Export west: How Mountain West metros can lead national export growth and boost competitiveness

In the beginning of 2010, with U.S. output growth modest and job growth nonexistent, President Obama devoted a portion of his State of the Union Address to “fi xing the problems that are hampering our growth.” One of these problems, according to the president, was a lack of international export sales. The president linked an increase in exports to an increase in jobs, and pledged to double the nation’s exports over the next five years.2 Since then, export growth has emerged as a key tenet of numerous economic visions including those of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution which has suggested that the “next economy” in the West and nationally will likely be “export-oriented, lower-carbon, and innovation-driven.”3 This report focuses attention on the benefits of exporting and highlights the existing and emerging strengths—and some weaknesses—of the Intermountain West’s large metropolitan areas in global trade. Doubling exports, whether or not it happens in the next fi ve years, would be a major boon to the Intermountain West’s largest metropolitan areas. Such a doubling would bring the West’s large metros thousands of good jobs and see them expand on their existing strengths in the world economy. The prospect of such gains is especially attractive in the Mountain zone, moreover, given the present moment of self-refl ection in a region that appears faced with the partial breakdown of its traditional migration- and real estate-driven growth machine. With such sources of domestically-driven growth looking less reliable, export-based development holds out one possible new source of sustainable job-creation and broadly shared prosperity. International exports, after all, present an important opportunity for the Mountain metros and promise tremendous benefi ts to workers, companies, regions, and the nation as a whole. Export markets in Brazil, India, and China are growing rapidly at a time of slower projected domestic growth. Export-related jobs pay relatively well. And for metropolitan area industry clusters and firms, international engagement and competition brings its own benefits of heightened innovation and productivity growth. In this respect, it is a good thing that metropolitan areas in the Mountain West already have depth in a variety of export industries, and in some cases enjoy high rates of industrial innovation—both a result of firms’ engagement in international competition and a driver of further global competitiveness itself. All in all, numerous metropolitan areas in the Mountain West could be well-positioned to benefit from the current national focus on doubling exports and from targeted metropolitan efforts to expand the foreign markets for their goods and services. To take advantage of their global connections and the new federal focus on exports, however, the region’s metropolitan areas-particularly those that have been heavily oriented to population growth and real estate development—will have to rethink what they do and how they do it. They will have to look outward. They will have to be more innovative, both in determining what new products and services they develop and in retooling their existing activities to capture a larger share of global demand. And they will need to be deliberate and strategic in their efforts. In sum, while bolstering exports will not replace the thousands of jobs lost to the Great Recession—many of them real estate and locally-serving jobs that disappeared once migration and consumption slowed down—the export of goods and services is likely to be an important source of quality and sustainable job growth for the region in the future. Western leaders should at a minimum investigate that possibility and consider the data and information presented in the following pages

Consumers' attitude towards farmers' markets: an explorative analysis in Tuscany

Farmers Markets (FMs) around the world are often considered as one key response to the less sustainable conventional food production systems. Despite the economic crisis, international studies show that the most important factor leading people to buy fresh products in these points of sale is the quality. In fact, consumers usually cite \better food quality", \locally produced foods", \higher social interaction" and \learning directly about the vendors and their food production practices", as the principal motivations in buying in FM environment. In this paper the results of a survey carried out in several FMs and shops in Tuscany are presented. A sample of consumers were interviewed on-site using a structured questionnaire. The attitude of respondent towards FM was assessed using a test scale composed of 16 items referring to five different features of this form of distribution, supposed to be relevant in the consumer choice: quality of products, direct contact with farmers, convenience, environmental sustainability, and support for rural development processes. The high level of reliability of the attitude scale allowed its use in performing a cluster analysis of observed units. The cluster analysis allowed to identify two groups of consumers with different characteristics both in term of socio-economic descriptive variables and in term of attitudes and motivations towards FMs.food miles,Alternative Food Networks (AFN),sustainability,Italy,Short Food Supply Chain (SFSC)

Partnership in Social Marketing Programs. Socially Responsible Companies and Non-Profit Organizations’ Engagement in Solving Society’s Problems

The development of social marketing, as an important area of analysis and research, has opened up multiple opportunities for organizations to engage in society’s problems. Whether we talk about non-profit organizations engaged in health or environmental programs or private companies willing to act responsibly, their goal is a common one: to help improve people's lives by promoting responsible behaviour in society. This paper aims to extend the area of research for "cause-related marketing" by highlighting the importance of partnerships between non-profit organizations and companies based on social responsibility. As a result, the article proposes and analyzes four features of social partnership: motivation, promotion, efficiency and law effect. The study examines the Romanian consumers’ opinions regarding the need of collaboration between corporations and non-profit organizations for achieving common social goals. Using the structural equation model, the paper describes the relations between each of the variables considered and social partnership and measures the extent to which these variables can influence the collaboration between organizations. The article tests and then proposes a model of the considered variables. The results obtained describe the characteristics of social partnership marketing programs and their importance for the consumer.partnership, cause-related marketing, social problems, non-profit organization, socially responsible company, social marketing program

Metropolitan Cities under Transition: The Example of Hamburg/Germany

In the intermediate and long run energy prices and hence transportation costs are expected to increase significantly. According to the reasoning of the New Economic Geography this will strengthen the spreading forces and thus affect the economic landscape. Other influencing factors on the regional distribution of economic activity include the general trends of demographic and structural change. In industrialized countries, the former induces an overall reduction of population and labor force whereas the latter implies an ongoing shift to the tertiary sector and increased specialization. Basically, cities provide better conditions to cope with these challenges than rural regions. Since the general trends affect all economic spaces similarly, city-specific factors also have to be considered in order to derive the impact of rising energy costs on future urban development. With respect to Hamburg regional peculiarities include the overall importance of the harbor as well as the existing composition of the industry and the service sector. The analysis highlights that rising energy and transportation costs will open up a range of opportunities for the metropolitan region.urban development; regional specialization; structural change; demographic change; transportation costs.

Bridging the business data divide: insights into primary and secondary data use by business researchers

Academic librarians and data specialists use a variety of approaches to gain insight into how researcher data needs and practices vary by discipline, including surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Some published studies included small numbers of business school faculty and graduate students in their samples, but provided little, if any, insight into variations within the business discipline. Business researchers employ a variety of research designs and data collection methods and engage in quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The purpose of this paper is to provide deeper insight into primary and secondary data use by business graduate students at one Canadian university based on a content analysis of a corpus of 32 Master of Science in Management theses. This paper explores variations in research designs and data collection methods between and within business subfields (e.g., accounting, finance, operations and information systems, marketing, or organization studies) in order to better understand the extent to which these researchers collect and analyze primary data or secondary data sources, including commercial or open data sources. The results of this analysis will inform the work of data specialists and liaison librarians who provide research data management services for business school researchers

STRATEGIC APPROACH IN MODEL OF SCHOOLING ”K-12”

Electronic learning is such aspect of modern learning where lectures, examination or instruction performs exclusively through Internet, while the percentage of learning and using ICT is over 80%. Key elements of e-learning pattern are technological mainframe, curriculum, interaction, strategic management and marketing. Model K-12 gives his contribution in organization of education and time flexibility, provides quality communication and gains higher profit. The paper addresses model of schooling K-12 which needs to be compared with current stage in Republic of Croatia. It is confusing that the term of e-learning industry still does not find itself in Croatian economical terminology, although its value in 2008 was ranked on 38 billions of euros.e-learning, model K-12, education management, KM, ICT

The Role of Marketing in Adult Permanent Vocational Training in the Context of the Current Economy

The problem of permanent vocational training is important in sustaining the vocational conversion of the working class. A change of views and mentality is desirable regarding vocational training, in the sense that people need to be more aware of the importance of permanent learning, more motivated in order to broaden their horizon and more willing to develop their professional skills. The labour market in Romania has suffered important changes due to the economic transition process, which has been materialized especially on the level of reducing the number of active workers and of employees, thus maintaining a relatively constant rate of unemployment and affecting the labour marketing especially by a limited number of jobs.network, training, marketing, adults