Evolutionary approaches in economic geography have contributed substantially to the growing body of knowledge of regional development processes and their underlying mechanisms. One key concept in the ...literature on evolutionary economic geography is that of related variety. Herein, regional industry structure is represented through the level of related variety of technologies, skills, or outputs. The related variety concept proposes that regional economic development is favored when an economy diversifies into products or technologies that are closely related to the stock of existing activities. In this article, we raise substantive questions regarding the internal logic of the concept of related variety, its spatial expressions, measurement specifics, empirical regularities and biases, and its possible short- and long-term effects on regional development. Based on this investigation, we make suggestions for improvements to future research.
Ecolabels are widespread tools for policy and marketing in many industry sectors. Carbon labels focussing on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are one specialised category of ecolabel ...in use by tourism corporations. All ecolabels, including carbon labels, rely on persuasive communication: i.e., providing technical information to individuals in ways that induce them to change relevant behaviours. This requires that individuals understand that information, appreciate its significance, trust its reliability, and know how to act more sustainably. Here, these four criteria are applied to a set of tourism carbon label schemes, to assess whether the information provided by existing labels is comprehensive. Secondly, results are presented from a survey of environmentally aware tourists and their perspectives of two different types of carbon labels. Results indicate that tourism carbon label schemes suffer significant shortcomings both from the theoretical perspective of communications analysis and from the practical perspective of tourist understanding and action. Results indicate that even if tourists care about their climate change impacts, carbon labels are currently ineffective because of deficiencies in communications. Since such deficiencies can be overcome, there are opportunities for carbon labels to become more widely and successfully used.
•Provides a first review of carbon labels used in tourism.•Shows that carbon labels suffer from shortcomings in the presentation of information.•Suggests that ‘optimized’ labels use colour schemes and factual information.•Indicates that there is considerable scope to further improve labels.
Development geography II Mawdsley, Emma
Progress in human geography,
04/2018, Letnik:
42, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Financialization is now a key area of research within Geography. Development geographers have made significant (although arguably under-recognized) contributions, notably in relation to household and ...‘everyday’ financialization, as well as recent work on the financialization of nature, land, infrastructure, health and energy in the Global South. In this progress report, I argue that donors are currently seeking to accelerate and deepen financialization in the name of ‘development’. Foreign aid is being used to de-risk investment, ‘escort’ capital to ‘frontier’ markets, and carry out the mundane work of transforming objects into assets available to speculative capital flows. Financialization both permeates and goes beyond the more commonly referenced private sector-led development. Donors are pursuing these strategies and programmes with little or no reference to the threats posed by greater financialization.
Evolutionary economic geographers propose that regional diversification is a pathdependent process whereby industries grow out of pre-existing industrial structures through technologically related ...localised knowledge spillovers and learning. This article examines whether this also applies to emerging radical technologies that create the foundation for new industries. The article develops a new measure for technological relatedness between the knowledge base of a region and that of a radical technology based on patent classes. It demonstrates that emerging fuel cell technology develops where the regional knowledge base is technologically related to that of fuel cells and consequently confirms the evolutionary thesis.
•Topic: skilled migration and innovation at industry level in UK, France and Germany.•Skilled natives and migrants increase innovation with elasticities of 0.3 and 0.09.•The contribution of skilled ...migration is higher in industries with low over-education.•The effect is stronger in industries with high FDIs and trade openness.•The effect is stronger in industries with more ethnical diversity at industry level.
This paper studies the effects of skilled migration on innovation –proxied by patent citations- in European industries between 1994 and 2005, using the French and the UK Labour Force Surveys and the German Microcensus. Highly-educated migrants have a positive effect on innovation, but the effect differs across industries. It is stronger in industries with low levels of overeducation, high levels of FDIs and openness to trade and, finally, in industries with higher ethnic diversity. The aggregate effect of the skilled immigrant is about one third the one of the skilled natives. We tackle the endogeneity of migrants with a set of external and internal instruments.
Cost-benefit-analyses (CBA) are widely used to assess transport projects. Comparing various CBA frameworks, this paper concludes that the range of parameters considered in EU transport CBA is ...limited. A comprehensive list of criteria is presented, and unit costs identified. These are used to calculate the external and private cost of automobility, cycling and walking in the European Union. Results suggest that each kilometer driven by car incurs an external cost of €0.11, while cycling and walking represent benefits of €0.18 and €0.37 per kilometer. Extrapolated to the total number of passenger kilometers driven, cycled or walked in the European Union, the cost of automobility is about €500 billion per year. Due to positive health effects, cycling is an external benefit worth €24 billion per year and walking €66 billion per year. CBA frameworks in the EU should be widened to better include the full range of externalities, and, where feasible, be used comparatively to better understand the consequences of different transport investment decisions.
•Shows that transport CBA frameworks in the EU are not comprehensive•Provides an overview of relevant parameters and cost of items•Calculates the per kilometer cost of driving, cycling and walking in the EU•Concludes that the cost of automobility is systematically underestimated•Argues that policy decisions should rely on comparative CBA where feasible
Extractivism is notorious for causing environmental destruction, resulting in worsened living conditions for those residing near sites of, among other processes, mining, logging, and hydraulic ...fracturing. Yet, companies can operate in certain areas because they mobilize narratives, often supported by governments and local authorities, asserting that extraction will bring local economic benefits in the forms of employment, improved general living standards, and economic compensation. In this article, we examine this core argument, focusing on shale gas development that has taken place since the mid-2000s in central Appalachia. We ground our analysis in original material gathered between 2020 and 2022 through 55 interviews with land and mineral owners. Extractivism is a capitalistic complex that operates on a systemic level with similar structures independently of the context where it is taking place. In this article, we zoom in on its operations and consequences at a micro level. We show how the logic of critical infrastructures is enacted by energy companies through compensation and experienced by residents through impacts on livelihood. While this qualitative analysis does not quantify local economic gains or losses, there is a preponderance of evidence showing that land and mineral owners have received limited and discontinuous compensation often compounded with the loss of usable land or forest. We argue that the extraction of raw fossil materials not only contributes to environmental destruction and climate change but is fundamentally grounded in unequal power relations that heighten social vulnerability and potentially destroy livelihoods.
The literature integrating an agency perspective with evolutionary economic geography (EEG) has tended to focus on change agency. This paper introduces a distinction between change agency and ...reproductive agency. The variegated agency understanding is integrated within a path-as-process perspective. By investigating three cases of rural tourism development, changes in types of agency in the course of path evolution are elucidated. It emerges that both change and reproductive agency are important for industry path development. Thus, the article contributes to a more dynamic and nuanced understanding of the role of agency in path evolution, expanding the hitherto change-oriented agency literature in EEG.
This paper pioneers the assessment of tourism's total global resource use, including its fossil fuel consumption, associated CO
2
emissions, fresh water, land, and food use. As tourism is a dynamic ...growth system, characterized by rapidly increasing tourist numbers, understanding its past, current, and future contributions to global resource use is a central requirement for sustainable tourism assessments. The paper introduces the concept of resource use intensities (RUIs), which represent tourism's resource needs per unit of consumption (e.g. energy per guest night). Based on estimates of RUIs, a first assessment of tourism's global resource use and emissions is provided for the period 1900-2050, utilizing the Peeters Global Tourism Transport Model. Results indicate that the current (2010) global tourism system may require c.16,700 PJ of energy, 138 km
3
of fresh water, 62,000 km
2
of land, and 39.4 Mt of food, also causing emissions of 1.12 Gt CO
2
. Despite efforts to implement more sustainable forms of tourism, analysis indicates that tourism's overall resource consumption may grow by between 92% (water) and 189% (land use) in the period 2010-2050. To maintain the global tourism system consequently requires rapidly growing resource inputs, while the system is simultaneously becoming increasingly vulnerable to disruptions in resource flows.
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