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In recent years, most European countries have experienced substantial demographic changes and rising cultural diversity. Understanding the social and economic impacts of these shifts is a major challenge for policymakers. Richard Florida’s ideas have provided a popular – and pervasive – framework for doing so. This paper assess Florida’s legacy and sets out a ‘post-Florida’ framework for ‘technology, talent and tolerance’ research. The paper first traces the development of Florida’s ideas. ‘Florida 1.0’, encapsulated by the Three Ts framework, has performed badly in practice. There are problems in bringing causality to the fundamental relationships, and in consistently replicating the results in other countries. ‘Florida 2.0’, though suggests that Creative Class metrics have value as alternative measures of human capital. This create space for a post-Florida agenda based on economic micro-foundations. I argue that the growing body of ‘economics of diversity’ research meets these conditions, and review theory and empirics. Urban ‘diversity shocks’ shift the size and composition of populations and workforces, with impacts operating via labour markets, and through wider production and consumption networks. While short-term labour market effects are small, over time low-value industrial sectors may become migrant-dependent. Diversity may help raise productivity and wages through innovation, entrepreneurship, market access and trade channels. Bigger, more diverse cities help generate hybridised goods and services, but may also raise local costs through crowding. All of this presents new challenges for policymakers, who need to manage diversity’s net effects, and address both economic costs and benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of the paper is to establish the future intervention priorities in building a new programme that would target the economic development in the research area. The used methodology included an adapted A'WOT analysis - an initial SWOT analysis and a prioritization of the items through an expert questionnaire. In the present paper we analyze the experts' opinions and the areas where intervention is needed for the optimum strategies for the 2014-2020 financial frame. These should rely on the strengths in the Guidelines for Applicants, the rules for projects implementation and the institutional system, it should consider changes on the weak points concerning the programme objectives, the Guidelines for Applicants and the beneficiaries consultations, it should make use of opportunities coming from the crossborder status, European Union frame and economic opportunities and overcome the differences coming from crossborder status, membership of two different supranational structures and the economic gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-R&D innovation activities account for a significant portion of innovation efforts carried out across very heterogeneous economies in Europe. However, to incorporate them into economic models is not always straightforward. Moreover, relying only on R&D data does not capture well innovation in the services sector. To counter these problems, this paper builds an augmented macro-theoretical growth model where, besides R&D, non-R&D innovation activities play a key role as main drivers of TFP. The model is estimated for a sample of EU-26 countries over the period 2004–2008, showing that the distinction between R&D and non-R&D innovation activities is significant for a number of different issues. First, we find both R&D and non-R&D to be statistically significant and economic important in technological catch-up. Second, there is a differential sizable impact of R&D and non-R&D; the impact of R&D on TFP growth is found to be twice as big as that of non-R&D. And third, the two types of innovation cannot strictly been seen as complementary, at least for the case of countries with high R&D intensities or high non-R&D intensities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development has become one of the burning issues on a global, local and individual levels as a result of climate changes, pollution, rapid development and changes in the global information, economic, industrial and business sectors and value systems. In this sense, education for sustainable development, as part of lifelong learning, has become one of the most important strategic and educational policy issues in Serbia. The aim of this paper is to highlight the potential of geography as a school subject, with special reference to the role of the subject matter of geoheritage and geodiversity in education for sustainable development. The aim of pointing the benefits of integrated and out-of-classroom approaches in teaching geography, which favour an active, experiential and exploratory approach to learning about geodiversity and geoheritage, is that students can acquire competencies in sustainable development. As outcomes of geography classes, competencies also represent a basis for raising awareness and increasing accountability and responsibility in individuals for preserving geoheritage and geodiversity as part of the Serbian national treasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the livelihood strategies pursued by people in the post-socialist societies of East-Central Europe? This paper critically evaluates the view that most of the population secures its livelihood through the formal economy and that only marginalized populations now have to rely on the informal economy (i.e. work beyond employment) for their livelihoods. Drawing upon extensive survey data from Ukraine, this paper reveals that only a small minority of households in this post-socialist society rely on the formal economy alone and that the vast majority depend on a plurality of both formal and informal economic practices to secure their livelihoods. The outcome is a call for a greater appreciation and recognition to be given to the role of the informal sector in post-socialist societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central argument of this paper pivots around the idea that the structure and functioning of the states and political systems of South Eastern Europe are strongly determined by a long lasting particular feature of the economies and societies of the region: their dualism. This feature has its origins in the modernization process, has evolved in parallel with it and has shaped in a distinctive way both the structure and the dynamics of the polities and states of these countries. The dualism of their economies is thus a key explanatory factor in any attempt to understand the dynamics of the region. Moreover, dualism has always played a crucial role in the process of international integration of South Eastern Europe in the European and global system and it is very likely that it will continue to play a major role in the future. Accordingly the approach articulated is not laying the emphasis on ethnicity, nationalism or religion as the mainstream approaches to the states and problems of the South East European region usually do, but on the regional political economies and on what this paper considers to be their key structural problem. It is indeed difficult to imagine and analyse the Balkan problems making abstraction of the powerful ethnic and religious forces that shaped the destiny of the region but it is important to approach these problems from different and complementary angles. The present analysis implies a simplification indeed, but it is an instrumental and pragmatic one that helps us to discern and disentangle some patterns or configurations of factors relevant for a better understanding of the internal evolutions and of the international integration prospects of South Eastern Europe. The main objective of the paper is to use a specific way of conceptualizing the political economy dynamics of the region in order to illuminate from a structural and historic perspective a crucial problem currently faced by the Balkan states in their attempt to settle on the path of self-sustained growth and European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the changes which are taking place in air transport for the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia in the context of liberalisation. It also attempts to identify the common and specific factors that influence these processes in different markets of the region. The indicators for the development of the aviation market were designed using, among other things, statistics describing the infrastructure facilities and the level of activity in the market. Composite indicators and the weights for their individual components were constructed using a Multidimensional Comparative Analysis. The conditions under which changes were taking place in Central and Eastern European Countries were described with the help of selected socio-economic panel data. Finally, One-Way Fixed Effects and Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) models describing the development of the aviation markets were estimated. The adopted procedure made it possible to identify the most important common and specific factors that exerted the greatest influence on the situation of air transport in CEE Countries. The very initiation of the liberalisation process undoubtedly had a significantly beneficial effect on the development of route networks and aviation activities as broadly understood. However, the pace of change depended not only on the progress of liberalisation itself, but also on the diverse socio-economic conditions in the individual countries. As a result of the analysis, the markets were divided into two separate groups, which in many respects are distinctly different from each other. The results of the estimation models also showed that there are strong unobservable determinants of development which are specific to individual countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global competition has evolved from the competition between companies to the competition between regions. In this context, clusters play an important role as competences' concentration poles. The cluster initiatives represent concentrated efforts to increase the wealth and competitiveness in a certain region including companies, local administration, research and training institutions. This paper proposes the analysis of the European clusters' role in ensuring the regional development. Resulted conclusions emphasize both the positive results of clusters' existence, as well as the fields where improvements can be made in order to increase the clusters' impact on the economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the coming years, the share of the working-age population in the total population will start to decline in all countries of the European Union. All other things remaining equal, this so-called demographic burden will have a downward effect on economic growth. This paper examines whether the Europe 2020 employment targets would be sufficient to compensate for the downward impact of demographic burden and whether the impact of demography on economic growth differs between EU countries and between urban and rural regions. The results show that raising employment rates to the Europe 2020 targets can restore positive opportunities for economic growth, but not in all countries and only to a limited extent. They also show that even though urban and rural regions differ in terms of population growth and growth of the working age population, the prospects for demographic burden are highly similar for both types of regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses whether hosting the most prestigious European cultural event, the European Capital of Culture, has an impact on regional economic development and the life satisfaction of the local population. We show that European Capitals are hosted in regions with above-average GDP per capita, but do not causally affect the economic development in a significant way. Surprisingly, using difference-in-difference estimations, a negative effect on the wellbeing of the regional population is found during the event. Since no effect is found before the event, reverse causality and positive anticipation can be ruled out. The negative effect during the event might result from dissatisfaction with the high levels of public expenditure, transport disruptions, general overcrowding or an increase in housing prices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the nexus between political instability and economic growth in 10 CEE countries in transition in the period 1990-2009. Our results support the contention that political instability defined as a propensity for government change had a negative impact on growth. On the other hand, there was no causality in the opposite direction. A sensitivity analysis based on the application of a few hundred different variants of the initial econometric model confirmed the abovementioned findings only in the case where major government changes were applied to the definition of political instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse the impact of financial liberalization and reforms on the banking performance in 17 countries from CEE for the period 2004–2008 using a two-stage empirical model that involves estimating bank performance in the first stage and assessing its determinants in the second one. From our analysis it results that banks from CEE countries with higher level of liberalization and openness are able to increase cost efficiency and eventually to offer cheaper services to clients. Banks from non-member EU countries are less cost efficient but experienced much higher total productivity growth level, and large sized banks are much more cost efficient than medium and small banks, while small sized banks show the highest growth in terms of productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portugal faced a decade of feeble economic growth after joining the European Economic and Monetary Union. Systematic research of the specific effects of this regime change on growth is still lacking. The counterfactual analysis that we undertake in this paper seeks to fill such a gap. Our findings suggest that the adoption of the Euro did have adverse effects on Portuguese economy. To the contrary, in 2009, the Euro seems to have sheltered the Portuguese economy from the worse effects of the international financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European nations are undergoing rapid and fundamental changes in response to social, political and economic events that are occurring both within and outside the region. These changes are far-reaching in scope and, ultimately, are expected to result in a redefinition of "Europe" and what it means to be "European." Using the author's extensively pre-tested Index of Social Progress (ISP), the research reported in this paper: 1) identifies the major changes in social development that have taken place in 36 European nations since 1970; 2) contrasts Europe's recent social development trends with those of other major world regions (including Asia, Africa, Latin and North America, and Oceania); 3) using aggregate scores on the Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP), identifies Europe's "social leaders" (SLs), "middle performing countries" (MPCs), identifies Europe's "social leaders" (SLs), "middle performing countries" (MPCs), and "socially least developing countries" (SLDCs); 4) identifies the major development challenges confronting Europe at the outset of a new decade; and 5) provides baseline data against which future developments in the region may be assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to show that convergence or divergence in the European Union (EU) will be influenced by developments in the periphery of Europe to a considerable extent, although the core situation cannot be ignored. In essence, therefore, it is the relationship between core and periphery that will determine the future of the EU. The main thesis of this study is that the EU economic position is such that divergence is more likely to occur than convergence. The focus of the analysis is what has come to be known as ‘Peripheral Fordism’, which enables us lo suggest that periphery prospects for economic development are predicated upon substantial expansion of their industrial sectors based on indigenous forces. It is therefore the existing institutional structure within the EU that poses obstacles to convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]