Lessons from European Union policies for regional development

Regional disparities present an ever present development challenge in most countries, especially those with large geographic areas under their jurisdiction. A neglect of these inequities may create the potential for disunity and, in extreme cases, for disintegration. In view of this, most countries actively pursue policies with a view to helping lagging regions catch up with faster growing regions. These policies have at best a mixed record of success. It is therefore useful to discern what type of policies work and why? In this context learning from the experience of the European Union (EU) may be particularly instructive as, over the years, it has provided significant support to assist poorer regions achieve convergence with the richer regions. This paper reviews the impact of EU policies for regional development to draw lessons of interest to other countries pursuing similar goals. The paper concludes that policies that serve to create an internal common market by creating a level playing field that enables poorer regions to integrate with the broader national and global economies have the best potential to advance regional income convergence. In this context, removal of barriers to trade and factor mobility and providing enhanced access to information and technology to the lagging regions should be main policy priorities for regional development.Regional Rural Development,Trade and Regional Integration,Political Economy,Economic Theory&Research,Debt Markets

Bridging the economic divide within nations : a scorecard on the performance of regional development policies in reducing regional income disparities

Regional inequalities represent a continuing development challenge in most countries, especially those with large geographic areas. Globalization heightens these challenges because it places a premium on skills: since rich regions typically also have better educated and better skilled labor, the gulf between rich and poor regions widens. While central governments in unitary states are relatively unconstrained in their choice of policies for reducing regional disparities, in a federation the division of powers curtails federal flexibility in policy choice. Thus in federal states large regional disparities can represent serious threats, with the state's inability to deal with such inequities creating potential for disunity and, in extreme cases, for disintegration. Inequalities beyond a threshold may lead to calls for separation by both the richest and the poorest regions. While the poorest regional may consider the inequalities a manifestation of regional injustice, the richest regions may view the union with the poorest regions as holding them back in their drive toward prosperity. Under these circumstances, there is a presumption in development economics that decentralized fiscal arrangements would lead to ever widening regional inequalities. The authors provide an empirical test of this hypothesis. The authors conclude that regional development policies have failed in almost all countries, federal and unitary alike. Among 10 countries with high or substantial regional income inequality, only one (Thailand) has experienced convergence in regional incomes. Still, federal countries do better in restraining regional inequalities, because of the greater political risk these disparities pose for such countries. The authors classify countries by degree of convergence in regional incomes: a) Countries experiencing regional income divergence - Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Romania, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. b) Countries experiencing no significant change in regional income variation - Canada and Mexico. c) Countries experiencing regional income convergence - Chile, Pakistan, Thailand, the United States, and Uzbekistan. Regional development outcomes observed in these countries provide a revealing look at the impact of regional development policies. While countries experiencing divergence tend to focus on interventionist policies, those experiencing convergence have taken a hands-off approach to regional development and instead focused on promoting an economic union by removing barriers to factor mobility and ensuring minimum standards in basic services across the nation. In Chile, for example, convergence in regional incomes is largely attributable to liberalizing the economy and removing distortions so that regions could discover their own comparative advantage. In Pakistan and the United States convergence is attributable to greater factor mobility. Paradoxically, creating a level playing field helps disadvantaged regions more than do paternalistic protectionist policies.Poverty Impact Evaluation,Economic Conditions and Volatility,Economic Theory&Research,Services&Transfers to Poor,Environmental Economics&Policies,Inequality,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research,Governance Indicators

Business Research in the VUCA World

The purpose of this issue is to invite articles on the VUCA theme (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), relevant to various crises. For example, the COVID-19 health crisis across the globe has affected many occupations leaving a double folded impact. VUCA is an opportunity for a few business organizations to realize their worthiness and an opportunity to revive their strategies to sustain themselves. VUCA is also an opportunity for business leaders to examine their abilities and leadership skills. Unpredictable environments give rise to more opportunities. Leadership skills can be mastered in the VUCA environment, as managers get ready to restructure and rethink the way of conducting business. This issue has accepted six articles from various fields of studies, which include Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Human Resource Management, Marketing, Consumer Behaviour, and Services Marketing. All the articles underwent a sequence of the review process and then were finalized for publication. This issue is rich in new ideas and gives opportunities for readers to access new information. All the articles have also contributed to a larger social impact, contributing to various stakeholders

Electromechanical and Dynamic Characterization of In-House-Fabricated Amplified Piezo Actuator

A diamond-shaped amplified piezo actuator (APA) fabricated using six multilayered piezo stacks with maximum displacement of 173 μm at 175V and the amplification factor of 4.3. The dynamic characterization of the actuator was carried out at different frequencies (100 Hz–1 kHz) and at different AC voltages (20V–40V). The actuator response over this frequency range was found neat, without attenuation of the signal. Numerical modeling of multilayered stack actuator was carried out using empirical equations, and the electromechanical analysis was carried out using ABAQUS software. The block force of the APA was 81 N, calculated by electromechanical analysis. This is similar to that calculated by dynamic characterization method

Equity home bias—A global perspective from the shrunk frontier

Equity home bias research explicates the need for correct characterisation of benchmark (optimum) foreign equity investment weights required for the estimation of equity home bias. This paper improves upon the traditional mean–variance optimisation framework by utilising the Bayes–Stein shrinkage technique to obtain optimal equity weights and home bias estimates for 39 countries for the period, 2000–2009. A regression model estimated with system GMM identifies financial integration, trade openness (exposure), stock market capitalisation, idiosyncratic risk and Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as the significant determinants of equity home bias. Unlike earlier studies, the relationship between home bias and financial integration is found to be U-shaped

Impact of Emotional Intelligence and Motivation on Job Satisfaction among “Mystery Shoppers”

This research paper focuses on “Mystery Shopping”, making mystery shoppers the target respondents of this research study. While previous studies have taken into consideration the motivational aspect, this research extends the scope to consider EI and its mediation between motivation and job satisfaction. Simple percentage analysis has been used to analyse the demographic profile of the respondents as well as an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and corresponding CFA. The hypothesized eleven factors of CFA (4 factors for motivation, 5 factors for Emotional Intelligence and 2 factors for job satisfaction) model fits the sample data very well. The major rule of thumb RMSEA is .87, RMR is 0.30 and AGFI is .891 which has satisfied the CFA model fit criteria. It is found that job satisfaction is enhanced only through motivation directly rather than being mediated by EI. Thus the lacking aspects have to be considered by the mystery shoppers to enhance job satisfaction through a well-balanced emotional state

Parameterized Disturbance Observer Based Controller to Reduce Cyclic Loads of Wind Turbine

This paper is concerned with bump-less transfer of parameterized disturbance observer based controller with individual pitch control strategy to reduce cyclic loads of wind turbine in full load operation. Cyclic loads are generated due to wind shear and tower shadow effects. Multivariable disturbance observer based linear controllers are designed with objective to reduce output power fluctuation, tower oscillation and drive-train torsion using optimal control theory. Linear parameterized controllers are designed by using a smooth scheduling mechanism between the controllers. The proposed parameterized controller with individual pitch was tested on nonlinear Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence (FAST) code model of National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)’s 5 MW wind turbine. The closed-loop system performance was assessed by comparing the simulation results of proposed controller with a fixed gain and parameterized controller with collective pitch for full load operation of wind turbine. Simulations are performed with step wind to see the behavior of the system with wind shear and tower shadow effects. Then, turbulent wind is applied to see the smooth transition of the controllers. It can be concluded from the results that the proposed parameterized control shows smooth transition from one controller to another controller. Moreover, 3p and 6p harmonics are well mitigated as compared to fixed gain DOBC and parameterized DOBC with collective pitch

Wide viewing angle and fast responding TN LCD

A new type of TN display device has been fabricated by sandwiching a dual frequency addressable nematic liquid crystal material between two unrubbed polyimide coated glass plates. Between crossed polarizers, the bright state is observed by applying a high frequency electric field, while the dark state by applying a low frequency electric field of similar strength. This dual frequency addressed rubbing free device shows very wide and highly symmetric viewing angle characteristics, with contrast ratio comparable to that of a rubbed TN device, and with very fast response time. Addressing the device in a "dual frequency dual amplitude pulsed mode" leads to only a small increase (~1.5 times) in power consumption in comparison with the conventional single frequency addressed device

“The Social Media Blue Bird Creating an Online Sensation”: A Sentimental Analysis with Reference to Coke-studio Hashtags

Coke-Studio, an online platform hosted in YouTube has been successful in both countries and has been discussed on another popular social media platform Twitter. However, studies report that Pakistan Coke-studio fares better in terms of its emotive content than its Indian edition. The paper analyses how the ―Hashtag fever‖ which has created a huge impact on brand image and profitability position of firms all around the world leads to the differential approach. Though a detailed Social Media Analysis (SMA), this paper aims to examine how hashtags work on the Twitter platforms and conclude how social-media often offers a glimpse of subconscious consumer preferences and its implications thereof

High precision density studies near the smectic A-nematic tricritical point

We have carried out very accurate density measurements (with a precision of ± 5x10− 5g cm− 3) near the smectic A-nematic transition in binary mixtures of 4-n-nonyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl (9CB) and 4-n-decyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl (10CB). The transition crosses over from second to first order as the temperature range of the nematic phase decreases. For mixtures with the shortest nematic range the data deviate noticeably from a single power law behaviour. Such a deviation is an indication of the first order nature of the transition. Very good fits to a single power law have been obtained for pure 9CB and the x=0.04 mixture where x is the mole fraction of 10CB in 9CB. The critical exponent obtained from the power law fitting has enabled us to locate the tricritical point to be very close to x=0.04, which is in agreement with the results obtained previously by high resolution calorimetric[1] and X-ray scattering studies[2]