The aim of this research is to study regional differences and regional cohesion in Bulgaria in accordance with “Europe 2020” Strategy. On the basis of analyses and comparisons of selected individual ...indicators, the existing significant differences in the regional development of the 6 NUTS 2 regions in the country are shown. The paper presents also the goals of regional cohesion according to the National Regional Development Strategy 2012-2022, prepared in order to integrate the goals of “Europe 2020” Strategy and the National Development Programme Bulgaria 2020.
Abstract
Boosting economic, social and territorial cohesion is a high priority for the European Union. The regional Cohesion Policy is its instrument for achieving this objective, with GDP per capita ...being the principal criterion for funding allocation. However, social cohesion also embraces a comprehensive range of non-economic features. This paper proposes a composite indicator of GDP per capita adjusted for social progress that incorporates both economic and non-economic issues. Notably, the indicator can account for policymakers’ preferences regarding the relative importance assigned to income and social progress. This novel indicator is used to simulate the eligibility status of European Union regions for funding in several policy scenarios. Regions’ simulated eligibility is then compared with their current eligibility for the period 2021–2027. Based on that comparison, winner and loser regions are identified, thus providing policymakers in charge of the European Cohesion Policy with an insight into the effect of incorporating social progress into funding allocation.
Since young adults tend to move from rural to urban regions, whereas older adults move from urban to rural regions, we may expect to see increasing differences in population ageing across urban and ...rural regions. This paper examines whether trends in population ageing across urban and rural NUTS-2 regions of the EU-27 have diverged over the period 2003-13. We use the methodological approach of convergence analysis, quite recently brought to demography from the field of economic research. Unlike classical beta and sigma approaches to convergence, we focus not on any single summary statistic of convergence, but rather analyse the whole cumulative distribution of regions. Such an approach helps to identify which specific group of regions is responsible for the major changes. Our results suggest that, despite expectations, there was no divergence in age structures between urban and rural regions; rather, divergence happened within each of the groups of regions.
The core sociological subject of ‘social cohesion’ (hereafter SC) has re-emerged as a key concept in the social sciences. On the one hand, SC is thought to be influenced by a society’s degree of ...inequalities and the quality of its welfare state. On the other hand, SC is thought to be instrumental in its own right to other factors such as economic growth, institutional quality, and individual well-being. In recent years, a few attempts have been made to measure SC empirically. Many current indices have not been sufficiently theoretically substantiated, and do not consider the importance of different ‘social levels’ when explaining and measuring SC as both cause and effect of other correlates. Very often, SC is simply defined as a ‘social quality’ or a quality of a collective. As a result, measures are often aggregate macro-indices leading to a loss of the information base of any social ‘units’ below the macro-societal-level. Contributing to this important methodological debate, this paper provides a conceptual reformulation of SC. Hence, when assessing SC based on a multi-dimensional index, it is insightful and feasible to evaluate both its internal variation as well as its holistic validity. In fact, it is proposed that these two aspects of measurement stand in direct relationship to one-another. The paper starts out with a discussion of SC as a ‘social fact’ in the Durkheimian sense. In addition, three bridging propositions on the measurement of SC are advanced: (a) SC as outcome or consequence at the level of individual attitudes and orientations (‘micro’); (b) SC as degree of dissimilarity and presence of latent conflict within a society at the level of salient social categories (‘meso’), and (c) SC as predictor, social determinant and hence antecedent at the societal-level (‘macro’). Using all rounds of the European Social Survey with a very large sample size, the advantages of this approach are illustrated by singling-out the important link between socio-economic inequalities, social cohesion and individual subjective well-being in a path of action.
Economic Convergence In Ageing Europe Kashnitsky, Ilya; De Beer, Joop; Van Wissen, Leo
Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie,
February 2020, 2020-02-00, 20200201, Letnik:
111, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
European regions experience accelerating ageing, but the process has substantial regional variation. This paper examines the effect of this variation on regional economic cohesion in Europe. We ...measure the effect of convergence or divergence in the share of the working age population on convergence or divergence in economies of NUTS 2 regions. The effect of convergence or divergence in ageing on economic convergence or divergence is quite substantial and, in some cases, is bigger than the effect of changes in productivity and labour force participation. Convergence of ageing leads to economic convergence only when the share of the working age population in rich regions exceeds that in poor regions and the former regions experience a substantial decline in the share of the working age population, or the latter regions experience an increase. During 2003–12, an inverse relationship between convergence in ageing and economic convergence was the rule rather than the exception.
Cet article montre comment la Région Occitanie s’appuie sur la croyance en un effet territorial du transport ferroviaire pour incarner une unité régionale mise à mal par le redécoupage administratif ...intervenu le 1 er janvier 2016. Une approche diachronique permet de retracer les origines de cette croyance et comment elle se nourrit d’un imaginaire ferroviaire ambivalent remontant au XIX e siècle. Cet imaginaire fait du transport ferroviaire aussi bien un vecteur de développement économique qu’un élément de remise en cause des systèmes urbains locaux. L’article montre aussi comment ce mythe a été entretenu et renforcé à travers les anciennes politiques régionales de transports qui s’étaient traduites par un renforcement des offres au sein des anciens périmètres régionaux. Pour cela un indice d’accessibilité a été construit afin de mesurer l’évolution de ces offres depuis la décentralisation. Outre cette approche quantitative, la méthodologie employée s’appuie sur l’analyse de discours d’élus, de documents de communication et de travaux de chercheurs qui participent tous, à des degrés divers, au maintien de cette croyance.
This paper analyses the impact of highways on the distribution of economic activities between urban agglomerations and peripheral regions in the European Union. In doing so, I use an empirical ...strategy based on the land use theory employing disaggregated economic and infrastructure data. To address endogeneity, I apply an IV strategy exploiting non-local highway construction as a source of exogenous variation. I find that highways contribute to the diffusion of urban economic activities into surrounding areas, reducing the income gap between European agglomerations and peripheries. Reduced-form estimations suggest that the gap would have been nearly 3% higher in 2020 if the highway networks of European countries had remained at the level of 1990. The study concludes that transportation infrastructure policies can alleviate regional income disparities, increasing economic convergence between urbanised and less urbanised areas.
This article addresses different stages of the border relations between the Argentine Republic and the Eastern Republic of Uruguay, in the binational space adjacent to the Uruguay River, between the ...years 1650 and 1990. Although it is an extensive historical reconstruction, it was centers at the stage in which the national states of the Argentine Republic and the Eastern Republic of Uruguay (hereinafter ROU) are territorially consolidated in the middle of the 20th century. This situation tended to fragment the pre-existing levels of cohesion of the neighboring binational territories, as a consequence of the action of the States to establish the border as a semi-closed space, reducing the fluidity of the exchanges between the neighboring places. At the end of the 20th century, there were diplomatic and paradiplomatic attempts to develop border cooperation. Some experiences consisted of border integration projects that were never carried out. The research is approached from a perspective of reconstruction of space from the historical geography. Due to the nature of the object of study and the objectives set out in the research, a qualitative approach was adopted, based on the analysis of documentary sources and interviews with qualified informants.
En este artículo se abordan distintas etapas de las relaciones fronterizas entre la República Argentina y la República Oriental del Uruguay, en el espacio binacional adyacente al río Uruguay (denominado tramo uruguayo), entre los años 1650 y 1990. Si bien se realiza una reconstrucción histórica amplia, se focaliza en la etapa en que los estados nacionales de la República Argentina y la República Oriental del Uruguay se consolidan territorialmente a mediados del siglo XX con políticas de fronterización. Esta situación tendió a fragmentar los niveles de cohesión preexistentes de los territorios binacionales vecinos, como derivación de los procesos del control fronterizo, restándole fluidez a los intercambios entre los lugares del tramo uruguayo. A fines del siglo XX existieron intentos diplomáticos y paradiplomáticos para desarrollar la cooperación fronteriza. Algunas experiencias consistieron en proyectos de integración fronteriza que nunca se llevaron a cabo. La investigación se abordó desde una perspectiva de reconstrucción del espacio desde la geografía histórica. Por la naturaleza del objeto de estudio y los objetivos planteados en la investigación, se adoptó un enfoque cualitativo, en base al análisis de fuentes documentales y entrevistas a informantes calificados.
Knowledge intensive business services have recently become one of the most important themes addressed by researchers in the field. Their interest in such a subject is due primarily to the impact they ...have in terms of growth rate, especially for the economies of emerging countries. The literature in the field brings a series of persuasive arguments about the role that these services have both at national and regional levels. In this paper, the authors make a radiography of the Romanian research system which is passing through a transition phase from the ruins of communism to the challenges of globalization. Moreover, the authors analyse the role of performance-based services in Romania’s regional development in correlation with the economic growth target at the national scale. Quantitative methods used during the present paper highlight the disparities between Romania’s geographic regions in terms of technological development and research. In addition, the econometric model developed in the study emphasizes the cohesion degree corresponding to the European Union Member States.
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