitioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 94% of lemur species are currently threatened with extinction and more than 17 species of giant lemur are already extinct. To help prevent the extinction of Madagascar's remaining lemurs, Dr. Patricia Wright initiated conservation programs in the Ranomafana region of southern Madagascar in the 1990s. These continued and expanded, and in 2003 were consolidated with Dr. Wright's research activities when Center ValBio ("CVB") was founded in 2003. CVB believes in the "One Health" approach in understanding the relationship between humans and the environment, and one of their core principles is that effective conservation is science‐based. CVB's environmental education (EE) programs (discussed herein) operate in various primary schools surrounding Ranomafana national park (RNP). The all‐Malagasy team consists of long‐term conservation educators as well as young intern teachers, who together address the issues of valuing lemurs and the forests that they require to survive. In this paper, we will describe three of CVB's EE programs and evaluate their impact. The primary tool used to assess impact was an analysis of pre‐ and post ‐intervention test scores evaluated using a Kruskal–Wallis test. We show that these programs (1) are popular, (2) produce concrete outputs that can change rural villages, and (3) improve local knowledge on the importance of biodiversity and sustainable development. Highlights: Local communities benefit from the conservation of a protected area through an environmental education program that has broad goals.Environmental education generates concrete outputs that can change rural villages for the better.Environmental education improves local knowledge about the importance of biodiversity, and offers paths towards sustainable development and income through tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research evaluates the management efficiency of the European Structural Funds according to whether their productive orientation is based on employment or on economic and social development. The data refers to 2000–2020 for the 28 EU countries. The paper includes an analysis of the influence of the country's governance and economic freedom on the production function associated with the funds received. The results show that there is a technological gap between groups of countries defined by their goodness of governance. On the other hand, there is a positive relationship of economic freedom and the efficiency scores of the countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the prospects and promises of continent‐wide infrastructure projects under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and its implications for intra‐regional trade and economic development in Africa. Building on the supply side theory of trade and economic development, and taking cognizance of the impacts of asymmetric market sizes on trade integration, this paper argues that continent‐wide infrastructure projects are perhaps not the biggest constraints to intra‐Africa trade. Consequently, the paper recommends caution in pursuing regional infrastructure projects under the BRI. Given that the economies of most African countries depend largely on natural resources, the BRI could be adopted strategically to establish and manage infrastructure projects that would relax the binding constraints to structural transformation and allow for the development of manufacturing and/or service capabilities in the respective countries, especially in niche areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Site selection processes whereby companies choose a location for an expansion or relocation have changed substantially over the past several decades. One key shift has been the emergence of collaboration among both individual economic developers and cooperation among the communities they represent. The rise in collaborative practices has also been increasingly reflected in the contemporary economic development literature outside the discipline of geography. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of economic development studies of collaboration and then to suggest ways that geographers might use concepts from that scholarship to inform and extend the limited number of studies exploring site selection practices. The paper begins by offering a context for the emergence of collaboration trends by highlighting the ways that information asymmetry in site selection processes create a demand for greater collaboration among industry practitioners. It then turns to an overview of the burgeoning literature on collaboration that has evolved over the last decade in the interdisciplinary scholarship on economic development. Next, the paper shifts to a discussion of the ways that geographers might use the literature on collaboration to inform studies of site selection, specifically focusing on geographic scale and research on site selection consultants as possible areas for future investigation. The article concludes by arguing that studying collaboration in the context of geographies of site selection holds the potential for greater insights into the broader outcomes of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature highlights the importance of export sophistication for economic development. Given the newness of the literature on export sophistication, its determinants are under‐exploited. As a pioneer study, this paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by examining the effect of infrastructure development on export sophistication. Based on a panel of 45 African countries over the period 2003–2016, the results of the different estimations show that infrastructure, including transport, electricity, ICT and access to water and sanitation, improves export sophistication in Africa. Our results also show that the effect of infrastructure varies at different intervals of the export sophistication distribution. Therefore, improved infrastructure would allow African countries to not only improve their export structure but also achieve sustainable and durable growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Levelling up and the everyday economy are two crucial concepts for understanding the direction of policy making in the UK, but the relationship between them has not yet been fully explored. Moreover, the UK's industrial and regional policies are woefully underdeveloped. This article suggests how levelling up and the everyday economy concepts could contribute to Labour's emerging industrial and regional policies. It argues that Labour is right to pursue an economic growth agenda, but must make growth work for communities and workers, and the everyday economy can help. The everyday economy can contribute to, and benefit from, local productivity growth, but regions still need companies that export or are at the technological frontier to raise demand, productivity and pay. Labour should work with the government's Levelling Up White Paper, but this was overly focussed on cities and knowledge intensive business services: there is an economic case for including towns and manufacturing too, and they should prioritise connecting places and sectors, building on the diverse strengths which different places can offer, and setting a long‐term direction of travel. Over time, Labour should try to ensure that cities, towns and smaller communities are better connected, better coordinated and more specialised within larger regions. Labour should, therefore, set out an industrial and regional strategy; work up an economic development toolkit; and devolve economic powers to Mayoral Combined Authorities and councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) expand the development agenda. While all major development actors support policy coherence for development (PCD), analysis has been lacking on how this can be achieved as the development agenda expands. We discuss the relationship between SDGs and PCD through a comprehensive case study from Finland. Purpose: To examine the coherence of Finland's foreign and development policy for achieving the SDGs, while leaving no one behind. Particular focus is given to policies related to the private sector's role in development, and attention is also paid to ministries other than the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Approach and methods: We carried out interviews with policy‐makers and other stakeholders, and analysed relevant documents. We reviewed governmental high‐level policy statements, sectoral alignments, and development aid documents. We also reviewed the position papers that the Finnish Government had issued on European Union (EU) processes, particularly regarding development relating to the private sector. Findings: Finland has been uniquely positioned to advance PCD in its foreign policy, thanks to co‐ordination structures across government. Nonetheless, mainstreaming of the expanded development agenda has been largely limited to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and its development policy department. The breadth of the SDG agenda has enabled individual targets to be cherry‐picked, with less attention paid to advancing the Agenda 2030 as a whole and to implementing its Leave No One Behind (LNOB) principle. Despite an institutional framework seemingly ideal for policy coherence, traditional sectoral divisions between development policy as a separate field and sustainability as an environmental issue, remain. Five factors in particular hindered policy coherence: (a) Finland's position papers to the EU on taxes and migration all but ignored Agenda 2030 commitments; (b) the Finnish emphasis on the private sector in development narrowed the considerations of development to economic growth; (c) sustainability was seen as green technology, with scant regard to social sustainability; (d) private firms interpreted the SDGs to mean that environmental sustainability could address human rights‐related concerns with corporate social responsibility initiatives; and (e) cuts to staffing in the Finnish Government stymied innovative thinking and working across departmental boundaries. Policy Implications: Finland is generally seen as a front‐runner in mainstreaming development issues, which makes it an interesting case. We outline the key challenges that Finland has faced in tackling PCD, which should be relevant for other Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries as well. Many challenges related to PCD are political and organizational. As such, they are highly dependent on the particular institutional settings in each country. Our methodological approach could be replicated in other similar countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of institutions indicates the level of economic development in the country. Institutions are a part of a system that is based on human interactions and that leads to the generation of incentives. These incentives can deal with uncertainties and foster economic, social, political growth, provided the human interactions are moderated well. This paper reflects on the strength of the interventionalist institutions like cooperatives in India and promotes institution building for a better future. The base of the paper focuses on the lessons learnt from dairy cooperatives in Gujarat state and discusses the current situation of the cooperatives and challenges faced by them. The cooperatives in India have been old institutions with a great history of success as also failures. Though there are various types of cooperatives in India, the dairy cooperatives have been able to gain more attention in the international market due to the Operation Floods I, II, and III. India has secured its position as one of the largest milk producers in the world. At present, India produces 20% of the total milk production in the world. This paper is a blend and analysis of theoretical perspectives and ground realities of the dairy cooperative sector in India. The paper follows theoretical perspectives from institutional theory to analyse the present scenario of dairy cooperatives in India. It addresses the gaps in the dairy cooperative development sector with an in‐depth analysis of ground realities and contributes to future policy formulation and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the relevance of museums in promoting cultural, tourism and economic development in local territories, we investigate the influence of both spatial and non‐spatial interactions on museum attractiveness. In particular, we assess whether non‐spatial collaborations such as partnerships and networking, contribute to enhancing their level of competitiveness and if spatial dependence occurs among neighbouring museums. Additionally, we differentiate the analysis by considering various location typologies, that is, sites located in highly attractive and remote areas. Findings from this study can assist policy‐makers in designing ad hoc strategies to encourage the active role of museums in their local context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at analysing how the presence of workers employed in cultural and creative industries (CCIs) is related to regional specialized diversification. From a theoretical perspective, CCIs drive economic development and local innovative capacity by facilitating processes of cross‐fertilization of ideas. This study estimates an entry model analysing the ability of Italian provinces to successfully create new sectoral specializations. The results indicate that the relationship between the share of employees in CCIs and the probability of creating new sectoral specializations is non‐linear, highlighting the need for CCIs‐led policies to achieve a certain level of critical mass to be successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on boom‐busts cycles in resource extraction often assumes that affected resource‐rich communities are at best reactive, at worst helpless, in the face of the large, exogenous shocks this cycle visits upon them. Researchers infrequently examine what communities themselves can do to improve their economic prospects and residents' quality of life amidst booms and busts. In this review paper, we identify and synthesize work scattered across disparate academic and gray literature—in planning, law, community economic development, rural sociology, economics, and political science, among others—to holistically assess what we know about how communities can use local policymaking to manage impacts of booms and busts associated with unconventional oil and gas drilling (UOGD), often called "fracking." We highlight examples of communities tackling this task using vertical and horizontal governance strategies and distill expert recommendations for how communities can build boom‐bust resiliency generally and in key areas impacted by UOGD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we outline how evolutionary economic geography (EEG) explains peripheral economic development by comparing two peripheries over extended time periods. This comparison involves critically appraising EEG's capacity to account for peripheral evolution. For geographical, historical, and political reasons, peripheries lack resources that lead to path creation and renewal. The hyper‐peripheral regions of the Pilbara in north‐west Australia and of Buryatia in south‐east Russia provide excellent comparative case studies for understanding how peripheral regional development evolves in ways contingent upon time, state institutions, natural resource endowments, and region/firm dynamics. Our analysis shows that EEG is well equipped to deal with historical factors and capitalist economies but it struggles to reconcile these regions' resilience and ability to sustain both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous socio‐economies. Development in these regions over extended periods of time invites questions about whether it is appropriate to apply EEG and its constituent parts: path creation, renewal, and exhaustion; regional resilience; and institutional thinness and thickness. In addressing those questions, we show that EEG can incorporate temporal development, stretching over long periods and economic analysis. We also critique the extent to which EEG can be used to consider how state activities influence path creation and renewal, the importance of extra‐regional contexts, and heterodox and Indigenous perspectives. This paper compares the long histories of the Pilbara, Australia, and Buryatia, Russia, to examine the economic development of hyper‐peripheries. We use Evolutionary Economic Geography over extended time periods, as well as Indigenous perspectives, to show how peripherality is both ingrained over time and also defined based on core‐periphery power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a comparative case study of Nikola Tesla's use as a symbol in interwar Yugoslavia and the contemporary United States to build upon Anderson's theory of modular nationalism. The modularity of national symbols, I argue, is driven by their utility in addressing similar social, political and economic transformations in different countries and may be transmissible through emigrant communities—albeit not without some changes in substance. Just as Yugoslavia used Tesla to bridge ethnic divisions, Yugoslav emigrants deployed Tesla to enhance their status in the United States. The cult of Tesla, moreover, is doubly modular, with its Yugoslav incarnation drawing inspiration from the American cult of Thomas Edison, just as Edison's current obsolescence as a symbol led to the cult of Tesla's adoption in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is mounting theoretical and empirical research that explains the reasons for the rapid expansion of China's export trade, but they mostly ignore the effects of cultural differences. To fill this gap, this paper provides an empirical investigation of how cultural diversity affects the sustainable development of trade, which is defined as the goal of maintaining certain volume of trade and making trade growth sustainable. The findings are as follows. (1) Cultural diversity can significantly promote the sustainable development of trade. (2) Entrepreneurship is the possible channel wherein cultural diversity affects the sustainable development of trade, including innovation entrepreneurship and business entrepreneurship. (3) Further studies demonstrate that economic openness has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between cultural diversity and the sustainable development of trade. That is, the higher the level of openness of a city, the stronger the promotion of cultural diversity to the sustainable development of trade. This study not only deepens understanding on the relationship between culture and trade but also provides important policy implications for many countries that have high migration rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human agency has become a core topic in economic geography complementing traditional, structural approaches to explain regional development. This paper contributes firstly with a discussion of the theoretical and conceptual relationships between the agency of individuals, organizations, and systems. Secondly, it proposes a novel analytical framework for studying how human agency, combined with external changes affects regional economic development, and how regional structural preconditions and external changes explain the activation of change agency. Thirdly, the relevance of the framework is examined through comparative studies of about 20 years of industrial development in three Norwegian regions. This illuminates the importance of human agency in regional transformation processes, how regional preconditions influence but not determine the activation of change agency, as well as why and how regional policy plays a role in the emergence of change agency. Yet, future research needs to investigate the context conditions, which promote or hinder the activation of change agency, to trace change in economic activities over time and link it to causal mechanisms, and to pay attention to the unintended consequences of change agency in the longer‐term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of U.S. states have set targets for renewable energy, but the prospects for meeting most of these goals hinge on the willingness of local governments to allow large‐scale renewable energy projects in their communities. In this paper, I investigate how exposure to lobbying by wind developers and the actions of neighboring jurisdictions inform the adoption and design of rules for siting commercial wind farms. Using data collected from 1603 counties in 23 states, I find local policymakers are more likely to enact wind ordinances when they have more time to interact with wind developers and when neighboring counties have adopted wind ordinances or approved the construction of wind farms. I also observe that counties tend to adopt more stringent rules when more wind farms have been built in neighboring counties. This evidence suggests that efforts to scale up renewable energy generation may encounter increasing resistance from local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As science becomes increasingly cross‐disciplinary and scientific models become increasingly cross‐coupled, standardized practices of model evaluation are more important than ever. For normally distributed data, mean squared error (MSE) is ideal as an objective measure of model performance, but it gives little insight into what aspects of model performance are "good" or "bad." This apparent weakness has led to a myriad of specialized error metrics, which are sometimes aggregated to form a composite score. Such scores are inherently subjective, however, and while their components may be interpretable, the composite itself is not. We contend that, a better approach to model benchmarking and interpretation is to decompose MSE into interpretable components. To demonstrate the versatility of this approach, we outline some fundamental types of decomposition and apply them to predictions at 1,021 streamgages across the conterminous United States from three streamflow models. Through this demonstration, we hope to show that each component in a decomposition represents a distinct concept, like "season" or "variability," and that simple decompositions can be combined to represent more complex concepts, like "seasonal variability," creating an expressive language through which to interrogate models and data. Plain Language Summary: Models are essential scientific tools for explaining and predicting phenomena ranging from weather and climate, to health outcomes, to economic development, to the origins of the universe, and testing competing models is one of the most basic scientific activites. Yet, how scientists evaluate and justify their models can be inconsistent or even arbitrary. Traditionally, one performance metric—such as mean squared error—is used to identify the best model, but one metric provides little insight into what aspects of a model are "good" or "bad." This paper proposes a basic language for expressing different aspects of a model's performance. On one hand, this is useful for determining which aspects of model may require revision, but it also allows the modeler to separate out the best elements among several models and combine them to form an ensemble, analogous to how an audio engineer mixes together multiple tracks to form the best rendition of a musical piece. Key Points: Mean squared error (MSE) is an objective but somewhat enigmatic measure of model performanceMSE can be decomposed into components that quantify specific aspects of model performance, such as bias and varianceMixing components among models yields a form of ensemble prediction [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, the contradiction between rapid economic development and water shortage has attracted much attention. This paper explores the problems of water consumption and environmental pollution in provinces with different economic development levels in China. Sewage discharge is put into the undesirable meta frontier dynamic data envelopment analysis (DEA) model as an undesirable output variable. The water use efficiency under different income levels from 2013 to 2017 is compared at the provincial level from the perspective of domestic water use efficiency, ecological water use efficiency, industrial water use efficiency and agricultural water use efficiency, and the dynamic evolution is further revealed by using kernel density estimation. The results show that water resource utilisation efficiency is positively correlated with regional income level and economic development level. The internal differences in high‐income areas are narrowing, while the internal differences in middle‐income areas are significantly expanding; agricultural water use efficiency is the most prominent problem. In view of these situations, the total amount and intensity of water consumption should be controlled in high‐income areas. For middle‐income provinces with abundant water resources but low efficiency, local governments can strengthen legislation and supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural resource dependence, although commonly invoked in natural resource sociology, has often been ambiguously defined. Communities are frequently described as dependent on natural resource development, but limited attention has been paid to what that means. In the literature, resource dependence is often treated as over‐specialization in, or over‐reliance upon, the natural resource sectors. However, the logic of over‐specialization conceptually grounds dependence in poor economic outcomes. Thus, a one‐dimensional typology of dependence based on a threshold of the share of development in the natural resource sector—as commonly used—does not fully capture the concept and risks tautology. In this paper, I address this ambiguity by formally defining natural resource dependence as over‐specialization in the natural resource sectors. I then present an ideal typology, known as the Natural Resource Community Typology, and a corresponding classification scheme for rural communities in the United States. The typology integrates both extractive and non‐extractive natural resource activity and has two dimensions—the level of development and the level of economic prosperity—and six mutually exclusive categories—extractive specialized, extractive dependent, non‐extractive specialized, non‐extractive dependent, hybrid specialized, and hybrid dependent. I classify counties from 2000 to 2015 and find that while extractive dependence decreased over the study period, non‐extractive dependence increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies entrepreneurship ecosystem development in a context little discussed in the extant literature to date: Oman. Specifically, it focuses on business incubation (BI) initiatives as a policy tool for developing the local, regional, and national systems of supporting entrepreneurship and SME growth. Although BI's are a popular policy measure for ecosystem development, spreading globally from their original conception in the United States around 60 years ago, their universal effectiveness is questioned. We analyse the tenability of BI as an economic development strategy by entrepreneurship ecosystems as a conceptual framework to help us understand the multitudinous cultural, institutional, and governance structures required for success. Specifically, we consider these ecosystem dynamics and their influence on the incubation of SMEs in the novel context of an oil-rich yet transitioning economy such as Oman. Conducting interviews with 22 key informants within a range of ecosystem actors (policy-makers, incubator managers, academics, and entrepreneurs) we find that existing capabilities within the Omani BI programme are not yet fully fit for purpose, highlighting the need to establish developmental priorities for the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem, bottom-up. Finally, we reflect on the wider cultural and institutional constraints highlighted, and suggest potentially fruitful avenues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nexus between tourism, financial development and economic growth in 31 African countries using the Dumitrescu–Hurlin Granger non‐causality test that accounts for heterogeneity and cross‐sectional dependence. It also employs the Granger causality test in the frequency domain that distinguishes between temporary and permanent causality for the country‐specific analysis. It shows a cointegration relationship between tourism, financial development and economic growth. It reveals a joint long‐run causality from tourism and financial development to economic growth, and a joint short‐run and long‐run causality from tourism and economic growth to financial development, albeit the joint causality from financial development and economic growth to tourism is tenuous. The individual causality shows a bidirectional causality between tourism and economic growth, between financial development and economic growth, and between tourism and financial development. The country‐specific analysis reveals that tourism is a significant predictor of financial development and economic growth at high frequency rather than at low frequency in most countries. Therefore, African countries should prioritize the policies and programs that can facilitate the development of the tourism and financial sectors in their quest to accelerate economic growth and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political institutions are an essential component to explain income variation. Brazilian municipalities are characterized by a great contrast in the colonization process and its impacts on the current income level and distribution, and other development aspects. This study analyzes the spatial heterogeneity of the relationship between institutional quality and the municipalities' economic development. We use a spatial moving window method applied to weighted regressions—Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). We find evidence that good institutions increase income and other variables related to economic development. In addition, the institutional quality influence on economic development measures is distinct across the Brazilian regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research was to study the influence of related variety on the economic performance of Spanish provinces during the international crisis (2009–2013) and the post‐crisis period (2014–2018), with the goal of contributing to assess the validity of the skill‐relatedness approach. The research is based on labor flows in a sample of more than one million affiliated workers. Our results confirmed the influence of related variety on the growth of GDP and employment in knowledge‐based industries, in protecting against unemployment, as well as on the creation of new firms, although with marked differences according to the economic cycle. Robustness issues and possible lines of progress using this novel methodology are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study is to examine the effects of investment in human capital, as funded by EU cohesion policy, on economic development in Poland at the local (LAU 2) level, that is, at the level of municipalities. We found evidence that human capital investment has a positive effect on local revenues. This effect is stronger than what is observed for the assistance programmes not related to human capital. The impact of intervention on migration balance is in turn not significant. We also observed that the effectiveness of the assistance within the cohesion policy depends on existing regional preconditions for development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]