20,589 research outputs found
Lobbying at the local level: Social assets in Russian firms
IIn the planned economy firms were made responsible for providing their workers with so-cial services, such as housing, day care and medical care. In the transforming Russia of the 1990s, social assets were to be transferred from industrial enterprises to the public sector. The law on divestment provided little more than general principles. Thus, for a period of several years, property rights concerning a major part of social assets, most notably hous-ing, were not properly defined, as transfer decisions were largely left to the local level players. Strikingly, the time when assets were divested varied considerably across firms. In this paper we utilize recent survey data from 404 medium and large industrial enterprises in 40 Russian regions and apply survival data analysis to explore the determinants of dives-titure timing. Our results show that in municipalities with higher shares of own revenues in their budget and thus weaker fiscal incentives, firms used their social assets as leverage to extract budget assistance and other forms of preferential treatment from local authorities. We also find evidence that less competitive firms were using social assets to cushion them-selves from product market competition. At the same time, we do not find any role for lo-cal labor market conditions in the divestment process.housing divestment; lobbying; firms; muncipalities; Russia
To Divest or not to Divest? Social Assets in Russian Firms
In the planned economy firms were made responsible for providing their workers with social services, such as housing, day care and medical care. In the transforming Russia of the 1990s, social assets were to be transferred from industrial enterprises to the public sector. A law on divestment was put into force but it provided mostly general principles. Thus, for a period of several years, property rights over a major part of social assets, most notably housing, were not properly defined as the transfer decisions were largely left for the local level players to make. Strikingly, the time when assets were divested varied considerably across firms. In this paper we take a political economy approach and utilize recent survey data from 404 medium and large industrial enterprises in 40 Russian regions to study the effects different forms of bargaining between the firm and the municipality may have on the timing decisions. In particular, we apply survival data analysis to explore the determinants of the divestiture timing. Our results show that the firms which divested assets later receive more benefits from the local authorities, especially in places where there are more benefits to extract (i.e. the local budget is richer). Further, we find evidence that the firms which transferred assets later performed relatively worse in 2002 in terms of profitability, productivity and investments. Finally, the data shows that poorly defined property rights have an adverse effect on the incentives to invest in social assets, and hence on the quality of public service provision.
Issues on the residentsâ perceptions of the impacts of tourism development: the case-study of GuimarĂŁes
In recent years peripheral regions, such as GuimarĂŁes, in the Northwest of Portugal, has been experiencing the expansion of its tourism industry. This occurred, may be, as part of the wish felt by a large number of tourists of reaching ĂąâŹĆunspoiltù⏠landscapes and more ĂąâŹĆauthenticalù⏠experiences (Nepal, 2008). After the nomination by U.N.E.S.C.O., in 2001, of its historical centre as world heritage, the city of GuimarĂŁes is now in the process of hosting the 2012 European Capital of Culture. These recent facts helped to reinforce its external visibility and cultural significance and put it in the trail to become a more consolidated cultural tourism destination. This paper aims presenting a few results of a survey that envisaged capturing the GuimarĂŁes residentsâ perceptions of tourism effects and attitudes regarding the tourists. The survey was implemented between January and March 2010 to a convenience sample of 540 inhabitants of the municipality of GuimarĂŁes. The results show that the GuimarĂŁes` residents keep a strong positive perception of the tourism benefits. The more or less favourable perception of tourism impacts the survey respondents kept are strongly correlated with some demographic features, such as age, gender and level of education. As expected, we got a more positive perception among the younger cohorts of age and the ones endowed with a higher level of education.
A stochastic approach for quantifying immigrant integration: the Spanish test case
We apply stochastic process theory to the analysis of immigrant integration.
Using a unique and detailed data set from Spain, we study the relationship
between local immigrant density and two social and two economic immigration
quantifiers for the period 1999-2010. As opposed to the classic time-series
approach, by letting immigrant density play the role of "time", and the
quantifier the role of "space" it become possible to analyze the behavior of
the quantifiers by means of continuous time random walks. Two classes of
results are obtained. First we show that social integration quantifiers evolve
following pure diffusion law, while the evolution of economic quantifiers
exhibit ballistic dynamics. Second we make predictions of best and worst case
scenarios taking into account large local fluctuations. Our stochastic process
approach to integration lends itself to interesting forecasting scenarios
which, in the hands of policy makers, have the potential to improve political
responses to integration problems. For instance, estimating the standard
first-passage time and maximum-span walk reveals local differences in
integration performance for different immigration scenarios. Thus, by
recognizing the importance of local fluctuations around national means, this
research constitutes an important tool to assess the impact of immigration
phenomena on municipal budgets and to set up solid multi-ethnic plans at the
municipal level as immigration pressure build
Geospatial database generation from digital newspapers: use case for risk and disaster domains.
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.The generation of geospatial databases is expensive in terms of time
and money. Many geospatial users still lack spatial data. Geographic
Information Extraction and Retrieval systems can alleviate this problem.
This work proposes a method to populate spatial databases automatically
from the Web. It applies the approach to the risk and disaster domain
taking digital newspapers as a data source. News stories on digital
newspapers contain rich thematic information that can be attached
to places. The use case of automating spatial database generation is
applied to Mexico using placenames. In Mexico, small and medium
disasters occur most years. The facts about these are frequently mentioned
in newspapers but rarely stored as records in national databases.
Therefore, it is difficult to estimate human and material losses of those
events.
This work present two ways to extract information from digital news
using natural languages techniques for distilling the text, and the national
gazetteer codes to achieve placename-attribute disambiguation.
Two outputs are presented; a general one that exposes highly relevant
news, and another that attaches attributes of interest to placenames.
The later achieved a 75% rate of thematic relevance under qualitative
analysis
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A practitioner's guide to 'Imagine', the systemic and prospective sustainability analysis
The purpose of the Mediterranean Action Plans Coastal Area Management Programme is to help Mediterranean countries implement a sustainable management process for their coastal areas. This in particular implies thinking collectively about possible futures by taking into account past developments and the present situation of the area in question. To do so and right from the very start, the Blue Plan has assisted teams involved in the CAMPs to use the systemic and prospective approach so as to highlight priorities, forecast negative developments and suggest action to be taken to establish sustainable development in the Mediterranean's coastal areas. What do we mean by sustainable development? The Blue Plan adheres to a definition that is a blend of what you find in the Bruntland Report and at the FAO, 'sustainable development is one that respects the environment, is technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable, making it possible to meet the needs of present generations without jeopardising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'.
In this framework the 'Imagine' analysis of systemic and prospective sustainability now proposes a set of tools and methods (a methodological corpus) to describe, assess and examine the level of sustainability of an eco-socio system in the past, present and future by means of indicators and a participatory process that considers local actors to be experts at their level
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