Tourism and integrated development: a geographic perspective

This article discusses the influence of tourism on integrated development from spatial and temporal points of view. The growth of tourism as an activity has been acknowledged from all parts of the world and it appears the tourism sector is making a lot of contribution to economic development of countries that have developed their tourism potentials. Many empirical studies have come up with evidence that suggests that there exists a relationship between tourism demand and other variables such as transportation and spatial behaviour of tourists. Due to the infancy of tourism as a development strategy in the developing countries only little work has been done to address theoretical underpinnings of tourism and integrated development within the geographic framework. The importance of spatial integration makes geography an integral aspect of development that may be of invaluable relevance to the understanding of tourism growth. Arguments in this paper are marshalled on three levels: the geographers’ view of integrated development; tourism and economic development; and geographic question in tourism and integrated development. It is believed that with the integrated development of tourism at all geographic scales, spatial inequity would be drastically reduced

Economic Complexity Unfolded: Interpretable Model for the Productive Structure of Economies

Economic complexity reflects the amount of knowledge that is embedded in the productive structure of an economy. It resides on the premise of hidden capabilities - fundamental endowments underlying the productive structure. In general, measuring the capabilities behind economic complexity directly is difficult, and indirect measures have been suggested which exploit the fact that the presence of the capabilities is expressed in a country's mix of products. We complement these studies by introducing a probabilistic framework which leverages Bayesian non-parametric techniques to extract the dominant features behind the comparative advantage in exported products. Based on economic evidence and trade data, we place a restricted Indian Buffet Process on the distribution of countries' capability endowment, appealing to a culinary metaphor to model the process of capability acquisition. The approach comes with a unique level of interpretability, as it produces a concise and economically plausible description of the instantiated capabilities

Geography of local configurations

A $d$-dimensional binary Markov random field on a lattice torus is considered. As the size $n$ of the lattice tends to infinity, potentials $a=a(n)$ and $b=b(n)$ depend on $n$. Precise bounds for the probability for local configurations to occur in a large ball are given. Under some conditions bearing on $a(n)$ and $b(n)$, the distance between copies of different local configurations is estimated according to their weights. Finally, a sufficient condition ensuring that a given local configuration occurs everywhere in the lattice is suggested.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AAP630 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Issues in front-end decision-making on projects

The importance of the front-end decision-making phase in projects is being increasingly recognized - the need to do the right project is on a par with doing the project right. This area is underrepresented in the literature, but there are a number of key themes that run throughout, identifying key issues or difficulties during this stage. This article looks at some of these themes and includes: the need for alignment between organizational strategy and the project concept; dealing with complexity, in particular the systemicity and interrelatedness within project decisions; consideration of the ambiguity implicit in all major projects; taking into account psychological and political biases within estimation of benefits and costs; consideration of the social geography and politics within decision-making groups; and preparation for the turbulence within the project environment, including the maintenance of strategic alignment

Doing evolution in economic geography

Evolutionary approaches in economic geography face questions about the relationships between their concepts, theories, methods, politics, and policy implications. Amidst the growing but unsettled consensus that evolutionary approaches should employ plural methodologies, the aims here are, first, to identify some of the difficult issues confronting those working with different frameworks. The concerns comprise specifying and connecting research objects, subjects, and levels; handling agency and context; engaging and integrating the quantitative and the qualitative; comparing cases; and, considering politics, policy, and praxis. Second, the purpose is to articulate a distinctive geographical political economy approach, methods, and illustrative examples in addressing these issues. Bringing different views of evolution in economic geography into dialogue and disagreement renders methodological pluralism a means toward improved understanding and explanation rather than an end in itself. Confronting such thorny matters needs to be embedded in our research practices and supported by greater openness; more and better substantiation of our conceptual, theoretical, and empirical claims; enhanced critical reflection; and deeper engagement with politics, policy, and praxis

Scaling and Universality in City Space Syntax: between Zipf and Matthew

We report about universality of rank-integration distributions of open spaces in city space syntax similar to the famous rank-size distributions of cities (Zipf's law). We also demonstrate that the degree of choice an open space represents for other spaces directly linked to it in a city follows a power law statistic. Universal statistical behavior of space syntax measures uncovers the universality of the city creation mechanism. We suggest that the observed universality may help to establish the international definition of a city as a specific land use pattern.Comment: 24 pages, 5 *.eps figure

Irish Sea Coastal Stakeholder Engagement in NW England consultation, participation, strategic purpose and rhetoric. Do you reap just what you sow?

The creation of a holistic more inclusive approach to marine management could be positively influenced by the development of well structured and sincere Stakeholder Engagement and Public Participation (SEPP) processes. However poorly designed frameworks and processes lacking sincerity may engender skepticism, mistrust and create barriers in the attainment of a thriving and diverse coastal economy During 2009 a public participation and stakeholder engagement policy has been used by government agencies, Defra and the Department of Energy and Climate Change to gauge public opinion within the marine and coastal environment of the Irish Sea. This concerns the development of Irish Sea Conservation Zones and the UK’s Nuclear Newbuild programme. Both issues have complex dynamics regarding their environmental, economic, societal and sustainability aspects. This paper studies two contrasting styles of SEPP deployed during this critical ‘first contact’ stage by a participatory observation approach and assesses how this phase may affect the development of the engagement process and how this may affect a project’s outcome

Assessing the disclosure protection provided by misclassification for survey microdata

Government statistical agencies often apply statistical disclosure limitation techniques to survey microdata to protect confidentiality. There is a need for ways to assess the protection provided. This paper develops some simple methods for disclosure limitation techniques which perturb the values of categorical identifying variables. The methods are applied in numerical experiments based upon census data from the United Kingdom which are subject to two perturbation techniques: data swapping and the post randomisation method. Some simplifying approximations to the measure of risk are found to work well in capturing the impacts of these techniques. These approximations provide simple extensions of existing risk assessment methods based upon Poisson log-linear models. A numerical experiment is also undertaken to assess the impact of multivariate misclassification with an increasing number of identifying variables. The methods developed in this paper may also be used to obtain more realistic assessments of risk which take account of the kinds of measurement and other non-sampling errors commonly arising in surveys