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"Urban Design Governance takes a deep dive into the governance of urban design around Europe. It examines interventions in the means and processes of designing the built environment as devised by public authorities and other stakeholders across the continent. In particular, the focus is on the use of soft powers and allied financial mechanisms to influence design quality in the public interest. In doing so, the book traces the scope, use and effectiveness of the range of informal (non-regulatory) urban design governance tools that governments, municipalities and others have at their disposal. Developed from the Urban Maestro project, a joint initiative of the United Nations Human Settlement programme (UN-Habitat), UCL and the Brussels Bouwmeester Maître Architecte (BMA), Urban Design Governance offers the first panorama of informal urban design governance tools from across Europe, and places the tools within a theoretical and analytical framework with the potential to be applied locally and internationally. Last, the book discusses and reveals the essential pre-requisites for the effective governance of urban design. Governments everywhere are increasingly seeing these sorts of tools as part of a necessary investment in delivering the high-quality built environments that their residents, businesses and investors demand. This book shows how."--

This paper investigates the effects of the Brexit announcement on the British economy. For this, we use a counterfactual analysis methodology, predicting a set of macroeconomic variables of the British economy in a scenario where the Brexit announcement did not happen and measuring what drifted away from its effective value. To forecast the variables we use the ARIMA method. Our conclusions are that if Brexit had not been announced: i) the exchange rate of the Pound Sterling against the US Dollar would not have had such a sharp depreciation trend; ii) real wage growth would not have been as high after the referendum; iii) the growth rate of the consumer price index would not have had such a strong growth trend and iv) the Gross Domestic Product would have grown at a higher pace and after three years of Brexit announcement it would have been 3% higher.

Purpose
This paper aims to examine how foreign direct investment (FDI) and firm-specific advantages (FSAs) of US multinational enterprises (MNEs) majority-owned subsidiaries affect environmental pollution in host countries. The research results contribute to helping managers and policymakers understand the environmental impact of MNEs activities, and encourage these firms to develop environmentally responsible management (ERM) as an element of their corporate social responsibility practice.


Design/methodology/approach
Panel data consisting of developing and developed countries spanning the years 2004 through 2014 are used. The dynamic panel generalised method of moments technique is implemented. This method avoids common estimation bias, such as endogeneity, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation.


Findings
This paper finds that the direct environmental impacts of FDI vary significantly between the two groups of countries. The environmental benefits of FDI to the recipient country are achieved through capital and technology transfer. The study also reveals that R&D intensity moderates the relationship between FDI and environmental pollution in both developing and developed countries in such a way that environmental pollution decreases.


Research limitations/implications
Future research could explore the environmental impact of MNEs on host countries by considering both equity and non-equity entry modes. The findings offer some support to host government policies offering generous incentive packages to attract R&D investment to improve environmental pollution. This research raises questions as to the reasons corporations operating in developing and developed countries should pursue their ERM practices.


Originality/value
This research examines both the direct effect of FDI and the moderating effects of FSAs on the relationship between FDI and the environment. Although previous studies have already looked at the relationship between FDI and the environment, the moderating effect of FSAs is very under-developed in this relationship.

This case-study conducted in Norway investigates employers' responses to policy measures implemented throughout 2006–2015 and aimed at promoting the inclusion of persons with disabilities (PwDs) into mainstream employment by providing work place adaptations. For this purpose, we apply a multi-method approach by combining in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with the managers at two large private companies in Norway and quantitative shift-share analysis performed on the Norwegian Disabled People LFS data. While the shift-share analysis has demonstrated positive effects in the employment of PwDs at the national level and in providing adaptations at work during 2011–2015 for 'changes of working time', 'need for one or more adaptations' and 'changes of work tasks', 'physical adaptations' remain negative. The qualitative interviews report that 'flexibility' or 'changes of working time' is the main work place adaptation the managers at both companies provide to own employees who return to work after acquiring a disability or having a long-term illness. Both Companies demonstrate high conformity to accessibility standards, however, the provision of workplace adaptations to PwDs without prior work experience remains limited or absent despite the disability policy measures in Norway in that period and the companies' commitment to inclusion. ; publishedVersion

This case-study conducted in Norway investigates employers' responses to policy measures implemented throughout 2006–2015 and aimed at promoting the inclusion of persons with disabilities (PwDs) into mainstream employment by providing workplace adaptations. For this purpose, we apply a multi-method approach by combining in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with the managers at two large private companies in Norway and quantitative shift-share analysis performed on the Norwegian Disabled People LFS data. While the shift-share analysis has demonstrated positive effects in the employment of PwDs at the national level and in providing adaptations at work during 2011–2015 for 'changes of working time', 'need for one or more adaptations' and 'changes of work tasks', 'physical adaptations' remain negative. The qualitative interviews report that 'flexibility' or 'changes of working time' is the main workplace adaptation the managers at both companies provide to own employees who return to work after acquiring a disability or having a long-term illness. Both companies demonstrate high conformity to accessibility standards, however, the provision of workplace adaptations to PwDs without prior work experience remains limited or absent despite the disability policy measures in Norway in that period and the companies' commitment to inclusion.

This paper investigates empirically the role of tourism in the Portuguese long-run economic output growth on quarterly data (1997:1 to 2010:4). The augmented Granger causality test approach developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) is employed to ascertain the direction of causality between variables in a bi-variate vector autoregressions (VAR) system using the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) method. The results provide evidence of a strong one-way directional causality between tourism and economic growth and the necessary argument to support the tourism led growth hypothesis. This result has important policy implications for where government investments should be targeted giving a further catalyst to economic growth. ; Este artigo faz uma investigação empírica sobre o papel do turismo no crescimento económico de longo prazo em Portugal. Para tal, foram utilizados os dados disponíveis: valores trimestrais de 1997 a 2010. Foi utilizada a análise de causalidade de Granger desenvolvida por Toda e Yamamoto (1995), para verificar a direção da causalidade entre as variáveis, num sistema VAR (" bi-variate vector autoregression") utilizando o método SUR ("Seemingly Unrelated Regression"). Os resultados evidenciaram uma importante causalidade unidireccional entre o turismo e o crescimento económico, confirmando a hipótese do setor do turismo gerar crescimento. Este resultado revela-se assim importante em termos de políticas públicas de investimento, mostrando como o turismo pode ser catalisador de crescimento económico.

This case-study conducted in Norway investigates employers' responses to policy measures implemented throughout 2006-2015 and aimed at promoting the inclusion of persons with disabilities (PwDs) into mainstream employment by providing workplace adaptations. For this purpose, we apply a multi-method approach by combining in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with the managers at two large private companies in Norway and quantitative shift-share analysis performed on the Norwegian Disabled People LFS data. While the shift-share analysis has demonstrated positive effects in the employment of PwDs at the national level and in providing adaptations at work during 2011-2015 for "changes of working time", "need for one or more adaptations" and "changes of work tasks", "physical adaptations" remain negative. The qualitative interviews report that "flexibility" or "changes of working time" is the main workplace adaptation the managers at both companies provide to own employees who return to work after acquiring a disability or having a long-term illness. Both companies demonstrate high conformity to accessibility standards, however, the provision of workplace adaptations to PwDs without prior work experience remains limited or absent despite the disability policy measures in Norway in that period and the companies' commitment to inclusion.

"This book is driven by major developments in the world economy and fills the gap in the literature by providing new insights into some of the main opportunities and challenges faced by multinational enterprises seeking to pursue their foreign investment activities and gain access to new markets., specifically focusing on cross-border investment and how multinational enterprises are able to exploit new global business opportunities"--

A computer system that consists of a set of several programs that share both the same geometric definition and a consistent set of definitions for construction elements, is under development. The system consists of a common program allowing different types of exportation to other simulation programs or to other modules. The main modules under development until now are: an interface to the Energy Plus program, which builds an "idf" file from a 3D geometric definition that was previously modeled in graphical mode; and a module, that will provide the necessary calculations to verify if a given shape fulfills the thermal regulation of buildings which is based upon the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) approved by European Parliament and Council. An interface with Radiance program is also being developed. Using this system, which has been designed firstly for architectural conception, the user can perform different simulations with different aims, but sharing the same architectural shape and construction types, in order to check if the building fulfills thermal Portuguese codes and to perform energy simulations with Energy Plus or Radiance. The use of this system has demonstrated that it can represent a great saving of time in simulations and helping to reduce the occurrence of design errors as well. Since it allows performing simulations in a very quick way it can contribute also to help architects on achieving better solutions while designing, in terms of the optimization of all the parameter evaluated. The use of energy plus to evaluate the comfort of the buildings while being design as shown that this methodology can help to find more sustainable solutions in terms of their architectural shape and construction elements.

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Book -- Chapter 2: Academic Tourism: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues -- Chapter 3: Academic Tourism and Dynamics of Tourism Destinations -- Chapter 4: Revisiting an Academic Tourism Destination: An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Motivations, Attitudes, Satisfaction, and Electronic Word to Mouth -- Chapter 5: Staff Teaching Mobility of Selected Polish Universities on the Example of Erasmus Plus Programme -- Chapter 6: Language Tourism in Higher Education. An Overview -- Chapter 7: How Do Others Think About Us? The Effect of Country Perceptions on the Behavioural Intentions of Foreign Students -- Chapter 8: The Role of Big Data in Knowledge Co-Creation for Academic Tourism Experiences -- Chapter 9: Exchange Students' Views on Tourism: The Impact of First-Hand Experiences on Transversal Skills Development and Loyalty to the Host Destination -- Chapter 10: Academic Tourism and Sustainability -- Chapter 11: Economic Impact of Academic Tourism in European Countries.

This paper investigates the effects of the Brexit announcement on the British economy. For this, we use a counterfactual analysis methodology, predicting a set of macroeconomic variables of the British economy in a scenario where the Brexit announcement did not happen and measuring what drifted away from its effective value. To forecast the variables we use the ARIMA method. Our conclusions are that if Brexit had not been announced: i) the exchange rate of the Pound Sterling against the US Dollar would not have had such a sharp depreciation trend; ii) real wage growth would not have been as high after the referendum; iii) the growth rate of the consumer price index would not have had such a strong growth trend and iv) the Gross Domestic Product would have grown at a higher pace and after three years of Brexit announcement it would have been 3% higher.