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In the presented research, the authors have conducted the literature review and organised real interviews of fruit retailers (FRs) to construct the advanced hierarchical structural (AHS) chain of macro-micro parameters for measuring the performances of defined fruit supply bazaars (FSBs). Apart from this, the purpose of this paper is to develop the grey set-based scorecard model for solving the proposed AHS chain of macro-micro parameters.

The performance of FSBs is linked with the supply of fruits towards clients under a feasible rate, which circuitously depends upon the evaluation of the economic locality of FSBs. The authors developed an advanced hierarchical structure of macro-micro parameters via a literature survey and considered these parameters based on the sampling score of FRs corresponding to select feasible FSBs/alternatives. Furthermore, the authors developed a grey set-based scorecard model for undertaking the incomplete information of FRs against the hierarchical structure.

It is found that the work is well suited for FRs as they can measure the performances of defined FSBs in accordance with their own opinions under the proposed AHS of macro-micro parameters. Apart from this, the work is useful for benchmarking the vegetable supply bazaars (VSBs) on the replacement of AHS. The proposed hierarchical structure with a grey-based scorecard model is flexible in its nature and can undertake more than 1,000 macro-micro parameters and FRs to access potential decision.

The conducted research work has a precise value for evaluating the economic FSB locality. The overall performance scores of considered FSB localities are computed as (∂₁)=1.991, (∂₂)=2.567 and (∂₃)=2.855, where (∂₃) is found to be more significant than available FSBs. This work can be used for opting the economic locality of VSB too.

This study aims to reveal the potential for ecotourism of a locality with high marginalisation index in the municipality of Tlalpujahua, a Magic Town in the State of Michoacán, Mexico.

This case study was based on several methodologies. First, socioeconomic, environmental, sustainability, geographic and institutional variables were used in the evaluation of 62 localities of the municipality. Geographic information systems identified study areas and determined their potential for ecotourism. Second, participatory diagnosis was used to collect specific information about the locality regarding their organisational aspects, development strategies, current socioeconomic problems, land use and resources availability and interest in developing projects related to ecotourism. Finally, the authors adapted the FAS Model (factors, attractors and support systems) to include environmental and organisational variables contributing to a theoretical approach to ecotourism. To identify attractors, they applied a questionnaire to determine the profile of tourists visiting Magic Towns and their potential interest in ecotourism.

The authors conclude that ecotourism is a possible alternative to highly marginalised localities within Magic Town municipalities and would be able to expand the benefits engendered by the program. Ecotourism can therefore represent a new option for tourists visiting marginalised communities in Mexico.

A diverse methodology applied key elements to identify localities suitable for ecotourism, characteristics of marginalisation and endowment of natural heritage. The authors conclude that the benefits to localities included in the Magic Towns Program can be expanded to surrounding spaces through strategies such as ecotourism.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the “marginalisation” thesis, which holds that marginalised populations disproportionately participate in undeclared work. Until now, the evidence that participation in undeclared work is higher in marginalised areas (e.g. peripheral rural localities) and marginalised socio-economic groups (e.g. the unemployed, immigrant populations and women) has come from mostly small-scale surveys of particular localities and population groups. There have been no extensive quantitative surveys. Here, the intention is to fill this gap.

To do this, we report a 2007 survey of participation in undeclared work involving 26,659 face-to-face interviews conducted in 27 European Union (EU) member states.

The finding is that the marginalisation thesis is valid when discussing younger people and those living in peripheral rural areas; they are more likely to participate in undeclared work. However, there is no significant association between immigrant populations and participation in undeclared work. Moreover, a reinforcement thesis, which holds that the undeclared economy reinforces the spatial and socio-economic disparities produced by the declared economy, applies when considering those with fewer years in education, women, the unemployed and less affluent European regions; they have lower participation rates than higher educated people, men, the employed and affluent European regions.

The outcome is a call for a more nuanced understanding of the marginalisation thesis as valid for some marginalised populations but not others. Whether similar findings prevail at other spatial scales and in other global regions now needs investigating.

This survey displays that although it is appropriate to target some marginalised populations when tackling undeclared work, this is not valid for others (e.g. immigrant populations, the unemployed, those living in less affluent EU regions).

The first extensive evaluation of whether marginalised populations are more likely to participate in undeclared work.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

A dominant belief is that the continuing encroachment of the market economy into everyday life is inevitable, unstoppable and irreversible. Over the past decade, however, a small stream of thought has started to question this commercialization thesis. This paper seeks to contribute to this emergent body of thought by developing a “whole economy” approach for capturing the multifarious economic practices in community economies and then applying this to an English locality.

A survey conducted of the economic practices used by 120 households in a North Nottinghamshire locality in the UK is reported here, comprising face‐to‐face interviews in an affluent, middle‐ranking and deprived neighborhood.

This reveals the limited commercialization of everyday life and the persistence of a multitude of economic practices in all neighborhood‐types. Participation rates in all economic practices (except one‐to‐one unpaid work and “off‐the‐radar” unpaid work) are higher in relatively affluent populations. Uneven development is marked by affluent populations that are “work busy”, engaging in a diverse spectrum of economic practices conducted more commonly out of choice, and disadvantaged populations that are more “work deprived”, conducting a narrower array of activities usually out of necessity.

This snapshot survey only displays that commercialization is not hegemonic. It does not display whether there is a shift towards commercialization.

Recognition of the limited encroachment of the market opens up the future to alternative possibilities beyond an inevitable commercialization of everyday life, intimating that the future will be characterized by the continuing persistence of multifarious economic practices rather than market hegemony.

The paper provides evidence from a western nation of the limited commercialization of daily life.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the meta‐narrative that capitalism is becoming totalising and hegemonic. Grounded in an emerging corpus of post‐development thought that has deconstructed this discourse in relation to western economies and the majority (third) world, the purpose of this paper is to further contribute to this burgeoning critique by analysing the degree to which capitalism has penetrated a post‐socialist society, namely Ukraine.

To analyse the penetration of capitalism, a survey is reported of the work practices of 600 households in a array of localities in Ukraine, conducted during 2005/2006 using face‐to‐face interviews.

Analysing the practices used by households to secure their livelihoods, the finding is that capitalism is far from hegemonic. Even when the formal economy is relied on either as their most important or second most important source of livelihood, it is nearly always combined with some other economic activity. A diverse portfolio of work practices is thus the norm rather than the exception with over 90 per cent of households relying on sources other than the formal market sphere as either their most important or second most important source of livelihood.

Displaying the shallow penetration of capitalism in this array of localities in Ukraine, this paper reveals the need for a re‐representation of the realities of work in such post‐socialist societies so as to open up the feasibility of, and possibilities for, alternative futures for work.

This paper reports the first evaluation of the extent to which capitalism has penetrated work practices in post‐socialist Ukraine.

This study aims to explore inefficiencies that arise from public and private policy initiatives undertaken in suburbs and outlying localities, where various intersecting economic, educational, ethnic and geographical disadvantages mutually reinforce each other. The authors propose to transpose the cross-disciplinary concept of intersectionality from an individual and community-based level (i.e. encompassing a variety of racial, ethnic and socio-economic minority communities) to a locality-based context.

The empirical data underlying this study were based on a long-term field study drawing on both interviews and observations. A self-administered ethnographic research approach was combined with classic analyses of conversations transcribed verbatim, using qualitative coding.

The main actors’ inability to understand the concrete situations experienced by subjects residing in outlying localities, as well as the managers’ failure to cooperate and engage collectively to promote employment among these populations, can be explained by the ineffectiveness of the categories that were designed and used in carrying out managerial action, as part of corporate policy, and then implemented within factories. These findings are particularly well-illustrated by the relatively lower inefficiency of SMEs, which had more limited resources, as compared with the actions undertaken at production facilities run by large companies, even though the latter devoted considerable resources to vocational inclusion (recruitment, integration and job preservation) and efforts to combat discrimination.

In identifying a new way to categorize a certain type of social dynamic driven by businesses and various social actors, the authors sought to overcome the epistemological obstacles that arise from relying on neo-institutional theory, which, when applied to the case at hand, would have merely resulted in mimetic similarities, without offering any means for unblocking the socio-economic factors that come into play. The limitations of the study are related to its strict temporal and geographic isolation (i.e. a two-year study examining three production facilities located within the same suburb north of Paris).

The authors hope the study will urge actors operating in the same disadvantaged locality to collectively address the multiple intersectional challenges that tend to render policies for social inclusion and economic development so difficult to implement within areas suffering from a myriad of socio-economic ills. The first step in that direction, the authors feel, consists in naming these intersectionalities adequately.

Using a rich empirical database, this paper aims to show the relevance of the concept of intersectionality beyond its traditional scope of application (disadvantaged minority communities and individuals) while directing interest toward a less anthropocentric level of analysis: the locality.

Confronted with rising poverty after an economic crisis in 1995, the Government of Mexico changed its social policy. It terminated universal subsidies for tortilla and funded new investments in human capital through PROGRESA, an innovative program providing school stipends to poor children as well as health and nutrition benefits. After reviewing the main features of PROGRESA, we use the Gini income elasticity to compare the marginal impact of PROGRESA on income inequality with the impact of other social programs. PROGRESA’s impact appears to be larger than the impact of these other programs. The Gini income elasticity for each program is decomposed into two components to measure the targeting performance of each program (i.e. who is participating and who is not), and the impact of the allocation rules for the distribution of the benefits among program participants. Sensitivity analysis is performed with the extended Gini income elasticity. Beyond the impact on inequality of the cash transfers provided by PROGRESA and other programs, we also discuss the programs’ long-term impact on social welfare. Finally, we propose some areas of improvement in the design of PROGRESA and similar programs.

In the UK regions that are structurally more vulnerable are less able to respond to economic shocks (McCann, 2017). An economic downturn for a poorer region like the North East of England (Jenkins, Pike, & Tomaney, 2019) will mean it enters recession earlier and emerges from recession later than significantly wealthier regions like London and South East region in England or Amsterdam City region in the Netherlands. We ask, what can be done to improve the impact of policy interventions that support and develop weaker regional economies? Behind this chapter sit two elements of research study: a question, which asks, what if you develop a “great” policy, that is well researched and designed; however, it fails because the people who deliver it don’t have the right culture, values, or knowledge? The second element is that the authors are interested in a range of factors that affect not only policy implementation including entrepreneurship but also economic culture and social capital, looking at the problem from different disciplinary viewpoints (Baker & Welter, 2018). This chapter makes a comparative study between the North East of England and the Amsterdam City region to explore how policy implementation might be improved as other factors of place cannot be easily altered, these factors include major infrastructure, political systems, and budgetary control as well as overall economic wealth. What this means is that practical research and studies have to find factors that can be improved in order to achieve change and a greater economic impact on Places in this context, the North East of England.

This paper assesses the impact of this program on the rural women's employment opportunities using data from the 2015 round of the household's living standard survey (HLSS) of Côte d'Ivoire.

In 2013, in order to improve the living conditions of the rural population, the Ivorian government launched the National Program for rural electrification (PRONER) to electrify all localities with more than 500 inhabitants.

The results show that PRONER, while reducing the time allocated to performing household chores, increases women's employment through the reallocation of time to full-time paid work in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. The authors also find that the allocation of men's time is not affected by this programme. A possible mechanism that would explain such a pro-women effect is the labour-saving technology introduced to home production as an effect of the reform.

As a limitation, it is important to note that these results were obtained in the specific context of PRONER in Côte d’Ivoire and are not necessarily applicable to rural electrification programmes in other contexts. Furthermore, the choice of other indicators to measure women's empowerment is limited by the quality of the data available. It would be interesting for future research to extend this analysis to include other aspects of women's empowerment and household welfare.

This paper is the first to the author’s knowledge to apply a robust econometric method by combining an inverse probability weighted regression adjustment model with Heckman sample selection method to access a robust causal effect of the PRONER in Côte d'Ivoire.