Housing intermediary services in China: the rise and fall of ‘Fang Wu Yin Hang’

Housing reforms in China are often conceived to have engendered a gradual shift towards a market system. New institutions have been introduced to enable decentralized, monetarized and privatized allocation of housing units. This study explores the emergence, growth and downfall of an intermediary service (known as ‘fang wu yin hang’) created spontaneously by real estate agents to facilitate housing transactions in the Chinese cities. Although this new institution looked capable of strengthening the rationality, efficiency, transparency and impersonality of China’s housing market, it was abandoned soon after its inception. The failure of this transient service suggests the presence of some social institutions, which could have blocked China’s progress towards a full-fledged market system in the housing sector.

Emergent macrostructures of path-dependent location adoptions processes of firms

Agglomeration of firms in a regional context is a complex process that cannot be tamed easily using traditional economic models. Instead, in this paper, I conducted computer simulations to observe under the assumption of increasing returns how firms choose among competing locations to form regional agglomeration. By designing simple rules of firms’ spatial choice behavior, I observed through such simulations how firms moved across and within regions. The findings showed that firms tended to lock-in a particular region, that is, that region dominated all others in the firms’ movement, reminiscent of market domination of a technology among competing technologies. The emergent macrostructures were surprisingly orderly in that the distributions of sizes of spatial clusters in relation to frequencies followed a logarithmically linear form or a power law. Unpredictability, path dependence, and small events were present in the simulations and can be explained in the context of regional development. Useful insights as to how macrostructures of agglomeration emerge through microbehaviors of firms can be gained through the simulations.

The spatial structure(s) of the Belgian housing stock

This paper presents the spatial structure(s) of the Belgian housing stock and the spatial outcome of socio-economic inequalities at a (sub)regional level and shows the link with the cultural landscape. A selection of housing patterns illustrates the processes that segment the Belgian housing stock today: north–south contrasts, east–west differences, centre–periphery and urban–non-urban dualities.

Urban Tourism in Bloemfontein: Current Dynamics,Immediate Challenges and Future Prospects

In South Africa, there is a paucity of research focused on urban tourism. The small body of research focused on South Africa’s urban places as tourist destinations is mainly concerned with urban tourism in the country’s metropolitan areas. Secondary cities, such as Bloemfontein, have received scant research attention. In the context of such research neglect, the paper focuses on the urban tourism system of Bloemfontein. Drawing on both survey material and secondary data sources, the investigation provides an outline of the Bloemfontein tourism economy. Particular attention is given to different tourism types and their spatial distribution. Thereafter, an overview of obstacles to various tourism development as experienced by product providers is given and potential support mechanisms detailed. Finally, a tourism development strategy is set out.

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Some aspects of the intraregional spatial distribution of local sector activities

This paper focuses on the spatial distribution of economic activities that serve the demands of households within a region. The level of local sector activities is measured by employment per inhabitant. The basic hypothesis relates to how this proportion varies systematically over space for a wide range of geographies, from high values in a city center to low values in areas adjacent to the city center, and asymptotically approaching the average regional level as the distance from the center increases. This defines a curve that we (under quite general conditions) find to be invariant under changes in the spatial residential pattern and the transportation structure. This suggests that relationships of this kind might be a powerful tool in the prediction of regional development.

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An analysis of wage flexibility: evidence from the Spanish regions

The theory of Optimum Currency Areas poses that one of the most important costs that EMU may entail for countries belonging to it is the loss of some instruments of political economy (exchange rate and monetary policies) in response to shocks. The aim of this paper is to analyse real wage flexibility, which is one of the main alternative adjustment mechanisms to these policies. For this purpose, the case of the Spanish regions for the period 1985–1999 is reported. First, we develop a nonparametric approach to show that unemployment and productivity growth rates have reduced effects on wage evolution in the period of study. Second, semiparametric estimation techniques are applied to provide more econometric evidence regarding regional flexibility of real wages in Spain. Additionally, some suggestions are developed on the topic of EMU’s ability to improve the degree of regional wage flexibility. The general conclusion that we draw in the study is that regional wages are very rigid and the impact of EMU, though favourable, will be reduced.

Inter-generational Occupational Mobility Amongst Blacks in the Mitchell’s Plain Magisterial District, Cape Town: Evidence from the Khayelitsha/Mitchell’s Plain Survey

This study examines inter-generational occupational class mobility amongst blacks (Africans and coloureds) in the Mitchell’s Plain Magisterial District in Cape Town, South Africa. The results of the Khayelitsha/Mitchell’s Plain Survey conducted in 2000 serve as the main source of data. We show that middle-class occupational origins do not necessarily guarantee the transmission of advantage from one generation to the next. The findings revealed that there is a churning effect at work with respondents experiencing upward occupational class mobility due to the changing occupational structure, which at the same time is counteracted by considerable downward occupational class mobility. This result is partly due to (1) the particular class structure of the Mitchell’s Plain Magisterial District, which excludes many middle-class black areas and therefore has a more working-class character and (2) the precarious character of the black middle class, which is concentrated in low-paid nursing and teaching occupations.

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Technological activity and productivity in the Spanish regions

This paper analyses the importance of technological activities in explaining the differences in productivity among Spanish regions in the period 1986–1996. It quantifies the effect of the regions’ own technological innovation, and the externalities associated with technological capital, on regional development. The analysis is based on the estimation of production functions and an equation explaining total factor productivity. Although a positive significant effect is obtained at national level on a long-term horizon, the significance of the effect of technological activities on the productivity of the Spanish regions in the period 1987–1996 depends on the indicator used. However, the technological spillover effects between regions are always highly significant regardless of the indicator used.

Innovation and regional absorptive capacity: the labour market dimension

In 2003, Eurostat published an ‘experimental’ dataset on regional innovation levels derived from the Second Community Innovation Survey. This dataset, part of the European Innovation Scoreboard, also contains a range of regional labour market indicators. In this paper, we report an exploratory analysis of this data, focussing on how the labour market characteristics of regions shape regions’ absorptive capacity (RACAP) and their ability to assimilate knowledge from public and externally conducted R&D. In particular, we aim to establish whether labour market aspects of RACAP are more important for innovation in prosperous or lagging regions of the European Union (EU).

Consolidating Local Economic Development in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Since the release in 2006 of a national coordinated framework, a new policy maturity has emerged in South Africa around the planning of local economic development (LED). In this article, key issues are explored for the consolidation of LED as an important aspect of development planning in postapartheid South Africa. Five significant themes are identified as central to the consolidation of LED, namely, the linkages of LED within wider spatial planning frameworks, learning good practices for LED especially in terms of cluster development, data issues and the identification of competitive advantage, the appropriate role of LED in the context of ‘the urban future’, and capacity challenges facing LED.

Spatial duopoly with zoning

We reexamine the spatial duopoly with a general equilibrium associated with a land market by considering a zoning constraint. It is shown that the zoning constraint makes the equilibrium location region smaller than that in the model with nonzoning constraint, and the land rent pattern shows that the highest land rent in the zoning area may be higher than or lower than the highest land rent of the production sites.

The economic rationale for integrated tariffs in local public transport

In this paper, it is shown that integrated tariffs can be used to extract the consumer’s surplus when there are a lot of connections supplied so that the law of large numbers applies in the estimation of the consumer’s willingness to pay. The time validity limitations of tickets are explained by a nonlinear pricing approach. Links between optimal pricing in local public transport and network characteristics are highlighted.

Regional economic instability: the role of industrial diversification and spatial spillovers

Within regional science there has been a long history of interest in the relationship between economic instability and regional diversification. Despite this interest there are many unresolved issues in the literature, and while regional economic theory suggests that greater diversity will make regional economies more stable, the evidence is far less convincing. In addition, very little is known about how other variables affect the level of instability experienced by regional economies. This paper intends to clarify some of these points, with developments in the field of spatial data analysis meaning that additional insights may be gathered using these techniques. The analysis uses data from the 125 Local Government Areas of Queensland, a state economy of Australia that consists of many types of regions, ranging from densely settled urban centres to sparsely settled rural regions.

Military Base Conversion in South Africa: Opportunities for Local Economic Development

Cutbacks in defence budgets have highlighted the importance of issues around the conversion of former military bases. The international experience shows that the process of closing military bases and converting them to alternative uses can open up possibilities for local economic development (LED). This article examines South African debates and experience of the reuse of military bases made redundant in the post-apartheid period. Implications for LED are discussed in two case studies of the Zwartkop Air Force base and the Bourke’s Luck Military Base.

Local Economic Development in the City of Lusaka,Zambia

The aim in this article is to examine the example of LED planning in Zambia, a country which post-2000 has been experiencing a modest expansion of decentralization. More specifically, the paper draws from a range of primary sources of information to discuss the development of planning for LED in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city. It is argued that whilst there has occurred a growth of planning around LED in Lusaka, implementation has been limited due to a number of factors, including capacity constraints and finance.

Fiscal decentralization and regional income disparities: evidence from the Colombian experience

Using the Colombian experience, this paper introduces new empirical evidence about the relationship between fiscal decentralization and regional income disparities. The study has made some advances in the empirical analysis of this relationship. First, a panel data approach is introduced to catch the dynamics of adjustment involved in a fiscal decentralization policy. Secondly, the analysis is based on a country experience rather than a cross-country analysis, so the effects of fiscal decentralization are estimated more objectively than previous research that exhibits cultural, historical, and institutional variation. Finally, other limitations observed in previous work, such as the absence of spatial dependence and sensitivity of the conclusions to the measures of fiscal decentralization used, are addressed in this paper.

The Limits of Decentralisation in Urban Zambia

Against a background of the expansion of decentralisation across sub-Saharan Africa and widespread debates concerning the benefits associated with decentralisation, this article analyses the example of Zambia. The paper highlights the “limits” or constraints affecting the success of decentralisation. From detailed research in Ndola, attention is drawn to several issues surrounding the council’s inadequate human resource base as well as critical funding constraints which impact upon public service delivery.

Location decisions of Japanese new manufacturing plants in China: a discrete-choice analysis

This paper adopts a conditional logit model to empirically examine the location choices of Japanese greenfield manufacturing foreign direct investment among Chinese provinces. It is hypothesized that its location decisions in China would be determined by the provinces’ market sizes, infrastructure capacities, labor, land, and energy costs, agglomeration effects, labor quality, and policy incentives. A Hausman–McFadden test is conducted to test whether the independence from irrelevant alternatives assumption of the conditional logit model is violated.

An equilibrium network design model with a social cost function for multimodal networks

In this paper, we present a comprehensive investment planning model and its solution approach. The model takes a bilevel programming form and allows a variety of effects of the investments incorporated. The model is characterized by its ability to address the total social costs occurring in transportation networks and to estimate the equilibrium link volumes in multimodal networks. Two solution algorithms were proposed. Both algorithms handle the discrete optimization problem by exploiting the strings of binary digits of integer variables. In an illustrative example, we performed network design analyses for three scenarios in which 25, 50, and 75% of the total required capital is available. By applying the two solution algorithms to the example problem, the optimal network alternative for each scenario was found. If a cost/benefit analysis is coupled with the proposed model, the optimal investments and the optimal network configuration will be determined simultaneously.

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Geographical and sectoral clusters of innovation in Europe

In this paper we attempt to provide empirical evidence on the phenomenon of cluster agglomeration of innovation activities throughout time and space in European regions. More specifically we try to assess whether there are some forces which support the development of technologically specialised regional clusters. In particular we want to determine the spatial extent of these forces, their dynamics along the eighties and nineties and their connection with production clustering. We have started from a mapping of innovation activity in European regions by means of an exploratory spatial analysis based on global indicators of spatial dependence. As a result, in a second step, we check the hypothesis that innovation concentration can be a result not only of the geographic concentration of production but also of the development of technologically specialised clusters in neighbouring regions. The analysis is based on a databank set up by CRENoS on regional patenting at the European Patent Office spanning from 1978 to 2001 and classified by ISIC sectors and on the Cambridge Econometrics database on production activity. Among the main results, it is shown that specialisation in innovative activity is positively and significantly influenced by specialisation in production activity. Additionally, it is obtained that innovation tends to cluster more in sectors in which the neighbouring regions are also technologically specialised.