Agricultural Expansion, Openness to Trade and Deforestation at the Brazilian Amazon: A Spatial Econometric Analysis

The Brazilian Amazon is a large piece of land that hosts only 12% of Brazilian population. Even this low figure and people mostly living in urban areas, the overexploitation of the forest resources driven by economic activities seems to be out-of-control. In the 1970s, abundant government subsidies/incentives for mining, crop and beef production, and gigantic road projects provided infra-structure to the new settlers coming from other parts of the country. For the last decades, frontier regions of Amazon have been a major scene of land conflicts between farmers, squatters, miners, indigenous group and public authorities. Furthermore, from the openness of economy in the 1990s, we also find some evidence that the very attractive demand of international markets for timber, and recently, the attractive international prices of agricultural commodities are determinants that have been also pushing to more deforestation through the conversion of forest to new agricultural areas. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how international trade has affected the dynamics of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The analysis also focuses on the expansion of crop and cattle activities, and other determinants such as gross domestic product, demographic density and roads. To achieve such goal, we combine standard econometrics with the spatial econometrics in order to capture, across the space, the socio-economic interactions among the agents in their interrelated economic system. The data used in this study correspond to a balanced panel for 732 counties from 2000 to 2007 totalizing 6,256 observations. The main findings suggest that the openness to trade indicator used--export plus import over GDP--goes up, the result is more deforestation. We also find that beef cattle and the production of soybeans, sugarcane and cotton are pushing to more deforestation in the region. The extraction of firewood and timber had both a positive and significant in impact on deforestation, as expected. Moreover, as the GDP goes up, it pushes to more deforestation as well. On the other hand, as the square of GDP goes up indicate less deforestation, supporting, to some extent, the environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis.

One size does not fit all… An economic development perspective on the asymmetric impact of Patents on R&D

Innovation is the building block of competitive advantages and thus economic policies are increasingly focused on creating stimulus to increase a country’s innovative performance and growth potential, namely through knowledge accumulation in general and R&D in particular. In this context, current policy trend seems to support the strengthening of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), in particular, patent protection, with the argument that positive effects will emerge and would be extensive to all countries regardless their level of development. In this paper we question this “one size fits all” policy and assess how patent thicket affects knowledge productive investment taking into account countries’ development levels. Based on a panel of 95 countries over a ten-year period (1997-2006), our results show that patents have asymmetric impacts across countries development stages, evidencing pervious effects on technological leaders and positive ones on some laggards. Such evidence sustains that innovation policies be adjusted to countries development stages.growth models; R&D; patents; economic development

Does Patenting negatively impact on R&D investment?An international panel data assessment

Although the conventional R&D-patents relationship is a long stand and relatively undisputed issue within the innovation literature, the reverse causality, in particular, the potential for a negative impact of patents over R&D has only recently received wide attention boosting interesting (mainly) theoretical debates. The macroeconomic perspective on this issue, however, remains largely unexplored. In fact, no evidence exists that ruled out the possibility of asymmetric effects of patents on R&D in accordance to the level of GDP in general, and to ‘convergence clubs’ in particular. Using panel data estimation methods on a sample of 88 countries, over an eight-year period (1996-2003), and controlling for clubs of convergence to account for differences on countries’ stages of economic development, we found mix support to the negativity of patent on R&D investment. The accumulated patents positively impact on R&D intensity for the set of less developed countries whereas no statistically significant effect emerges in the case of higher developed converge clubs; restricting the highest developed convergence club down to countries with a R&D intensity above 3%, the negativity reverse causality arises, corroborating the asymmetric impact of patents on R&D investment. We further demonstrate that albeit causality appears to be stronger in the most intuitive appealing traditional direction, evidence supports the theoretical conveyed double causality between R&D and Patent.Patents; R&D; panel data; convergence clubs

Global Hypoellipticity for Strongly Invariant Operators

In this note, by analyzing the behavior at infinity of the matrix symbol of an invariant operator $P$ with respect to a fixed elliptic operator, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition to guarantee that $P$ is globally hypoelliptic. We also investigate relations between the global hypoellipticity of $P$ and global subelliptic estimates.Comment: 20 page

Searching for clusters in tourism. A quantitative methodological proposal

The tourism industry is one of Europe’s leading employers, and for many regions highly dependent on tourists’ spending, innovation is the difference between growth and stagnation. Thus, at a regional level, tourism may function as a driving force of socioeconomic development and thus contribute to the demise of regional disparities. Such lever effect is usually associated to a geographical concentration abusively denominated of clusters. Most of the studies within the tourism industry identify clusters resorting to simplistic analyses of geographic location measures or experts’ opinions. These latter tend to neglect the essence of the cluster concept, namely the inter-linkages among regional actors. In the present paper, we propose a methodology to rigorously identify tourism clusters, stressing the importance of networks and cooperation between agents.Clusters; Tourism; Methodology

Bridging Science to Economy: The Role of Science and Technologic Parks in Innovation Strategies in “Follower” Regions

The concept of Regional Innovation System (RIS) builds upon an integrated perspective of innovation, acknowledging the contribution of knowledge production subsystem, regulatory context and enterprises to a region’s innovative performance. Science and Technology parks can act as a platform to the production of knowledge and its transfer to the economy in the form of spin-offs or simple knowledge spillovers, enhanced by the co-location of R&D university centers and high technology enterprises on site. Although reflecting mainly a science push perspective, they may constitute central nodes in an infrastructural system of competitiveness that articulates other entrepreneurial location sites and bridges Universities to the economy in a more efficient and effective way, being crucial to increasing technology transfer and interchange speed, promoting the technological upgrading of the regional economy. In this paper we discuss the importance of Science and Technology Parks in the building up of a Regional Innovation System, promoting the technological intensification of the economy, a more effective knowledge transfer and sharing and the construction of competitive advantages, with particular importance in follower regions facing structural deficiencies. We oppose to the predominant closed paradigm, which understands science parks’ role in a narrow and “enclavist”, arguing in favor of an open and “integrative” paradigm where the interconnection to other infrastructures and agents boosts the park’s performance and upgrades the regional economies competitiveness infra-structures and innovation capability. We further stress the importance of science parks in signaling capabilities and hence attracting R&D external initiatives, namely, R&D FDI.Science Parks, New technology-based firms, Innovation, Regional Policy

From Concept to Policy: Building Regional Innovation Systems in Follower Regions

In the spirit of “The Lisbon strategy”, public policies are redirecting support from investment-driven policies to knowledge building as the main driver for competitiveness and innovation. This re-orientation poses different challenges to regions and RIS concept may be the central element, simultaneously goal and toolbox, for devising innovation promotion policies. The RIS framework stresses the need to combine a systemic and inclusive view of innovation along with territorially embedded specificities. In this paper we explore how to operationalize the concept of RIS in terms of innovation policy, arguing against a “one size fits all” approach. Concentrating our analysis on follower regions, we bridge the concept of RIS with the structural deficiencies and challenges posing to this kind of regions, for which innovation policy should seek an adequate combination between science push and demand pull perspectives. We also address the importance of taking advantage of the catching-up status, building upon R&D cost-advantages and clustering around external initiatives as well as the correction of important constraints to the construction of a RIS.Innovation, Regional Innovation Systems, Innovation Policy, Follower Regions

A VECM approach with oil Prices

This paper addresses to the spillover effects from the USA to the Euro Area and the spillover from Euro Area to the USA, under oil prices. Taking into consideration the already accepted and well-established literature is well known the effects of the USA monetary policy on other economies, being in some cases bigger and stronger than in the USA economy itself. Following this line of thought, this paper aims, supported by a VECM methodology and using quarterly data from 2000Q1 to 2015Q4, to measure the magnitude of spillover effects on both economies. The results also contribute to shed light on economic policy procedures, specially enabling the decision makers to handle this effects in their economies. The results are consistent with the literature. The USA monetary policy plays the major role on the propagation of monetary shocks across the globe, especially to the big and mature economies, such as the Euro Area and to economies linked to the USA dollar. However, the Euro Area is also a source of shocks to the USA economy but, as expected, in a smaller scale. It is also shown how important the money supply and the interest rates are to restrain the inflationary pressures originated by the oil prices, producing a sizable spillover on the other economy. Ultimately these results are easily understood, being both economies integrated in a global market dominated by the USA and consequently, is not strange, that the USA is the biggest source of these shocks.Este trabalho foca-se no efeito de spillover proveniente dos Estados Unidos da América (EUA) para a Zona Euro e o spillover da Zona Euro para os EUA, sob o efeito dos preços do petróleo. Partindo da literatura existente e aceite, são bem conhecidos os efeitos da política monetária dos EUA em outras economias, sendo em alguns casos maior e mais forte que na própria economia dos EUA. Seguindo esta linha de pensamento, este trabalho tenta, recorrendo ao Vector Error Correction Model, com dados trimestrais do primeiro trimestre de 2000 ao quarto trimestre de 2015, responder à questão de investigação: existirá efeito spillover entre estas economias e caso exista, qual a sua magnitude e direção sob o efeito dos preços do petróleo? Os resultados são consistentes com a literatura. A política monetária dos EUA é a maior fonte de propagação de choques monetários pelo mundo, especialmente para as economias desenvolvidas, como a da Zona Euro e para as economias vinculadas ao dólar. No entanto, a Zona Euro é também uma fonte de choques para a economia Americana, mas como é esperado, numa menor escala. É também demonstrado o quão importante são a oferta monetária e as taxas de juro para conter as pressões inflacionárias originadas pelos preços do petróleo, produzindo neste processo, efeitos spillover consideráveis na outra economia. Os resultados também contribuem para uma melhor compreensão, por parte dos decisores políticos, de medidas de política económica para melhor enfrentarem esta situação. Em última análise, estes resultados são facilmente entendidos, tendo em conta que ambas as economias estão integradas globalmente, sendo os EUA a economia líder. Sendo assim, não é de estranhar, que os EUA sejam a maior fonte destes choques

Case study: Lisbon: A dream destination?

O turismo é um fenómeno marcante do século XXI, assumindo importância nas mais variadas esferas que compõem a vida em comunidade, constituindo uma égide económica, política, cultural e social difícil de encontrar em outros sectores da sociedade. Este caso pedagógico insere-se nessa problemática, partindo de um conjunto de tendências de turismo internacionais para a focalização num destino específico, a capital de Portugal, Lisboa. Tendo em vista uma discussão globalizante e integrante dos diversos temas que confluem para a gestão estratégica e promoção de um destino turístico enquanto marca, serão apresentados um conjunto de dados que servirão de base para um estudo aprofundado do mercado turístico lisboeta, avaliando primordialmente as dimensões de posicionamento e imagem percebida do destino, partindo ainda de determinadas características que definem o perfil do seu público-alvo. Lisboa enquadra-se num cenário competitivo forte, no qual procura distinguir-se dos principais destinos Europeus através de uma estratégia holística que tem por base um alinhamento entre os diversos produtos turísticos da cidade e região e que contribuem para o seu posicionamento genérico enquanto destino turístico. Para facilitar o entendimento do caso será efectuada uma abordagem ao tema de marketing estratégico de destinos turísticos, no que toca sobretudo aos conceitos de marca, imagem e comportamentos do consumidor em turismo. O cariz pedagógico é atribuído pela actualidade e recente importância de Lisboa no panorama internacional do turismo espelhando uma perspectiva futura optimista e contribuindo decisivamente para a alavancagem da sociedade portuguesa, não só a nível económico como também social e espiritual.Tourism is a noticeable phenomenon of the XXI century, assuming critical importance in the several spheres that compose life in community, constituting an economic, political, cultural and social aegis hard to find in other areas of society. This case study is edged under this problematic, starting from a set of international tourism trends to focus on a specific destination, the capital of Portugal, Lisbon. Key facts will be presented, seeking for a globalizing and integrating discussion around the diverse themes that comprise the strategic management and brand promotion of a tourism destination, involving a deep study of the Lisbon tourism market, primarily evaluating its perceived image and positioning dimensions and relating to its specific target markets profile characteristics. Lisbon is framed on a strong competitive scenario, striving for a differentiation relatively to the main European destinations through holistic strategies based on a principle of alignment between the several tourism products of the city and region that contribute for its overall positioning as a destination. A literature review will be presented, in order to contribute for a generic comprehension of the case study, highlighting key concepts of destination strategic marketing, such as branding, image and consumer behavior in tourism. The educational character is attributed by the hot topic and recent importance of Lisbon in the international tourism panorama reflecting an optimistic future perspective, aiming at decisively contributing to the leverage of the Portuguese society, not only at an economic level, but also considering a social and spiritual dimension.http://hdl.handle.net/10071/518