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Objectives: This paper examines the impact of local economic activity on criminal behavior. We build on existing research by relaxing the identification assumptions required for causal inference, and estimate the impact of local economic activity on recidivism. Methods: We use the fracking boom as a source of credibly exogenous variation in the economic conditions into which incarcerated people are released. We replicate and extend existing instrumental variables analyses of fracking on how many released offenders return to state prison seperately from aggregate crime and arrests. Results: Our instrumental variables estimates imply that a ten thousand dollar increase in the value of per capita production is associated with a 2.8% reduction in the 1-year recidivism of ex-offenders at the county level. Improved labor market conditions, specifically an increase in wages for young adults, may explain a non-negligible fraction of the reduction in recidivism associated with economic booms. In contrast, we replicate existing work finding that fracking increased aggregate measures of crime and arrests. Conclusion: Increased economic opportunity appears to have a different impact of overall crime than on recidivism. This suggests that the relationship between economic opportunity and offending may be conditioned by local social ties. Further research examining how social connections and labor markets affect individual criminal behavior is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on urban vitality tends to focus on the built environment. This paper argues that some important processes in shaping vitality may be overlooked without examining the intensity and diversity of economic and human activities. Using newly developed spatial big data and adopting the methods of multi-indicator measurement and spatial analysis methods, we analyzed the pattern of urban vitality in Chongqing, a provincial city in western China and, on this basis, evaluated the creation and maintenance of urban vitality from the economic and human activities perspective. Our findings indicate that the impacts of economic and human activities are positive and significant. Among the three intensity and diversity indicators, economic intensity and population density show an effect on urban vitality stronger than that of economic diversity. However, economic diversity has the strongest superposition or interactive effect, and is thus an important foundation dynamic. The positive effect of population density on urban vitality is largely a result of Chongqing's jobs-housing balance. The case of Chongqing highlights the importance of topographic features, historical inheritance, large-scale migration, and cultural activities in shaping the distinctive vitality pattern of a city. This study contends that the creation and maintenance of urban vitality can not be fully explained without incorporating the impacts of economic and human activities. It contributes to a comprehensive measurement of urban vitality and enriches its connotations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A global disaster, such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic, affects every aspect of our lives and there is a need to investigate these highly complex phenomena if one aims to diminish their impact in the health of the population, as well as their socio-economic stability. In this paper we present an attempt to understand the role of the governmental authorities and the response of the rest of the population facing such emergencies. We present a mathematical model that takes into account the epidemiological features of the pandemic and also the actions of people responding to it, focusing only on three aspects of the system, namely, the fear of catching this serious disease, the impact on the economic activities and the compliance of the people to the mitigating measures adopted by the authorities. We apply the model to the specific case of Spain, since there are accurate data available about these three features. We focused on tourism as an example of the economic activity, since this sector of economy is one of the most likely to be affected by the restrictions imposed by the authorities, and because it represents an important part of Spanish economy. The results of numerical calculations agree with the empirical data in such a way that we can acquire a better insight of the different processes at play in such a complex situation, and also in other different circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that the political and economic domains are analogous for distributive purposes. The upshot of this conclusion is that because we normally think that an unequal distribution of votes is objectionable even if these inequalities are strictly necessary to improve the lives of less informed voters, so we should conclude that an unequal distribution of resources might be similarly objectionable even if strictly necessary to make the worse off better off. Leveling down economic resources is therefore sometimes morally permissible. I consider and reject three types of objections to this view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal Cross Border Trade (ICBT) is a viable economic activity for many people, in Zimbabwe, who have depended on it for survival during economic hardships. Due to climate change, agriculture cannot be depended upon for survival and people are increasingly depending on ICBT for a livelihood. Despite a crucial role in providing for many, ICBT has been negatively affected by changes in the fiscal economy, specifically, the adoption of virtual cash in a time of cash crisis. This paper examines the impact of the virtual cash economy on the livelihood of participants in ICBT in Gweru, Zimbabwe. Qualitative data was collected and subjected to inductive analysis. Results revealed a positive livelihood outcome for traders prior to the virtual cash economy, followed by a negative outcome when virtual cash payments increased. The paper presents a framework that highlights the importance of cash, to ensure the success and sustainability of ICBT in the city of Gweru. The paper concludes with the recommendation that ICBT should be integrated into policy to address identified issues that affect economic benefits of ICBT, to ensure its sustainability in the provision of essential livelihood needs in line with Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic geographers have traditionally been reluctant to extend their analysis to illicit and illegal markets despite their being significant in their global economic extent and displaying highly uneven geographies. By contrast, the geographies of licit, legal industries have produced multiple traditions of empirically rich, theoretically diverse accounts. Our understandings of the spatialities of illicit and illegal 'industries' derive from a different set of intellectual traditions for whom space is a less explicit, central concern. This paper aims to advance our understanding of the geographies of illegal economic activities by exploring the spatialities of one illegal industry, cybercrime (online for-profit fraud), through the lens of economic geography. It considers the spaces within which cybercrime is embedded, exploring it as the product of factors operating at multiple scales. It reviews cybercrime scholarship focused, variously, at the local, national and transnational scales and examines factors salient to the production of cybercrime through case studies at these scales. It examines national level drivers of cybercrime, local cybercrime agglomerations in Europe and transnational asymmetries, connections and opacities and the production of cybercrime. In each case, it reflects upon the potentials for the development of more spatially informed readings of cybercrime specifically, and illegal economic activities more generally, and considers how this might be mobilised to inform anti-cybercrime policy. The paper speaks to both theme I of this special edition 'the interactions, the norms, the rituals, the behaviours of OCGs in physical spaces' and theme III 'the interactions between OCGs and institutions such as the political and economic field'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. output has steadily outpaced the rise in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the past several decades. The decoupling of these two trends represents a decline in aggregate GHG emission intensity. Using recently released national datasets covering industry-specific GHG emissions and shipments, this paper decomposes the relative importance of changes in various channels underlying changes in aggregate GHG emissions in the U.S. from 1997 to 2015: scale or national output growth, cross-sector composition changes, and a technique effect capturing other factors lowering emission intensities within the country's productive industries. The results demonstrate that reductions in within-sector techniques explain two-thirds, and cross-sector shifting of economic activity towards cleaner industries explains one-third of the increasing gap. Using data on industry exports and imports, this paper further investigates the relative environmental effect of trade on GHG emissions. Together, increased exporting, and importing, of both intermediate and final goods, has corresponded to a relatively small expansion of cleaner sectors and appears to have contributed slightly to the relative expansion of cleaner U.S. industries. In 2015, U.S. imports of intermediate and final goods account for the displacement of roughly 290 million metric tons of U.S. GHG emissions, representing less than 5% of U.S. GHG emissions in the same year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategy of reconnecting rivers with their floodplains currently gains popularity because it not only harnesses natural capacities of floodplains but also increases social co-benefits and biodiversity. In this paper, we present an example of a successfully implemented nature-based solution (NBS) in the Dijle valley in the centre of Belgium. The research objective is to retrospectively assess cost and benefit differences between a technical solution (storm basins) and an alternative NBS, here the restoration of the alluvial floodplain. The method is a comparative social cost–benefit analysis. The case study analysis reveals similar flood security, lower costs, more ecosystem services benefits and higher biodiversity values associated with the NBS option in comparison to the technical alternative. However, the business case for working with NBS depends substantially on the spatial and socio-ecological context. Chances for successful NBS implementation increase in conditions of sufficient space to retain flood water, when flood water is of sufficient quality, and when economic activity and housing in the floodplain is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobility restrictions have been identified as key non-pharmaceutical interventions to limit the spread of the SARS-COV-2 epidemics. However, these interventions present significant drawbacks to the social fabric and negative outcomes for the real economy. In this paper we propose a real-time monitoring framework for tracking the economic consequences of various forms of mobility reductions involving European countries. We adopt a granular representation of mobility patterns during both the first and second waves of SARS-COV-2 in Italy, Germany, France and Spain to provide an analytical characterization of the rate of losses of industrial production by means of a nowcasting methodology. Our approach exploits the information encoded in massive datasets of human mobility provided by Facebook and Google, which are published at higher frequencies than the target economic variables, in order to obtain an early estimate before the official data becomes available. Our results show, in first place, the ability of mobility-related policies to induce a contraction of mobility patterns across jurisdictions. Besides this contraction, we observe a substitution effect which increases mobility within jurisdictions. Secondly, we show how industrial production strictly follows the dynamics of population commuting patterns and of human mobility trends, which thus provide information on the day-by-day variations in countries' economic activities. Our work, besides shedding light on how policy interventions targeted to induce a mobility contraction impact the real economy, constitutes a practical toolbox for helping governments to design appropriate and balanced policy actions aimed at containing the SARS-COV-2 spread, while mitigating the detrimental effect on the economy. Our study reveals how complex mobility patterns can have unequal consequences to economic losses across countries and call for a more tailored implementation of restrictions to balance the containment of contagion with the need to sustain economic activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anonymous voting is widely used in economic and social activities, whenever it requires to express opinions privately and fairly. In this paper, we consider the task of anonymous voting using quantum mechanics. Based on quantum Bell states, anonymous entanglement is established between each voter and a tallier; thus, employing the one-time pad technique, each voter can privately cast his/her vote to the tallier. The tallier provides a mechanism of opening and permuting the ordered votes of all voters in an anonymous manner. With the distribution of all counted votes, the voting results can be obtained through a simple calculation. By a private address index, each voter can anonymously trace his/her counted vote, leading to verifiability. Following the practical requirements, the quantum anonymous voting protocol satisfies privacy, non-reusability and verifiability at the same time. Under the ideal conditions, the security concerning some common attacks is given in detail, and the theoretical analysis states that this protocol is secure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of cyber-physical and similar systems depends on prevailing social and economic conditions. It is here argued that, if the effect of these technologies is to be benign, the current neo-liberal economy must change to a radically more cooperative model. In this paper, economy change means a thorough change to a qualitatively different kind of economy. It is contrasted with economic change, which is the kind of minor change usually considered in mainstream discourse. The importance of language is emphasised, including that of techno-optimism and that of economic conservatism. Problems of injustice, strife, and ecological overload cannot be solved by conventional growth together with technical efficiency gains. Rather, a change is advocated from economics-as-usual to a broader concept, oikonomia (root-household management), which takes into account all that contributes to a good life, including what cannot be represented quantitatively. Some elements of such a broader economy (work; basic income; asset and income limits) are discussed. It is argued that the benefits of technology can be enhanced and the ills reduced in such an economy. This is discussed in the case of cyber-physical systems under the headings employment, security, standards and oligopoly, and energy efficiency. The paper concludes that such systems, and similar technological developments, cannot resolve the problems of sustainability within an economy-as-usual model. If, however, there is the will to create a cooperative and sustainable economy, technology can contribute significantly to the resolution of present problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon the renowned media reports-based “Economic policy uncertainty” (EPU) index and analyzes its Granger-causal interrelationships with consumer confidence and aggregate economic activity. Employing a heterogeneous panel Granger causality test on data from 13 world countries, the authors find that: (1) the analyzed countries are quite heterogeneous in terms of the found causality patterns; (2) the EPU index does not Granger-cause the overall economic activity in the vast majority of the analyzed economies; (3) consumer confidence is confirmed as a significant predictor of aggregate output in all countries; (4) news media uncertainty and consumer confidence largely represent two distinct psychological transmission channels. The evidence presented in this paper suggests that consumer confidence (i.e. first moment, expectation) is considerably more important for the aggregate economic activity than economic uncertainty (i.e. second moment, variance). Two robustness checks are provided (an alternative lag structure of the Granger causality test, and the usage of monthly (industrial production) instead of quarterly (GDP) economic activity data). The obtained inferences are quite robust to both model alternations. Additionally, the leading characteristics of EPU index are found to be less pronounced than those of GARCH uncertainty and forecast disagreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to the article entitled “Fifty years after the Social Indicators Movement: Has the promise been fulfilled?” by Ken Land and Alex Michalos (2015) which constitutes a careful review of the historical development of the Social Indicators Movement, utility of social indicators in shaping the concept of quality of life and subjective well-being, and issues deserving social indicators research in future. In this response paper, we join in the discussion by highlighting five issues—progress, paradigms, puzzles, promise, and potential research directions of social indicators research. In terms of progress, while we have accomplished many tasks proposed by Solomon et al. (The quality of life, Sage, London 1980), some of them are yet to be achieved. Regarding research paradigms surrounding social indicators, researchers have primarily used positivistic or post-positivistic orientation to conduct and interpret social indicators research, with relatively fewer studies using interpretive, constructionist or critical theory perspective. There are also several puzzles deserving consideration. These include (a) the use of “other types of evidence”, particularly qualitative data; (b) evaluation of social programs; (c) feasibility of assessing “social progress”; (d) choice of social indicators; (e) interpretation of findings; (f) methodological debates; and (g) explanations for social change. Finally, the promise of social indicators research to promote quality of life and potential future research directions of social indicators research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the spatial evolution of countries accounting for economics, geography and (military) force. Economic activity is spatially distributed following the AK model with the output being split into consumption, investment, transport costs and military (for defense and expansion). The emperor controls the military force subject to the constraints imposed by the economy but also the geography (transport costs, border length) and the necessity to satisfy the needs of the population. The border changes depending on how much pressure the emperor can muster to counter the pressure of neighboring countries. The resulting dynamic process determines a country's size over time. The model leads to multiple steady states, large empires and small countries being separated by a threshold and collapse. The resulting patterns can be linked to historical observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aviation is a key sector of the economy, contributing at least 3% to gross domestic product (GDP) in the UK and the US. Currently, airline performance statistics are published with a three month delay. However, aircraft now broadcast their location in real-time using the Automated Dependent Surveillance Broadcast system (ADS-B). In this paper, we analyse a global dataset of flights since July 2016. We first show that it is possible to accurately estimate airline flight volumes using ADS-B data, which is available immediately. Next, we demonstrate that real-time knowledge of flight volumes can be a leading indicator for aviation's direct contribution to GDP in both the UK and the US. Using ADS-B data could therefore help move us towards real-time estimates of GDP, which would equip policymakers with the information to respond to shocks more quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a heterogeneity stochastic frontier model (HSFM), we empirically investigated the economic efficiency of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei from 2003 to 2016 and its influencing factors. The key findings of the paper lie in: 1) in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the overall economic and technological efficiency tended to increase in a wavelike manner, economic growth slowed down, and there was an obvious imbalance in economic efficiency between the different districts, counties and cities; 2) the heterogeneity stochastic frontier production functions (SFPFs) of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei were different from each other, and investment was still an important impetus of economic growth in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei; 3) economic efficiency was positively correlated with economic agglomeration, human capital, industrial structure, infrastructure, the informatization level, and institutional factors, but negatively correlated with the government role and economic opening. The following policy suggestions are offered: 1) to improve regional economic efficiency and reduce the economic gap in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, governments must reduce their intervention in economic activities, stimulate the potentials of labor and capital, optimize the structure of human resources, and foster new demographic incentives; 2) governments must guide economic factors that are reasonable throughout Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and strengthen infrastructure construction in underdeveloped regions, thus attaining sustainable economic development; 3) governments must plan overall economic growth factors of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and promote reasonable economic factors (e.g., labor, resources, and innovations) across different regions, thus attaining complementary advantages between Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a flexible tool to estimate the risk sensitivity of financial assets when exposed to any sort of risks, including extreme ones, from the financial markets and the real economy. This tool works with observations and a priori views. Our contribution is threefold. First, we combine copulas and factorial structures which allow us to capture the whole dependencies between the returns of a large number of assets of multiple classes. We build what we call a Cvine Risk Factors (CVRF) model, which can disentangle financial and explicitely economic like activity, inflation, emerging, etc, and more generally speaking real sphere related risks. Second, this model provides the way to extend the well known linear multibeta relationship in a non-linear version and to assess the exposures of any asset to several factorial risk directions in the cases where the risks are extreme. The exposure measures are relevant Cross Conditional Values at Risk (Cross-CVaR). Third, as an application of the methodology, we solve an optimization program to find portfolios that are the most diversified in capital while being immunized to extreme shocks to a given risk factorial direction. Varying the immunization constraint, we recover the portfolio strategies which are the most widely used today. For example, adopting the ERC (Equal Risk Contribution) rule insures optimal capital based diversification and immunization against inflation risk. Accordingly, we propose a unified view and a rationalization ex post of several current portfolio strategies that appear different at a first glance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most common location for campsites is in forested or arborous areas. Given the regular use of combustible material by campers and the frequent use of campfires to cook, campsites become areas with a high propensity for the occurrence of fires. Moreover, fires occurring close to campsites can cause evacuations, disturbing their regular activities and jeopardizing tourism and likewise economic activities. While some campsites have tents and caravans within a secure distance of each other, many other campsites have the tents and caravans very concentrated in a limited area, making it much easier for fire to spread from a tent to the next. Despite the occurrence of several of these events, the associated risk is currently not well studied or documented. The work presented in this paper was performed within the Portuguese research project FireCamp, whose main purpose was the analysis and documentation of the fire risk in campsites. Several topics were addressed and some of them will be presented within this paper, specifically: (1) understanding of the mechanisms associated to burning tents; (2) analysis of the combustibility of typical accessories used in campsites such as tents, sleeping bags or camping mattresses; (3) characterization of a campsite fuel cover and its surroundings via image analysis taken by unmanned aerial vehicles; and (4) modeling of fire spread in campsites. A pilot study was carried out between 2011 and 2014 in the Campsite of Côja, in Arganil-Coimbra-Portugal. Taking into consideration that external fires frequently threaten these sites, complementary to the analysis of the fuel distribution inside the campsite, the land use analysis in the surrounding area is also of great interest. Thus, a fuel map of the Campsite of Côja was produced based on a high-resolution map of the area obtained by aerial photography produced by drones. Based on this fuel map, a stochastic model was set up to predict the fire spread in the covered area. The results obtained in this pilot study are hereby presented. Additionally, several laboratory tests were carried out in order to analyze the high calorific values (HCV) and the time to ignition (TTI) of the materials of typical camping accessories. The values of HCV found are in the range of 22.45-45.45 MJ kg and the values of TTI found are in the range of 118-224 s. These values show a high propensity for these materials to spread fire. Real tents with and without typical accessories inside (e.g., sleeping bags) were burnt in controlled environment in order to determine the mass loss decay, the increase of temperature and the convective airflows produced. Due to the convective flow inside the tent, these parameters were not considered as valid but these tests were important to understand the mechanisms associated to the burning of tents and the risk associated. The presence of combustible material inside a tent was found to be of high importance in order to sustain the combustion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to unravel the effects of both policies and autonomous developments driving the changes of final energy consumption for the European Union (EU28) and its member states complemented with an in-depth analysis of two EU member states, Germany and Poland, for the period of 2000 to 2015 by the logarithmic mean Divisia index methodology (LMDI). We examine the influences on the changes in final energy consumption for each of the five main demand sectors at aggregated level and at a more detailed level of residential end-uses, transport modes and industrial sub-sectors. With the second level, we provide insights into the effects of policies from a European and national perspective. Our analysis shows that final energy consumption in the EU28 is primarily influenced by an increase in energy efficiency in industry followed by households. For the latter, the energy savings were mainly realised in space heating. The main counteracting drivers were increasing economic activity and the rising demand for higher comfort and social factors, such as a declining household size. Germany shows relatively low energy efficiency improvements in industry, but strong energy efficiency gains in households followed by transport. Poland's transport, however, is responsible for a strong increase in final energy consumption mainly through increased activity, while here the sector industry—despite strong effects of increased activity—in total shows a significant reduction in energy consumption through energy efficiency improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the implications of remittance fluctuations for various macroeconomic variables and sudden stops. The paper employs a quantitative two-sector model of a small open economy with financial frictions calibrated to Mexican and Turkish economies, two major recipients, whose remittance receipts feature opposite cyclical characteristics. We find that remittances dampen business cycles in Mexico, whereas they amplify the cycles in Turkey. Their quantitative effects in the long run, approximated by the stochastic steady state, are mild. In the short run, however, remittances have quantitatively large impacts on the economy, when the economy is borrowing-constrained. This is because agents in the economy cannot adjust their precautionary wealth to sudden tightening in credit, and hence, fluctuations in remittances get magnified through an endogenous debt-deflation mechanism. The findings suggest that procyclical (or countercyclical) remittances can play a significant deepening (or mitigating) role for sudden stops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constant seacoast changes represent a natural process for coastal geosystems; moreover, the extent of technogenically transformed coasts is constantly growing. It is impossible to create coastal economic development and conservation plans without understanding how environmental conditions and technogenic transformation affect coastal geosystems. Successful integrated use of the seacoast requires reliable information on the magnitude of observed and projected changes, the admissibility of anthropogenic changes to the coast, and adaption of economic activity to such possible changes. The paper discusses the basic principles for comprehensively assessing Russian coastal areas. A system of criteria is proposed to qualitatively assess the economic and environmental importance of individual coastal areas and their resistance to possible changes. These criteria are tested in some areas of Russia’s Azov-Black Sea coast. A preliminary assessment has shown that accumulative shores are the most dynamic and prone to natural hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadband (high-speed) internet access expanded rapidly from 1999 to 2007 and is associated with higher economic growth and labor market activity. In this paper, we examine whether the rollout also affected the social connections that teens make. Specifically, we look at the relationship between increased broadband access and teen fertility. We hypothesize that increasing access to high-speed internet can influence fertility decisions by changing the size of the market as well as increasing the information available to participants in the market. We seek to understand both the overall effect of broadband internet on teen fertility and the mechanisms underlying this effect. Our results suggest that increased broadband access explains at least 7 % of the decline in the teen birth rate between 1999 and 2007. Although we focus on social markets, this work contributes more broadly to an understanding of how new technology interacts with existing markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates a Multidimensional Poverty Index for Gauteng province of South Africa. The Alkire-Forster method is applied on Quality of Life survey data for 2011 and 2013 which offer an excellent opportunity for estimating poverty at smaller geographical areas. The results suggest that the Multidimensional Poverty Index for Gauteng is low but varies markedly by municipality and by ward, as well as across income groups. Not only are low income households more likely to be multidimensionally poor, they also suffer from higher intensities of poverty. Multidimensional poverty is highest in areas of low economic activity located on the edges of the province. However, pockets of multidimensional poverty do prevail even in better performing municipalities. Government, at all spheres, needs to devise policies that channel investments into lagging areas and avoid approaches that are indifferent to the heterogeneities that exist across localised geographical extents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the name of development, governments in Africa are reformulating land policies to facilitate privatisation of customary land rights. The main rationale for this is to stimulate private investment through tradable land titles, which will enhance local economic activity and ultimately contribute to increased incomes and poverty alleviation. However, these land reform proposals have often produced unintended results leading to exclusion of the poor and servicing the interests of the elite. Zambia is not an exception in the land reform rhetoric. In 1995, the government enacted a pro-investment law to attract investment from abroad. Consequently, large tracts of customary land were converted to private tenure as increasing foreign investments were made in the country. One example of such investments is mining; for example, Lumwana and Kansanshi mines were opened up in Solwezi. These mines have attracted more people and fringe investments in search of economic opportunities. This has further led to increased pressure on land as more people and organisations seek to acquire customary land from chiefs and convert it to private leaseholds. This paper uses personal experience and research to present the achievements, potential and limitations of private investments in local communities and their economy. The paper argues that, despite the huge potential of private investment, attaining poverty alleviation through land reform strategies in Zambia still remains overshadowed by conflicting agendas, i.e. serving the interests of poor citizens versus pursuing the collective global market agenda in order to gain international recognition and acceptance. This is particularly crucial given that these agendas are often at odds with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The threat of sea-level rise and climate change means that coastal managers are being increasingly asked to make long-term assessments of potential coastal impacts and responses. In the UK, shoreline management planning (for flood and erosion hazards) and spatial planning now takes a 100 year perspective. An integrated framework across a wide range of physical and social issues is required for the assessment of coastal impacts and consequently for making sound management decisions. This paper provides an overview of the development of the 'Tyndall Coastal Simulator' including the underlying philosophy that is being followed. The Simulator is based on a series of linked climate models (CM) within a nested framework which recognises three spatial scales: (i) the global (GCM) scale; (ii) the regional scale and (iii) the Simulator Domain (a physiographic unit, such as a coastal sub-cell). Within the nesting, the larger scale provides the boundary conditions for the smaller scale. The models feed into each other and describe a range of relevant processes: sea level, tides, surges, waves, sediment transport and coastal morphology. Different climate scenarios, as well as the range of uncertainty, are being explored. Communication of results is a major issue and the Simulator includes a dedicated GIS-based user interface that allows a wide range of queries of model outputs. The paper demonstrates the possibility of developing an integrated framework that is multi-scale and capable of linking various models in order to simulate complex coastal processes and consequently allowing long-term assessments that are useful for setting future management plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most striking aspects of the recent recession is the collapse in international trade. This paper uses disaggregated data on U.S. imports and exports to shed light on the anatomy of this collapse. The paper finds that the recent reduction in trade relative to overall economic activity is far larger than in previous downturns. Information on quantities and prices of both domestic absorption and imports reveals a 40 percent shortfall in imports, relative to what would be predicted by a simple import demand relationship. In a sample of imports and exports disaggregated at the 6-digit NAICS level, the paper finds that sectors used as intermediate inputs experienced significantly higher percentage reductions in both imports and exports. It also finds support for compositional effects: sectors with larger reductions in domestic output had larger drops in trade. By contrast, the paper finds no support for the hypothesis that trade credit played a role in the recent trade collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the abolition of the double registration regime, on paper Chinese NGOs are more independent from the Government's bureaucratic commands than ever. Nevertheless, in reality the Chinese Government's control over Chinese NGOs remains heavy-handed. Through giving NGOs bianzhi and purchasing services from NGOs, the Chinese Government caused and continues to cause the Chinese NGOs to adopt certain attributes of the danwei tradition. Specifically, the Government strives to embed the CPC into the Chinese NGOs and make the Chinese NGOs financially dependent on the Government. The danwei tradition is not merely a lingering legacy of China's Communist past but also a result that the Government today actively seeks to bring about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to rapid growth of population and development of economy, water resources allocation problems have aroused wide concern. Therefore, optimization of water resources systems is complex and uncertain, which is a severe challenge faced by water managers. In this paper, a factorial multi-stage stochastic programming with chance constraints approach is developed to deal with the issues of water-resources allocation under uncertainty and risk as well as their interactions. It can deal with uncertainties described as both interval numbers and probability distributions, and can also support the risk assessment within a multistage context. The solutions associated with different risk levels of constraint violation can be obtained, which can help characterize the relationship between the economic objective and the system risk. The inherent interactions between factors at different levels and their effects on total net benefits can be revealed through the analysis of multi-parameter interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decoupling theory is an appropriate tool to study the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption (or environment pollution). But the underlying causes of the states of decoupling are difficult to find. Based on the Log-Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) theory, this paper provides a new way to find the nature of the factors governing the changes in the state of decoupling between the economic growth and energy consumption in China. Our results show that only four states of decoupling occurred during the period 1991-2012: weak decoupling, expansive coupling, expansive negative decoupling, and strong decoupling. The economic activity effect made a negative impact on the decoupling in the study period. The energy intensity effect played a positive role in the development of decoupling except in 2003, 2004, and 2008. The economic structure effect only played a positive role in the development of decoupling in several years. However, the energy structure effect plays a relative small role in the development of decoupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the nexus between firm labor diversity and innovation by using data on patent applications filed by firms at the European Patent Office and a linked employer-employee database from Denmark. Exploiting the information retrieved from these comprehensive data sets and implementing proper instrumental variable strategies, we estimate the contribution of workers' diversity in cultural background, education and demographic characteristics to valuable firm's innovation activity. Specifically, we find evidence supporting the hypothesis that ethnic diversity may facilitate firms' patenting activity in several ways by (a) increasing the propensity to (apply for a) patent, (b) increasing the overall number of patent applications, and (c) by enlarging the breadth of patenting technological fields, conditional on patenting. Several robustness checks corroborate the main findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational transfers are a very important part of our daily economic activity. These transfers, whether familial or public, may influence our economic decisions to the same extent that financial markets do. In this paper, we seek to shed some light on the effects of transfers on capital accumulation in the face of demographic aging. In particular, a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with realistic public and familial transfers drawn from the National Transfer Accounts project is implemented to Spain. Given that, in this case, net familial transfers mainly go from parents to children while public transfers go from children to parents, it is shown that the Spanish baby boom and baby bust could lead to capital depletion and a reduction in consumption per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an historical archaeological examination of the socioeconomic relations of the Chinese and European communities of Cooktown in north Queensland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It looks at the social landscape and production, exchange and consumption of material culture to show that the Chinese were not a disengaged group, as depicted in conventional understandings of colonial life, but integral to the town's socioeconomic fabric. This close relationship arose out of a process of negotiation between Chinese and Europeans which responded to the strengths, weaknesses and resources of their individual business networks, and the particular conditions of Cooktown's frontier environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ceramic industry is an important area of economic activity in the Ayacucho Region, in particular in the District of Quinua. As a consequence, there is a huge demand for clay to produce ceramic pastes in that region. This paper reports on results concerning the mineralogical characterization of four clayey samples, which were collected MAA and SPQA from the area Pampa de La Quinua with geographic coordinates 13° 02′ 49″ S 74° 08′ 03″ W, CE1M and CE2M from the Quinua locality 13° 03′ 07″ S 74° 08′ 31″ W, both in the District of Quinua, Province of Huamanga, Ayacucho, Peru. The chemical and mineralogical characterization of these samples was carried out with powder X-ray diffraction detecting quartz, albite, montmorillonite, kaolinite and glauconite mineral phases, Mössbauer spectroscopy detected iron in kaolinite, glauconite and montmorillonite minerals. Chemical analysis was performed through scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Data obtained from the combination of these techniques provided relevant information about the morphology, chemical composition, and the mineralogy of samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore in this paper the relation between activities, communication channels and media, and common ground building in global teams. We define re-representation as a sequence of representations of the same concept using different communication channels and media. We identified the re- representation technique to build common ground that is used by team members during multimodal and multimedia communicative events in cross-disciplinary, geographically distributed settings. Our hypotheses are as follows: (1) Significant sources of information behind decisions and request for actions are embedded within the fabric of communicative events in which participants use both informal and formal media to express their ideas. Capturing these information sources can facilitate common ground building and accelerate the execution of action requests. (2) Re-representations of concepts, i.e., sequences of representations using diverse media and communication channels, mediate and accelerate common ground building. (3) The use of intra- or interdisciplinary re-representations correlates with high team performance, i.e., effective team process and high product quality. We used AEC Global Teamwork course offered in 2008-2009 as the testbed for our study to validate our hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The depth and duration of the 2007-09 recession serves as a powerful reminder of the real consequences of financial shocks. Although channels through which disruptions in financial markets can affect economic activity are relatively well understood from a theoretical perspective, assessing their quantitative implications for the real economy remains a considerable challenge. This paper examines the extent to which the workhorse New Keynesian model-augmented with the standard financial accelerator mechanism-is capable of producing the dynamics of the U.S. economy during the recent financial crisis. To do so, we employ the methodology of Gilchrist and Zakrajšek (2011) to construct a measure of shocks to the financial sector, which is then used to simulate the model over the crisis period. The results indicate that a reasonably calibrated version of the model can closely match the observed decline in economic activity and can account for the sharp widening of nonfinancial credit spreads, a decline in nominal short-term interest rates, and for the persistent disinflation experienced in the wake of financial disruptions. Given its empirical relevance, we then use this framework to analyze the potential benefits of a monetary policy rule that allows the short-term nominal rate to respond to changes in financial conditions as measured by movements in credit spreads. The results indicate that such a spread-augmented policy rule can effectively dampen the negative consequences of financial disruptions on real economic activity, while engendering only a modest increase in inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines maternal trade-offs between subsistence/economic activities and caregiving, and it explores the effect of allomaternal investment on maternal time allocation and child care. I examine how nonmaternal investment in two multiple caregiving populations may offset possible risk factors associated with reductions in maternal caregiving. Behavioral observations were conducted on 8- to 12-month-old infants and their caregivers among the Aka tropical forest foragers and Ngandu farmers of Central Africa. Analysis demonstrates that mothers face trade-offs between subsistence/economic activities and infant care. Infants receive less investment when their mothers engage in subsistence/economic activities, indicating a potential risk to those infants. However, results indicate that allomothers target their assistance during times when mothers are engaged in work activities, partially offsetting potential risks associated with the maternal trade-off. The effects of intercultural variability on maternal time allocation and allomaternal investment are also explored as a means of examining the potential impact of their behaviors on infant care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do emotions influence economic action? Current literature recognizes the importance of emotions for economy because they either help individuals perform economic roles through emotion management or enhancement of emotional intelligence, or because they aid rationality through their influence on preference formation. All these strands of research investigate the link between emotions and economy from an atomistic/individualistic perspective. I argue for a different approach, one that adopts a relational perspective, focuses on emotional embeddedness and examines how emotions matter in economic interactions. Emotional embeddedness research starts with a premise that emotions result from and are influenced by interactions between economic actors during the economic process where emotional currents and their visceral and physical manifestations come to the fore. This increases the uncertainty in economic transactions and complicates the given means-ends logic of rational economic decision making, yielding economic action principles different from utility maximization. I propose two types of such creative economic action in this paper: improvisation and situational adaptation. Improvisation characterizes situations where ends (goals) and means are unclear at the beginning of a transaction process and get articulated as a consequence of emotional embeddedness experienced during a process. Situational adaptation characterizes situations in which means or ends of action change because of interaction-induced emotions that prompt actors to choose new means/ends. The article concludes with a call for empirical research that explicates further the influence of emotions not merely for rational economic action but also creative economic interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local economic development (LED) in South Africa has grown in significance since the 1994 democratic transition. This article examines the evolution of LED policy from 1995–2006 and specifically focuses upon the implications of the 2006 National Framework document. The 2006 LED Framework document is important as it represents the first national guidelines issued for LED in South Africa. The paper critically argues that a set of severe challenges faces LED in South African small towns and that LED policy needs to recognize these challenges and take on a specific focus on the needs of small towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Times have arguably never been better for minority nationalism. The hollowing out of the nation-state has provided spaces for minority nations to assert their identities and seek wider forms of self-rule. Their position is strengthened by the increased salience of development strategies at the regional scale that draw on the cooperation and coordination of economic actors. In this context, minority nationalism can help foster regional economic success by providing increased cohesion and cross-class collaboration. In return, regional economic success promises to strengthen the nation by providing resources to smooth over class divisions. This article lays out this argument, but raises a number of political and economic contradictions that threaten to interfere both with the construction of regional strategies, and with their ability to paper over class divisions within the nation. It concludes with a brief discussion of the Québec case to show how the promise of a mutually reinforcing relationship between minority nationalism and regional strategies runs up against a series of contradictions in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is strongly impacting the Arctic environment, leading to rapid sea ice loss. In some sectors, the retreating ice edge is perceived as an opportunity to expand and develop economic activities. Previous studies show this development in the Canadian and Russian Arctic. This paper examines mobility patterns of cruise ships and fishing vessels around Svalbard, a major hotspot of maritime activity and retreating sea ice cover, in relation to sea ice variability between August 2012 and September 2019. The results show a slight overall increase in fisheries and cruise activity, as well as remarkable trends of stretching operational seasons and expanding navigational areas in these sectors. Overall increasing activity and changing mobility patterns provoke a discussion about the implications for safe navigation and sustainable management, thus raising issues of high pan-Arctic relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]