Unveiling the truth about tourism labour precarity in Argentinian cities

Purpose This paper aims to study the role of tourism specialisation on tourism labour precarity in Argentinian cities, considering urban primacy. Design/methodology/approach The authors propose an econometric model that iterates between alternative labour precarity measures explained by the economic sector (tourism, rest of services and rest of economy) and tourism specialisation at the city level. They build three geographical groups based on Argentinian urban agglomerates: the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, tourism specialised cities and non-tourism specialised cities. The authors further distinguish between big and small cities according to their urban primacy. The main sources of data are the Permanent Household Survey and the Hotel Occupancy Survey from the Argentinian National Statistics and Census Institute for the period 2007–2017. Findings The authors find that as tourism specialisation grows, the incidence of precarious labour conditions in tourism goes down. Working in this sector increases the chances of having a precarious job, particularly for non-legal outcome variables. However, tourism specialisation and urban primacy generate a mitigating effect on these negative results. Originality/value The authors focus on tourism labour conditions in Argentinian cities, using different measures of labour precarity from a legal perspective, (namely, legal informality) and a non-legal one (including productive informality, part-time work and non-permanent occupation). The authors follow an innovative approach to this matter in the tourism sector, as they consider both tourism specialisation at the city level and urban primacy. This is the first article addressing these issues not only for Argentina but also for Latin America.

Concept of polycentricity-the differences between development policies and spatial reality

Contemporary scientific literature and strategic documents suggest the concept of polycentricity as a key factor and the aim of regional development policies. One of the aims of this study is to analyze spatial relations between the nodal regions and to determine (calculate) the level of polycentricity in the region of Vojvodina (Northern Serbia). By quantifying spatial relations in the region (using selected methods), we pointed out the relevance of regional development policies, i.e., the extent to which the proposed measures for reducing regional inequalities are in line with the direction of contemporary spatial relations in the region of Vojvodina. We have used four different methodological tools: rank-size rule, urban primacy index, index of functional centrality, and commuting patterns (levels of functional dependence). The obtained results identified the existence of morphological polycentricity, but also the growing domination of the cities of Novi Sad and Belgrade in regulating and managing spatial and functional relations in the region of Vojvodina. These results are not completely in line with the development directions declared in the strategic documents. Our approach focuses on assessing the influence of the main nodal (sub)centers in managing further spatial and functional relations in the region of Vojvodina.

Study on Urbanization Level, Urban Primacy and Industrial Water Utilization Efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

Considering the undesirable output, this paper adopted the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with the slack variable and super efficiency improvement, to measure industrial water utilization efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The paper also creatively introduces urbanization level and urban primacy into driver factors’ estimation by stochastic and fixed Tobit models, exploring how urbanization characteristics affected the water utilization in regional industrial production. The results showed that industrial water efficiency has maintained an upward trend during the whole period, while most central and western provinces have shown a U-shaped trend of decreasing first and then rising. However, the industrial water utilization efficiency of central regions is the lowest, and the eastern regions are the highest, catching up with western regions. Utilization efficiency shows an overall convergence during the research period from 2005 to 2017. Regarding the factors’ estimation, both population urbanization and land urbanization negatively affected industrial water utilization efficiency, particularly blind expansion and disorderly development. The urban primacy meant the unbalance of urbanization, which would lead to urban diseases and pollution transfer, while the effects of urban primacy depended on the urbanization level. However, the utilization efficiency of industrial water did not become better automatically along with urbanization development; therefore, the scale and speed of urbanization should be scientifically formulated. The effects of the level of economic development, the advanced industrial structure, and the level of foreign investment are significantly negative.