Geographie Economie Societe最新文献

The existence of geographical disparities in the French supply of medical care begs the question of the adjustment between needs and effective access to medical care. This access depends on the sharing out of financial resources, first between regions and second between medical infrastructures in each region. The two priorities of the government in the field of Health, which are equality in medical care access and the control of medical public spending, may obviously be conflicting. The concentration of medical activities in some regions and the agglomeration of specialized hospitals in urban centers can be observed. So the methods used by the government to plan medical supply seem to be inefficient in resolving this geographical imbalance. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the field of Health appears to be an innovative solution. In particular, the development of telemedicine may resolve the problem of medical supply concentration. The first contribution of the paper is to develop a theoretical model in order to explain the French disparities in hospital medical care access between urban and rural areas in the same region. It describes the allocation of public funds to hospitals in a region, which determines the medical care supply in this region. We show that the optimal allocation mechanism leads to large disparities between the two areas in terms of quality of medical care access and of utility. Second, we introduce telemedicine into our model to measure its effect on the inequality in medical care access. We show that telemedicine increases regional utility only if the urban area has a great advantage in terms of medical infrastructures. This result implies that telemedicine has to be considered as an alternative to public policies attempting to re-allocate the funds between the two areas. We then propose some public policy recommendations concerning the development of telemedicine.

In the past few years, environmental integration has become an imperative for industrial enterprises and it is acknowledged that the state of the environment tomorrow depends upon the attitude of the enterprises of today. The location, the socio-economic situation, environmental constraints and institutional stimuli are elements that strongly influence the relationship that industries have with their surroundings. The conditions in which this relationship takes form and its implications for territorial competitiveness in Portugal are the main theme of this article. This idea is supported by the case study of the Águeda local productive system.

On this paper the retail labour market main trends are studied in the framework of the recent transformations of the activity and its management because our hypothesis says that job characteristics should be related with the activity’s organisation and its transformation.

The sector main changes deal with concentration and internationalisation of firms, retailing diversification, new relationships between retail organisations and geographical space, besides the new meaning of commerce in the consumer’s society.

Job trends point to stabilisation of the total employment but increasing presence of female and young employees. At the same time we find significant traces of segmentation of the labour market with simultaneously disqualification and upskilling of jobs, increasing part time work and outsourcing contracts.

While three main types of management strategies were identified in portuguese retail system, about half of the owners don’t have any strategy for their business, thus we can say their strategy is merely passivity.

Independent State since the twelfth century, Portugal has kept its terrestrial borders practically unchanged since the 13th century. This is explained in big measure by the fact of a continuous strategy, based on the maritime border: privileged commercial and political relations with maritime powers (Northern Sea, Baltic and Mediterranean), overseas trade and colonial outposts. Between 1974 and 1986 this political constant ended: independence of the colonies and European Community integration. The demographic and economic littoralisation, as well as the bicephaly of the urban system are, to a certain extent, the result of this strategy and 40 years (1960–2000) of regional policy haven’t changed these tendencies. The new geo-economic positioning of Portugal in an enlarged Europe to the east, obliges to reconsider its role in the European space. It becomes reducing and perhaps obvious that the west facade of Portugal is well placed to play a role as a logistic platform oriented towards transoceanic spaces, in complementarity with other European platforms.