Suchergebnisse

Questo libro fornisce una panoramica completa degli scenari futuri del cambiamento climatico e delle problematiche di gestione associate all'impatto del cambiamento climatico sull'economia blu delle isole e delle regioni ultraperiferiche europee. La pubblicazione raccoglie i principali risultati dei risultati della ricerca del progetto Soclimpact, con l'obiettivo di aumentare la consapevolezza sociale tra i responsabili politici e l'industria sulle conseguenze dei cambiamenti climatici a livello locale e fornire informazioni basate sulla conoscenza nella progettazione delle politiche di sostegno, dal livello locale a quello nazionale. ; This book provides a comprehensive overview of the future scenarios of climate change and management concerns associated with climate change impacts on the blue economy of European islands and outermost regions. The publication collects major findings of the Soclimpact project's research outcomes, aiming to raise social awareness among policy-makers and industry about climate change consequences at local level, and provide knowledge-based information in support policy design, from local to national level.

Water problem in developing countries like Ethiopia is twofold: low coverage levels and poor quality that require urgent attention to reduce associated health and social consequences. Understanding this fact, the government and NGOs are currently carrying out several activities to improve the coverage and quality of water supply. To this end, willingness to pay of households that are expected to be benefited from the project should be analysed. The central objective of this study is, hence, to estimate Willingness to Pay (WTP) of households for better-quality water service provision and identify its determinants by using Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) in Jigjiga city. We estimate Willingness to Pay (WTP) for better quality of water supply service on cross-sectional survey of households in Jigjiga city taking 210 sample households randomly drawn. The highest relative WTP for improved water supply service was found in the city with the highest percentage of respondents being unsatisfied with the current water supply both in terms of quality and quantity. Response to the hypothetical scenario shown that sampled households stated that their mean WTP of 94 cents per 20 litres. The results of logit model revealed that household income, family size, water source, age of the respondent and bid value have significant effects on WTP for improved water service provision. The implication is that it is better take into account the socio-economic characteristics of the households in planning and designing water supply projects, which may serve to set rigorous demand oriented projects that can sustain the service delivery.

The introduction of smart specialization (S3) as a fundamental pillar of the 2014 reform of the EU cohesion policy is a significant strategic shift in European development intervention. S3 strategies aimed at mobilizing the economic potential of each country and region of the EU by allowing a more place-based and bottom-up approach to development. However, despite the salience that S3 has acquired in a short period of time, there has been no European-wide evaluation of the extent to which S3 strategies truly reflect the economic characteristics and potential of the territories where they are being implemented. This article examines the characteristics of S3 strategies across Europe – by focusing on their development axes, economic or scientific domains and policy priorities – to assess whether this is the case. The results show that S3 strategies display a proliferation of objectives, a problem that particularly affects areas with weaker quality of government. Moreover, strategies are generally loosely connected with the intrinsic conditions of each region and mostly mimic what neighbouring areas are doing. The lack of more concise and focused S3 strategies is likely to undermine the effectiveness of what is, otherwise, a very interesting and worthwhile policy experiment.

A number of studies examine the effect of the presence of migrants or refugees on voting behaviour in the same location, overlooking potential interactions between geographical areas. Exploiting unique data on refugee reception centre locations, we provide novel empirical evidence on the geographical spillover effect of refugee premises on voting outcomes in neighbouring municipalities. Our analysis of the 2016 referendum and the 2013 and 2018 general elections demonstrates that proximity to refugee reception centres increases voter turnout and the share of votes for populist parties in Italy, while reducing support for the centre-left. Importantly, the effect varies by municipality population size, per capita taxable income level, former political orientation, and access to broadband internet. Consistent with the hypothesis that opposition parties might have exploited anti-immigration sentiments to influence both referendum and general election ballots, we find that geographical proximity to refugee centres partly contributes to the recent success of populist parties in Italy.

Smart City policies have attracted relevant attention and funding over the last few years. While the time seems now ripe to conclude that such policies have a positive impact on urban economic growth, the picture is much less clear when looking at the microfoundations of this effect. In this paper we look at the urban innovation impact of Smart City policies. In fact, typical Smart City projects imply the involvement not only of major multinational corporations, along with local public authorities, but also of local companies, typically with the aim to translate general technological solutions to the local needs. A new data set collected for these analyses comprises data on Smart City features for 309 European metropolitan areas, Smart City policy intensity, and urban innovation outputs. The latter are proxied by calculating total patent applications to the European Patent Office between 2008 and 2013. Patent counts also include technologically narrower classes, namely high-tech, ICT, and specific Smart City technologies patent applications. Propensity Score Matching estimates suggest that cities engaging in Smart City policies above the EU average also tend to patent more intensively. This effect is stronger for high-tech patents, while decreases for more narrowly defined technological classes. This last result suggests possible technological spillovers from technologies directly involved in Smart City policies.

This paper draws upon Feenstra and Ma (2007, 2008), to develop a model of asymmetric competition between multiproduct firms. The model is used to analyze how cost asymmetry affects the equilibrium, with determination of quantity/price as well as product scope per firm. By treating the number of firms as a continuous variable, the model is extended to account for the endogenous determination of the number of firms in a long-run, monopolistically competitive equilibrium, with free entry by heterogeneous firms.

This chapter provides a simple overview of the canonical model of international migration, discusses the consequences of migration on both sending and receiving countries and draws some considerations on future research prospects for the international migration literature.

Tipping points have become a key concept in research on climate change, indicating points of abrupt transition in biophysical systems as well as transformative changes in adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, the potential existence of tipping points in socio-economic systems has remained underexplored, whereas they might be highly policy relevant. This paper describes characteristics of climate change induced socio-economic tipping points (SETPs) to guide future research on SETPS to inform climate policy. We review existing literature to create a tipping point typology and to derive the following SETP definition: a climate change induced, abrupt change of a socio-economic system, into a new, fundamentally different state. Through stakeholder consultation, we identify 22 candidate SETP examples with policy relevance for Europe. Three of these are described in higher detail to identify their tipping point characteristics (stable states, mechanisms and abrupt change): the collapse of winter sports tourism, farmland abandonment and sea-level rise-induced migration. We find that stakeholder perceptions play an important role in describing SETPs. The role of climate drivers is difficult to isolate from other drivers because of complex interplays with socio-economic factors. In some cases, the rate of change rather than the magnitude of change causes a tipping point. The clearest SETPs are found on small system scales. On a national to continental scale, SETPs are less obvious because they are difficult to separate from their associated economic substitution effects and policy response. Some proposed adaptation measures are so transformative that their implementations can be considered an SETP in terms of 'response to climate change'. Future research can focus on identification and impact analysis of tipping points using stylized models, on the exceedance of stakeholder-defined critical thresholds in the RCP/SSP space and on the macro-economic impacts of new system states.

The last decade has witnessed a political shift in voters' preferences. The upsurge of populist parties has involved countries in the whole world. The thesis focuses the attention on the European context, in a moment in history when all regions are experiencing an increase in unemployment and a decrease in per-capita income. At this very moment, a collapse of citizens' support towards social and democratic parties occurs and a number of populist parties emerge, re-addressing the politics' concerns on people's needs and demands. Going beyond the merely descriptive voting patterns, the ambition is to design different empirical scenarios where multiple forces and factors move together and shed light on the mechanisms at play. In pursuing this objective, the thesis fully dives into the geography of discontent literature, investigating the mechanisms behind the populist outbreak and its geographic heterogeneity. Chapter 1 draws the academic frame in which we embed the empirical works. Chapter 2 explores the role of regional institutional quality in shaping people's political preferences in European regions. Chapter 3 extends the previous chapter's contribution, by enriching the OLS-IV analysis via the adoption of a recent methodological tool, i.e. the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). Chapter 4 shapes the last part of the work, turning the attention to the Italian context. Implementing a municipal-level analysis, it investigates the role of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, in shifting political preferences.

Le zone interne, spesso coincidenti con lo spazio rurale esprimono dimensioni sociali, politiche ed economiche, espressioni della cultura locale. La capacità di innescare processi che mirano contemporaneamente a creare economia, valore sociale e ambientale attraverso innovative formule organizzative indicano nuovi ruoli e responsabilità sono fondamentali. per la costruzione dello sviluppo L'innovazione deve prestare attenzione alla necessità di una transizione socio-ecologica della società e dell'economia. L'ambiente naturale e' considerato un elemento centrale nelle strategie di sviluppo, fonte insostituibile per la sopravvivenza stessa dell'uomo. Il lavoro schematizza una nuova visione delle zone interne e rurali, territori che assumono cruciale importanza nei processi di cambiamento e di transizione ecologica che la società sta vivendo. ; The territory of the inland areas, often coinciding with a rural territory, is the result of sedimentation of social, political, and economic practices, expressed by the local culture. Today, the ability to trigger processes that simultaneously aim at creating economic, social, and environmental value through innovative organizational formulas that propose new roles and responsibilities in building development is fundamental. Innovation must pay attention to the need for a socio-ecological transition of society and the economy. The natural environment must be considered a central element in development strategies, an irreplaceable source for the very survival of man. Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved through a shared vision and structured process, which means that a transition management approach could potentially change society in the medium to long term. The article proposes a new vision of inland and rural areas, territories that assume crucial importance in the processes of change that society is currently experiencing.

The production of different exhaustible resources, and mining in particular, are a source of stock pollutants and the growth of these stocks can be constrained by abatement and taxation. However, the firm may have incentives to non-comply with these regulations. This study analyzes the enforcement of an emission tax in a dynamic model, which includes stock externalities and abatement by the mining firm and by natural processes. The purpose of this investigation is twofold. First, to study the consequences of a given enforcement scheme in a dynamic model and to generalize the results from previous static models. Second, to analyze the time paths of control variables and the violation level. It is argued that non-compliance in itself does not necessarily imply that net emissions from the mine are excessive compared to the full-compliance emission level. It is the possibility of a zero emission report that may cause the divergence from the socially optimal emission levels. The time path of violation and hence the path of unpaid taxes can have multiple shapes depending on the type of tax applied.

In this paper we analyze some specific conditions for local development. Our interest is oriented towards a multidimensional aspect of peripheral and rural areas. The rural areas considered as a productive system reflects a strong relationship between the agriculture and the other economic activities, In addition eco-systems must be protected and enhanced to develop innovation models that propose new roles and responsibilities for a new development vision. Following the implementation of the Smart Specialization Strategy and the Quintuple Helix Model this paper underlines the importance of connecting the innovation process with rural territories. We have considered some environmental and sectorial indicators for Sicily compared with the rest of Italy, to underline the role of peripheral areas for a new style of competitiveness based on the principles of sustainable development.

This paper investigates the role of research networks inside local development processes to increase the competitiveness of underdeveloped territories. This paper, within the scope of local development theory, aims to describe the state of the art on the regional research systems resulting largely from programs co-financed between 2000 and 2013, with which the various regions are preparing to engage in programming for the period 2014-2020. The extent of consistency between the objectives of sectorial specialization set by policies previously or currently implemented and those in the planning phase (S3) is assessed, as is their connection with existing territorial specializations at a regional level.

The average equity risk premium (ERP) in emerging markets is well-known to be significantly higher than in developed markets. But, key reasons for this remain unclear, contributing to investment strategy uncertainty. Here, we use industry-level data for 19 emerging market countries across three regions of the world to first examine the contribution of each industrial stock market to the extra premium paid by emerging markets to international investors from 1995 to present, and then to explore the relative importance of country-level governance and macroeconomic policy uncertainty in explaining both national and regional industry-by-industry ERP behavior. We conduct separate analyses for the emerging market crises period of 1995-2002, and the post-crises period of 2003-2012. Based on both static and dynamic approaches, we find that some industries indeed perform consistently better than others. In particular: (i) the healthcare and basic materials industries mostly contributed to the extra premium paid by the Asian stock market; and (ii) the East European and Latin American stock markets' extra performances were largely driven by the utilities and consumer services industries, respectively. However, our cross-sectional analyses suggest that country-level governance indicators are not strongly correlated with either national or industry-level returns, with the exception of the consumer goods industry. Lastly, using both rolling-window and DCC-GARCH frameworks, we find that correlations between industrial stock market excess returns and a measure of global economic policy uncertainty are consistently negative, and follow similar patterns. Our empirical evidence as a whole suggests that industrial stock markets are more highly related both within and across countries and regions than has been suggested previously. Contrary to much existing empirical work, our results therefore suggest there is currently little space in emerging markets to exploit cross-industry portfolio diversification benefits. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

The paper presents a new approach based on Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) and a new index called Relative Industrial Relevance (RIR) to discover, track and analyze spatial agglomeration of economic activities. By comparing patterns of local employment, this methodology shows how the local supply of human capital can explain the advantages generating spatial agglomerations. The reference case for this research is Italy, which has developed one of the most remarkable and studied example of spatial agglomerations, the Industrial Districts (IDs). IDs are traditionally identified by indexes which measure the physical concentration of firms belonging to a given industry, but are unable to seize the overall productive structure of the local economy. Employing the Italian Clothing Industry as test bed, the approach proposed in this paper identifies spatial agglomerations in terms of industry patterns and not of industry concentration. This methodology can offer a new basis to analyze the multiple pattern of local development.