1,720,965 research outputs found
A composite policy tool to measure territorial resilience capacity
Full text linkThe 2007–2008 global recession and consequent slow recovery have revealed considerable heterogeneity in economic performance across countries and regions. This study contributes innovatively to existing resilience literature by identifying a life cycle resilience framework and computing a “handy” composite Regional Economic Resilience Indicator. We analyse economic resilience by means of a cluster and exploratory spatial data analysis, revealing well-defined spatial patterns in the EU. National resilience trends dominate in the EU-15, while a more heterogeneous spatial pattern is present in the EU-13. Our findings can support the monitoring of economic resilience at regional level and facilitate a common understanding of this complex and dynamic process for policy purposes
Clustering the built form at LAU2 level for addressing sustainable policies. Insights from the Belgium case study
No full textPopulation growth has determined two different types of urban development: the vertical growth, tending to compactness, and the horizontal one which privileges a more dispersed and sprawled expansion. Those two urban forms have different impacts on environmental sustainability influencing, among others, the microclimate conditions of a city, the energy demand and its economic cost, and the provision of Ecosystem Services. European policies are oriented towards sustainable development of urban areas reducing the environmental footprint and restoring degraded ecosystem through a Green infrastructure deployment. Understanding the urban form, and specifically, the typology of the building form is crucial for policymakers and urban planners to define strategies for a higher degree of sustainability. The lack of data and the heterogeneity of information across Europe on the built form have hindered the operationalisation of European strategies and their downscaling into national or regional policies. The paper aims to fill this gap proposing a methodology based on a cluster analysis that estimates the built form of Belgium at LAU2 level for addressing single specific actions towards environmental sustainability goals. The cluster analysis uses data traditionally surveyed by national censuses, ensuring the replicability of the method for the upcoming 2021 census, and also the opportunity to update it continuously
Local financial distress and fiscal regimes: Evidence from Italy
No full textThis paper investigates how fiscal regulation may influence lower government finances by devolving greater responsibilities to local policymakers that limit free-riding behaviour and ensure fiscal sustainability. To this extent, the Italian case provides a suitable regulatory setting that has evolved over the years, as almost 600 Italian municipalities experienced financial distress from 1989 to 2018. The aim of this study is two-fold: i) to investigate the historical and geographical evolution of local government bankruptcy procedures and ii) to test whether the exogenous Italian legislation on local government defaults influenced the dynamics of the local financial distress phenomenon, identifying three different fiscal regulatory regimes. Our results show that the regulatory regimes until 2000, which prepared for the government bail-out of local defaults, encouraged municipalities to take advantage of the bankruptcy procedures and after 2001, when the legislative interventions had been updated, there is no longer such incentive. Asymmetric effects are observed when municipalities are analysed by population size, pointing to the need to go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to fiscal policy
Challenges and Opportunities to Regional Renewal in the European Union
Full text linkThe strength of the 2008 financial and economic crisis and the resulting degree of resilience were heterogeneous among and within the European Union countries. Challenges and opportunities driven by regional-specific differences determined the ability to overshoot the precrisis levels of growth. Focusing upon Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS 2) European regions, we explore a novel conceptual framework related to regional economic resilience, namely the renewal capacity. Precisely, we concentrate on the capacity of regional economies to “renew” their growth paths in the labor market in the aftermath of the recent global crisis. We find some well-identified spatial patterns of regional employment renewal and we identify a set of territorial assets that allow regions to bounce back faster and more comprehensively than others to the economic downturn. Furthermore, there are significant differences between the drivers of the regional renewal of Old and New Member States. Our findings suggest potential policy directions at all levels for enhancing regional resilience
A composite policy tool to measure territorial resilience capacity
No full textThe 2007–2008 global recession and consequent slow recovery have revealed considerable heterogeneity in economic performance across countries and regions. This study contributes innovatively to existing resilience literature by identifying a life cycle resilience framework and computing a “handy” composite Regional Economic Resilience Indicator. We analyse economic resilience by means of a cluster and exploratory spatial data analysis, revealing well-defined spatial patterns in the EU. National resilience trends dominate in the EU-15, while a more heterogeneous spatial pattern is present in the EU-13. Our findings can support the monitoring of economic resilience at regional level and facilitate a common understanding of this complex and dynamic process for policy purposes
Strengths and weaknesses of EU regional reactivity to shocks
Full text linkThis study introduces the novel concept of regional reactivity to shocks. A region is considered to be much more reactive if it bounced back to the level of labour productivity achieved before a shock in the same or less time than it took to reach the pre-2008 economic crisis peak from an equivalent lower bound. The analysis of the reactivity of the EU-NUTS2 regions reveals a clear spatial pattern. By using a spatial lag model selected via a Bayesian comparison approach, we show that tertiary education and institutional quality are key to promote reactivity. On the other hand, population density acts in the opposite direction. Our results are potentially useful for defining policy strategies that emphasise or refocus the strengths of each region in light of current territorial trends and emerging challenges
Testing the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis on land use: The case of Romania
Full text linkThe aim of the present study is to test empirically the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis for 42 Romanian counties over the 2000-2014 period. Specifically, we investigate the existence of an inverted U-shaped curve relationship between residential built-up land and economic development in a low-income EU country undergoing rapid and profound transition. We do so by making innovative use of spatial panel econometric techniques. Contrary to our expectations, the results indicate an inverted EKC, implying that higher levels of residential built-up area occur for higher levels of wealth. Moreover, we find that the built-up land in Romania mainly reflects processes of urban expansion, such as sprawl or suburbanization, that may have harmful environmental and social consequences. Spatial spill-overs in terms of built-up land arise and spread, albeit to a limited extent, to neighbouring locations. These findings are of potential significance for policy makers, because they highlight the need for coordination among neighbours. Furthermore, strengthening the institutional framework and local tax management, and planning urban regeneration better could curb and even reverse the extensive built-up land expansion and real estate speculation
Bounded rationality and heterogeneous expectations. Euler versus anticipated-utility approach
No full textBy using Bayesian techniques, our paper investigates behavioral New-Keynesian DSGE models derived under two parsimonious alternatives to introduce heterogeneous expectations: the Euler equation and the anticipated-utility approach. First, we explore the relation between the expectation formation processes and the model determinacy for a broad range of parameterizations by using global sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo filtering. Second, we perform model comparison to assess how much the two alternatives are consistent with macro and expectation survey data. Our main results are twofold: (1) model determinacy is strongly undermined by the presence of boundedly rational agents; (2) a behavioral model based on Euler equation approach fits the data decisively better than one based on anticipated utility
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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