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“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

Globally influential Islamic banks from the Middle East and Southeast Asia carry voluminous correspondence banking with banks from China and India, leading to potential spillover effect of contagion among the banks from these regions. This study aims to investigate the Islamic banks systemic risk contagion with major banks from China and India.

Having the option pricing theory in the backdrop, the authors calculated three different distance to risk measurements (default, insolvency and capital). The authors have included top six listed globally influential Islamic banks, top seven Indian banks and top eight Chinese banks based on their net asset value. They then measured the banks’ extreme shocks based on the extreme value theory by using the logistic regression model. These extreme shocks helped the authors to map the spillover among the selected banks from multiple regions.

The authors have found strong evidences of directional risk spillover among the banks in this sample. Islamic banks are receiving a significant risk spillover from the other sample banks but transmitting less toward the other banks from India and China. Hence, there is strong one-directional risk contagion toward the Islamic banks in the study sample.

This research would be particularly useful to the regulators and bankers from emerging and Islamic markets to understand the conniving nature of the crisis by effectively mapping the source, destination and implementation of the shock transmission mechanism of the potential financial contagion.

Even though the corresponding banking among the top Islamic banks from the Middle East and Southeast Asian countries, and banks from India and China, is on the rise, the assessment of risk among these banks has been limited. In particular, the authors extended on the extreme value theory to focus on the wider impact of spillover, including significant direction of contagion from non-Islamic banks to Islamic banks.

This paper uses contingent claims analysis to evaluate the implicit government guarantee to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to their placement into conservatorship. The main findings of the paper indicate that the expected value of the guarantee was in line with the size of capital injections under the Treasury Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement and that the market expected the government to cover nearly all expected losses on senior debt. However, simulations reveal that the eventual total cost to recapitalize the GSEs may be significantly higher than provided for under the original terms of the conservatorship.

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether buyers and sellers appears to take distance to the capital business district (CBD) into account in their valuation for acquisition or disposition.

Under a mono‐centric model conceptualization, applicable to the central area of many European cities, location can be represented by distance to the city center. The effect of several distance measures on selling price is investigated for income properties with mixed residential and commercial components – geometric distances, driving distance and time, and time by subway. Exponential and multiplicative models are considered and estimated using a robust estimation method.

The findings indicate the mono‐centric model to be a useful conceptualization, that buyers and sellers of income properties do take distance into account, and that a number of buildings operate under a suboptimal split between residential and commercial components.

In social science even when a model shows good statistical fit, one will not know if it is correct, but only that it represents observed relationships well. Several models, however, may fit the data. The authors chose ones used by other researchers in similar investigations in past decades. Variable definition and measurement are always issues. In the present case “time by subway” is a mix of walking‐waiting‐riding and minutes in each activity would not be equivalent, involving inter‐personal comparisons of utility. The variable “effective age” based upon the assessment concept of “value year” may not fully capture age‐related effects on price.

The key implications are that the multiplicative model may well be a suitable functional form for these types of analyses and that robust methods are important to prevent outliers in the data from having an undue influence on the estimation.

The authors used robust estimation methods for the price models. The authors defined and studied a sub‐optimality ratio of residential area to commercial area in the mixed use buildings.

Maize and rice constitute the two major staple crops in Ghana. The demand for maize and rice outstrips production levels in Ghana, creating deficits for farmers to capitalize on to increase yield. Farmers procure certified seeds from different supply outlets to improve crop yield. This study assessed the effectiveness of supply outlets of certified maize and rice seeds. This study also examined factors that influence smallholder farmers' decisions in sourcing seed from the identified supply outlets.

Multi-stage sampling was used to collect data from smallholder farmers. A total of 360 farmers were interviewed for the analysis. The multivariate probit model was used to estimate the main drivers of the supply outlets of certified seeds.

The findings revealed that farmers' decisions to use certified seeds from a particular supply outlet are contingent on household size, years of farming, extension contacts, distance to the nearest market, distance to the district capital, access to credit and farm size.

Sourcing certified seeds from National Seed Traders Association of Ghana, Research Institutions and Ministry of Food and Agriculture is more effective than input dealers, open market and family and friends.

This study is one of its kind that looked at how effective are the supply outlets of certified seed purchasing outlets.

This study employs firm-level data to evaluate how the knowledge economy impacts the financing constraints of businesses across 106 low- and middle-income nations, focusing on the influence of technological transformation on corporate financing choices.

The research centers on privately held, unlisted firms and examines the distinct effects of knowledge at both the within-country and between-country levels using a panel dataset. Rigorous sensitivity and endogeneity analyses are conducted to ensure the reliability of the findings.

The findings indicate that greater levels of the knowledge economy correlate with reduced financing constraints for firms. However, this effect varies depending on the location within a country and across different geographical regions. Firms situated in larger urban centers and more innovative regions reap the most significant benefits from the knowledge economy when seeking external funding. Conversely, firms in smaller cities, rural areas and regions characterized by structural and institutional inefficiencies in knowledge generation experience fewer advantages.

The impact of knowledge exhibits variability not only within and among countries but also between poor and affluent developing nations, as well as between larger and smaller countries. The knowledge effect on firms' access to external finance is influenced by factors such as financial openness and development, educational quality, technological absorption capabilities and agglomeration conditions within each country.

This study aims to examine the systemic risk contagion in banks from 15 US states using extreme shocks in their distance to risk.

The authors contemplate a model that inputs co-exceedances in the base US states’ banking sector as the dependent variable and the co-exceedances in other states’ banking sector (along with other underlying variables of a banking system) as the explanatory variables.

The authors find smaller states transmit and receive more systemic shocks than their larger counterparts and larger states exhibit a better shock-resisting capacity than their smaller counterparts. The authors also find that bigger shocks are more contagious than the smaller shocks.

This will be the first paper that will investigate the inner linkage of US states’ banking network using three different distance to risk methods, thus providing timely guidance for regulators.

This study investigates implications of crop and income diversifications on consumption expenditure (welfare) of rice-producing households in Ghana. It further compares diversification by three rice production systems: two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice production.

Primary data were sourced from 225 rice farmers. Margalef index and three-stage least-squares were employed.

Majority of rice-farming households in Ghana diversify livelihoods. The extent of livelihood diversification differs among two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice-producing households. Credit, distance to district capitals, production purpose and number of farming seasons influence crop and income diversifications, and consumption expenditure of rice-producing households. While crop diversification reduces consumption expenditure, income diversification increases it. Crop and income diversifications positively influence each other. Consumption expenditure reduces crop diversification but increases income diversification.

Policy should be directed towards the promotion of more livelihood activities to boost rice farmers' welfare. There should be awareness creation and training programmes to enable rice farmers realize different economic activities within and outside the agricultural value chain.

Crop and income diversifications were measured as continuous response variables, unlike previous studies that used a binary response variable. The authors established a synergy among crop and income diversifications, and consumption expenditure (welfare). The authors further compared crop and income diversifications by three rice production systems: two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice production systems.

Growing evidence suggests regional economic factors impact on individual outcomes, such as life expectancy and well-being. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact that player-specific and regional differences have on the number of senior international appearances football players accumulate over the course of their careers, for six UEFA member countries, from 1993 to 2014.

The research employs a Poisson regression model to analyse the impact of individual and regional factors on the number of senior international caps a footballer receives over the course of their career.

The results indicate that both individual and regional variables can explain the number of caps a player receives over the course of their career. The authors find that an individual’s career length positively influences the number of international caps accrued. Players born in wealthier and more populous regions accumulate a greater number of international appearances. Distance from the capital has no effect, however, the number of youth academies in the player’s region of birth has a significant positive effect.

The analysis is limited to regional variations within economically developed states. It would be interesting to test whether the correlation between relative regional development and international success exists in less developed countries. The authors only address mens international football in this study and cannot comment on the generality of the findings across genders or sports.

The results can provide insights for local football authorities and policy makers concerned with regional characteristics and those interested in the development of elite talent.

This is the first study to analyse a pan-European data set, using an increasingly adopted econometric method to understanding regional economic development – Poisson modelling.

Due to greater returns to high skill and desirable amenities, high-skilled workers are increasingly agglomerating in metropolitan areas and form path dependence. This chapter explores whether the land supply policy of China constraining big cities' urban construction land quota strengthens the spatial divergence of human capital. Using city-level land supply data, population census data, and land transaction micro data, we find that the higher the degree of a city's land supply lagging behind land demand, the greater the enlargement effect of the initial share of population with college degrees on the increase in share of population with college degrees. Further research reveals that the main mechanism causing this phenomenon is the rapidly rising housing prices hindering low-skill labor flows to big cities.