Suchergebnisse

In this paper a model of the spatial development of the American venture capital industry is provided. The investment preferences for both publicly and privately owned venture capital firms for the period 1970–85 are examined in light of this model. A median polish analysis of the investment preferences, for firms located in the sixteen largest venture capital centers, reveals a high level of regional parochialism in investment. Differences in risk aversion and industry choice are also found both by city type and by firm type. Implications for local development are discussed.

The nature of the pollution process predicates a need to integrate the activities of the different bodies engaged in controlling environmental pollution. In Britain, it has been suggested that integrated control (the best practicable environmental option—BPEO) could be achieved by local liaison in the form of pollution panels. Because pollution panels have general aims, are usually large, do not usually include all the relevant control authorities, meet infrequently, and cover only 11% of the districts of England and Wales, and because industrial members are reluctant to discuss their affairs in 'public', it is concluded that they are not, as presently constituted, the appropriate bodies to implement the BPEO concept. Some of the pollution panels have, however, created the 'climate of opinion' and the informal contacts which would enable specific BPEO cases to be discussed by technical working groups drawn mainly from the panel's membership. Nevertheless, informal local liaison does not appear to be a particularly promising method of achieving integrated pollution control.

In April 1987 the United Kingdom took an important step towards the 'integrated' or 'cross-media' approach to pollution-control with the creation of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP). Significant legislative change is now proposed which will put HMIP on a statutory footing and enable it to take an integrated approach to the control of more serious problems of pollution, considering the impact on the environment as a whole. Integrated polution-control has been claimed to offer environmental and administrative advantages over a sectoral system, but these remain to be demonstrated in practice and some important conceptual, methodological, and institutional issues remain to be resolved as HMIP embarks upon implementation of the new approach. Political commitment to pollution-control, reflected in the availability of adequate resources, will be essential if real progress is to be made.

It is important for health service planning to build up a knowledge of costs within the specialties in hospitals. At present, there is no available accounting procedure which makes these costs directly available, and so they have to be estimated. In this paper, the available ways of achieving this are reviewed for inpatient costs, and a new method based on a biproportional fitting procedure is proposed. The results of the various models are compared and an assessment is made of the potential usefulness of such information in the planning process.

The past two decades have witnessed widespread agreement that the incidence of budgetary allocations, requests, and more so approvals, is accounted for by both economic and political environmental factors, aside from incremental budgetary behavior.In accord with the emphasis on the environmental determinants of budgetary allocation, we find the gross investment in agriculture in Israel to follow the theoretical lines offered by Western researchers: The requesting side relies on inertia more often than the approving side; the approving side is more political, situating the budget in a larger, more universal, context.The results indicate that there is a relative drop in investments in agriculture under the Likud control in Israel and thus give further confirmation to the apparent Conservative discrimination against agriculture.

The assertions of links between school segregation and segregation in housing are evaluated in a case study of housing patterns and school integration in part of the Los Angeles metropolitan region. The indices of separation/segregation show that although schools in many instances were integrated with voluntary and then mandatory pupil assignments, the housing patterns changed little. However, there was a substantial increase in private school enrollment. This latter response is consistent with the residential choice literature which indicates significant white flight when there is intervention in school systems.

The future of nuclear power in the United Kingdom is finely balanced. The relevant factors are discussed in the context of geographic arguments related to siting and safety. Aspects of the 'British approach' to nuclear power regulation, licensing, siting, and emergency planning are briefly described. Last, the planning intentions of the state power-utilities are reviewed and the impact of a new party-political dimension assessed.

This paper is an evaluation of the impact nuclear power planning policies have had on Czechoslovakia's socialist society, particularly for the post-Chernobyl era. Poor indigenous energy resources and the leading role that nuclear power has played in the COMECON's energy-intensive manufacturing sector has made nuclear power into an attractive proposition from the 1960s onwards. Discussion in this paper centres around nuclear-power plant siting and operation, and media coverage of the industry—especially after April 1986; reports include official Czechoslovakian material, and matter published by émigré groups. Official planning policies appear to have changed little since the Ukrainian accident, with increasing reliance being placed on nuclear power for electricity production in Czechoslovakia, up to the end of this century and beyond.

In this paper the regional organization of collective services in socialist countries is discussed. Social infrastructure is a key aspect of regional activity. Within socialist economies shortage, or unsatisfied demand, is a driving force which stimulates natural tendencies to management stabilization in which bureaucratic structures control the distribution of goods and services. There are two rival models of regional infrastructure provision: Orientation to places of production, or orientation to places of residence. Within either model a hierarchical structure is necessary. It is becoming necessary in socialist countries to appraise the administrative consequences of social goods provision as well as of productive forces. This creates major challenges to link the productive and residence orientation of administration. This, in turn, suggests a need for a more flexible rather than a uniform approach to settlement planning.

In the paper the authors outline the framework for research on transport, communications, and mobility, which underlies the network strategy currently being undertaken by the eighteen member countries of the European Science Foundation. They highlight the need for greater emphasis to be given, by policymakers throughout Europe as a whole, to the broader social and economic consequences of current trends in the field, and suggest that joint endeavour in this field is of paramount importance in order to exploit the research potential of the European countries.

How can technology be better utilized to meet socioeconomic needs? Technological change is closely related to societal change. At the level of the firm, technology is a tool to achieve and sustain competitive advantage but radical innovation is system oriented and involves infrastructure. The paramount role of information technology has to be emphasised. Two new concepts are emerging; Just in Time/Total Quality Control (JIT/TQC) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). So-called value-added-networks or VANs are catching on in Western countries. The bottlenecks are the costs, the externalities, the lack of standardization, and the system incoherence. Brief case-studies are developed: The new generation of metros, high speed trains, the motor industry, and intermodalism with utilization of High-Cube containers. The findings of these studies show that organizational innovation has to go along with technological innovation.

In this paper a recently developed framework designed to facilitate the expression, interpretation, and communication of imperfect quantitative information is adapted in order to elucidate the quality and significance of recently published measures of UK energy efficiency (MONERGY) need and performance. The analysis in the paper uncovers a considerable variability in the quality of the publicised measures; this in turn provides crucial pointers to the way they should be interpreted, and in some cases indicates ground for possible improvement.

This paper contains a presentation of a theory and a taxonomy explaining relationships among policies in three spheres—sector, distribution, and space. Based on a juxtaposition of competing approaches of the liberal and radical schools, the theoretical analysis is seen to suggest the dominance of sectoral policies and the complementary role of others, particularly spatial policies. In order to define the interdependencies among policies in practical terms, a relational taxonomy is presented. Last, a procedure of taxonomical analysis is prescribed as a normative guideline for policymaking.