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The purpose of this paper is to theoretically explain the significance of discourse for the construction of the legitimacy of place marketing practice, and to illustrate empirically how this is done in a “genre of strategy”.

The paper applies a critical discourse analysis perspective, and utilises a theoretical framework of four legitimation strategies of authorisation, moral evaluation, rationalisation and mythopoesis to analyse how the legitimacy of a place marketing project carried out in the region of North Karelia, Finland, is discursively constructed within strategic documents of the project.

Several discursive legitimation strategies were recognised. The authority of the project was constructed by referring to the organisational context of the project, while rational and moral legitimation strategies drew from hegemonic discourses of regional competitiveness, attractiveness and cooperation. These discourses were further connected to discussions of contemporary regional development in Finland and in Europe.

While the paper underlines the significance of the “genre of strategy” for the discursive legitimation of place marketing projects, it points out that it does not extend to cover the reception or change over time of the legitimation strategies, that should be addressed in further studies.

The paper presents an original perspective on legitimacy of place marketing projects by introducing discourse as a central element in the construction of legitimacy. This is especially useful for critical purposes, as it allows the discourses that legitimise place marketing practice to be placed under scrutiny, hence opening up the possibility for alternative discourses to emerge.

The theoretical contribution provided by the transitional theories has fundamentally helped develop a better understanding of the migration process, by showing how migration is interacting with other processes of development. They show that along with development, emigration is following an upside down ‘U’ shaped pattern, being overreached by immigration, while the region changes its migration profile from emigration to immigration. This was the case for the southern European states, which followed a rapid migration transition during the second half of the twentieth century. After large emigration to Western and Northern Europe, these managed to attract large immigration flows from the less developed countries in Africa and Latin America, but also from Eastern Europe after the fall of communist regimes. This chapter aims to test whether Eastern Europe is heading to the same migration transition pattern as the South and change their current status of net migration provider. Thus, the impact of the migration transition drivers in explaining net migration balance is analysed using a panel data for the 2000–2013 period. As a country can encompass both emigration and immigration regions, the current analysis is carried out at European Union (EU) regional level data (NUTS II), while controlling for the regional specifics and unobserved time effects. Overall, most of the factors which led to the migration shift, from emigration to immigration, in Southern Europe were proven to be fundamental at EU regional level as well. Migration flows were shown to be more sensitive to unemployment, urbanisation, segmentation of the labour market and active population share in the eastern as compared to the southern European regions. Nevertheless, accessing the transition drivers evolution during 2011–2013 period, eastern regions are still highly unattractive and their chances for becoming destination regions are currently at low levels.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is try to answer the following question: to which extent the observed location pattern is driven by network effects or by traditional location factors, like the structure and behaviour of the local labour market, housing market, public goods, and local tax rates? Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses an econometric model derived from random utility maximization. This model is estimated on a panel of Helvetic labor market areas, using a two stages estimation method. The first stage allows the network effect to be estimated. In the second stage, it estimates the impact of standard location factors. Findings – The paper finds evidence of a very strong network effect. This network effect is a very important location factor and implies that a location may attract current immigrants mainly because it attracted previous immigrants, even if the traditional location factors are not a source of attractiveness. Research limitations/implications – The present study corroborates earlier work on the Italian case. There is still some work to be done for taking account of the highly localized nature of network externalities. Originality/value – The impact of network on migrants' behavior is a hotly debated issue. However, there is almost no analysis of this impact on migrants' location. Conversely, if the high level of concentration of immigrants is a well known stylized fact, there is almost no study of the factors explaining this concentration. The research starts filling these two gaps.

An indiscreet strategy of offshoring from low-cost countries (LCCs) can do more harm than good, since invisible supply chain risks may increase hidden costs and subsequently more than offset cost-saving opportunities. Considering the potential impact of these risks on offshoring, the purpose of this paper is to identify risk factors that significantly hinder the efficiency of offshoring and then measure specific risks associated with offshoring in foreign countries.

This paper develops performance metrics for gauging the offshoring attractiveness of potential sourcing countries using data envelopment analysis and then identifies the benchmark sourcing country using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP).

This study reveals that, defying the conventional wisdom, LCCs are not necessarily the most desirable offshoring destinations. This study also discovers that LCCs tend to be less business friendly, less logistically efficient, and riskier to source than their high-income country counterparts.

This paper is one of the first to introduce the concept of wealth creation efficiency for an offshoring decision and consider a host of key determinants such as wealth creation efficiency, logistics efficiency, business friendliness, and various supply chain risks for selecting the most desirable offshoring destination.

The aims of the paper are to evaluate the relevance of environmental factors (seasonality, size and quality) on hotels’ performance and benchmarks; to measure the bias in efficiency resulting from a failure to control for these sources of heterogeneity; and to propose some managerial policies to handle for environmental heterogeneity.

The sample is constituted by 2,705 hotels operating in Emilia-Romagna (Italy). The metafrontier approach is used to identify the different production processes and measure technical efficiency scores.

Different production processes exist among accommodation firms due to environmental features; not considering heterogeneity in technological sets produces high levels of bias in the efficiency measurement, albeit the ranking of hotels tends to be fairly consistent; the star rating is the primary source of efficiency bias followed by seasonality, while size has a minor impact.

Future research could be directed to analyse the relevance of environmental heterogeneity in other areas; study the dynamics; investigate agglomeration effects; and use other methodological tools.

The analysis proposes new managerial interventions: targeted strategies to different groups; creation of networks of enterprises, clustered mainly in respect to size for highly rated enterprises and seasonality for low-rated enterprises; and incentives to annual hotels and raise in the product quality.

This paper simultaneously considers several environmental factors affecting heterogeneity in hotel production processes; investigates the effect of heterogeneity on either the efficiency scores or the ranking of hotels; and focuses on micro, low-quality or seasonal hotels.

This paper analyses the modern market for project finance, its sectorial structure and main development trends. This study aims to form a constructive diagnostic toolkit for investment support of infrastructure design in regions, taking into account spatial asymmetry in the context of an integrated management approach.

When analyzing the public–private partnership (PPP) project performance, it is reasonable to distinguish the following two levels of discount rates: state and private. To achieve a high level of development of the general infrastructure of a region, a conceptual approach to the formation of investment support for the development of regional infrastructure has been developed.

The scientific contribution of this study is to improve the approach to modeling investment support for regional infrastructure design in the context of spatial asymmetry. Implementation of infrastructure projects creates prerequisites for sustainable economic growth, improvement in business and investment and social attractiveness of the national economy and its regions.

The practical significance of this study is that its main provisions allow for an effective regional socio-economic policy, based on the systemic development of regional infrastructure and aim at boosting competitiveness.

Recommendations can be used by regional and local authorities to formulate a socio-economic strategy for regional development as well as by representatives of private business who intend to engage in regional PPP projects.

The purpose of this paper is to substantiate the basic role and to develop recommendations for increasing the attractiveness of a regional market of educational services in modern Russia for provision of its global competitiveness in the conditions of industry 4.0.

The authors use the method of regression analysis for evaluating the influence of the indicators of investment attractiveness of a regional market of educational services – volume of investments into fixed capital in the sphere of education and state expenditures for financing of education – on the indicator of global competitiveness of this market in the conditions of industry 4.0 – number of foreign students – by the example of regions of the Volga Federal District of the Russian Federation. The empirical basis of the research is statistical materials of the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation for late 2018 and early 2019.

It is proved that investment attractiveness of a regional market of educational services is the basis of its global competitiveness in the conditions of industry 4.0. A barrier on the path of full-scale digital modernization of the system of higher education in modern Russia is the absence of private venture investments, which shows low investment attractiveness of a regional market of educational services.

It is substantiated that the causes of emergence of the determined barriers have the institutional nature and could be eliminated with the help of the complex of the recommended measures that are connected to usage of the mechanism of public–private partnership for financing of digital modernization education, flexible regulation of investment activities of digital universities, which is selected for each specific project, and coordination of the investment activities of universities at the regional level and creation of a specialized digital portal. Practical implementation of the offered measures will allow achieving significant growth of global competitiveness of a regional market of educational services of modern Russia in the conditions of industry 4.0.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between regional factors and investment attractiveness of solar energy production. The aim is to create a rank order of the Greek regions based on their investment attractiveness.

In this research, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied in its group choice approach combined with a purposive sampling of experts from the business, governmental and research fields.

A rank order of the regions was developed related to their investment attractiveness based on the experts’ sampling and the specific criteria that were set. Analyzing the criteria, it was found that general macroeconomic performances of the regions are of low priority, while the ones related to the entrepreneurial development such as solar irradiation and land availability are of high priority.

This work is practically applicable, as it conduces to the management of companies operating in the solar energy sector. It is also useful for policy makers as the regions are prioritized, identifying, in this way, opportunities for investment.

The novel aspect of this research is regions’ ranking based on their dynamic in solar energy investments. The utilization of the AHP offers additional value to the research of energy planning and management, as it is applied for the first time in the solar energy sector, concerning regional factors, solar energy parameters, economic data and expert sampling to develop a rank order of the regions.

The purpose of this study is to substantiate the necessity and to develop the innovative mechanism of government support for the investment activities of digital universities for provision of region’s investment attractiveness in the conditions of Industry 4.0.

The authors use the method of regression analysis for determining the dependence of the aggregate volume of investments (internal and external), which are attracted into the regional economy, on the volume of investments into fixed capital in the sphere of education (as the indicator of investment activities in the sphere of digital education) by the example of the regions of the Volga Federal District of the Russian Federation in 2018.

It is substantiated that the modern Russian mechanism of government support for investment activities of universities (including digital), which is based on such tools as norming and standardization, tax preferences and co-financing, does not allow for full implementation of the existing potential of digital universities in increasing region’s investment attractiveness in the conditions of Industry 4.0, which reduces the investment rating and volume of attracted investment resources in the regional economy – as is shown by the example of the regions of the Volga Federal District of the Russian Federation.

The determined problem could be solved by the presented innovative mechanism of government support for the investment activities of digital universities for provision of region’s investment attractiveness in the conditions of Industry 4.0. It is implemented on the basis of new – for modern Russia – tools: information and consultation support for investment activities and institutional support for integrating digital universities for joint realization of the investment projects in a region. The advantage of the developed mechanism is transfer of the financial load and responsibility for the investment activities from the state to digital universities because of the creation of market stimuli for conducting these activities.