Search

This paper discusses race, racialisation and whiteness in relation to Eastern European migrants living in Western Europe. Focusing on Poles in the UK, it examines both Polish migrants' experiences of racism as well as their own investment into racial exclusions of other racialised groups. The paper interrogates how migrants navigate their peripheral whiteness in broader racial hierarchies of Eastern European in-betweenness that are both historically rooted and constantly negotiated. Benefitting from relatively easy access to the UK, Polish migrants occupy at once a racially privileged and racially marginal position that echoes historical tensions around the place of Eastern Europe in wider racial hierarchies of Europeanness. While being white enough to engage in racial exclusions Eastern Europeans are at the same time not white enough to escape racialisation. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Poles in the UK conducted between 2019–2020 the paper offers insight into complex racialising practices of Polish migrants when they are both racialised and able to benefit from their position as 'paler migrants' to distance themselves from other migrants as well as 'darker citizens'. It contributes to scholarship on racialisation of East–West movers within Europe, in-betweenness and whiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions (HEI) have undergone fundamental changes driven by ICT developments, globalisation, and the advent of socio-constructivist pedagogic approaches. As a result, within the UK, capital investment in new and retrofitted facilities has reached a record expenditure. Recent research on user-related evaluations of facilities, particularly in HEI learning spaces, highlights the prevalence of evaluations dominated by reductionist approaches focused on measuring outcomes, on users, such as satisfaction, learning outcomes or engagement. These approaches have a major pitfall, neglecting the complexity of the dynamic relationships between people, spaces, technology, institutional structure and pedagogic practices. In response, this paper aims to propose a shift on current approaches by exploring the application of sociotechnical systems theory to learning space design and evaluation. Amid these, it is argued that Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) offers promising alternatives to inform design and management of higher education learning spaces. Finally, within the paper, three CWA interventions are proposed and discussed, focusing on how these address previously identified shortcomings of predominant approaches used in HEI learning space design and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the key factors driving UK direct investment in the Spanish regions over the period 2000–2016 and, consequently, tries to unveil its main motivation. Applying a spatial Durbin panel model to capture spatial linkages, the results point to the existence of complementarity between the FDI received by a region and that of the remaining ones. This outcome, along with a positive and statistically significant spillover effect of market potential, reveals that complex‐vertical FDI motivation with agglomeration economies prevails among UK MNEs investing in Spain. Additionally, our findings unveil the role played by some other FDI drivers, such as wages and infrastructure. Furthermore, the paper is unique in decomposing the average direct and spillover effects by region and pairs of regions, so that remarkable differences can be identified. This breakdown has strong significance from a policy perspective since it can guide regional policy makers. In short, our findings point out to the fact that FDI policy should be jointly designed by those regions presenting strong bilateral spillover effects. Thus, greater cooperation among policy makers would be welcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the Brexit announcement affects Japanese direct investment into Europe at the regional NUTS-2 level. Political and economic uncertainty is an important factor affecting the economic performance of a country and its regions. In this study, Japanese annual firm-level data between the years 2000 and 2018 for 31 European countries is used. Negative binomial estimations indicate a significant negative relationship between uncertainty associated with the Brexit announcement and Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the UK regions. Strong FDI path dependence currently acts to dampen this effect. However, depending upon future European Union Single Market access rules, such path dependence could act to magnify Brexit's effect on inward-UK FDI. JEL Classification Codes: F23, R12. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social impact bonds are payment by results contracts that leverage private social investment to cover the up-front expenditure associated with welfare services. The introduction of private principles and actors through outcome-based commissioning has received a great deal of attention in social policy research. However, there has been much less attention given to the introduction of private capital and its relation to more established forms of quasi-marketisation. This paper examines what effect private social investment has on outcome-based commissioning and whether the alternative forms of performance measurement and management, that social impact bonds bring to bear on service operations, demonstrate the capacity to engender: innovation in service delivery; improved social outcomes; future cost savings; and additionality. This paper draws on an in-depth study of four social impact bonds in the UK context, as the welfare regime at the vanguard of this policy development. The findings suggest that the introduction of private capital in outcome-based commissioning has had a number of unique and unintended effects on service providers, operations and outcomes. The paper concludes by considering whether social impact bonds represent a risk or an opportunity for public service reform both in the UK and further afield. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 1988, when the current EU Cohesion Policy was introduced, it has played an influential role in setting priorities for policies aimed at dealing with the effects of European economic integration on regional and social disparities. Although, latterly, the amount of money spent in the UK through the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) has declined, EU programmes have had a disproportionate effect on the design and implementation of UK policies shaping regional and local economic and social development. This paper starts by recalling how EU Cohesion Policy has functioned in the UK, then considers how Brexit may affect regional and social development and the need for a corresponding policy response, focusing on the sorts of policies currently supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF). The paper shows that filling the policy vacuum will be far from straightforward because complementary national policies and institutional frameworks have lacked consistency or coherence. It concludes by examining the wider policy issues arising from rethinking domestic policy outside the ESIF framework. The sub-national level, in particular, will need a fresh approach following Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the advent of the knowledge economy it has become evident that the territorial footprint of investment in intangible assets is largely asymmetrical. First, these types of assets tend to be distributed unevenly across space. Second, intangible assets are an important source of productivity growth and competitiveness. Although significant advances have been made in measuring intangible assets and accounting for their effects in economic outcomes, their exact nature remains vague. Within the national accounts framework the majority of intangibles are, even now, still treated as intermediate expenditure. Consequently, intangibles are largely excluded from conventional measures of output and investment, making it difficult to account for their spatial effects. The present paper adjusts gross value added (GVA) data for NUTS 3 regions in Great Britain for intangibles. The adjusted series are then used to investigate trends in regional inequalities in GVA per employee in this country during the pre‐recession period 1995–2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Energy-related investment decisions in the buildings sector are heterogeneous in that the outcome for each individual varies according to budget, values, and perception of a technology, even if an apparently identical decision task is faced. In particular, the rate of adoption of new energy-efficient technologies is often hard to model and underlines the need for an advanced approach to capture diversity in decision-making, and enable the inclusion of economic, comfort, environmental and social aspects. This paper presents an enhanced agent-based model that captures several characteristics of consumer behaviour that influence investment decisions. Multiple agents with different objectives, search strategies, and decision methods are implemented. A case study is presented which illustrates the benefits of the approach for the residential sector in the UK. The agent-based method shows diversity in investment decisions, without requiring the constraints on uptake needed in many models. This leads to a range of technologies in the market during a transition phase, continuous investment in low capital cost technologies, and eventually the emergence of a low carbon system based on new mass market technologies. The system that emerges is vastly different from one observed when economically rational investment is assumed and uptake constraints are applied. Highlights • An enhanced building sector model using an agent-based method. • Represent real-world decision making for investment in energy technologies. • A method to model the limits, barriers and speed of consumer technology adoption. • Modelling framework adaptable to different geographical regions. • A case study is investigated for the residential sector in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government and the Conservative Government that took office in 2015, policy measures were introduced to develop a Social Impact Investment Market that harnesses private finance to invest in services to achieve social and financial outcomes. This nascent market is of growing interest amongst social scientists (Bryan and Rafferty, 2014; Whitfield, 2015; McHugh et al., 2013; Dowling, 2017; Edmiston and Nicholls, 2017), but little attention has been given to interrogating related UK Government discourse. The originality of this paper is its contribution to addressing this ‘discourse gap’; enhancing our understanding of the development and representation of impact investment in the UK. Using Hyatt's (2013a) Critical Policy Discourse Analysis Framework, a rigorous critical examination of UK Coalition and Conservative Government impact investment discourse between 2011 and 2016 is undertaken. The significance of this work lies in its contextualisation and deconstruction of UK Government texts to identify and unpack how distinct rationales, justifications and legitimations draw on and (re)produce a Broken Britain-Big Society narrative (Wiggan, 2011; Dowling and Harvie, 2014; Smith and Jones, 2015) to ‘policy booster’ financialised reconfiguration of the welfare state as the route to a better society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financialisation literature has been criticised for its limited empirical base and its failure adequately to link the everyday world with that of high finance. The paper addresses these shortcomings by examining the calculative practice of property valuation. The way that valuations are performed affects their results and, therefore, the operation of the property market. The paper traces the evolving influence of finance capital on the valuation of commercial property in the UK by constructing a historiography of investment valuation since 1960. Traditional approaches to valuation have been increasingly challenged by those derived from financial economics. However, the former remains the dominant method for undertaking market valuation. Its grounding in comparison -- a centring and standardising process -- offers an explanation for some of the changes in the urban built environment that are ascribed to financialisation. This suggests that a more detailed and historically sensitive interpretation of financialisation is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK energy policies position urban heat networks as components of a resilient low carbon, affordable system, but, as Stewart Russell's work showed, such technologies have never been integrated into UK provision. This paper takes Russell's legacy forward by examining prospects for urban district heating and combined heat and power development in the context of the financial, rather than technological, innovations shaped by liberalised energy and financial markets. Drawing on sociology of markets and social studies of finance, the paper examines the resulting evaluation practices. Findings indicate that such district energy infrastructure does not conform to the investment calculus, making a business case hard to establish. Bridging the value gap between liberalised finance and district energy requires actors willing to devise improvised solutions. In spite of the established sustainability credentials of the technology therefore, significant deployment in the UK (and similar countries) will depend on political leadership and new fiscal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capitalist economies depend on private business investment, and all governments in similar states compete to induce businesses to invest through various policy interventions. In so doing, they compete with other governments to retain current investors and to encourage new ones from elsewhere. The implications for policy-making and, by extension, citizens, are huge. The pressure on governments to capture new investment has an impact on taxation policies, workplace regulations, legal protections, public infrastructure and social policies. However, not all governments compete for investment in the same way at the same time, and not all businesses are attracted by the same inducements offered by states, highlighting the possibility that public policies shape investment strategies, just as investment strategies also shape public policies. It is its development of relatively unique and aggressive strategies to capture new investment that places the UK in a vulnerable position post-Brexit. It has successfully attracted mobile corporations to its shores, in part because it has offered a particularly favourable gateway into Europe for foreign capital. This raises questions about how the country will seek to compete for capital investment in future. This paper examines these questions with reference to both theoretical and empirical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of a key source of wealth (the stock market) on road traffic collisions. Using data on over 2 million road accidents we do not find a linear relationship between stock prices and road crashes (fatal or otherwise) in Great Britain. However, we do find a V-shaped effect – collisions respond to the absolute change in stock market returns. The results are robust to a series of falsification exercises that potentially support a causal interpretation. We also examine another source of wealth that has not previously been examined – house prices. Similarly, we do not find that changes in monthly house prices have an impact on accidents, but a symmetric V-shaped is also shown for slight and serious accidents. • We examine the impact of stock price changes on road collisions in Great Britain. • We use administrative data on road collisions by type: fatal, serious and slight. • There is not a linear relationship between stock prices changes and collisions. • Collisions instead respond to the absolute change in stock market returns. • Using another source of wealth, house prices, we find a similar V-shaped effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence suggests that planning policies significantly impact on investment property market performance in the UK. It is less clear, however, how information about the planning policy environment feeds into investment decision-making. This paper seeks to explore this issue. It reports on interviews with the property investment community and focuses on the decision to invest in the retail sector. The paper uses a six-stage model of the investment decision-making process as a framework for analysing the way in which concerns about policy impact on behaviour. The results suggest that an understanding of the policy environment and the development of a relationship with local planning authorities are most important in the post-acquisition asset management stage of the investment process. The research also reveals variations in access to policy intelligence and that approaches to analysis of the likely effects of planning regimes vary with fund type and strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper contributes to the empirical analysis of financial uncertainty and investment from a Post Keynesian perspective. The paper uses the volatility of the exchange rate, the volatility of the stock market index, and the real gold price as indicators for financial uncertainty. An increase in the volatility of a variable is a sufficient, but not a necessary condition for an increase in uncertainty regarding this variable. The effects of changes in uncertainty on investment are investigated econometrically for the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and France. Financial uncertainty, we find, has significant negative effects in the US and the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The literature on environmental champions emphasises the effective action of environmentally committed individuals. This paper draws on case studies of process technology investment projects in chemical and dairy companies in the UK and Sweden. The analysis is based on a political process perspective on organisations. By analysing the career histories of environmental champions as well as their behaviour in the investment projects, the paper shows how their championing behaviour is shaped by dynamic interaction with the organisational context, as well as a broader range of motivations and interests, including career opportunities and private life concerns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

London remains the economic hub of the UK and its railways play a vital role in linking it with its wide catchment across South East England. But, although some major projects are now in hand, investment in the region's railway system is still far too limited for it to play this role effectively. This reflects several weaknesses: no vision for the future, little effective leadership from government, and instability across the agencies responsible for railway planning and investment. The paper reviews these problems, looking at current policies and plans, considering the strategies and priorities that emerge from these, and drawing out the various barriers to their implementation. Brief comparisons are made with the approach taken in Paris and the Dutch Randstad. The paper concludes with some recommendations for action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how investments in knowledge codification may be used as innovation policy tools, in a non-interventionist policy environment. Analysing statistically and historically the case of the UK's Department of Trade and Industry, from the early 1980s to 2002, the paper shows how knowledge codification can be used as policy-instrument for restructuring the design, characteristics and implementation of public innovation support as well as for developing new national competitive competences. This paper suggests that within a context of outsourced policy implementation and execution, the continuous upgrade of public support for innovation requires that both governmental department and external suppliers engage in 'learning-by-codifying'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the changes in Information Technology (IT) investment philosophy of both private and public sector companies. Based on the available published material in scholarly journals and magazines, our analysis is focused on the USA and the UK. The paper analyzes the past and current behaviors of business investments in technology and the factors that have prompted companies to change their IT investment patterns. The paper discusses how the success of IT can not be measured with traditional methods of calculating return on investments (ROI) but must be evaluated in other ways. It highlights specific points proving that IT has slowly evolved over the years from an uncontrollable technological change to a strategic management tool that creates and increases competitiveness. In this strategic role, investment in IT has become a tool of meeting business objectives for the companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great deal of investment is currently going into the railway industry across Europe, including into new lines. The British Channel Tunnel Rail Link is under construction, and a number of other high-speed lines in Britain have been discussed. This paper considers whether high-speed lines are the best solution in the British context. It challenges those involved in decision- making to determine more clearly the reasons for such high-speed lines, where capacity increases are often more important than achieving end-to-end journey time reductions. A number of other strategies for railway investment are also discussed, with the paper concluding that (after operational improvements), a targeted investment in bottlenecks in the existing system may be the most cost-effective solution in general. However, this response is made more difficult by the performance regime on Britain's privatised railway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares British and US government policy initiatives to combat financial exclusion and promote community reinvestment. Financial exclusion, a general term for those who lack financial products, is concentrated in a small number of deprived urban areas in larger cities that are also starved of private sector investment. British policies, though they have drawn on US experience, predominantly treat exclusion as an individual problem and pay insufficient attention to the wider interconnections between people and place that underlie financial exclusion. These are more prominent in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that has led to significant improvements in financial inclusion and community investment in the USA. The CRA is underpinned by a more compartmentalised and locally embedded system of financial regulation. Consolidation in the banking sector and the growth of competition between banks and other financial institutions in an increasingly integrated US financial sector threaten this. British policies seek to provide 'joined-up' solutions to financial exclusion in a manner that is more in tune with an integrated financial sector where a small number of large banks compete on a level playing field with other financial institutions. The paper highlights the difficulties that these policies face in enlisting the cooperation of financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'social investment market' in the United Kingdom is a growth area due to the governments' focus upon building up the supply-side element of the market over the last decade, often through the direct financing of 'Social and Investment Finance Intermediaries' (SIFIs). However, this ignores problems that can occur on the demand-side of the social investment market, such as a lack of 'investment readiness' amongst social enterprises seeking investment. Indeed, whilst there is now a significant body of policy-based and practitioner research exploring the social investment market, there remains a paucity of empirical academic research. The research reported in this paper sought to explore SIFI perceptions of what constituted investment readiness in the social investment market. Semi-structured interviews were held with the fund managers (or relevant personnel) at 15 SIFIs in order to explore what they believed constituted investment readiness and how they assessed this. The results indicate that the conception of investment readiness in the social investment market is similar to that held in mainstream financial markets. The results are discussed in relation to the prior literature and theories of the social investment market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 financial crisis has transformed the financial environment for small and medium-sized enterprises, resulting in significant declines in the availability of bank lending and venture capital. This has prompted government intervention to improve the availability of debt and equity capital. Whereas there are comprehensive statistics on bank lending and venture capital investments, equivalent information on business angel investment activity is lacking. This paper draws upon three sources of evidence on business angel investment activity in the UK--business angel networks, Scottish angel groups, and individual angels--to reveal for the first time how the angel market has fared during the early stage of the financial crisis. While the evidence is not entirely consistent, it is clear that angel investment activity has held up since the onset of the financial crisis. This further emphasises the economic significance of business angels and underlines the need for ongoing government support. Policy options are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology acceptance in policing is under-researched, yet mobile devices are widely implemented across UK police forces. The paper validates a mobile technology acceptance model (M-TAM) developed in a single police force. It shows that the M-TAM is transferrable to other UK police forces, and potentially worldwide. The influence of local supervision and fit of technology to roles and tasks are shown to be the most influential factors. Factors beyond the technology itself, such as the influence of peers and involvement of operational officers in technology investment decisions, must be considered to accommodate the strong cultural barriers in policing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The UK is a country with only low to moderate seismicity, and the long intervals between significant earthquakes in Britain results in people forgetting they occur. As a result, seismic hazard was only thought of for the first time in Britain in 1976. For ordinary construction, it is true that seismic hazard can be considered insignificant in the UK, but for strategic facilities, especially those with a high consequence of failure, such as nuclear power plants (NPPs), seismic hazard is important. This paper traces the history of such studies, with emphasis on those for the nuclear industry. The UK seismological community saw major investment from the nuclear industry after 1980. There was a cessation of NPP construction in Britain after 1995, but in recent years steps have been taken towards a resumption of NPP building, which will see a need for new seismic hazard studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many reasons, partly financial, partly political and partly historic, the privatisation of airports in the USA (and Canada) has never really 'taken off'. Even taking into account the recently concluded transaction to lease the major airport in Puerto Rico, the track record of deals since the Airport Privatisation Pilot Program was instigated in 1996 is abysmal. In contrast, the UK embraced airport privatisation to such a degree since the mid 1980s that it is now one of the most privatised countries in the world in terms of airport infrastructure. In the UK, political factors were very much at the forefront of this tendency. Only one airport group held out against the movement, but it too has now succumbed to the tide and, belatedly, has both peculiarly and innovatively concocted a scheme by which at one and the same time it will sell part of its own equity to a strategic partner in order to invest in another airport on a 'no win-no fee' basis to the partner. This paper seeks to examine the underlying reasons behind this dichotomy while posing the question, 'has airport privatisation to date really been of benefit to the consumer?' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the consultation paper (CP) published by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in Great Britain. The CP confirms FSA's bans on product provider payments to platforms and all cash rebates of product charges by providers to consumers or retail investment products. The FSA ruling will be enforced on December 31, 2013 after giving an extra year for compliance. However, the FSA wishes to bring execution-only platforms within scope with extensions to non-advised platform sales. The report also includes findings from independent studies, consumer interactions, and insights on the platform's rebate bans.

During the so-called “golden age” for culture in the UK, the sector raised record levels of private investment championed by increasing levels of public funding and complementing healthy streams of earned income. However, the funding landscape for the arts and heritage has recently been challenged as market forces are putting pressure both on the public purse and the private sector's levels of investment. The financial year of 2008/09 brought the first real impact of the recession on culture, with a moderate 7 per cent decrease of private investment across the board (from business, individuals and trusts and foundations). This was followed by another smaller decrease in 2009/10 of 3 per cent. However, within these headline figures are hidden several parallel stories and trends – indicators such as region, artform and size of organisation directly affect the nature and scope of private investment received, which we explore in more depth. Based on Arts & Business’ annual Private Investment in Culture survey, the paper will provide an analysis of private investment received by the sector, exploring where it is coming from and going to. This will be complemented by year-on-year comparisons, which will also enable an assessment of the impact of the recession on private investment in arts and heritage, and the challenges they will be facing in a post-recession economy and with a new government. Additional and contextual information about the past, present and future state of arts and heritage and their relationship with the private sector will highlight the potential for this income source going forward, as well as ongoing and upcoming trends in light of the recession and beyond. These will respectively feed into policy recommendations for any future government, and suggestions for cultural organisations to collectively emerge from the recession as a stronger and more sustainable sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distribution systems are inherent monopolies and therefore have generally been regulated in order to protect customers and to assure cost-effective operation. In the United Kingdom, this is one of the functions of the OFGEM (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets). Initially the regulation was based on the value of assets, but there is now a trend toward performance-based regulation. In order to achieve this, a methodology is needed that enables the reliability performance associated with alternative investment strategies to be compared with the investment cost of these strategies. At present there is no accepted approach for such assessments. Building on the concept of reference networks proposed in Refs. 1 and 2, this paper describes how these networks can be used to assess the impact that performance-driven investment strategies will have on the improvement of reliability indices. The method has been tested using the underground and overhead parts of a real system. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 173(1): 24–31, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.20945 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the impact of the Great Recession on environmental policy. We argue that the recession has a specific environmental policy dimension by challenging underlying assumptions of the dominant model of environmental policy - ecological modernization (EM). Due to its Schumpeterian connotations, the concept of EM is more vocal on the connection between the economic crisis and environmental policy than most alternative approaches. When a 'Green New Deal' became a core element of fiscal stimuli packages, it was widely based on an EM discourse. However, actual 'green' stimulus policies have proved more problematic, as is shown for energy-related and car-related measures in the USA, the United Kingdom and Germany. On reflection, while boosting environmental efficiency investments, the 'Green New Deal' has so far failed to address underlying vulnerabilities of the EM model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The UK government’s economy-wide 60% carbon dioxide reduction target by 2050 requires a paradigm shift in the whole energy system. Numerous analytical studies have concluded that the power sector is a critical contributor to a low carbon energy system, and electricity generation has dominated the policy discussion on UK decarbonisation scenarios. However, range of technical, social and market challenges, combined with alternate market investment strategies mean that large scale deployment of key classes of low carbon electricity technologies is fraught with uncertainty. The UK MARKAL energy systems model has been used to investigate these long-term uncertainties in key electricity generation options. A range of power sector specific parametric sensitivities have been performed under a ‘what-if’ framework to provide a systematic exploration of least-cost energy system configurations under a broad, integrated set of input assumptions. In this paper results of six sensitivities, via restricted investments in key low carbon technologies to reflect their technical and political uncertainties, and an alternate investment strategies from perceived risk and other barriers, have been presented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Complying with proposed Water Framework Directive (WFD) water quality standards for 'good ecological status' in England and Wales potentially requires a range of Programmes of Measures (PoMs) to control point and diffuse sources of pollution. There is an urgent need to define the benefits and costs of a range of potential PoMs. Water quality modelling can be used to understand where the greatest impact in a catchment can be achieved through 'end of pipe' and diffuse source reductions. This information can be used to guide cost-effective investment by private water companies and those with responsibilities for agricultural, industrial and urban diffuse inputs. In the UK, river water quality modelling with the Environment Agency SIMCAT model is regarded as the best current approach to support decision making for river water quality management and planning. The paper describes how a SIMCAT model has been used to conduct a trial WFD integrated catchment planning study for the River Ribble catchment in the North West of England. The model has been used to assess over 80 catchment planning scenarios. The results are being used support a national assessment of the cost-effectiveness of proposed PoMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the reasons for the persistence in the UK of significant relative interregional variations in office property investment in the face of economic theory and empirical evidence that would support its more even spatial distribution. The argument is made from a cultural economy perspective and involves the application to property of a concept drawn from the accountancy literature: calculative practice. UK investment decision-making is distinguished by the primacy attributed to portfolio benchmarking as an influence on investment strategy. The wider logic underpinning property benchmarking is subjected to critical appraisal. Then, evidence is presented that suggests that benchmarking is a self-referential practice which results in convergence and rigidity in fund structures and in the concentration of performance around a bounded range of sub-optimal returns. It is a barrier to the greater geographical diversification of office property investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years a series of high-profile flagship plant closures and short-lived investment projects across peripheral regions in the United Kingdom provided a stark reminder of the potential fallibility of peripheral region development strategies based upon inward investment. Nevertheless, inward investment promotion remains a common component within the economic development strategies of UK peripheral regions. In particular, capturing the potential positive labour market contributions offered by flagship projects has been used by policymakers to legitimate the continued pursuit of inward investment. In this paper I move beyond the static analysis of employment out-comes of investment episodes by investigating the detailed structure of labour-market processes and imprints across workforce formation and dissolution. I use the example of the fluctuating and youthful history of the semiconductor fabrication industry in the old industrial region of the North East of England to illustrate the spatial, occupational, and sectoral labour-market imprints of investment episodes. Using the example of two large-scale high-technology inward-investment projects, Fujitsu and Siemens, I expand our understanding of both the labour-market dynamics associated with volatile flagship investment and the policy implications for peripheral regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of 'equity gaps' has loomed large in recent discussions of enterprise formation and development, both in the United Kingdom and in Germany. One particularly intriguing, but highly elusive, aspect of this issue is the question of whether equity gaps have a regional dimension: are certain regions at a systematic disadvantage with respect to the provision of equity capital? In this paper, we explore this question in the context of the UK and German venture capital industries, drawing both on unpublished industry data and on information obtained from original surveys of venture capital firms in the two countries. We report clear evidence that the venture industries in both countries are spatially constituted. Despite important national differences, venture capital firms tend to be concentrated in identifiable clusters and their investment outcomes show clear evidence of spatial proximity effects; investment is disproportionately concentrated in those regions that also contain the major clusters of venture capital firms. However, how far this spatial form produces regional equity gaps is hard to determine. Venture capitalists themselves argue that they do not intentionally discriminate between regions in their decisionmaking, and many acknowledge the existence of funding and deal-size gaps but not regional gaps per se. But their perception of project risk is, nevertheless, regionally sensitive. We argue that the notion of a simple supply gap overlooks the way in which the localised form of the industry is based on a dynamic learning process in which demand and supply processes combine with their embeddedness in social networks and individual perceptions in a mutually reinforcing way. Less-favoured regions, with low investment rates, few local venture capital firms, and a dearth of experienced specialist intermediaries, may thus be trapped in a situation of both depressed demand for and supply of venture capital investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how institutional constraints determine organizational choices and investments decisions. More precisely, we examine how private parties adjust when policymakers impose a mode of organization with no or very little consideration for some major characteristics of the transactions that arrangement is intended to support. Our analysis uses original data related to the reform of the British rail industry. Notwithstanding their specific aspects, the problems raised by the radical transformation of this sector in the mid-1990s carry important lessons about what happens when a misaligned arrangement is implemented in a context that requires interfirm coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The town of Lyme Regis is located on an unstable and eroding section of the West Dorset coastline in the UK. Such are the threats to the long-term future of the town from continuing instability that West Dorset District Council is promoting the implementation of a series of coast protection schemes to reduce the risk of destructive landsliding and coastal erosion from occurring in the future. The schemes involve major foreshore and slope stabilisation works which impact upon the town's residents and the tourist industry, both in their completed form and in terms of the disruption they may cause during construction. This paper outlines how heavy investment in public consultation by West Dorset District Council and high levels of participation from all interested parties minimises potential conflict and produces a sense of public ownership and a high level of consensus across the town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of venture capital in economic development increasingly is recognized as central to the development of an entrepreneurial economy. However, the supply of venture capital is not distributed evenly across the space economy. In the UK, evidence for the 1980s demonstrated that venture capital investments were highly concentrated in Greater London and the South East, reinforcing the existing patterns of regional concentration of economic activity. This paper reviews the regional distribution of venture capital investments in the UK in the 1990s, a period of massive growth in venture capital investment activity. It concludes that the regional concentration of venture capital investment has been considerably reduced since the 1980s. However, more detailed analysis of the data demonstrates that this shift towards a less unequal regional distribution has been driven by so–called ‘merchant’ venture capital – investments in large–scale management buy–outs and buy–ins which facilitate corporate restructuring through ownership change and often have adverse consequences for employment. ‘Classic’ venture capital – investments in young entrepreneurial companies with high growth potential – remains highly concentrated in London and the South East, and also in Scotland. This reflects both supply– and demand–side factors. The Government’s new regional venture capital funds are unlikely to be effective in closing this regional finance gap. An alternative approach to intervention, in the context of the increasing globalization of venture capital investments, is to seek to attract venture capital money and expertise from elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the contribution of inward investment to economic regeneration in UK Enterprise Zones using survey data from a government-sponsored national evaluation. Results indicate that by providing tax incentives and stimulating infrastructure improvements, policy attracted a group of inward investors that accounted for nearly one-third of employment in the zones at de-designation and a high proportion of new local jobs. The local impacts of inward investors are examined in terms of recruitment, linkages, growth and stability and compared with other establishments in the zones. It is concluded that inward investment can be an important driver of local economic regeneration in distressed areas when stimulated by this type of initiative, but that a mechanism is needed to limit short-distance transfer activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1960's financial institutions (pension funds and insurance companies) have steadily purchased the freehold to agricultural land in Great Britain. With lower inflation and an uncertain economic future for farming, this investment has largely ceased to be replaced by a period of portfolio rationalization. Previously, such institutions only provided landowners with loan or mortgage capital, opting not to buy land, and the paper seeks to assess the significance of this change of policy for British agriculture. The direct impact on landowning and productive relations has been small as they still own only 1.9% of the agricultural area of Great Britain. They do, however, represent the most active area of agrarian landlordism today and have encouraged new forms of lease, and sale and leaseback arrangement. The latter are highly selective and only of benefit to efficient occupiers with large, well-equipped farms on good land. Evidence that institutional landlords exploit their tenants, or employ fanning practices unused by progressive family farmers, is limited. The main lesson for farmers and landowners of recent investment is that in a capitalist economy, which most of them endorse, they cannot expect the state to protect them from the periodic incursions of finance capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1980s, rising income inequality in the UK resulted partly from market conditions, and partly from supply-side policies that reduced social security benefits and income supports for low-wage earners. Greater inequality, plus low levels of investment spending (relative to consumption) hinder the ability of demand management to raise the level of output and employment in the UK economy. Higher income earners have higher import propensities. Consequently, at any stage of the economic cycle, the trade deficit is now larger than it was before 1980. Increases in demand leak into a demand for imports, further reducing the incentive to invest. The paper argues for lower interest rates to encourage investment, and a fiscal policy that redistributes income towards those with lower incomes to solve these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to present the empirical results of an investigation into the links between investment stability and industrial structure in U.K. manufacturing industry. First, the alternative theoretical propositions concerning the influence of industrial structure on the stability of capital investment over the business cycle are discussed. This is followed by a description of the data and the specification of the variables used. Subsequently, the empirical results obtained from multivariate regression equations are analysed. The influence of industrial structure and diversification on the adjustment of capital stock and on the convergence of dynamic systems to equilibrium is then examined. Finally, the main conclusions drawn from the analysis are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents part of a three-year Kobler Unit study into current practices of managing IT investments involving 60 managers from 34 British companies. Guidelines were collected to assess the true costs of deploying IT, taking into account technological costs, human costs and organizational costs. By identifying examples of best practice, an evaluation methodology was then developed which concentrates on both the primary objectives of systems and on the inevitable second-order effects resulting from the broader human and organizational impact. The methodology is eclectic in that it matches specific evaluation techniques to distinct classes of IT projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the techniques used by organizations to appraise Information Systems (IS)/Information Technology (IT) investments, and concentrates, in particular, on techniques of capital investment appraisal. We draw on relevant studies reported in both the accounting and finance, and the IS literature, which have addressed their usage. Where possible comparisons are drawn between both sets of literatures. The results of a survey that specifically examined IS/IT investment appraisal practices of a sample of UK companies is also presented. Among the issues discussed include the extent to which capital investment appraisal techniques are used to appraisal investments, the importance of the techniques used and the problems attendant on the decision making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of IS/IT investments is a notoriously difficult area. Some doubt that IT investments are ever really productive; others point to mismeasurement as a major reason for such a conclusion and for the so-called IT 'productivity paradox'. The paper reviews traditional approaches to IS/IT evaluation, and discusses their limitations. An eight-stage, multidimensional approach is then put forward to address those limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of information systems technology (IS/IT) investments has been a much debated issue in the IS literature. This paper adds to that debate by discussing the IS/IT project evaluation practices of a sample of the top 1000 UK companies. The study sheds light on a number of evaluation issues, including the extent to which formal procedures of evaluation exist within organizations, and the extent to which consultation with stakeholders takes place, in addition to identifying the problems inherent in evaluating IS/IT investments. The implications of the findings are discussed, where possible in the light of previous research, in addition to identifying a number of key issues where further research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the science funding in Great Britain. This paper gives observation on the changing landscapes in the funding that the government provides. Research councils may be pressured to deliver results as the government now seeks for results to the long and heavily invested science researches. Scientists had enjoyed tremendous funding in the past decade and the government wants to see results as indicated by the council documents implying economic competitiveness and social impacts.