Spatial econometrics

The individual pension system is known as the personal future investment system that allows participants to regularly save for their retirements. Thus, the role of this system among incomes in retirement has significantly grown in the last decade in Turkey as in other countries. In Turkey, the participation in the individual pension system has been voluntary since the beginning of this system. Thus, it is important to study the factors affecting the participants of the individual pension system and also the distribution of the participants in Turkey. In this study, participants' data in the individual pension system of Turkey (2013), provided by the Pension Monitoring Center, is examined at provincial level by means of GIS and spatial statistics tools. Firstly, spatial distribution, spatial local and global clustering for the participation rate have been researched. Also, the participant rate in Turkey with the effects of variables measured at provincial level (the labor rate, unemployment rate, sex ratio, urbanization rate, deposit rate, illiteracy rate and human development index) is studied by using the spatial econometrics models. The result shows that there are global and local spatial autocorrelations between the participation rates in Turkey and also the spatial lag model provides better results than the classical regression model and some other spatial models in terms of all criteria.

This paper explores the long-term sensitivity of street-level retailers to agglomeration to corroborate its theorised benefits under current economic modelling. It does so by studying the annualised chance of closure of retailers as a function of the number of surrounding retailers, as well as how different types of retailers respond differently to agglomeration. A time fixed effect model is used to study the mortality rate of retailers over the period of a century. The study draws from a self-created database of retail establishment locations and types in Detroit, Michigan and The Hague, Netherlands between 1911 and 2011. The case study cities have been selected for their combination of similarities and differences. While downtown Detroit is infamous for its high vacancy and The Hague has been praised as a vibrant Dutch urban core, both cities have in fact suffered significant loss of retail activity over the past century, allowing for the study of retail closure under different socioeconomic and cultural circumstances. The study demonstrates a significant sensitivity of retailers to agglomeration in both cities. The study also indicates a specifically high sensitivity to agglomeration in the case of comparison shops. Without a critical mass of peers, these retailers will face a significantly higher than average chance of closure. The sensitivity to agglomeration is remarkably similar between both case studies, urban cores which at first sight have experienced rather different fates over the past century. This cross-cultural similarity may point to a generalisability of the underlying mechanism of sensitivity to agglomeration.

Research and development (R&D) activities are of great significance in the long term development of firms and R&D expenditures have been studied by economists including Romer. This paper sets out to investigate the effects of R&D spillovers at provincial level with specific reference to Turkey. To serve this purpose, data published by Turkish Statistical Institute have been employed. The paper covers the period from 2003 to 2007. The number of data points is 342 subsequent to the aggregation of data at the firm level. Of the data aggregated, it has been found out that 162 of them are zero. While running the spatial econometric estimations, inverse distance and neighboring matrices were employed as the weighting matrix. The determinants of R&D activities employed in the study are size, represented by the number of employees; qualified labor, represented by the number of R&D employees; technology transfer represented by expenses for licensing; foreign ownership, Pavitt sector dummies, location dummies by the sea, border or airport. The results of the analyses suggest that when both weighting matrices are used, spatial lag and error yielded significant results. There is R&D knowledge spillovers at provincial level in Turkey, shown by the spatial spillover effects in nearly one third of the total effects.

Molnár Gabriella - Zuti Bence

Egyetemi kontextusú globális-lokális paradoxon a tanuló régiók keretfeltételei között: a „negyedik generációs” egyetemek irányába

Napjainkban felértékelődött a tudás szerepe, felgyorsultak az innovációk, a tudásalapú gazdaság és társadalom korszakában élünk. Az egyetemek is jelentős szerepet játszanak ebben a folyamatban, a fejlett országokban nemzetközi sikereket érnek el, nemzetközi hallgatói körrel és kutatási eredményekkel rendelkeznek, emellett szorosan beágyazódtak a helyi gazdaságba is. Napi kapcsolatot ápolnak az ipari szférával és a kormányzattal, tartós versenyelőnyeik a lokális térségben gyökereznek. Ezzel szemben Magyarországon még nem tapasztalható ez a kettősség, számos esetben ugyanis ezek az egyetemek a helyi gazdaságtól, társadalomtól, munkaerőpiactól elhatárolva tevékenykednek, ugyanakkor nemzetközi sikerekre törekednek. Ebből a problémakörből kiindulva jelen dolgozat elsődleges célja, hogy megvizsgálja, megadhatóak-e egy nemzetközileg sikeres, ugyanakkor a helyi gazdaság és társadalom igényeit a lehető legnagyobb mértékben kielégítő egyetem ismérvei. E kérdés megválaszolásához három fő fejezeten át vezet az út. A dolgozat leíró jellegű módszertant alkalmaz, a témához szorosan kapcsolódó szakirodalom bemutatása után felvázolja az egyetemek sikerességi faktorait egyetemi rangsorok és nemzetközi benchmark példák alapján, mindezeket felhasználva végül kísérletet tesz arra, hogy megadja egy sikeres „negyedik generációs” egyetem keretfeltételeit. Modellek felállítására kerül sor, melyek megmutatják, hogyan is kellene kinéznie egy „negyedik generációs” egyetemnek, hogyan értelmezhető a globális-lokális paradoxon egyetemi kontextusban, illetve milyen mértékű szerepet tölt be egy „negyedik generációs” egyetem egy újraértelmezett Triple Helix modellben. Mindezek vizsgálata a tanuló régiók keretfeltételei között történik. Kutatásunk egyik legfontosabb megállapítása, hogy az egyetemek esetében is definiálható a globális-lokális paradoxon, hasonlóan a vállalatokhoz, az egyetemek nemzetközi törekvései mellett tartós sikereik forrásai a lokális térségben gyökereznek. Vizsgálódásunk további következtetése, hogy a vállalatok iparági versenyelőnyei forrásainak kategorizálása párhuzamba állítható az egyetemek versenyelőnyei forrásainak osztályozásával, definiálhatók a Porter-féle rombusz modell tényezői egyetemi dimenzióban, valamint a Triple Helix újraértelmezésével egy olyan modellt kapunk, melyben az egyetem kapja a leghangsúlyosabb szerepet, és az egész modell a helyi gazdaság és társadalom keretein belül értelmezhető.


Gabriella Molnár - Bence Zuti

Global-local Paradox in the Context of Universities within the Framework of Learning Regions: Towards the “Fourth Generation” Universities

Nowadays the role of knowledge is revalued, innovations are created even more swiftly, and we live in the era of knowledge-based economy and society. The universities play a notable role in this process as they achieve international success in developed countries, possess a number of foreign students and internationally acknowledged research results; meanwhile they integrate themselves into the local economy. They have day-to-day relations with the industrial sector and the government as their permanent competitive edge resides in the local area. Contrarily, this duality cannot be recognized in Hungary, namely the local universities function separately from the local economy, society and labor market, at the same time they aim to achieve international success. Based on this the primary goal of the paper is to examine if there are describable criteria of a university that is both internationally successful and completely satisfactory regarding the demands of local economy and society. To answer this, we compiled three main chapters. In the paper we applied descriptive methodology, after the introduction of related literature; we outline the success factors of universities with the help of university rankings and international good practices. By using these, we make an attempt to establish the framework conditions of a successful “fourth generation” university. We generate models that reveal how the “fourth generation” university should function, how can the global-local paradox be interpreted into a university context and what role does a “fourth generation” university play in a redefined Triple Helix model. All of these examinations are done within the framework of learning regions. One of the most important statements of our research is that, the global-local paradox can be interpreted in the context of universities and similarly to enterprises the permanent resources of success reside in local areas aside from international endeavors of universities. Another conclusion of our research is that the categorization of industrial competitiveness of enterprises can be parallel to the classification of competitiveness of universities, so the factors of Porter’s diamond model can be defined within the dimensions of universities. Furthermore with the reconsideration of the Triple Helix we obtain a model in which the university has the most emphasized role within the framework of local economy and society.

Support for organic farming is a key strategy of rural development policies in several countries. This paper studied the spatial pattern of participation in agro-environmnetal policy the policies designing to foster diffusion of organic farming. The ultimate goal is to investigate the impact of local factors for improving the policy targeting. Indicators of spatial association and a spatial econometrics model were performed for the analysis. The results show regional agglomeration effects of the rate of participants to the measures adopted to promote organic farming. In addition, a spatial relation among the farms that obtain public support is found, highlighting that the diffusion of participation is driven mainly by imitation process and external economies of scale.

Predominant theories explain the electoral success of far right (FR) parties since the late 1990s within national boundaries. We offer an alternative approach to prevailing cross-national comparisons, by examining patterns of transnational diffusion through a novel integrated analytical framework of transmission of FR electoral habits and party strategies in Europe. Using a new regional database of national and European parliament elections, spanning 7,652 electoral outcomes from 2000 to 2017, we find evidence of spillovers of both FR vote and party positions. Contagion takes place between geographically and culturally proximate countries. Positive transmission is carried through foreign contextual factors in the short run and voting externalities in the long run. Impulse responses indicate that the transmission peaks 4-5 years after an unanticipated shock in foreign FR vote shares or policy positions. Our findings have policy implications for countering xenophobia, rightwing radicalism, and extremism: spillovers entail strong voting externalities which render national policies ineffective, highlighting the need for European-level policies, which can internalize these externalities.

This report studies population dynamics in Europe. Its purpose is threefold. First, the report offers a literature review of the main drivers of population growth. Second, an empirical analysis is carried out in order to unveil the determinants of population growth in EU sub-regions (NUTS3 level) over the period 2000-2010. Spatial econometrics is employed to account for spatial dependence among neighbouring regions. Third, the existing evidence on the long-run relationship between economic and population growth is discussed, followed by an empirical assessment of the relationship between these two aggregates in Europe over the period 1960-2010. Time-series econometric tools are used for this analysis. The main findings of both the litterature reviews and empirical analyses are discussed, along with their implications and future extensions.