Making Regional Competence Blocs Attractive - On the Critical Role of Entrepreneurship and Firm Turnover in Regional Economic Growth

Radically new technology offers the prospect of a New and high productivity Economy for the industrially advanced economies. These opportunities are rapidly taken advantage of by innovative firms operating across national borders. Rapid globalization, therefore, makes the regional dimension of economic growth increasingly overshadow the national dimension. Economic transformation, furthermore, is also being pushed by a still ongoing (2003) severe recession , forcing previously successful firms to shed resources and making industrial assets available in the market at depressed prices. Technologies embodied in those assets are often globally mobile. Even large regions or nations, however, may lack a sufficiently broad commercialization competence to locally identify, capture and industrialize all free floating technologies. Hence, also previously prosperous regions may risk missing the boat to the New Economy, and history is full of such regional failures. Therefore, even large regional economies will depend on foreign investors, and policy authorities in many industrial regions have initiated policy races both to attract new resources and to shore up the outward flow that might otherwise occur through the intermediation of global companies. The outcome of all this may be the creation of other concentrations of excellence among the rich industrial economies than those created in the wake of the previous industrial revolution some 150 years ago. Being attractive for advanced investments is synonymous to being both internationally competitive and offering a rich supply of complementary industrial services to potential investors. The local capacity (receiver competence) to identify and locally commercialize technological spillovers is always more narrow than the supplies of technology. Competence bloc theory is used to explain and characterize the locally attractive attributes and to demonstrate how they can be enhanced through policy to attract global resources.The Lake Mälar/Baltic region in Sweden is used to clarify how policy action may stem the outward flow by making the region attractive for imports of industrial competence and inward investment emphasizing the need to import industrially competent venture capital to broaden the local receiver competence and to support local new firm establishement based on locally available technology. The Bavaria/Baden- Württemberg (B/W-W) region in Southern Germany is used to illustrate the opposite, namely a region that may possess the broad based capacity to locally reinvest in locally released technologies. For Sweden this amounts to a repeat of the 17th and 18th century industrial policy of Swedish kings to stimulate the foreign immigration of skilled labor, only that this time the purpose is to build new industry for economic growth, not to build an imperial war machine. The dramatic restructuring over markets in Sweden holds the promise, if succesful, to be more innovative than the B/B-W restructuring, but the Swedish case is more risky, not least because of a political unwillingness to introduce the necessary institutional reforms.Competence Bloc theory; Experimentally Organized Economy; Globalization; New Economy; Policy Competition; Regional Industrial Attractor; Social Capital; Venture Capital Competence

A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE IMPACT OF THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS IN ROMANIA

The outbreak of the financial crisis in Romania at the end of 2008 marked a turning point from the strong economic growth of the previous years. Starting from the nature and the key features of the current economic crisis, we examine its impacts in Romania, both from the national and regional perspective, and the corresponding policy responses.economic crisis, regions, Herfindahl specialisation index, location quotients, Romania

IMPACT OF ECONOMIC CRISES ON FIRMS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

This paper examines literature that analyzes how economic crises affect firms. Eighty-five studies were examined with the overall aim of finding out the impact of crises on firms. Studies published between 1805 and 2018 were sampled purposively through digital database searches, to establish the most recent literature on the impact of crises on firms. Consequently, the majority of the work assessed focuses on the global economic crisis of 2007 and its effect on firms in a different country and regional contexts. The literature demonstrates that economic crises affect firms negatively and positively with a tendency for crises to affect firms more negatively. Negative impacts include a decline in demand, fall in profitability, debt problems, operational challenges, bankruptcy, loss of goodwill or public image, uncertainty, and scale down of operations. Positive impacts comprise stimulation of efficiency, and improved performance for strategic firms The review further establishes that the impact of crises on firms varies from firm to firm, which requires that to examine the impacts of economic crises on firms requires that the firms are studied on a case-to-case basis.                                         

The offshore services value chain : developing countries and the crisis

This paper analyzes the recent evolution and impact of the global economic crisis on the offshore services industry. Using a global value chains framework, the authors classify the offshore services sector in a comprehensive set of general and industry-specific activities that correspond to different segments and stages in the value-adding process for services. Through an analysis of the impact of the economic crisis on the industry, a small decline in demand was found; however this did not cause any structural changes in the market. The crisis has created two opposing effects: general contraction of demand by existing customers due to the recession; and, at the same time, a substitution effect by which new services are being moved from developed countries to emerging economies in search of cost reduction. The paper concludes that the offshore services industry will continue to offer growth opportunities for developing countries not only among existing market players, but also a range of new countries. The industry has the potential to become an important source for employment and economic growth around the globe.ICT Policy and Strategies,E-Business,Water and Industry,Housing&Human Habitats,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures

Evaluation of the main achievements of cohesion policy programmes and projects over the longer term in 15 selected regions: case study North East England

This report presents the Pilot Case Study for North East England as part of the study ‘Evaluation of the Main Achievements of Cohesion Policy Programmes over the Longer Term in 15 Selected Regions (from 1989-1993 Programming Period to the Present)’ which is being managed by the European Policies Research Centre and London School of Economics

Exploratory Research into the Resilience of Farming Systems during Periods of Hardship

This paper investigates the management strategies and responses used by New Zealand sheep and beef farmers to ensure resilience during periods of hardship. Using two, farm level surveys conducted in 1986 and 2010, some aspects of resilient farming systems were identified. Despite apparent hardship current farmers seemed more willing to take risks, with many more borrowing to invest in on farm developments than those in 1986. The main similarity between time periods was the greatest response to economic changes being the adoption of a low input policy. This result was quite significant, as conventional farmers are generally believed to resort to other strategies or responses.Resilience, New Zealand, indicators, sustainable agriculture, strategies, Agribusiness, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Production Economics,

Re-conceptualising strategy in design management education

The aim of this paper is to explain the current place of ‘strategy’ in design management education in the UK. The research questions concern the extent to which design management education meets the needs of future strategic roles in management and secondly the ways in which design management education is keeping abreast with current theory and practice of management strategy. The paper draws on research from a UK research council project, The Metamorphosis of Design Management Network (MDMN).The methodology uses a qualitative approach to analyse the transcripts and activities undertaken in symposia over a five year period from 2007-2012, with a focus on four events held from 2010-12. The findings on education and strategic designer development were matched against the content analysis of strategy in conference papers presented at British Academy of Management from 2009-13. The findings demonstrate the exposure of students to organisations and different design contexts. However other strategic management developments in strategy-as-practice, dynamic capabilities and scenario building provide new opportunities to extend design management education. The conclusion summarises the opportunities for design education and the development of students as strategic designers through new interdisciplinary approaches

Bimodality In Interim Reports: An Analysts' View

Cumulative abnormal residuals (cars) show how markets adjust to published information. Theoretically, cars are assumed to display unit normal behavior.  Despite its merits, car has proved to be a somewhat imprecise measure of market response to published information.  In practice, cars exhibit considerable deviation from theoretical unit normal behavior. Three disparities between theory and practice can be pinpointed.  These are car: (1) location, (2) shape, and (3) stability.  In our previous work we have demonstrated that cars are often bimodally distributed.  This finding shows one reason why it takes semistrong efficient markets some time to digest new information. Cars, for the time period during which markets analyze the new value determining data, are usually bimodally distributed. One mode of the distribution represents the impact of good news. The other peak is caused by bad news.  The valley, between the two peaks, indicates the influence of neutral news.  This paper analyzes the interim reports, which constitute the data for our previous related studies. This research identifies the type of new information that creates bimodal cars

Exploring key economic sectors and groups of sectors in Scotland; 1998, 2004, 2007

Different methods and criteria exist for determining ‘key’ economic sectors. The Scottish Government identifies a number of ‘key’ sectors, although it is not clear which metrics it used to choose these. It is likely that these sectors are considered to be ‘key’ in delivering the Scottish Government’s policy priorities. This differs from a more formally defined economic approach to determining key sectors. However, even within the economics literature, there are different ways of thinking about which sectors are ‘key’. This short paper presents one approach to determining individual and groups of ‘key’ sectors. We will explain why these approaches are not necessarily equivalent, and what value is added in moving from considering sectors individually to analysing the impact of sectors in groups. We begin with a non-technical overview of the methods we employ, before discussing the database used in this analysis. We then present the results of applying this method for Scotland for three time periods: 1998, 2004, and 2007. We mainly focus on sectoral output, but we also include one set of results which look at key employment sectors. In the discussion of our results we concentrate on two things. First, we are interested in which sectors are identified as important in Scotland in each time period. Second, we investigate how those sectors have changed between 1998, 2004 and 2007