Agglomeration decay in rural areas

Holmen, R. B. 2022. Agglomeration decay in rural areas, Insights into Regional Development 4(3): 139-155. https://doi.org/10.9770/IRD.2022.4.3(9)Spatial proximity to other economic activities – occasionally labeled as ‘market access’ and ‘economic density’ – is associated with good economic performance. How the impulses from economic activities diminish over space is known as ‘agglomeration decay’ or ‘distance decay’. Although market access functions and the associated agglomeration decay constitute an important topic within spatial economic research, the phenomenon is seldom studies in a rural setting or addressed by non-linear estimation techniques. In this paper, we estimate the market access function in the relatively rural regions of Southern parts of Norway. We approximate market access in the national road network by alternative market access functions with power and exponential distance decay, applying ordinary non-linear least squares (NLS) and non-linear mixed effects (NLME). We apply labor productivity as the outcome variable, employment and population as alternative measures for potential market connections and traveling time as distance measure. In the regression, we control for capital intensity, industry structure and annual growth trend, as well as mixed effect in case of the NLME model. Compared to previous findings in the literature, we find evidence of relative sharp agglomeration decay in a rural setting, involving power and exponential distance decay parameters of about 2.3 and 0.07 respectively. Comparisons of the log likelihood from the estimation of market access functions suggest that exponential distance decay involve a slightly better fit than power distance decay. In addition, employment involves slightly more explanatory power than population as a measure for potential market connections.Agglomeration decay in rural areaspublishedVersio

Productivity impulses from regional integration: lessons from road openings

INSIGHTS INTO REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT is an open-access journal, which means that the journal and individual articles are available to readers without any restrictions and free of charge. Authors retain the copyright without restrictions. Authors can deposit all versions of their work (submitted, accepted or published) in an institutional or other repository of their choice without embargo.In recent years, assessment of wider economic impacts has become an integrated part of transportation appraisal in many developed countries. The practices have also spread to sparsely populated countries, for which the empirical evidences for such impacts remain thin. In this paper, we conduct a multi-level examination on productivity impulses of regional integration caused by road constructions in Coastal Southern Norway. We measure market access in the national road network by power and exponential distance decay, using local estimates for the distance decay parameters from Holmen (2022a) in our baseline specifications. Our endogeneity test and earlier studies suggest that productivity analyses of impulses from Norwegian road constructions do not suffer from reverse causality. Still, we operate with buffer zones of twenty traveling kilometers around each receiver of impulses from market access, where traveling times are held constant. Total factor productivity is pre-estimated, before the impacts of increased market access are assessed at firm and industry level. We find some indications of more commuting and regional industry restructuring subsequent to road openings. The most striking evidences are nevertheless that the openings neither appear to have enhanced productivity growth at firm level nor induced welfare-enhancing reallocation of factor inputs within or between local industries.Productivity impulses from regional integration: lessons from road openingspublishedVersio

Impacts from transportation measures in national appraisal guidelines: coverage and practices

Holmen, R.B., Biesinger, B., Hindriks, I., (2022). Impacts from transportation measures in national appraisal guidelines: coverage and practices. Archives ofTransport, 63(3), 67-111. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0015.9928Transportation appraisal has a potential important role in prioritization of transportation investment projects and other transportation measures. Appraisal practices vary much over countries and time, but these differences are not fully known. More knowledge on the variation in practices may contribute to smoother knowledge exchange between countries and more informed choices in the further development of each national practice. In this paper, we present both an updated mapping and a meta-analysis of impact coverage in national appraisal guidelines for transportation measures and spatial measures more generally. Our updated mapping of impact coverage covers 18 national and regional guideline sets and 44 sorts of impact. It shows rather similar overall impact coverage in the reviewed guide-lines for economic, social and environmental impacts. The most advanced appraisal practices are found in Northern and Western Europe and Oceania. We find that supplementary quantitative analyses are most common for economic impacts, while multi-criteria analyses are most common for environmental impacts. Our meta-analysis covers ours and 15 earlier impact mappings, jointly covering 42 countries and regions. In this examination, we show how impact cover-age in appraisal practices has improved over time, particularly for environmental, user and wider economic impacts. The meta-analysis also reveals that Western and Northern European and Oceanian countries and dependencies have had the widest impact coverage from 1998 to 2020, both in CB and overall. To examine what characterize countries with broad and narrow impact coverage, we have applied econometric regression models that are linear (i.e. linear least squares), quasi-linear (i.e. Tobit) and fractional response-based (i.e. fractional probit and fractional logit). In these regression analyses, we control for study-specific characteristics and clustering the standard errors on countries. Our results show that the CB impact coverage tends to increase with economic wealth, equality and population size in developed countries, while we find no such patterns for overall impact coverage.publishedVersio

Market access and seaport efficiency: the case of container handling in Norway

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Comprehensive studies on the impact of market access on port efficiency are scarce, and the problem that market access indicators are potentially endogenous lacks treatment in maritime economics. This paper offers both theoretical and empirical advances to fill these research gaps. First, it pioneers in the use of Stochastic semi-Nonparametric Envelopment of Z variables Data for measuring port efficiency, and further develops the methodology for panel data and proposes an instrumental variable extension for dealing with endogenous market access indicators. Second, it advances the empirical port literature by developing a unique panel dataset on Norwegian container ports encompassing a comprehensive set of foreland and hinterland connectivity measures. Our comprehensive assessment suggests that the role of market access in determining port efficiency is uncertain.Market access and seaport efficiency: the case of container handling in NorwaypublishedVersio

The nonprofit theory revisited : the advantages and challenges for the third sector

In my master thesis in economics, I draw attention to nonprofits with core focus on the ones that are operating in the business sector. I aim to investigate how nonprofits functions, and how they differ from other organizations. The main question I ask is: ‘What are the pros and cons of nonprofits, and in what ways do they differ from other organizations?’ Furthermore, I raise three probed further: ‘What are the roles of the nonprofit sector, and why does it play these roles?’ ‘What do nonprofits do when they are not maximizing profit, and which other aims are relevant?’ ‘How does the interior incentive structure function when the organization has other aims than profits, and there are no owners to discipline the management?’ After pointing out my questions, I sketch the organizational map for forprofit, public and nonprofit organizations, before I give a brief introduction to the nonprofit landscape. Thereafter, I investigate the three most common demand approaches to nonprofits; namely the public good approach, the trust approach and the stakeholder approach. In relation to the public good approach, I show how green worker theory could be integrated to the formal model framework. I also suggest an integration of green consumer theory in the trust approach. Further on, I examine three supply approaches; the entrepreneurship approach, the voluntarily failure approach and the organizational behavioral approach. After reviewing the prevailing theories, I continue by discussing the potential problems of moral hazard and rent-seeking, before I display how these can be overcome both with and without behavioral factors, inter alia by my own game of internal control. Towards the end of the thesis, I turn to the financial side of the nonprofits, comprising sources of financing and potential financial rigidity. I discuss the lack of financial flexibility and how the problem can be countered, which is one of the most neglected realms in the prevailing nonprofit literature. I conclude that nonprofits could be the best response to governing and market failures, both on the demand side and the supply side. Moreover, nonprofits seem to achieve comparative advantages contra the forprofits and the public enterprises under certain circumstances, by their combination of inability to distribute profits, political autonomy and social aims; and for some nonprofit organizational designs; their leeway for stakeholder control. These features may inter alia enable nonprofits to attract green workers, provide public goods that cut across political priorities and achieve more trustworthiness in the provision of unverifiable goods

Fixed Capital Estimation: Utilization of Macro Data to Account for Capital Heterogeneity at Firm Level

Reliable figures for fixed capital are crucial for studies of production and costs characteristics, but they are often unavailable in firm data. In this paper, we demonstrate how macroeconomic data sources may be exploited to account for heterogeneity in fixed capital estimation with firm data. To address the impact of fixed capital heterogeneity, we estimate fixed capital by perpetual inventory method and book adjustments, both applying aggregate and disaggregate capital deflators and depreciation rates. Our capital estimations suggest that use of aggregate capital deflators, aggregate capital depreciation rates and direct measurement rather than the perpetual inventory model implies a misjudgment of capital composition and an underestimation of aggregate capital value over time. Many of the differences between the perpetual inventory model and direct measurement are less prevalent, when capital services are applied as capital measure rather than capital stock.Fixed Capital Estimation: Utilization of Macro Data to Account for Capital Heterogeneity at Firm Leve

Transfer wiedzy i technologii siłą napędową innowacji społecznych

Knowledge and technology transfer are defined as driving force for new business models, innovations and economic development. The aim of the paper is to carry out detailed literature analysis in order to create new framework of technology and knowledge transfer that contributes to social innovation. To explore the level of investigation and latest trends of the topic, the article provides bibliometric analysis on knowledge and technology transfer. The information is obtained from Web of Science for the period of 1990 to 2021. VOSviewer has been used for citation analysis, co-authorship and bibliographic de-coupling. More than 5,000 articles have been found with the keywords technology transfer and knowledge transfer in the database WoS indexed at six well-established citation indexes. For the bibliometric analysis, 308 articles in the fields of economics and business management have been used. Results of this review integrates concept of social innovation into theory of knowledge-based of firms. Furthermore, it composes the model of new knowledge and technology transfer that leads to social innovations. Thereby, our article contributes to theory of knowledge-based of firms and the concept of social innovation.submittedVersio

Knowledge and technology transfer as driving force for social innovations

Knowledge and technology transfer are defined as driving force for new business models, innovations and economic development. The aim of the paper is to carry out detailed literature analysis in order to create new framework of technology and knowledge transfer that contributes to social innovation. To explore the level of investigation and latest trends of the topic, the article provides bibliometric analysis on knowledge and technology transfer. The information is obtained from Web of Science for the period of 1990 to 2021. VOSviewer has been used for citation analysis, co-authorship and bibliographic de-coupling. More than 5,000 articles have been found with the keywords technology transfer and knowledge transfer in the database WoS indexed at six well-established citation indexes. For the bibliometric analysis, 308 articles in the fields of economics and business management have been used. Results of this review integrates concept of social innovation into theory of knowledge-based of firms. Furthermore, it composes the model of new knowledge and technology transfer that leads to social innovations. Thereby, our article contributes to theory of knowledge-based of firms and the concept of social innovation

FDI, technology & knowledge transfer from Nordic to Baltic countries

The purpose of this study is to examine the intensity of technology and knowledge transfer to the selected Baltic countries through foreign direct investment. The intensity of technology and knowledge transfer across the Baltic countries varies widely, with Estonia showing the leading position in the Baltic region. The amount of foreign direct investment in three countries is linked with the level of technology and knowledge transfer. It is indicated that during the Financial Crisis in 2008, the extent of foreign direct ownership changed in all three countries and later recovered. In the aftermath of this disruption, countries recovered their stock Foreign direct investment attraction rates and almost reached their 2004 level. Latvia has achieved a 50 per cent increase among Baltic countries, benefiting from it. Foreign direct investment and technology transfer increased through effective strategies and policies. In contrast, Estonia maintains a sustained stock foreign direct investment and has moderately lower margins than in other Baltic countries. Among countries, Estonia is the dominant stock FDI absorber in the Baltic region and have made significant contributions in the region

FDI, technology & knowledge transfer from Nordic to Baltic countries

The purpose of this study is to examine the intensity of technology and knowledge transfer to the selected Baltic countries through foreign direct investment. The intensity of technology and knowledge transfer across the Baltic countries varies widely, with Estonia showing the leading position in the Baltic region. The amount of foreign direct investment in three countries is linked with the level of technology and knowledge transfer. It is indicated that during the Financial Crisis in 2008, the extent of foreign direct ownership changed in all three countries and later recovered. In the aftermath of this disruption, countries recovered their stock Foreign direct investment attraction rates and almost reached their 2004 level. Latvia has achieved a 50 per cent increase among Baltic countries, benefiting from it. Foreign direct investment and technology transfer increased through effective strategies and policies. In contrast, Estonia maintains a sustained stock foreign direct investment and has moderately lower margins than in other Baltic countries. Among countries, Estonia is the dominant stock FDI absorber in the Baltic region and have made significant contributions in the region.acceptedVersio