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

Benefit transfers of cultural heritage values - how far can we go?

Assessing the economic values attached to alternative land uses, when cultural heritage goods are at stake, makes the valuation process more articulated. Economic elicitation of cultural heritage values is quite a recent practice. Not many case studies have applied non-market valuation techniques, such as contingent valuation methods or travel cost methods, to derive monetary estimates of cultural goods attribute and even fewer applications have been policy oriented. Being a relatively recent research field, the first applications have mainly dealt with the challenges faced by the valuation techniques and the validity and reliability of results. These studies, particularly contingent valuation ones, have very high implementation costs. Hence, to obtain primary estimates of cultural values, agencies need to spend a great deal of money and time. Since these resources are scarce, there is an impinging need to consider the possibility of transferring benefit estimates from a specific “study site” for which data has been collected, to a “policy site” for which there is little or no information. An important question often addressed in the literature is what we can learn from individual case studies for a next case study. How general are the results of case study research? Can we transfer findings from a set of rather similar case studies to a new case study? This question is known as the benefit transfer (or value transfer) issue and seeks to investigate under which (general and specific) conditions common findings from various case studies are more or less valid for a new given case at a distinct site. Knowledge acquisition in the social sciences, and hence also in economics, is usually based on a reductionist approach, which eliminates many person-specific, object-specific or site-specific characteristics of a phenomenon, but the major advantage is that it allows for generalization through a common standardized approach that is applicable to a larger population. This methodology lies also at the heart of meta-analysis, which seeks to synthesize research findings from different case studies (van den Bergh et al. 1997, van den Bergh and Button 1997, 1999). Through the use of common relevant descriptors (behavioural, methodological, contextual) it is possible to draw inferences from a large sample of cases. For value transfer (also commonly named ‘benefit transfer’) the possibility of using meta-analysis is of major importance (Bal and Nijkamp 1998a). The basic idea of value transfer is that knowledge accumulated over time may be subjected to a transfer to a new, similar type of study. For the use of knowledge on a new similar study, it would be ideal if almost identical site characteristics could be transferred without any manipulation and if, at the same time, typical site-unique characteristics could be taken into account: that is, if it were possible to adapt derived variables for these site-unique characteristics.Value transfer studies in cultural heritage economics are rather rare, and the idea itself is quite controversial. In this paper we offer a concise – and certainly not exhausting – review of some recent value transfer studies in this area, with a particular view to spatial variability and transferability. We discuss limits and potentialities of benefit transfer approach for cultural values, aiming to raise debate on the topic. We acknowledge the local nature of cultural values and the strict relationship with the population to which the specific heritage belongs, but we focus on the more universally shared values that are embedded in cultural heritage and on possible ways of expressing them in terms of priorities and clusters. More research is needed in this direction before dismissing the possibility to apply benefit transfer in the case of cultural values estimates.

Alternate Strategies for Managing Resistance to Antibiotics and Pesticides

How should one manage the problem of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides? Although the salience of this question has now been recognized, the formal modeling of this question is very much in its infancy. Consequently, we have three objectives in this paper. First, we construct a dynamic and stochastic model of antibiotic or pesticide use. Second, we analyze two different strategies (interventionist and non-interventionist) for overseeing the problem of resistance. Finally, we identify a specific probability function and we show that whether the problem of resistance is best addressed with an interventionist strategy or a non-interventionist strategy depends fundamentally on this probability function.

On Container Versus Time Based Inspection Policies in Invasive Species Management

We study the problem of precluding biological invasions caused by ships transporting internationally traded goods in containers between different regions of the world. Using the long run expected net cost (LRENC) of inspections as the apposite managerial objective, we address the following important question: Given that inspection is a cyclical activity, is the LRENC lower when a port manager’s inspector inspects cargo upon the arrival of a specified number of containers (container policy) or is this LRENC lower when this inspector inspects cargo at fixed points in time (temporal policy)? We construct a queuing theoretic model and show that in an inspection cycle, irrespective of whether the inspection policy choice is made on the basis of an explicit optimization exercise or on the basis of rules of thumb, the container policy is superior to the temporal policy because the container policy results in lower LRENC from inspection activities.

Favoritism in the Public Provision of Goods in Developing Countries

Goods are often allocated publically by means of queuing processes in developing countries. In such situations, which group of citizens should a corrupt government official favor? In addition, what should be the basis for this favoritism? To the best of our knowledge, these salient questions have received scant attention in the literature. Consequently, we use queuing theory to first demonstrate that when allocating goods publically, a case can be made for favoring a particular group of citizens. Next, we show that the nature of this favoritism depends not only on the bribes received by the corrupt government official but also on the efficiency with which this official discharges his duties.Bribery

A Stepwise Efficiency Improvement DEA Model for Airport Operations with Fixed Production Factors

In the spirit of the deregulation movement, Japan is also faced with an ÃgAsia Open SkyÃh agreement which favours aviation liberalization in international services. This means an end to Japan's aviation policy of isolation. In association with this policy change, also environmental concerns grew increasingly severe for small and local regional airports. Consequently, there is a need for an objective analysis of the efficiency of airport operations in Japan. A standard tool to judge the efficiency of such activities is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). In the past years, much progress has been made to extend this approach in various directions. Interesting examples are the Distance Friction Minimization (DFM) model and the Context-Dependent (CD) model. The DFM model is based on a generalized distance friction function and serves to improve the performance of a Decision Making Unit (DMU) by identifying the most appropriate movement towards the efficiency frontier surface. Standard DEA models use a uniform input reduction in the improvement projections, but the DFM approach aims to enhance efficiency strategies by introducing a weighted projection function. This approach may address both input reduction and output increase as a strategy of a DMU. Likewise, the CD model yields efficient frontiers at different levels, while it is based on a level-by-level improvement projection. The Stepwise DFM model is an integration of the DFM and the CD model in order to design a stepwise efficiency-improving projection model for a conventional DEA. In general, a DEA model – and neither the mix of the DFM-CD model – doesnÃft take into account a fixed factor. Such a non-controllable of fixed factor may refer to a production factor that cannot be flexibly adjusted in the short run. In our study the newly integrated Stepwise DFM-CD model will be extended with a fixed factor model in order to adapt the DEA model to realistic circumstances in an efficiency improvement projection. The above-mentioned stepwise fixed factor projection model is illustrated on the basis of an application to the efficiency analysis of airport operations in Japan in light of the above mentioned contextual changes in aviation policy.

Winners and loosers in the European Monetary Union: A neural network analysis of spatial industrial shifts

The forthcoming creation of a single European currency area will likely have far reaching impacts on the competitive position of European industries, as a result of a decline in transaction costs and currency risks for intra-European trade. These impacts will take place independent of the question whether the 15 EU countries form an Optimum Currency Area or not. The generally expected gains of trade from an integrated European market may therefore not be Pareto-optimal, as a monetary union may have significant distributional impacts on individual countries and regions. Then there will be winners and losers. This paper addresses the welfare impacts of a single European currency area by investigating industrial changes and shifts in location that may take place after the introduction of the EURO, based on the idea that fixed exchange rated in the EMU will be reflected in a decline in transportation costs and industrial clustering. The empirical analysis uses an extensive data set on industrial production, interest rates and exchange rates in the various European countries. Two policy scenarios are envisaged, with a retrospective (backcasting) scenario on the likely effects of (i) a fixed exchange rate in the past and (ii) a fixed exchange linkage with the US dollar. Next, a neural network analysis is developed to trace for the two above mentioned scenarios the foreseeable and likely welfare effects of a single monetary union. It is concluded that the introduction of the EMU- according to the two past scenarios ? would have worsened for most European countries the industrial competitiveness.

A classification of european cities On the basis of e-images

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a major enabling technology that is nowadays very much 'en vogue'. It has also become an important tool to promote a variety of business goals and public policies. The growing importance of ICT in daily life, business activities and governance prompts the need to consider ICT more explicitly in local policies. The expected benefits from ICT encourage urban policy-makers to formulate proper strategies for public ICT policies. But, what are the urban policy-makers' expectations about ICT? And how do they assess the future implications of ICT for their city? This paper is focusing on the way urban decision-makers perceive the opportunities of modern ICT and its related ICT policy. By highlighting the importance of understanding the decision-maker's 'black box' on ICT, we will address three crucial issues in European cities, viz. perception of the city, attitude towards ICT, and assessment of the relevance of ICT policy. We will give an operational meaning to these three variables by using a survey comprising more than 200 European cities as the basis for a classification of these cities by means of their e-images.ICT policy, public policy-making, urban policies, factor analysis, cluster analysis