Search results

The paper analyses the prevalence of extreme and multidimensional poverty in line with the sustainable development agenda. In addition, the paper examines the drivers of extreme poverty while accounting for the potential spillover effect of poverty in the region.

The study adopts the pooled OLS with Discroll-Kraay robust standard errors to control for cross-sectional dependence. In addition, given the strong potential for endogeneity of poverty index, the authors also employ the generalized method of moments (GMM), which accounts for simultaneity and endogeneity problems, and the spatial error and lag models to control for all forms of spatial and temporal dependence since the factors that affect poverty disperse across borders.

The study finds that in addition to the traditional drivers of poverty (unemployment, low per capita GDP growth and public debt), poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is a symptom of a deeper structural problem (lack of access to water and sanitation, high level of corruption and low level of financial development, and frequent economic busts). Likewise, the results from the spatial econometric specification show, consistently across all the specifications, that there is a substantial spillover effect of poverty across the region.

The main novelty of the paper is that the authors investigate the “economic shrinkage hypothesis,” and examined the potential negative spillover effect of poverty in the region.

With the recognition that generating economic growth is not the same as sustaining it, the challenge to catch-up and growth literature is discerning between these processes. Recent research suggests that the decline in the frequency of “shrinking” episodes is more important for long-term development than higher growth rates. By using a framework centred around social capabilities, this study aims to investigate the effects of income inequality and poverty on economic shrinking frequency, as opposed to previous literature that has exclusively had a growth focus. The aim is to investigate how and why some societies might be more resilient to economic shrinking.

The research is a quantitative study, and the authors build a longitudinal data set including 23 developing countries throughout 42 years to test the paper’s purpose. This study uses country and period fixed-effects specifications as well as cross-sectional graphical representations to investigate the relationship between proxies of economic inclusivity and the frequency of shrinking episodes.

The authors demonstrate that while inclusive societies are more resilient to shrinking overall, it is changes in poverty levels, but not changes in income inequality, that appear to be correlated with economic shrinking frequency. Inequality, while still an important element to explain countries’ growth potential as an initial condition, does not seem to make the sample more resilient to shrinking. The authors conclude that the mechanisms in which poverty and inequality are correlated with the catch-up process must run through different channels. Ultimately, processes that explain growth may intersect but not always overlap with the ones that explain resilience to shrinking.

The need for inclusive growth in long-term development has been championed for decades, yet inclusion has seldom been explored from the shrinking perspective. Though poverty reduction is already an important mainstream political objective, this paper differentiates itself by providing an alternate viewpoint of why this is important. Income inequality could have more of an economic growth limiting effect, while poverty reduction could be required to build resilience to economic shrinking. Developing countries will need both growth and resilience to shrinking, to catch-up with higher-income economies, which policymakers might need to balance carefully.

This paper aims to investigate the drivers of foreign direct divestment (FDD), how it relates to foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and stocks and its implications for developing countries. While divestment occurs for various reasons, it can be explained by reversing the propositions implied by FDI theories.

The authors combine FDI data and FDI theories to provide theoretical explanations for FDD and what it means for developing countries. FDI stock and flow data are used to derive inferences on trends in FDD and examine the implications of FDI theories on FDD.

Changes in the modes of global production and the rise of COVID-19 have reinforced the trend of stagnant or diminishing FDI flows observed since the global financial crisis, with implications for FDD. The authors demonstrate how the various FDI theories can be used to explain FDD, except for the currency areas hypothesis. By reviewing the costs and benefits of FDI, it is concluded that shrinking FDI flows and stocks may not be as detrimental for developing economies as it is typically portrayed.

The paper uses two original approaches to measure and explain the motives for FDD. The first is a reassessment of FDI theories in a way that makes them valid theories for FDD. The second original approach is to interpret data on FDI flows and stocks to imply the trends governing FDD, which is useful, as data on foreign divestment are not available on a country or regional basis.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

The aim of the study is to demonstrate evidence that societal ageing and poor economic growth are linked in the advanced economies. It challenges the claim however that secular stagnation represents a serious problem for future prosperity.

This paper critically reviews recent formulations of the secular stagnation hypothesis concerning stalled economic growth in the advanced economies and the links between demographic ageing and economic slowdown. It outlines both trends (of ageing and stalled growth) and reviews some of the key empirical studies that have sought to determine the role played by demographic change in accounting for the relative lack of growth in the advanced economies.

The advanced economies are ageing and their economic growth is slowing, although a causal link between these two phenomena remains unproven. However, even if no direct causal link can be drawn between these two processes the focus upon the impact of societal ageing serves as a stimulus to re-think the nature of future growth in our increasingly ageing and unequal societies.

While the measurement of demographic trends is relatively straightforward, there are more problems in specifying the exact parameters of macroeconomic growth. This makes empirical studies in the area difficult to interpret. However studies in this area have value in widening thinking about the role of ageing and the nature of growth in the future.

Rather than fearing the prospect of an age related slowdown in the rate of growth in the advanced economies, these developments offer opportunities to focus upon redistribution more than growth, while supporting a programme of growth with equity in the world's developing economies.

While a demographically over-determined model of the secular stagnation hypothesis is dubious, the future ageing of the advanced economies is certainly a challenge. It is also an opportunity for rethinking ideas about ageing, growth and development. Adopting such a more nuanced perspective offers a counter-narrative to the demographic catastrophising that is often evident when discussing 'societal ageing'. It also suggests the value of shifting the perspective of seeking ever increasing growth toward a greater focus upon redistribution, between and within the generations.

There has been very little engagement with the secular stagnation hypothesis outside economics. Behind its macroeconomic formulation, however, lie assumptions about the ageing of society that can easily become examples of unwarranted demographic catastrophising. By bringing this topic to the attention of the social sciences, the paper can serve as a stimulus for rethinking both ageing and growth.

Following the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in Basic, securities class plaintiffs can invoke the “rebuttable presumption of reliance on public, material misrepresentations regarding securities traded in an efficient market” [the “fraud-on-the-market” doctrine] to prove classwide reliance. Although this requires plaintiffs to prove that the security traded in an informationally efficient market throughout the class period, Basic did not identify what constituted adequate proof of efficiency for reliance purposes.

Market efficiency cannot be presumed without proof because even large publicly traded stocks do not always trade in efficient markets, as documented in the economic literature that has grown significantly since Basic. For instance, during the recent global financial crisis, lack of liquidity limited arbitrage (the mechanism that renders markets efficient) and led to significant price distortions in many asset markets. Yet, lower courts following Basic have frequently granted class certification based on a mechanical review of some factors that are considered intuitive “proxies” of market efficiency (albeit incorrectly, according to recent studies and our own analysis). Such factors have little probative value and their review does not constitute the rigorous analysis demanded by the Supreme Court.

Instead, to invoke fraud-on-the-market, plaintiffs must first establish that the security traded in a weak-form efficient market (absent which a security cannot, as a logical matter, trade in a “semi-strong form” efficient market, the standard required for reliance purposes) using well-accepted tests. Only then do event study results, which are commonly used to demonstrate “cause and effect” (i.e., prove that the security’s price reacted quickly to news – a hallmark of a semi-strong form efficient market), have any merit. Even then, to claim classwide reliance, plaintiffs must prove such cause-and-effect relationship throughout the class period, not simply on selected disclosure dates identified in the complaint as plaintiffs often do.

These issues have policy implications because, once a class is certified, defendants frequently settle to avoid the magnified costs and risks associated with a trial, and the merits of the case (including the proper application of legal presumptions) are rarely examined at a trial.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of build back better (BBB) in contexts affected by depopulation and shrinking economies discussing how and if its principles are able to drive the recovery pattern toward a sustainability re-development path.

BBB principles’ usefulness in driving toward a sustainable post-disaster recovery has been tested in L’Aquila’s area (Italy) – severely affected by an earthquake in 2009 – through interviews and analyses of reconstruction plans and policies.

Although most of the BBB principles can be recognized within the intentions of plans and policies, the recovery process highlights a major fallacy in addressing the pre-disaster socio-economic stresses inducing to shrinkage and depopulation development lock-ins.

Although most of the principles can be recognized in the intentions of plans and policies, the recovery process highlights a main fallacy of the “BBB paradigm”: the need of addressing pre-disaster socio-economic stresses while recovering from the shocks was not explicitly nor implicitly addressed.

Shrinkage as a process of territorial transformation has been little explored in relation to natural hazards and post-disaster contexts. Indeed, while from one side BBB concept and principles drive toward a potential mitigation of the main risks while re-building, it results challenging to overcome the built environment re-building priorities to question whether, what and how to re-build while investing in socio-economic recovery. Reverting, or accepting, shrinkage could indeed implies to not build back part of the urban fabric, while investing in skills and capacity building, which, in turn, would be difficult to justify through the reconstruction budget. The tension between re-building (better, the built environment) and re-development (skills and networks, at the expense of re-building) is critical when BBB faces disasters happening in shrinking territories.

In recent decades, processes of postindustrialization, economic restructuring, and globalization have been transforming the landscape of social and economic inequalities in general (Wade, 2003), and in urban settings in particular (Baum, 1997; Fainstein, 1990; Sassen, 1990a, 1991, 1998; Waldinger, 1996). The role of cities as strategic sites in the globalization process and as arenas of economic transformation is central in the literature of globalization and economic restructuring (Fainstein, 2000; Sassen, 1988, 1998).

Single-family houses are a common form of housing in Europe. Most were built in the context of the suburbanization after World War II and are now facing challenges arising from generational changes as well as increasing living and energy standards. According to the hypothesis of this paper, in several EU regions, single-family houses may face future challenges arising from oversupply and lack of adaptation to current demand. To examine this, the paper analyses the present situation and discusses the prognosis for the challenges described above regarding the three neighbouring north-western European countries Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, based on available data and a review of country-specific characteristics of housing markets as well as national policies. Despite an impending mismatch between demand and supply, planning policies still support the emergence of new single-family houses. The comparison of Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands shows the growing polarization between shrinking and growing regions and central and peripheral sites apparent at different stages in the three countries. While a high rate of vacancies is already registered for some regions in Germany, in the Netherlands this phenomenon can only be seen near the borders and in villages within the Randstad conurbation. In Belgium also, this phenomenon is not yet widespread, but in some suburban neighbourhoods dating from the 1950's and 1960's more and more single-family houses are becoming more difficult to sell, indicating an emerging mismatch between supply and demand. This article proposes some instruments which enable municipalities to intervene in single family housing neighbourhoods which are largely dominated by private ownership. These instruments are not yet widely established in single-family housing neighbourhoods but that may become important in the future.