XXQ FACTORS FOR SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT: A SYSTEMS ECONOMICS VIEW

Modern cities turn increasingly into functional areas seeking for a balance between agglomeration forces and urban quality of life. This paper will address the issue of sustainable urban development from a quality (performance) perspective. It aims to identify the critical access factors for the highest possible quality (XXQ) of the urban economy. A plea is made for a coherent methodological approach based on a systems economic view. In addition to a sketch of recent dynamic trends in urban systems in OECD countries, it pays attention to theories on urban growth and performance. Next, five critical success conditions for a high performance of cities will be presented in a coherent urban systems economics framework. The policy lessons of the analysis will form the last part of the paper.urban development, sustainability, critical access factors, systems economics

Entrepreneurship, Development, and the Spatial Context Retrospect and Prospect

Entrepreneurship has been a topical issue in the business administration literature, but in the past decade a wave of interest can be observed on the role of entrepreneurship in the economic growth literature. This paper aims to highlight the various contributions to the entrepreneurship literature from the perspective of regional economic development. After a broad overview, particular attention is given to the regional action space of entrepreneurs, including their social and spatial network involvement. The paper concludes with a future research agenda.entrepreneurship, regional growth, action space, networks, SME, virtual organization, innovation

Testing the spatial scale and the dynamic structure in regional models (a contribution to spatial econometric specification analysis)

This article addresses the problem of specification uncertainty in modeling spatial economic theories in stochastic form. It is ascertained that the traditional approach to spatial econometric modeling does not adequately deal with the type and extent of specification uncertainty commonly encountered in spatial economic analyses. Two alternative spatial econometric modeling procedures proposed in the literature are reviewed and shown to be suitable for analyzing systematically two sources of specification uncertainty, viz., the level of aggregation and the spatio-temporal dynamic structure in multiregional econometric models. The usefulness of one of these specification procedures is illustrated by the construction of a simple multiregional model for The Netherlands

Understanding the 2.5th dimension: modelling the graphic language of products

Recognizing a product of a specific brand without seeing the logo is difficult. But for companies it is important to distinguish themselves from competitors with a consistent portfolio, which will be easily recognized by their target consumers. The recognition of brands and their associated brand values can take place in different ways. In this paper a framework is discussed to analyze a brand at different levels of graphical dimensions. The proposed framework distinguishes the difference between graphics (2D), such as a logo or a text; form and shape elements (3D); and everything in-between (2,5D), which we will call ‘graphical elements’. Examples of such graphical elements are the protruding letters on a beer bottle of Grolsch, the characteristic grill of a car or the illuminated apple in a Mac Book. The framework, based on the work of Karjalainen & Warell, was developed further within an educational setting. In an elective master course, students developed a product for a specific brand using the most remarkable design features of the brand. The results of the course showed that modelling the 2.5th dimension of the products actually had a great impact on the translation of the brand values of the analyzed brands into new designs. The integration of these ‘graphical elements’ is often underexposed, but this paper shows that they can play an important role in the recognition of a brand and its brand values

Immigration and innovation in European regions

The pooling of people with diverse backgrounds in particular areas may boost the creation of new ideas, knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurship and economic growth. In this paper we measure the impact of the size, skills and diversity of immigration on innovativeness of host regions. For this purpose we construct a panel of data on 170 regions in Europe (NUTS 2 level) for the period 1991-2001. Innovation outcomes are measured by means of the number and types of patent applications. Given the geographical concentration and subsequent diffusion of innovation activity, and the spatial selectivity of immigrant settlement patterns, we take account of spatial dependence and of endogeneity of immigrant settlement in the econometric modelling. We find that an increase in patent applications in a region is associated with (i) net immigration; (ii) the share of foreigners in the population of the region; (iii) the average skill level of the immigrants; and (iv) the cultural diversity of the immigrants. The magnitude of these effects varies between types of patents

Competition and economic performance

Onderzoek naar het aandeel van concurrentie bij sector prestatie aan de hand van twee tijdsperioden; het verleden (1988 - 1999) en de toekomst (2001-2012). Voor dit onderzoek is een model (MOCO) ontwikkeld om de effecten van turbulentie en concentratie van economische prestaties van sectoren te analyseren.

The impact of cultural diversity on firm innovation: evidence from Dutch micro-data

An important question for firms and policy makers is whether the recruitment of foreign workers can boost innovation. Migration studies have demonstrated positive economic impacts of cultural diversity on productivity and innovation at the regional level, but the impacts at firm level are less well known. Merging data from four different sources, provided by Statistics Netherlands, we construct and analyze a unique linked employer-employee micro dataset of 4582 firms that includes qualitative information on firm innovation. We consider both the number of immigrants these firms employ and their cultural diversity. Potential endogeneity of migrant employment is addressed by an instrumental variables approach that accounts for the past geographic distribution of immigrants and the past culinary diversity of the municipality the firm is located in. We find robust evidence that firms employing relatively more migrants are less innovative. However, there is evidence of integration in that this effect is generally less strong or even absent for second generation immigrants. Moreover, firms employing a more diverse foreign workforce are more innovative, particularly in terms of product innovations. The benefits of diversity for innovation are more apparent in sectors employing relatively more skilled immigrants