Suchergebnisse

The paper attempts a present day appraisal of the urban economic question so that it might then explainthe tendency for population and economic activity to crowd into major urban centres.To explain such drivestowards agglomeration along with the slowing down of the spread of the great cities, a synthesis is hereessayed of established and novel theory, the effects of both market pressure and local government in itsmultiple manifestations being ever borne in mind the while.With the same end in view, a summary is givenof empirical research into the question undertaken over the last decade, attention being here drawn to atendency to understand the phenomenon of agglomeration in terms of the effects of external dynamiceconomics and available workforce resources available in the cities at a given time under study.The reviewing of the issue and research on the same is held to lead to the conclusion that there is still a longway to go before an explicative model could be offered for urban growth and a need is seen to complementthat undertaken to date with material drawn from other disciplines such as History and Sociology. In thesame vein, it is here thought advisable that studies should be made as to the characteristics of the urbangrowth of any given centre that these might be offered to local government as this would be of great assistanceto this when it came to taking measures provoked by the phenomenon. ; El principal objetivo de este trabajo es llegar al conocimiento del estado actual de la economíaurbana, en su intento de explicar la tendencia hacia la concentración de las actividades y la población engrandes núcleos urbanos. Para explicar los procesos de aglomeración, así como el freno al crecimiento de lasgrandes ciudades, se sintetizan teorías ya consolidadas con nuevas aportaciones, tomando en consideracióntanto las fuerzas del mercado como la posible intervención de los distintos niveles de la administración publica.Igualmente, se pasa una revisión a la investigación empírica más significativa de la última década, advirtiendocomo tendencia más relevante la explicación de los procesos de aglomeración a través de las economíasexternas dinámicas y de los niveles de capital humano existentes en la ciudad en un momento dado.La revisión hecha permite concluir que a la economía urbana todavía le queda mucho por avanzar en la especificaciónde modelos explicativos del crecimiento de las ciudades, sugiriendo, entre otros aspectos, la oportunidadde complementar la visión económica con aportaciones procedentes de otras ramas del conocimiento,como la historia o la sociología. Igualmente se concluye sobre la oportunidad de hacer estudios que permitandar a conocer a la administración local los patrones de crecimiento vinculados a su ciudad, ya que ello permitiríacontar con un marco más adecuado para la adopción de medidas que promuevan el crecimiento.

The paper is based upon those concepts of service cost recovery, economic rationalization and environmentalpreservation set out in EU Directive 2000/60. Certain considerations as to the price to pay for the supplyingof water as within city nuculae are made upon these. The lack of any clear information in the sector alongwith the fact that the low price for supplying water in Spain works against any recovery of the cost of doingso, against any greater efficiency targets or even hopes for any conserving of the element are then lamented.In the light of the fore-going, the author then makes a series of recommendations as to price changes thatwould lead to a meeting of EU requirements as in Spanish cities there is margin and more for raising theprice of water, doing so speedily and thoroughly depending on little more than there being the political willto do so. ; En este artículo, tomando como referencia el principio de recuperación de costes del servicio, ylos objetivos de racionalidad económica y protección medioambiental planteados en la Directiva 2000/60/CE,se hace una reflexión sobre las tarifas aplicadas en el servicio de abastecimiento de aguas en núcleos urbanos.Entre otros aspectos se denuncia la falta de transparencia informativa en el sector, así como el hechode que los bajos niveles tarifarios aplicados en España no permiten el cumplimiento del principio de recuperaciónde costes, ni de los objetivos de eficiencia y conservación del recurso. En este orden de ideas, en laparte final del trabajo se plantean una serie de recomendaciones sobre la aplicación de tarifas del agua aefectos de cumplir con los requisitos de la norma comunitaria. En las ciudades españolas existe un ampliomargen para justificar la elevación del precio del agua, en todo caso la celeridad y la intensidad con que sedé este inevitable proceso dependerá de las voluntades políticas.

The paper is based upon those concepts of service cost recovery, economic rationalization and environmentalpreservation set out in EU Directive 2000/60. Certain considerations as to the price to pay for the supplyingof water as within city nuculae are made upon these. The lack of any clear information in the sector alongwith the fact that the low price for supplying water in Spain works against any recovery of the cost of doingso, against any greater efficiency targets or even hopes for any conserving of the element are then lamented.In the light of the fore-going, the author then makes a series of recommendations as to price changes thatwould lead to a meeting of EU requirements as in Spanish cities there is margin and more for raising theprice of water, doing so speedily and thoroughly depending on little more than there being the political willto do so. ; En este artículo, tomando como referencia el principio de recuperación de costes del servicio, ylos objetivos de racionalidad económica y protección medioambiental planteados en la Directiva 2000/60/CE,se hace una reflexión sobre las tarifas aplicadas en el servicio de abastecimiento de aguas en núcleos urbanos.Entre otros aspectos se denuncia la falta de transparencia informativa en el sector, así como el hechode que los bajos niveles tarifarios aplicados en España no permiten el cumplimiento del principio de recuperaciónde costes, ni de los objetivos de eficiencia y conservación del recurso. En este orden de ideas, en laparte final del trabajo se plantean una serie de recomendaciones sobre la aplicación de tarifas del agua aefectos de cumplir con los requisitos de la norma comunitaria. En las ciudades españolas existe un ampliomargen para justificar la elevación del precio del agua, en todo caso la celeridad y la intensidad con que sedé este inevitable proceso dependerá de las voluntades políticas.

The paper attempts a present day appraisal of the urban economic question so that it might then explainthe tendency for population and economic activity to crowd into major urban centres.To explain such drivestowards agglomeration along with the slowing down of the spread of the great cities, a synthesis is hereessayed of established and novel theory, the effects of both market pressure and local government in itsmultiple manifestations being ever borne in mind the while.With the same end in view, a summary is givenof empirical research into the question undertaken over the last decade, attention being here drawn to atendency to understand the phenomenon of agglomeration in terms of the effects of external dynamiceconomics and available workforce resources available in the cities at a given time under study.The reviewing of the issue and research on the same is held to lead to the conclusion that there is still a longway to go before an explicative model could be offered for urban growth and a need is seen to complementthat undertaken to date with material drawn from other disciplines such as History and Sociology. In thesame vein, it is here thought advisable that studies should be made as to the characteristics of the urbangrowth of any given centre that these might be offered to local government as this would be of great assistanceto this when it came to taking measures provoked by the phenomenon. ; El principal objetivo de este trabajo es llegar al conocimiento del estado actual de la economíaurbana, en su intento de explicar la tendencia hacia la concentración de las actividades y la población engrandes núcleos urbanos. Para explicar los procesos de aglomeración, así como el freno al crecimiento de lasgrandes ciudades, se sintetizan teorías ya consolidadas con nuevas aportaciones, tomando en consideracióntanto las fuerzas del mercado como la posible intervención de los distintos niveles de la administración publica.Igualmente, se pasa una revisión a la investigación empírica más significativa de la última década, advirtiendocomo tendencia más relevante la explicación de los procesos de aglomeración a través de las economíasexternas dinámicas y de los niveles de capital humano existentes en la ciudad en un momento dado.La revisión hecha permite concluir que a la economía urbana todavía le queda mucho por avanzar en la especificaciónde modelos explicativos del crecimiento de las ciudades, sugiriendo, entre otros aspectos, la oportunidadde complementar la visión económica con aportaciones procedentes de otras ramas del conocimiento,como la historia o la sociología. Igualmente se concluye sobre la oportunidad de hacer estudios que permitandar a conocer a la administración local los patrones de crecimiento vinculados a su ciudad, ya que ello permitiríacontar con un marco más adecuado para la adopción de medidas que promuevan el crecimiento.

Research that tries to explain the decisions of local government in the contracting out of certain services frequently disregards the temporal dimension. In this article, the authors take time into account in the analysis, proposing a duration model as an alternative to discrete choice models. The objective is to analyze the explanatory factors in the contracting out of municipal services. This methodology is applied to the water services of 744 municipalities in southern Spain during the period from 1985 to 2006. From the results, the authors conclude that complexity in the environment, economies of scale, financial restrictions, and stability of the local government are determinants in the decision.

AbstractOne of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6 is to increase water use efficiency in all sectors. In the domestic sphere, water consumption is largely conditioned by the habits and behaviour of individuals. In this study, we investigate for the first time the influence of connectedness to and contact with nature on five different uses of water at home. Using ordered probit regressions with a sample of 874 students from the University of Granada (Spain), we found that connectedness to nature and nature contact is positively or non‐significantly related to different dimensions of water efficiency. The results indicate that in order to encourage pro‐environmental water use habits at home, efforts should be made to develop an ecocentric vision in schools and to promote school trips to explore and understand the nearest natural areas. These policies should be adapted to a wider international context as a way of addressing the global problem of water scarcity.

The study of happiness or subjective well-being has traditionally been studied within the disciplines of psychology or sociology. Although economics has contemplated happiness in research terms, it has only recently been studied in any depth. In this paper we offer several proposals in order to investigate the relationship between water access and happiness, suggesting some situations that would merit further research. Moreover, we have included some methodological notes in order to achieve this objective. This relationship can be useful in two ways. Firstly, it can favour the contemplation of water access as a human right. Secondly, it can serve as a framework for the decision-making process carried out by Governments and NGOs in developing countries.

AbstractIn light of the growing interest and potential of the Life Satisfaction Approach (LSA) to value environmental attributes, this research paper aims to estimate the monetary value of water supply infrastructure improvements using this novel approach. A theoretical framework compares this method with the widely used contingent valuation method (CVM), highlighting the pros and cons of both approaches. Results show that the LSA can generate meaningful values of the nonmarket benefits derived from improving water supply infrastructure, based on the impact that such benefits can have on individuals' life satisfaction. In addition, these values are not different from those obtained from the CVM. Thus the LSA arises as a useful complement to the more traditional methods while expanding the array of techniques available for the economic valuation of environmental goods in a cost benefit framework.

This paper analyzes the relationship between market concentration in the private segment of the water industry and water prices with a sample of municipalities located in the Southern Spanish region of Andalusia. In doing so, several Heckman sample selection models are estimated with the main finding being that market concentration increases the price of water for residential use charged by private companies. The main policy recommendation is that urban water service privatization must be accompanied by the appropriate regulatory and institutional frameworks to promote competition among businesses and monitor water pricing.

In a recent study into the literature, Bel and Fageda (2007) highlighted the lack of the time dimension in research dealing with explanatory factors in the decision to contract out municipal services. In this paper we attemp to evaluate if the argument of Bel and Fageda is true. We do this by means of two methodological contrast in the designing of variables from a dataset containing 744 municipalities in Southern Spain. From our empirical analysis, we conclude that the consideration of the tiem dimension does contribute to a better specification fo the model, and not considering it could lead to a misunderstanding of the motivation behind the decision.

In this paper the differences in terms of performance between public and the private governance in urban water management are investigated. A statistical ranking is implemented to determine programmatic efficiency differences in DEA, using an incomplete panel data that gathers information on 20 water utilities in Andalusia, in Southern Spain. In the model, labour and operational costs are considered as inputs. The volume of revenue water, the number of connections and the network length are used as outputs. The analysis indicates that private management is more efficient. The efficiency indicators adjusted by a variable related to quality are estimated and demonstrate that privatization of the service does not mean any loss in terms of quality. However, there are no significant differences between both types of management including as a desirable input hydraulic yield as a proxy of the degree of network renovation. A lower hydraulic efficiency in private management would suggest that the need to make significant investments could be an important factor when making the decision to privatize the management of the urban water service.

In a recent study into the literature, Bel and Fageda (2007) highlighted the lack of the time dimension in research dealing with explanatory factors in the decision to contract out municipal services. In this paper we attempt to evaluate if the argument of Bel and Fageda is true. We do this by means of two methodological contrasts in the designing of variables from a dataset containing 744 municipalities in Southern Spain. From our empirical analysis, we conclude that the consideration of the time dimension does contribute to a better specification of the model, and not considering it could lead to a misunderstanding of the motivation behind the decision.