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This study investigated the earliest change of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and its relationship with β-amyloid (Aβ) burden in preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) employing dual-phase 18F-florbetaben (FBB) PET. Seventy-one cognitively normal (NC) individuals were classified as Aβ negative (Aβ−NC) or positive (Aβ+NC) based on two different cutoff values: an SUVR of > 1.08 and a Centiloid scale of > 20. The PET scans were acquired in two phases: an early phase (0–10 min, eFBB) and a delayed phase (90–110 min, dFBB), which were averaged to generate single-frame images for each phase. Furthermore, an R1 parametric map was generated from the early phase data using a simplified reference tissue model. We conducted regional and voxel-based analyses to compare the eFBB, dFBB, and R1 images between the Aβ positive and negative groups. In addition, the correlations between the CBF proxy R1 and the dFBB SUVR were analyzed. The Aβ+NC group showed significantly higher dFBB SUVR in both the global cerebral cortex and target regions compared to the Aβ−NC group, while no significant differences were observed in eFBB SUVR between the two groups. Furthermore, the Aβ+NC group exhibited significantly higher R1 values, a proxy for cerebral perfusion, in both the global cerebral cortex and target regions compared to the Aβ−NC group. Significant positive correlations were observed between R1 and dFBB SUVR in both the global cerebral cortex and target regions, which remained significant after controlling for demographics and cognitive profiles, except for the medial temporal and occipital cortices. The findings reveal increased CBF in preclinical AD and a positive correlation between CBF and amyloid pathology. The positive correlation between R1 and amyloid burden may indicate a compensatory mechanism in the preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease, but to elucidate this hypothesis, further longitudinal observational studies are necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Patients undergoing macroscopically curative resection for distal cholangiocarcinoma (DCC) have high recurrence rates and poor prognoses. This study aimed to investigate the impact of surgical margin status on survival and recurrence after resection of DCC, specifically focusing on microscopic residual tumor (R1) and its relationship to local recurrence. Patients and Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of patients who had undergone pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) for DCC between 2005 and 2021. Surgical margin was classified as R0, R1cis (positive bile duct margin with carcinoma in situ), and R1inv (positive bile duct margin with an invasive subepithelial component and/or positive radial margin). Results: In total, 29 of 133 patients (21.8%) had R1cis and 23 (17.3%) R1inv. The 5-year overall survival (OS) for R0 (55.7%) did not differ significantly from that for R1cis/R1inv (47.4%/33.6%, respectively). The 5-year recurrence-free survival (RFS) for R0 was significantly longer than that for R1inv (50.1% vs. 17.4%, p = 0.003), whereas RFS did not differ significantly between those with R0 and R1cis. R1cis/R1inv status was not an independent predictor of OS and RFS in multivariate analysis. Cumulative incidence of isolated distant recurrence was significantly higher for R1cis/R1inv than for R0 (p = 0.0343/p = 0.0226, respectively), whereas surgical margin status was not significantly associated with rates of local or local plus distant recurrence. Conclusions: Surgical margin status does not significantly impact OS and RFS in patients undergoing PD for DCC following precise preoperative imaging evaluation. Additionally, R1 status is significantly linked to higher isolated distant recurrence rather than local recurrence, highlighting the importance of multidisciplinary therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research collaboration is an important instrument for innovation and knowledge transfer. In this respect, barriers that prevent or impede research collaboration between research institutions and companies are of particular importance. In this paper, we elaborate on the importance of research collaboration barriers by conducting and analysing 77 expert interviews from ten German regions. We go beyond the existing literature by examining differences in the perception of different kinds of experts and by comparing different types of regions classified according to the presence of important actors, namely research institutions and large companies. Our results show that research collaboration barriers are perceived as very significant barriers to innovation across all region types. We find differences in the perception of research collaboration barriers between the experts. On the regional level, the presence of research institutions shifts the relevance from missing partners to other research collaboration barriers, while all research collaboration barriers are not perceived as significantly less important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present evidence on the effect of a public health crisis on housing markets through the lens of the recent opioid crisis in the U.S. Using data on opioid prescriptions and repeat sales in Ohio, we find that house price changes around opioid dispensaries are negatively associated with the quantity of opioids dispensed. To explore a causal inference, we use a potentially cleaner measure of supply that is based on vertical integration. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in the standardized number of pills dispensed by vertically integrated pharmacies is associated with a 5.8% decrease in house price appreciation. Our work informs the broader policy discussion on economic costs resulting from health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing a recently developed panel econometric technique, first, we show that accounting for spatial dependence and heterogeneity yields more accurate risk factor coefficients and abnormal housing returns. Rather than systematic risks, idiosyncratic risks explain the variations in residential housing excess returns. After controlling for asset-specific and systematic risk factors, the positive and significant impact of the unobservable common factors on the excess returns suggests that speculative market forces drive the housing excess returns. Second, we then analyze the risks and returns of houses in affordable and expensive submarkets allowing for spatial dependence and heterogeneity. We find that houses in the affordable submarkets perform better than houses in the expensive submarkets. Thus, the potential demand for houses in the affordable submarket may aggravate the housing affordability crisis. Our study's results, therefore, encourage policymakers and investors to view the housing market as a collection of regional units and submarkets, but not as a single national market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic literature is unanimous on the fact that access to clean fuels has positive externalities on the different dimensions of welfare. However, the effects on deforestation are less known despite the existing relationship between the use of certain fuels and forest degradation. This study focuses on the effect of access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking on deforestation in developing countries. We examine this relationship going from a sample of 92 countries during the 2000 to 2015 period. The results show that access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking slow down deforestation. Based on its findings, the study suggests an urgent need of policy measures focusing on provision of clean fuels and technologies for cooking to households to reduce deforestation in developing countries. Moreover, the proportion of arable land has a significant effect on deforestation. The government must therefore regulate agricultural investments in countries with large arable land to reduce deforestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glioblastoma recurrence is caused by tumor cells resistance which can be initial or acquired resu-lting from therapy. Studies searching the markers that would allow predicting the level of glioblastoma cell therapy resistance are in progress. Complexity of the problem is due to a high heterogeneity of individual tumors as well as due to cellular composition in each tumor. In the present work, comparative study on the influence of temozolomide (in Temodal® form) single exposure on the well-known glioblastoma cell line A172 as well as on new line R1 was performed. Treatment of A172 (highly temozolomide-sensitive cell line) with 0.1 mM temozolomide showed that only individual cells persisted and resumed the proliferation. In R1 glioblastoma, single cells survived and resumed the proliferation upon treatment with 1.0 mM temozolomide. Populations obtained from these proliferating cells were designated as resistant ones. The presence of MGMT enzyme and the expression of genes responsible for chemotherapy resistance and tumor progression (MGMT, ABCB1, ABCC1, ABCG2), and of growth factor genes (VEGF, HGF), as well as the presence of IL-6 and IL-8 cytokines (and their encoding genes) was examined in resistant A172 and R1 cells. In A172 cells, methylated status of MGMT gene promoter and the absence of MGMT gene expression were confirmed. It was firstly shown that R1 glioblastoma was heterogeneous in methylation status of MGMT gene promoter and MGMT enzyme expression. In A172 and R1 resistant cell populations, the level of MGMT gene promoter methylation was lower than in intact cells, while MGMT gene expression was enhanced that could be clue to a greater resistance of these cells to chemotherapy. Expression of most genes connected with chemotherapy resistance and more aggressive course of the disease, as well as of growth factors genes and interleukin genes in resistant A172 cells was higher than in intact cells. In contrast, in resistant R1 cells, expression of the same genes (excluding ABCC1 and VEGF, in which the expression level changed insignificantly) was lower than in intact cells. Our results confirmed the significance of MGMT in formation of glioblastoma cell resistance to temozolomide. Prognostic value of other studied parameters is still considered ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using firm-level information on Italian manufacturing companies provided by Capitalia and the Institutional Quality Index (IQI) dataset over the 2004–2006 (10th edition) period, we employ a multi-probit model to assess the effects of government quality upon four dimensions of innovation, namely, marketing, organisational, product and process innovation. Findings presented in the paper suggest that higher government quality stimulates firms' innovative activities, though the impact of governance varies across the various dimensions of innovation examined. Our evidence, which is robust to firms' size, PAVITT classification and firms' geographical location, provides room for policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims to show the impact of financial knowledge among rural consumers' access to financial technology services. In general, knowledge regarding any particular fact helps consumers to select or reject different options. Therefore, knowledge regarding financial services is considered a factor that influences access to financial technology services. This study carries out a survey-oriented method with a structured questionnaire. According to the data category, this study uses three well-known econometric models: logistic regression, probit regression, and complementary log–log regression, have been experimented. This study finds that knowledge regarding various factors significantly impact on access to financial technology services. Mainly, this study has important practical significance for the use of rural finance and financial technology in rural areas, which affects the entire economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arctic region is one of the most exposed to the global climate change. Russia accounts for more than a half of the whole Arctic territory and population and allocates most of the economic activity of the region. From the Soviet time till now, the Arctic region also accounts for a substantial share of Russia’s wealth. The article analyzes often ambiguous knowledge on climate change implications for the long-term economic development of the Russian Arctic. Based on the review of the key policy documents issued in Russia and ongoing and planned development programs, the study aspires to contribute more clarity on Russia’s standing in the Arctic region. We aim to analyze the convergence of Russian climate and Arctic policies boosting the synergies between each other. The paper discovers, among other issues, the climate change adaptation priorities in policy areas aimed at minimizing net costs of climate change. While policies rhetorically aim at contributing to resilient and sustainable growth in the Russian North, they remain under-developed in accounting for multiple climate-related risks. Our analysis suggests that a comprehensive framework of Arctic policy measures should be centered around climate change as a core factor underlying the future of the region and should encompass two main policy dimensions: (a) strengthening the knowledge base on climate change, the adjunct risks, and emerging opportunities in the region and (b) developing the system for climate change risk management and resilience building ensuring that regional diversity and climatic and socioeconomic features of various locations are taken into serious account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tumour-positive proximal margin (PPM) after extended gastrectomy for oesophagogastric junction (OGJ) adenocarcinoma is observed in approximately 2–20% of patients. Although a PPM is an unfavourable prognostic factor, the clinical relevance remains unclear as it may reflect poor tumour biology. This narrative review analyses the most relevant literature on PPM after gastrectomy for OGJ cancers. Awareness of the risk factors and possible measures that can be taken to reduce the risk of PPM are important. In patients with a PPM, surgical and non-surgical treatments are available but the effectiveness remains unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The role of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease is complex and largely unknown. We investigated cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between CBF, amyloid burden, and cognition, in cognitively normal individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD). Methods: We included 187 cognitively normal individuals with SCD from the SCIENCe project (65 ± 8 years, 39% F, MMSE 29 ± 1). Each underwent a dynamic (0–70 min) [18F]florbetapir PET and T1-weighted MRI scan, enabling calculation of mean binding potential (BPND; specific amyloid binding) and R1 (measure of relative (r)CBF). Eighty-three individuals underwent a second [18F]florbetapir PET (2.6 ± 0.7 years). Participants annually underwent neuropsychological assessment (follow-up time 3.8 ± 3.1 years; number of observations n = 774). Results: A low baseline R1 was associated with steeper decline on tests addressing memory, attention, and global cognition (range betas 0.01 to 0.27, p < 0.05). High BPND was associated with steeper decline on tests covering all domains (range betas − 0.004 to − 0.70, p < 0.05). When both predictors were simultaneously added to the model, associations remained essentially unchanged. Additionally, we found longitudinal associations between R1 and BPND. High baseline BPND predicted decline over time in R1 (all regions, range betasBP×time − 0.09 to − 0.14, p < 0.05). Vice versa, low baseline R1 predicted increase in BPND in frontal, temporal, and composite ROIs over time (range betasR1×time − 0.03 to − 0.08, p < 0.05). Conclusion: Our results suggest that amyloid accumulation and decrease in rCBF are two parallel disease processes without a fixed order, both providing unique predictive information for cognitive decline and each process enhancing the other longitudinally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of minimum wages increases on youth employment level has been extensively analysed, but recent contributions have highlighted the potential bias in these studies due to neglected spatial autocorrelation in the considered relationship. This paper contributes to this scarce literature by providing novel evidence for a country with very low interregional mobility. The aim is to see if the bias of neglecting spatial dependence acts in a similar direction than in the few studies for the United States and if this bias explains the low elasticity of youth employment to minimum wages in Spain compared to the international literature. Our results show the relevance of spatial spillovers in the Spanish regional labour markets, but after correcting for the bias, we do not find a significant negative elasticity of youth employment to minimum wages, with the only exception of those between 16 and 19 years old. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributional extensions of the benchmark AK endogenous growth model and of the Ramsey model are presented in this paper. The resulting geographic growth model - a forward-backward parabolic partial differential equation (PDE) over a bounded spatial domain - is governed by two main driving forces: a spatial friction in the reallocation of physical capital, and a spatial arbitrage driving the reallocation of savings. The spatial AK model solution, starting from an unequal distribution of capital, displays convergence over time to a spatially homogeneous balanced growth path with positive growth rates. The spatial Ramsey model potentially contains both diffusive and agglomerative spatial forces. If there are no agglomerative forces, the solution displays convergence to a spatially homogenous steady state, but if an agglomerative force exists, there is increasing spatial concentration of capital over time. This shows that convergence in the aggregate can be consistent with different distribution profiles over locations. An additional contribution of the paper is to develop a distributive comparative dynamics analysis for a spatially heterogeneous productivity shock. It is shown that, although there is redistribution of consumption across locations, technological inequality is persistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent widespread interest of policy in entrepreneurial ecosystems has been complemented by a burgeoning academic research output. This research to date may be broadly categorized as focusing on place, actors, governance, and evolution. Of these groupings, evolutionary processes have been paid least attention despite their centrality to a dynamic ecosystem phenomenon that evolves from an origin through processes of growth, adaptation, and resilience. To redress this imbalance, we frame a future research agenda on evolutionary processes of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Foremost amongst these are the competing lens for the evolutionary processes, the appropriate and evolving geographic scope and boundaries of the ecosystem, and the evolving visible or invisible modes of governance. Methodologically, we call for greater use of longitudinal studies of such evolutionary processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of the impact of bilingual school designation on housing price by analyzing the case of school conversion from a monolingual school to a bilingual school in Melbourne. We find that house price within the pertinent school catchment area responds positively by 7.8%–8.7%. Moreover, we find no significant response in the unit market where residents are less likely to be households with children. Analysis with substituted control groups such as the test catchments with extended surrounding areas, other bilingual school catchment areas, and school catchment areas of public schools with a similar level of academic performance confirms that bilingual education is positively capitalized in the house submarket. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manganese (Mn) is a neurotoxicant that, due to its paramagnetic property, also functions as a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) T1 contrast agent. Previous studies in Mn toxicity have shown that Mn accumulates in the brain, which may lead to parkinsonian symptoms. In this article, we trained support vector machines (SVM) using whole-brain R1 (R1 = 1/T1) maps from 57 welders and 32 controls to classify subjects based on their air Mn concentration ([Mn]Air), Mn brain accumulation (ExMnBrain), gross motor dysfunction (UPDRS), thalamic GABA concentration (GABAThal), and total years welding. R1 was highly predictive of [Mn]Air above a threshold of 0.20 mg/m3 with an accuracy of 88.8% and recall of 88.9%. R1 was also predictive of subjects with GABAThal having less than or equal to 2.6 mM with an accuracy of 82% and recall of 78.9%. Finally, we used an SVM to predict age as a method of verifying that the results could be attributed to Mn exposure. We found that R1 was predictive of age below 48 years of age with accuracies ranging between 75 and 82% with recall between 94.7% and 76.9% but was not predictive above 48 years of age. Together, this suggests that lower levels of exposure (< 0.20 mg/m3 and < 18 years of welding on the job) do not produce discernable signatures, whereas higher air exposures and subjects with more total years welding produce signatures in the brain that are readily identifiable using SVM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imbalance of regional development trends is strongly correlated over time and across provinces, paralleled the growth of the economic quality and even influenced by exogenous variables. In this paper, a regional 'two-way' theory based on 'input and output' is proposed, reflecting the current state of economic quality development comprehensively. An 'inverse absolute dispersion method' came up with calculating the Quality of Economic Imbalance in Regional Development (QEIRD) after the measurement of economic quality is obtained by the total factor productivity (TFP). Moreover, the distribution of Chi-square is fitted to classify the grades of QEIRD, and the causes of QEIRD are analyzed via exogenous variables and regional decomposition under the panel data from China at the provincial level. The results indicate that the new method of measuring QEIRD based on TFP is scientific and reasonable in China at the country level. Secondly, the results obtained from the three regional decomposition ways are highly consistent, showing that the QEIRD from China has been diminishing, though not continuously and more so in some periods and regions, and being in a transition from stage three to stage two. Thirdly, the mainspring of total QEIRD is from the between-regions QEIRD; however, the rate of the within-region QEIRD is increasing cannot be neglected. In addition, exogenous variables have a crucial role in reducing QEIRD; it is a long-term and unremitting efforts to achieve stage one and move toward coordinated regional development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on regional entrepreneurship has tended to neglect inter-regional flows of human capital, and yet spatial mobility provide the nascent entrepreneurs with multi-location knowledge and networks to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. The paper fills the gap by adopting an agent-environment interactionist perspective in the investigation on the interrelation between mobility and entrepreneurship. To be more specific, it deals with two underlying themes. First, the way through which the multi-location experiences and non-local knowledge equip the migrants with the pursuit of opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. Second, the distinctive relationship between the regional environment and opportunity-driven entrepreneurial motives for individuals with and without spatial mobility experiences. These themes are investigated with the China labor-force dynamics survey data, comparing the characteristics and drivers of entrepreneurial motives of the migrants and locals. The survey data presents clear evidence of a higher prevalence of opportunity-driven entrepreneurship in migrant entrepreneurs compared to their local counterparts. Furthermore, the ordered logit regression results demonstrate that spatial mobility experiences significantly promote the likelihood of entering into opportunity-based business. The regional environment exerts impacts on migrants and non-migrants' entrepreneurial motives, yet in different ways. Local entrepreneurs are more influenced by the endogenous nature of firm ecology in the city, whereas migrant entrepreneurs start business pulled by both local demands and extra-local connectedness to greater market areas. Finally, the paper reflects upon possible implications for a more targeted and inclusive entrepreneurial policy, as well as the future areas of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effect of energy utilization, greenhouses gasses emissions, and economic activities on health risks such as mortality rate and incidence of respiratory diseases in emerging Asian economies. The study analyzes a panel data from 1995 to 2018 to examine the long-run and short-run influence of environmental pollution on health issues. The empirical findings highlight that greenhouse gasses emissions, fossil fuel consumption, and natural resources depletion in the region are key factors to increasing health risks in the long-run period, while the use of clean energy and improvement in per capita economic growth is helping to improve the health status of the households. In a short period, greenhouse gasses emission is the only significant factor responsible for the high mortality rate and occurrence of respiratory diseases in the emerging economies of Asia. According to the results, there is a need for government intervention programs to rescue the region from the negative effects of environmental pollution and the utilization of nonrenewable energy. In emerging Asian countries, the combustion of fossil fuels, environmental pollution, and limited access to clean energy are such factors responsible for high mortality rate and stimulating incidence of respiratory diseases in the individuals. The study suggests that alternative green energy can prove helpful to control greenhouse gasses emissions and to control health issues by improving environmental quality. The study further suggests that the use of clean energy from water, wind, and sunlight may prove helpful to meet the energy requirement at the domestic level and improve the health status of the individuals by reducing the incidence of respiratory diseases in emerging countries of Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regions with high population agglomeration have always been important centers of growth throughout history. However, little is known about the economic spillovers an agglomerated region produces on its neighboring areas. In this paper, I look at the effect of growth of an agglomerated county on its surrounding non-agglomerated counties, by using the methods outlined in Qu and Lee (J Econom 184(2):209–232, 2015) and Qu et al. (Econom J 19(3):261–290, 2016). I use the US county as the geographic unit of analysis. The results show that the impact of is inverted U-shaped—at low levels of per capita income of an agglomerated county, growth has a positive impact on the neighboring non-agglomerated counties, relative to non-agglomerated counties that do not have any agglomerated counties nearby. However, as the agglomerated county gets richer, its relationship with the neighboring non-agglomerated county becomes negative, relative to the growth rate of a non-agglomerated county that has no agglomerated county nearby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the 'fluidity', i.e., entry and exit of inventors, as well as changes of their relationships in nine German regions. The levels of entry and exit of inventors are rather high and most links among inventors are only short term. Fluidity of inventors and links leads to some fragmentation of the regional inventor networks but does not significantly affect other network characteristics. Entry of new inventors and growing numbers of links are positively related to the performance of the respective regional innovation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between cultural attachment and mental wellbeing among Canada's Indigenous population is explored with data from the 2012 Aboriginal Peoples Survey. Cultural attachment is assessed by involvement in traditional activities and Indigenous language. Ordered probit models are used to determine the factors associated with wellbeing. The results suggest an urban–rural divide with cultural attachment associated with higher levels of wellbeing for Indigenous Canadians living in rural areas. The results are expected to be of interest to policy makers in countries with significant Indigenous populations whom tend to have higher frequencies of psychological wellbeing issues, such as Canada, Australia and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional inequality measures fail to capture the geographical distribution of income. The failure to consider such distribution implies that, holding income constant, different spatial patterns provide the same inequality measure. This property is referred to as anonymity and presents an interesting question about the relationship between inequality and space. Particularly, spatial dependence could play an important role in shaping the geographical distribution of income and could be usefully incorporated into inequality measures. Following this idea, this paper introduces a new measure that facilitates the assessment of the relative contribution of spatial patterns to overall inequality. The proposed index is based on the Gini correlation measure and accounts for both inequality and spatial autocorrelation. Unlike most of the spatially based income inequality measures proposed in the literature, our index introduces regional importance weighting in the analysis, thereby differentiating the regional contributions to overall inequality. Starting with the proposed measure, a spatial decomposition of the Gini index of inequality for weighted data is also derived. This decomposition permits the identification of the actual extent of regional disparities and the understanding of the interdependences among regional economies. The proposed measure is illustrated by an empirical analysis focused on Italian provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the four key information and communications technology (ICT) indicators (fixed-line subscribers, mobile cellular subscribers, fixed broadband subscribers and individuals using the internet) in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) member countries and finds the mobile telecommunication services are highly adopted. Further, considering mobile subscribers' data from 2000 to 2017, we compare the Bass, Gompertz, and logistic econometric diffusion models to identify the best adoption diffusion pattern of mobile telecommunication technology. The seven SAARC members of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka follow the Gompertz model, while India follows the logistic pattern. The main contribution of this study is offering a supporting material for telecommunication policymakers and stakeholders to design a sustainable ICT strategy for the SAARC countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades we have seen an increased interest in the use of seemingly unrelated regressions models (SUR) in a spatial context, with compelling case studies in different fields. This upsurge has favoured the development of new and more efficient inference techniques. At present, the user has a basic toolkit to deal with this kind of model, that is, however, in need of improvement. This paper focuses on the question of estimating, quickly and accurately, spatial SUR models. The most popular procedure is maximum likelihood (ML) which guarantees precision at the cost of a high computational burden. This is especially true in cases of large sample size and strong spatial structure. We explore simpler estimation algorithms such as instrumental variables (IV), which expedites calculation at the cost of a certain loss in quality of the estimates. We focus on the importance of sample size and the trade-off between accuracy and speed. To that end, we perform a comprehensive simulation experiment in which we compare ML and IV algorithms, looking for their strengths and weaknesses. The paper includes two applications to the case of Airbnb in the urban area of Madrid. First, we estimate a spatial SUR hedonic model of accommodation prices, using micro-data for three different cross sections à la Anselin, that is, considering temporal correlation plus spatial structure. Then, the data are aggregated by neighbourhoods. We specify a spatial SUR model with two equations (apartments and rooms) also using three cross sections. In both cases, the models are estimated by ML and IV using the spsur R package (Angulo et al. in spSUR: spatial seemingly unrelated regression models. R Package version 1.0.0.3, 2019), with the aim of illustrating its capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of a stigmatized property due to undesirable mortality incidents, such as homicide and suicide, may affect people's willingness to pay to live in that particular neighborhood. The Japanese property transactional law states that a stigmatizing incident that could affect a potential buyer's/renter's decision needs to be disclosed prior to the contract phase. However, such disclosure does not occur in most cases when the transactional property is not the property at which the incident occurred by tacit agreement that the stigma does not extend beyond the property. This paper applies a hedonic approach to examine the externality of stigmatized property using data from Tokyo, Japan. By carefully considering detailed regional fixed effects, the estimation results reveal that an incident of homicide occurring in an apartment unit lowers the rents of nearby units in the same building by approximately 10% immediately after the incident, but the impact is ameliorated gradually over time and disappears after approximately 7–8 years. We do not find any evidence of a negative externality in cases of suicide or death by fire. These results suggest that under the current legal system, a recent homicide occurring at a property in an apartment building should be disclosed to potential buyers/renters of different units in the building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the effectiveness of policy creating science parks is evaluated with respect to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Science parks created to support innovation and regional growth often target productivity gains through agglomeration economies. However, spatial proximity of firms may also stimulate selection, less competitive firms being forced to exit, a cluster of high-productivity, surviving firms being observed at the regional level. Empirical studies also show that high- or low-productivity firms or both may spatially sort into a region. Using estimates of firm-level total factor productivity, the science park sorting and selection behavior of Taiwanese and South Korean SMEs is analyzed. The results indicate heterogeneity in location choice of SMEs arising from the economic environment of science parks. Overall, the empirical evidence suggests that science parks can generate real productivity improvements if the incentives are reinforced through national-level policies; otherwise, such incentives may end up protecting inefficient firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the Black Death pogroms to shed light on the factors determining when a minority group will face persecution. Negative shocks increase the likelihood that minorities are persecuted. But, as shocks become more severe, the persecution probability decreases if there are economic complementarities between majority and minority groups. The effects of shocks on persecutions are thus ambiguous. We compile city-level data on Black Death mortality and Jewish persecutions. At an aggregate level, scapegoating increases the probability of a persecution. However, cities which experienced higher plague mortality were less likely to persecute. Furthermore, for a given mortality shock, persecutions were more likely where people were more inclined to believe conspiracy theories that blamed the Jews for the plague and less likely where Jews played an important economic role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of ethnic minorities evokes policy debate about their impact on the local economy, driving a need to measure their effects. This article introduces a spatial econometrics approach to Deller et al.'s expansion of the Carlino-Mills growth model. We employ the confidential US Census data to investigate drivers of local economic performance with emphasis on the role of Latino-owned businesses (LOB) on convergence. The model also includes a number of controls. The model produces direct, indirect, and total impact estimates, and expected values for the non-LOB controls. The estimated total impact of LOB employment on county-level average annual growth rates is significant and positive, but a rurality interaction carries the opposite sign, such that the total impact in rural areas is negative. The negative effect in rural areas is due to negative spatial spillovers captured by the model. The spatial Durbin error model empirical results indicate that although LOB employment interacted with rurality significantly impacts county-level growth rates of population, employment, and income, they do not change the equilibrium relationship between these variables captured by the speed of convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of geographical proximity in fostering connections and knowledge flows between innovative actors ranks among the most controversial themes in the research of innovation systems, regional networks and new economic geography. While there is ample empirical evidence on the constituent force of co-location for the formation of research alliances, little attention has been paid to the actual consequences of geographical concentration of alliance partners for the subsequent performance of these linkages. In this paper, we address this underexplored issue and aim to complement the rare examples of studies on the relevance of geographical proximity for research outputs. We utilize original and unique survey data from collaborative R&D projects that were funded within the "Leading-Edge Cluster Competition" (LECC)—the main national cluster funding program in Germany in recent years. We find that the perception of the necessity of geographical proximity for project success is rather heterogeneous among the respondents of the funded projects. Moreover, the relationship between geographical distance and project success is by no means univocal and is mediated by various technological, organizational and institutional aspects. Our findings strongly support the assumption that the nature of knowledge involved determines the degree to which collaborators are reliant on being closely located to each other. The relevance of geographical proximity increases in exploration contexts when knowledge is novel and the innovation endeavor is more radical, while this effect is less pronounced for projects with a stronger focus on basic research. Moreover, geographical proximity and project satisfaction foster cross-fertilization effects of LECC projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether and how regional industrial structure/concentration influences firm productivity. Based on the firm-level data from China, the paper estimates firm productivity with regional structure conditioning on agglomeration effects and concludes that regional industrial structure plays little role in firm's output, but affects localization agglomeration, which in turn affects firm productivity. In other words, localization agglomeration is stronger in cities in which sectors are less dominated by a few large firms in their own sector. Our conclusions are robust to the classification of industries, intertemporal, and spatial dimensions of agglomeration externalities, alternative measures of regional industrial structure and agglomeration, and different spatial scales in which standard errors are clustered. An important policy implication of our findings is that China's industrial policies favoring large firms may be harmful to local economic development in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on Science and Technology Parks (STPs) is growing rapidly and, despite the positive impact of STPs on firms found by many studies, it remains unclear how STPs create value for tenants. In this paper, we study the STP supply side through a case study in a Swedish region. We identify two components of the business support provided by parks: a configuration-oriented component, and a process-oriented component. The former refers to the static design of the business support, and the latter to the active, hands-on support provided by parks' management. Both components must be planned carefully in order to deliver value to tenants. We also discuss some implications for policy and managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes municipal expenditures in the light of horizontal fiscal interactions. I investigate total expenditures and a set of non-earmarked expenditure subcategories in the largest German federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia. The empirical analysis is based on a Spatial Durbin Model in a panel for the years 2009–2015. Using a two-regime spatial matrix, I also examine the impact of agglomeration on the intensity of public expenditure interactions, thus testing the hypothesis that an agglomerated region can decrease the amount of public goods without losing mobile factors to the periphery. The findings indicate that significant municipal expenditure interaction effects do exist. The reaction functions also vary for different expenditure subcategories. Unlike spillover effects and fiscal competition, yardstick competition is an insignificant source of potential interactions. Expenditure interaction is fiercer if there is less agglomeration in a municipality. Urbanized and populous municipalities appear to benefit from agglomeration economies, a fact that enables them to spend less. Robustness checks confirm the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a recently proposed Euclidian measure to quantify inter-regional inequality in per capita GSP (gross state product), we study the convergence among Mexican states during the 1940–2010 period. In ten cases, we find that GSP inequality diverges while the rest of the states' GSP inequality can be described as the following catching-up or lagging behind processes. For the later processes, we also find evidence of structural breaks. The shifts in the evolution of regional inequality in Mexico for various cases coincide with two distinct periods: the "Mexican Miracle" phase and the "oil/debt crisis" phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists recognize that the local availability of higher human capital represents significant knowledge spillovers, especially for innovation process. This research question is tested on a sample of Italian manufacturing companies, originally edited by Mediocredito Centrale and currently carried out by the Capitalia Banking Group's Research Department over two waves: 2001–2003 and 2004–2007. The aim of our work is to investigate the role of human capital (measured as educational level) for innovation process in particular contexts, where the highest educated people and the highest innovation levels are differently located. To this end, we select the Italy country, characterized by a relevant North-South economic divide. Our analysis suggests that the positive spillovers can arise because the firms generate more technology innovation than those located in areas with higher educational attainment workforce. The more efficient macro regions who produce highly skilled graduates have, in a sense, saturated their contribution on firms' innovation (i.e. that have already reached their steady state). The role of some factors (size, technological and territorial) to the probability of firm's innovation has also been investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyses the effect of the institutional design of public spending on technical efficiency. The model controls for technical efficiency using institutional variables for earmarked and autonomous revenues and assesses them using two stochastic frontier models. The main findings show that expenditures by Mexican municipalities, regardless of type, reduce the technical efficiency of local production. Results support the Brennan–Buchanan collusion hypothesis that decentralization generates an increase in government spending, but it does not translate to higher social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been widely observed that financial support is the key to entrepreneurial activities. The last decade has witnessed tremendous growth of startups and financial markets in China. Despite "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" becoming a national agenda item in China in recent years, few studies have investigated how financial development is related to entrepreneurial activities across cities in such an emerging economy. Drawing on a unique dataset of over 5000 startups in China, this study investigates the geographical characteristics of startup cities and the role of finance in promoting startups across Chinese cities. We find that there exists significant geographical concentration of startups. Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are the most important startup cities in the country. Regression results show that strong financial supports from both equity financing and credit financing are beneficial to the development of startups at the regional level. Venture capital availability is found to have very positive effects on the entrepreneurial activities in a city. The agglomeration of startups in financial centers and neighboring regions indicate that there exist strong positive externalities of metropolitan cities where the key financial, political, and technology resources are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a significant number of papers has been published providing alternative measures of progress and well-being to Gross Domestic Product. Most of these papers differs in terms of their theoretical approach as well as their purpose and statistical methodology used to define what well-being is and how to measure it. In this paper, we construct a well-being indicator for the Italian provinces that shows a high degree of heterogeneity not only between the Northern and Southern Italian provinces, but also among adjacent provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "entrepreneurial ecosystem" metaphor is capturing attention in academia, industry, and government. The entrepreneurial ecosystem approach is used in corporate, national, or local contexts, and has grown in prominence given the vital need to transform economies around the creation of innovative ideas, products, services, and technologies. Entrepreneurial ecosystems involve a network, a system, of interactions of individuals and organizations, like financial intermediaries, universities and research institutions, suppliers and customers, multinational companies, or the government. The entrepreneurial ecosystem literature has thus mainly focused on identifying the relevant stakeholders like entrepreneurial firms and entrepreneurs and how they interact with other stakeholders within a more or less defined system. Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach, the literature has almost overlooked and largely ignored the governance of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This special Issue of Small Business Economics critically examines issues concerning the governance of entrepreneurial ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban sprawl is rapidly occurring in many Spanish urban areas. The objective of this paper is to evaluate how the trend of building dispersion of new residential areas may be affecting the fiscal stability of local governments in Spain. The wide diversity of the characteristics of Spanish urban areas as well as the existence of very similar local fiscal structures make this case particularly interesting. After delimiting the urban areas and the spatial unit of analysis, a precise index of urban sprawl, calculated with geo-referenced digital cartography, is used. Using the spatially disaggregated information of taxes from the Spanish National Institute for Fiscal Studies allows for a measure of fiscal burden by local areas and the ability to distinguish among types of taxes. Control variables are also available at the local level from the Spanish Census and other databases. Two methods, quantile regressions and ordinary least squares, are used in order to measure not only the average change but the heterogeneity across the distribution of the local fiscal burden associated with the changes in urban sprawl, whilst controlling for other explanatory variables in the model. The results indicate that higher levels of urban sprawl imply higher local fiscal burden. By tax categories, the phenomenon of urban sprawl particularly affects both local indirect and direct taxation. These results suggest that local decision-makers should consider urban planning as one of the fundamental tools to assure long-term local fiscal sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the efficiency of land taxation in a system of jurisdictions with absentee ownership of land. The government of a jurisdiction exploits absentee owners and overtaxes land. Hence, even if land taxation does not distort the use of land, it distorts the allocation of resources between the private and public goods, creating an efficiency loss. If individuals choose their land ownership by trading it in the asset market, they do not necessarily choose an efficient ownership. The government of a jurisdiction also imposes an absentee owner surcharge, reducing the return to absentee ownership and eliminating absentee ownership. Surcharges thus improve the efficiency of land taxation in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial inequality measures should take into account the geographical position of the data of reference if the focus is on the spatial aspects of territorial inequality. However, these traditional spatial inequality measures like the Theil index do not distinguish among different locational situations. On the other hand, when analyzing the spatial decomposition of inequality, it is usual to express global inequality as a weighted sum of inequality values calculated for population subgroups (within component) plus the contribution arising out of differences among subgroup means (between component). Nevertheless, it is unclear whether the reported within and between contributions have been driven primarily by specific factors related to the spatial level of research or by neighborhood factors. The present paper has two main objectives. The first consists into propose a simple way to measure the role of the geographical position in economic inequality. The second aim is to provide an approach to decompose global inequality into its within-country and between-country components assessing which part of these components could be related to neighborhood factors. The proposals are illustrated for the case of European countries. Inequality within each of the countries and inequality between countries can be filtered of neighborhood components, showing inequality components related to specific (local) factors. For a considered spatial level, this exploratory approach can highlight the relevance of future place-based policies versus policies able to support and promote regional neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glioblastoma tumors are characterized by a high phenotype diversity among patients and by a high cellular heterogeneity within each tumor instance. Here, we report the effects of photon irradiation of various dosage and regime onto cells of two reference (T98G and A172) and two novel (T2 and R1) human glioblastoma cell lines. In contrast to the A172 and R1 lines, where all cells were perished upon relatively low-dose irradiation, a population of resistant cells within the T98G and T2 lines survived even after a high-dose irradiation. These radio-resistant cells were large single- or multinucleated non-proliferating cells, that remained viable over one month after irradiation. The cells had markedly elevated expression levels of genes coding for factors promoting growth and angiogenesis, components of the extracellular matrix, and marker genes in-herent for mesenchymal phenotype. The expression profile of these genes in the radiation-induced growth-arrested cells T98G and Т2 was similar to that of the cell lines treated with another genotoxic factor, the fotemustine. Therefore, radio-resistant growth-arrested cells are characterized by a high activity of genes encoding proteins affecting both the tumor cells and their microenvironment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosperity and economic growth require robust specialization and exchange. This means the formation and maintenance of numerous complex supply chains. These are emergent and include supply chains for things and supply chains for ideas. The former involve transactions; the latter can be via transactions and/or realized positive externalities. All supply chains have a geographic dimension which is also emergent. Firms carefully choose what to make vs what to buy and also where to sell or buy it, near or far. The whole system tends to be a pattern of locations that denote realized transactions (and transactions costs) as well as realized externalities. The city remains a competitive producer if these relationships are encouraged with the attendant costs contained. Cities are "engines of growth." They offer attractive supply chain formation and management opportunities, including the various spatially situated supply chains for things and ideas. The latter are more complex than textbook discussions of non-rival goods suggest. People are keen to identify and acquire useful knowledge. Consider (1) the advantages of open-source knowledge sharing have been acknowledged; (2) ideas often denote complex tacit knowledge exchange, and (3) access to useful knowledge is priced in land markets and impacts location choice. Favorable networking and location opportunities are significant. Flexible land markets facilitate the availability of such opportunities. Access to pools of human capital is clearly beneficial, but the ability to tailor access to the peculiar requirements of the firm is even better. Detailed firm location data for various sectors for the Los Angeles metropolitan areas are analyzed to support our claims. We estimate Ripley k-functions and note differences by industry as well as firm size. There is agglomeration that is near as well as far. This finding complicates "death of distance" as well as "clustering" discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do people and firms choose to relocate to new cities? We argue that this difficult yet consequential choice is often poorly made, or not made at all, resulting in undermobility and consequent losses in individual utility and aggregate social welfare. We propose a behavioural economic theory of why this happens and the predictable directions in which failure occurs in terms of characteristic biases and heuristics in city choice (including status quo bias, loss aversion, endowment effect, availability heuristics, present bias, social norms, anchoring, elimination heuristics, sunk cost effects, and regret aversion). We examine how cities and their regional context might mitigate this problem by improving information as inputs into choice and by redesigning the choice architecture to embed effective choice heuristics into city search and match databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social relationships play at least three important roles in entrepreneurship. They help to determine who sees entrepreneurship as an available and desirable career path. Entrepreneurs use their contacts to raise funds for and to recruit employees and partners to their ventures. Social relationships also influence where and when entrepreneurs want to spend their leisure time. Because of these factors, entrepreneurs tend to found their firms in the places that they live (and in the industries in which they have been employed). That, in turn, implies that industries will tend to become and remain concentrated in a small number of places, even when firms do not benefit from this clustering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the impact of the Stand Your Ground (SYG) law on gun deaths by degree of urbanization. Unlike firearm homicides the definition of firearm deaths does not depend on the broadening of the self-defense provision that the SYG law represents. Using a difference-in-difference design, we find that the SYG law had no impact on gun deaths at the state level. However, once the U.S. states are disaggregated into portions by degree of urbanization—central city, suburb, small urban area and rural area—we find that the law increased gun deaths in the central cities and the suburbs, and had no impact in smaller urban areas and rural areas. These findings are consistent with the fact that there is a great divide between urban and rural areas in terms of ownership and usage of guns, attitudes towards guns, and the implications thereof. The finding of increased violence in the suburbs is of particular interest in the historical backdrop whereby the growth of the suburbs, to a large extent, may have been motivated by a desire to escape crime and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the role of financial shocks, such as the economic crisis since 2006, in the reallocation process of employment flows in high-tech and low-tech industries. The contributions of the paper to the literature are threefold. First, a general framework of employment growth is estimated by using a dataset made of 879 large international firms observed for the period 2002-2010 and localized in three economic areas: USA, Japan and Europe. Second, we develop a database merging the firms’ data with EPO patents data. In particular, the innovation variable is proxied by the R&D capital stock. Third contribution to the literature is to analyze the extent to which the economic crisis may affect the sensitivity of employment with respect to own innovation but also with respect to outside innovation, the R&D spillovers, in high-tech and low-tech industries. The empirical results suggest some important and significant results. This comparative finding could be the source of relevant industrial policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity is currently at the centre of a lively scientific debate in which scholars from different fields are engaged. The interest on such topic is mainly due to its potential positive impact on economic development; thus, understanding the determinants of creativity becomes important in terms of policy decisions. Although the existing literature has identified some determinants of creativity, evidence on the specific impact of such determinants on particular creative talents and on the degree of creative complexity within a local area is still scant. This work tries to fill this gap starting from the thought that the mental cross-fertilization of talents in different fields is what stimulates the best and most original ideas. By considering artistic, scientific, and economic creativities as the main modes in which creativity can show itself, the paper explores empirically the relation between local socio-economic characteristics and the concurrent presence of multiple creative talents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]