Entrepreneurship and regional development policies

Many national, regional or local agencies have created policies to directly support entrepreneurs so as to increase the number of businesses or aid the competitiveness and expansion of existing small firms both generally. This paper considers what is meant by the term entrepreneurship and the implications of these meanings for different policies to promote entrepreneurship. These include predominantly macro-level policies such as economic stability, taxation and regulations, together with regional and local policies focusing upon advice, training, finance, technology transfer, markets access, physical infrastructure and the characteristics of the locality.

Financial capability: evidence review

This report provides a brief overview of current evidence on financial capability as it relates to disadvantage in Scotland. It was commissioned by the Scottish Government and carried out by the Employment Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University in order to provide an evidence platform for stakeholders, with an interest in financial inclusion, to develop a more strategic approach in their support for financial capability. Current high levels of individual indebtedness, an increasingly complex and rapidly changing financial landscape, an increased focus on individual responsibility and the effects of the current financial crisis, indicate there is a growing need for improved financial capability. However, as demonstrated by Scottish Household Survey (SHS) data, large parts of the population such as many young or unemployed people lack full financial capability. This report does not consider the availability and regulation of financial services as these are generally reserved matters and not directly the responsibility of the Scottish Government.Report of the Scottish Government Social Inclusion Divisio

The Impact of Ferry Services on an Island Economy

This paper examines ferry fares and quality of service to a remote island region and analyses how this affects the economy of the islands. Taking the Western Isles in Scotland as a case study, the paper identifies the links between fares, service, and economic development and attempts to quantify this impact. A new methodology is developed to estimate the impact of service frequency. The Western Isles, especially the more remote southern islands, face particular challenges due to their peripheral location relative to markets and supplies in Scotland, the rest of the UK and the European ‘core’. This manifests itself in terms of access to skilled labour, raw materials, connections to other businesses and customers. These economies are likely to experience higher transportation costs to domestic and international markets and may also be limited by the frequency and reliability of connections. The ferry services between islands and with mainland Scotland are vital to the continued economic and social well-being of the Western Isles. The extent of the contribution of ferry services towards the economic and social prosperity of the Isles is very much dependant upon the frequency, speed and reliability of service and on the fare structure. It is therefore vital to ensure that the correct fare mechanism is in place to ensure maximum benefit to the local economy of the Isles, in addition to satisfying value for money criteria for the taxpayer and commercial viability for the operators. Our findings show that a reduction in ferry fares and, in particular in increase in service frequency, will have substantial income and employment benefits to the local economy, running into millions of pounds annually. It is also revealed that there is potential to increase the quality of service to the Isles, and reduce fares in some cases, with no increase in public subsidy towards operating costs. This is achieved by taking a more radical perspective to the routes and services operated, and by more closely matching service provision to the demands of communities within the islands.

An appetite for learning : increasing employee demand for skills development

Raising the demand for skills amongst individuals in the workforce is critical if the UK is to meet its 2020 Ambition. This edition of Praxis highlights a number of policy interventions that the evidence suggests can work, and proposes a policy framework for describing and understanding these. The paper aims to stimulate wider debate about the policy interventions most likely to address the barriers to learning faced by the UK workforce. To this end the UK Commission welcomes readers' responses to the following questions, prompted by this paper

The Economic Impact of a Sporting Event: A Regional Approach

This paper aims to estimate the economic impact of a large one-day international sporting event on both a regional and a city economy. In addition, it seeks to investigate the regional origins of visitors to the event, and investigates the relationship between residence and expenditure. The importance of sporting events to regional economies is recognised, but can be difficult to quantify due to the scale and nature of the data required. This analysis draws on over 5,000 spectator interviews conducted at the five one-day rugby internationals (Scotland versus England, France, Romania, South Africa and Fiji) held in Edinburgh, Scotland, during 2002. As such it represents one of the largest databases of its kind in Europe. Spectators were asked about their expenditure, residence, accommodation and attitudes to future visits. Findings were triangulated using a parallel survey of business turnover. The survey data is used to estimate the economic impact on both the wide region (Scotland) and the city region (Edinburgh). Our findings indicate that each match may be worth around £20m to the Scottish economy and £12m to the city of Edinburgh economy. We argue that although this appears large, the methodology used may have resulted in an estimate that is slightly conservative if anything. This points to a greater need for local, regional and national government to exploit the potential that such events can have. We also found that the origin profile of spectators differs between matches, naturally reflecting the origins of the visiting crowd, but more importantly there are also notable regional differences in expenditure patterns among visitors from each nation. We examine the possible reasons for this and the implications for regional and city tourism marketing strategies.

The Space Age at the Grass Roots: Nasa in Cleveland, 1958-1990

The Space Age at the Grass Roots: Nasa in Cleveland, 1958-199

‘We raise up the voice of the voiceless’: Voice, rights and resistance amongst Congolese Human Rights Defenders in Uganda

Amongst Uganda’s Congolese refugee population are a number of human rights defenders who actively resist the construction of refugees as dispossessed and displaced humanitarian aid recipients. Upon fleeing the complex and violent conflicts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, rather than supplicate to a humanitarian regime saturated with the language of human rights, these young men draw on human rights to “raise up the voice of the voiceless.” This article explores how defenders draw on human rights to understand, articulate, and resist the constraints of forced displacement into a humanitarian regime

Sexual and geographic dimorphism in northern rockhopper penguins breeding in the South Atlantic Ocean

The Endangered northern rockhopper penguin Eudyptes moseleyi, like all penguins, is monomorphic, making sex determination of individuals in the field challenging. We examined the degree of sexual size dimorphism of adult birds across the species’ breeding range in the Atlantic Ocean and developed discriminant functions (DF) to predict individuals’ sex using morphometric measurements. We found significant site-specific differences in both bill length and bill depth, with males being the larger sex on each island. Across all islands, bill length contributed 78% to dissimilarity between sexes. Penguins on Gough Island had significantly longer bills, whilst those from Tristan da Cunha had the deepest. Island-specific DFs correctly classified 82-94% of individuals, and all functions performed significantly better than chance. The model for Nightingale Island correctly classified the greatest proportion of individuals (94-95%), while that for Tristan da Cunha performed the poorest (80-82%). A discriminant function derived from all sites accurately sexed 86-88% of northern rockhopper penguins achieving similar accuracy to island-specific functions. While molecular techniques conclusively determine an individual’s sex, morphometric measurements can provide a reliable estimate with close to 90% accuracy using a method that is less invasive and requires little technical expertise. Sexing is an important tool for meaningful interpretation of ecological data. Consideration of sex-specific differences in future studies will aid investigation of a potential sex-dependent vulnerability in this Endangered species.© The authors 2019. Open Access under Creative Commons by Attribution Licence. Use, distribution and reproduction are unrestricted. Authors and original publication must be credited. The attached file is the published pdf