Is the impact of public investment neutral across the regional income distribution? Evidence from Mexico

This paper investigates the contribution of public investment to the reduction of regional inequalities, with a specific application to Mexico. We use quantile regressions to examine the impact of public investment on regional disparities according to the position of each region in the conditional distribution of regional income. Results confirm the hypothesis that regional inequalities can indeed be attributed to the regional distribution of public investment, where the observed pattern shows that public investment mainly helped to reduce regional inequalities between the richest regions.regional development, quantile regression, public investment

Protected areas as a chance for the local development. The National Park of "Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici" as a dynamising element in its area of influence.

Recent times, many countries influenced by its citizens had followed a strategy of create natural or national parks. The overriding motive appears to be the preservation of a recognisable unique area of natural wealth. Nevertheless, recent years have seen a rising demand for wildlife viewing. In this sense, the demand of outdoor recreation in general and wildlife viewing in particular has grown rapidly. The problem is that too many visitors imply that the wilderness aspect of the recreational experience is watered down and second it affects the wildlife itself. The set of problems facing protected areas management has to do with the possibility of harmonising aims; preservation and recreational use. Generally, protected areas are settled on economically slum areas with high ageing rate, with important process of rural depopulation and under-staffed in terms of equipment, services and infrastructures. In this respect, a proper management of these natural areas could imply an economic and social revitalisation of such regions. This paper analyses the social and economic impact of the National Park of Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici on its influence zone. The Park is located in Catalonia in the heart of the Pyrenees and it's the most genuine representation of mountainous area. This paper analyses also the different alternatives that had been developed and considers others that could be introduced in order to achieve a greater complicity between local communities, visitors and managers by the reinforcement of the national park as a positive element for every one.

Sustainability in the boardroom: An empirical examination of Dow Jones sustainability world index leaders

In recent years, there has been a virtual explosion of interest in corporate governance. Corporate scandals and the need to protect minority shareholders' interests, for example, are some of the reasons behind the development of corporate governance codes in numerous countries and corporations. At the same time, the concepts of "sustainable development", "corporate responsibility", and "corporate citizenship" have taken root in the business world. Although an extensive body of research treats the fields of corporate governance and sustainable development separately, less attention has been paid to the interaction between both fields. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by examining how corporate governance systems are evolving in order to integrate sustainable development thinking into them. We do so by analyzing the governance systems of the 18 corporations that are leading the market sectors considered by the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSWI). We present the results of our in depth analysis of the 18 cases and propose the Sustainable Corporate Governance Model that emerges from that analysis.Corporate governance; sustainable corporate governance; sustainable enterprise; sustainable development; business in society;

Using stakeholder dialogue as a source for new ideas. A dynamic capability underlying sustainable innovation

This paper attempts to gain a deeper understanding of the firm's ability for integrating stakeholder insights into the process of organisational innovation within the context of sustainable development. Given the early stage of empirical research on the topic, we used an exploratory case study method of two Spanish companies that have successfully learned from stakeholder dialogue and have generated innovations that are both beneficial for the company and for sustainable development in general. The evidence from the two case studies suggests the existence of two simple capabilities - stakeholder dialogue and stakeholder knowledge integration - for generating innovations in accordance with stakeholder needs. Whereas stakeholder dialogue leverages organisational resources that promote two-way communication, transparency and appropriate feedback to stakeholders, stakeholder knowledge integration relies on non-hierarchical structures, flexibility and openness to change. The paper sheds some light on the under-researched issue of linking stakeholder dialogue and sustainable innovation, and contributes to opening the 'black box' of dynamic capabilities and advancing in the understanding of this fundamental organisational concept.sustainable development; stakeholders; innovation; capabilities;

Political competition and the allocation of public investment in Mexico

This paper examines the causality between central government spending in regions and local elections, in an environment of increasing electoral competition and a undefined decentralisation. This study examines Mexican elections during the period 1990-1995 where the main party started loosing part of its influence and there were many claims of use of the budget to favour the central governing party. We employ data on public investment and municipalities ruled by the PRI in each Mexican region. The evidence shows that there is opportunistic behaviour of the central government using public investment to gain local control of pressures for decentralisation.

New “Danger Zone” in Europe: Representations of Place in Social Media–Supported Protests

Social media–supported protests build circuits of collective interaction that grow across physical, material, digital, and virtual spaces. Extending the research on the governance of communicative spaces, we ask whether representations of place define the public space and whether their analysis suffices to grasp the powerful processes embedded within that space. Consequently, we analyze the available representations of place in the Twitter communication about the protests against the Akademikerball, which is a ball organized by the right-wing populist party, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), in Vienna, Austria. The analysis shows multiple forms of representation, but further consideration of its limitations takes into account three other key features of the public space. Together with an examination of representations, the analysis of textures, structures, and connections inform four modes of analysis that ought to be explored simultaneously to comprehensively understand the governance of the communicative space that is occupied in social media–supported protests

Student protests. Three periods of university governance

Exploring the idea of student protests as an autonomous object of research and discussion, this paper leads to the understanding that the transforming role of the university and its governance defines the possibilities for the political role of students. In this perspective, there is a particular constellation of the different forms of higher education governance that provides students with the right and even the responsibility of protesting as politically engaged citizens of the university and of the state. Approaching the transformation of the models of university governance as a set of archaeologically organised states this paper identifies the sequential roles provided to the students and the meaning of their protests and demonstrations. After visiting some antecedents of more contemporaneous student movements and protests, this paper focuses on the UK to explore three manifestations of university governance that can be roughly differentiated as the enduring democratic period that extends from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, the globalisation period that extends from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s and as the post-millennial turn. These periods, embodying three different styles of governance of higher education, not only demonstrate conformity with the political and economic contexts in which they are embedded, they also correspond to particular socio-technological and communicative ecosystems and determine the specifici-ties of the role of the students and their capacity for political actio

Ocupar las plazas con tuits. Una propuesta para el análisis de la gobernanza de los espacios comunicativos

The demonstration in 2012 in front of the Chamber of Deputies in Madrid serves to introduce a model for analysing communication spaces. During the demonstration, an online map of the centre of Madrid was used to collect the geolocated tweets of protestors under the hashtag #voces25s. A colour code represented the location of the citizens as well as the police charges. In that demonstration, and many that have followed since, a communication space was created across the virtual and the physical realms. In order to understand the socio-political conditions of this space for public discussion, four modes of analysis are introduced: representations, textures, structures and connections

On the viability of a CSO architecture for on-demand virtualized cloud planning and provisioning

As bandwidth requirements and computing capacity for future applications have been predicted to exceed current network and IT infrastructure capabilities, providers face the need to adapt their provisioning models. This article presents the benefits of Cross Stratum Optimized architectures (provision of network and IT resources in a coordinated way) in support of Cloud-based applications. We also present the architecture's potential impact and benefits for operators, based on MACTOR methodology. MACTOR results show the interactions among value-chain actors and identify their business convergences and divergences, revealing the architecture feasibility

Experimental analysis of manufacturing parameters’ effect on the flexural properties of wood-PLA composite parts built through FFF

This paper aims to determine the flexural stiffness and strength of a composite made of a polylactic acid reinforced with wood particles, named commercially as Timberfill, manufactured through fused filament fabrication (FFF). The influence of four factors (layer height, nozzle diameter, fill density, and printing velocity) is studied through an L27Taguchi orthogonal array. The response variables used as output results for an analysis of variance are obtained from a set of four-point bending tests. Results show that the layer height is the most influential parameter on flexural strength, followed by nozzle diameter and infill density, whereas the printing velocity has no significant influence. Ultimately, an optimal parameter set that maximizes the material’s flexural strength is found by combining a 0.2-mm layer height, 0.7-mm nozzle diameter, 75% fill density, and 35-mm/s velocity. The highest flexural resistance achieved experimentally is 47.26 MPa. The statistical results are supported with microscopic photographs of fracture sections, and validated by comparing them with previous studies performed on non-reinforced PLA material, proving that the introduction of wood fibers in PLA matrix reduces the resistance of raw PLA by hindering the cohesion between filaments and generating voids inside it. Lastly, five solid Timberfill specimens manufactured by injection molding were also tested to compare their strength with the additive manufactured samples. Results prove that treating the wood-PLA through additive manufacturing results in an improvement of its resistance and elastic properties, being the Young’s module almost 25% lower than the injected material.Preprin