Regional Science Policy and Practice最新文献

Analyzing the impact of electricity price changes on electricity demand helps in energy supply planning. This study estimated the electricity demand functions of households and industries, as well as the impact of electricity price hikes on electricity demand following natural disasters. We found that structural changes occurred in various regions' electricity demand's price elasticity following natural disasters. Furthermore, the results showed that the decrease in consumer surplus associated with higher electricity prices was more significant in regions that depended on nuclear power. These results have important implications for regional energy policies.

This study evaluates the impact of city spatial development patterns on the spread of airborne pandemics, focusing on Mashhad, Iran. Using ArcGIS spatial statistics, 91 spatial indices were examined between March 5, 2020, and October 2, 2021, during five distinct waves of the virus, revealing that private vehicle ownership and limited use of public transportation did not significantly reduce COVID-19 infection rates in Mashhad. Instead, factors such as proximity to transportation hubs, healthcare facility polarization, and retail shop distribution had a significant impact. Surprisingly, demographic vulnerability and conventional population-related factors had relatively minor effects. The study also highlights the influence of building concentration with high floor area ratios (FAR) and the impact of local authorities' optimism in reducing social distancing measures, especially in travel and traffic control, on the increased spread of the virus during recent waves.

This study highlights how Winter Storm Benji played a significant role in human responses and displacements on the basis of a multitude of periods, geographic scales, and social vulnerability. This study collects Twitter data between November 20 and December 24, 2017 for Winter Storm Benji in the United States, which was one of the heaviest December storms on record in the southern United States. This study finds that tweets during the week of the winter storm were roughly four times higher than those in the pre‐winter storm week. Second, the southern United States significantly shows a higher proportion of tweets during the winter storm week. Third, US states show different displacements with other variables controlled. For example, Texas and Louisiana show less displacements than Florida. Fourth, vulnerable people responded differently to the natural disaster according to social vulnerability categories. For instance, vulnerable people in the housing type & transportation category are highly associated with the natural disaster event, whereas those in the socioeconomic status category are not related to it.

This article aims to analyse carbon emissions in Brazil by decomposing consumption and income-based structural factors from 2011 to 2018. It utilizes environmentally interregional input-output models to quantify these factors. The findings reveal an imbalanced pattern of carbon generation, with economically prosperous regions driving emissions due to demand and supply factors. Production structure and economic activity are key drivers of CO2 emissions on the consumption and value-added side. Wealthier areas in Brazil, known for diverse and value-added production, have lower emission-intensive industries. However, those areas economically benefit from emissions generated by resource-intensive sectors in less prosperous regions. These findings highlight the need to distribute emissions responsibility spatially and implement measures to penalize regions benefiting from primary factor utilization. By promoting equitable environmental responsibility, policies can encourage sustainability and discourage emissions concentration in economically advantaged areas.

This study delves into the relationship between organizational resilience and organizational ambidexterity in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) facing exogenous shocks in emerging economies. Specifically, it investigates how firm resilience influences the connection between innovation capabilities and innovation performance. A cross-sectional database comprising 170 SMEs in Bosnia and Herzegovina forms the basis of this research. Utilizing multivariate linear regression analysis, the study tests its research hypotheses. The study reveals that exploitative innovation capabilities positively contribute to innovation performance, and firm resilience moderates this relationship. However, the analysis does not support the significance of explorative innovation capabilities in impacting innovation performance. The findings underscore the pivotal role of organizational resilience for SMEs in navigating external shocks within small emerging economies. Cultivating and enhancing resilience becomes imperative for coping with such challenges effectively. This paper contributes by linking resilience theories with existing literature on organizational ambidexterity. Additionally, it sheds light on the differing impacts of exploitative and explorative innovation capabilities on determining innovation performance.

This article aims to calculate the COVID-19 Pandemic Vulnerability Index (COVID-19-PVI) across Brazilian municipalities, positing that vulnerability to the coronavirus is linked to socioeconomic disparities in this continental-sized country. From data collection on epidemiological, socioeconomic, demographic, and public health systems, it was possible to rank which features were most influential in the spread of COVID-19 using the artificial intelligence implicit in the boosting tree regression method. To ensure the robustness of the findings, this index is tested in Pearson correlations leading to conclusions about which regions were most vulnerable to the pandemic and its consequences, the importance of the spatial distribution of General Hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak, and the influence of population density on the advancement of the coronavirus in the country.

The objective of this paper is to verify the effect of the location of health facilities on amenable and child mortality in the city of Salvador in Brazil. Based on the theory of local public goods, we consider that the provision of public health facilities affects the local health condition, and should therefore be decentralized to achieve better outcomes and avoid congestion costs. Panel data with mortalities data, socioeconomic variables, and the georeferenced location and internal structure of local health facilities for 163 neighbourhoods of the city were used to estimate a panel Poisson model. Simultaneity bias between mortality rate and location of health facilities was controlled using an instrumental variable based on the location of day-care centres, pre-schools, and public elementary schools. The results show that the homogenous spatial urban coverage of health care facilities contributes to reducing mortality. An increase of one unit in the coverage of public health facilities can reduce amenable mortality by 2.57% and under-five mortality by 23.06%. This effect may be greater for neighbourhoods with less unequal socioeconomic conditions.

This paper investigates whether bank credit extended to the non-financial private business sector may be boosting regional economic growth in Mexico. For this purpose, a panel of annual data by state for the period 2005–2018 was constructed and dynamic model estimations were carried out using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The results suggest that increases in the level of bank credit extended to private non-financial firms increased the state´s GDP per capita growth, a result consistent with the emphasis in Mexico – and internationally – regarding the need to promote policy measures that stimulate the healthy development of a country’s financial system. Furthermore, the research offers some counterfactuals to analyze the effect on a state’s GDP per capita growth rate when it moves from a lower to a higher quartile within the CREDIT allocation. This analysis is therefore expected to reveal more information about the systemic efficiency of the banking system and better capture the contractual relationships between banks and their clients, something that is impossible to obtain from country-level data from international studies.

Experimentation is key for accelerating local transformations. Experimentation discourse, however, is often biased towards technology. We introduce the notion of socially innovative experiments (SIX) and their contribution to transformative local development as a counterbalance. We conceptualize SIX in local development and study over 100 SIX in Austria in terms of spatial context and their interactions with space. Results show that (1) SIX with a place-based approach are more likely to spark change than unbound interventions, (2) rural SIX face more barriers while at the same time being more substantial for successful local transformations, and (3) thorough spatial embedding is thus key for ensuring SIX’ contribution to local transformations. We hence advocate for local caretakers and transformation hubs to oversee local challenges, promote exchange and learning between experiments, and take on the patronage of SIX for transformative local development.