The Response of Creative Class Members to Regions Vying to Attract Them With Subsidies

There are no theoretical studies in regional science that examine which region to locate in from the standpoint of a creative class member, given that the pertinent regional authorities (RAs) are competing among themselves to attract the creative class using subsidies. This gap provides the motivation for our paper. This paper’s contribution is that it is the first to theoretically study the regional location choice of creative class members when the RAs of the locations in which they might locate are using subsidies to attract them. Specifically, a knowledge good producing creative class member must decide which of two regions ( A or B) to locate his plant in. This good is produced using a Cobb–Douglas function with creative and physical capital. We analyze plant location in four cases. In the benchmark case, we show that the representative creative class member ought to locate his plant in the less expensive region B. Next, we show that a small subsidy to creative capital by region A switches the plant location decision from region B to A. Finally, when both regions grant identical subsidies to creative capital, the representative creative class member is indifferent between locating in regions A and B. So, for identical subsidies to affect the plant location decision, they are better targeted to physical and not to creative capital. JEL Codes: R11, R58

Does Trust Associate with Political Regime?

Since trust correlates with economic development and in turn economic development associates with political regime, we conjecture that there may be a relationship between trust and political regime. Without looking for any casual inference, we investigate if trust aggregated on the country level correlates with the country's political regime. Specifically, we are interested whether trust correlates positively with the level of democracy in cross-sectional observations. We analyse data on trust from 76 countries using the Global Preference Survey and investigate the correlations with five separate democracy indices (Polity2, Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy, Freedom House, MaxRange and Unified Democracy Score). We do not find any significant association, with or without taking into account other factors (e.g., regional location, economic development, geographic conditions, culture) as well. Trust does not correlate with cornerstones of democracy either, measured by five components of the EIU index. A robustness check using an alternative measure of trust from the World Values Survey reaches the same results. The present study supersedes the working paper version (Khayouti et al., 2020).

A qualitative investigation of mental health in women of refugee background resettled in Tasmania, Australia

Background Women of Refugee Background (WoRB) are a highly vulnerable population with complex going mental health needs following resettlement. In Australia, there has been a substantial increase in WoRB being resettled in rural and regional locations. Despite this, no research to date has specifically focused on factors contributing to mental distress in WoRB in regional resettlement locations. The current study aimed to address this gap in literature. Methods 21 semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with WoRB and service providers in regional locations of Tasmania, Australia. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were analysed utilising Braun and Clarke (Qual Res Psychol 3(2):77–101, 2006) framework for conducting thematic analysis. Results Thematic analysis revealed that WoRB conceptualised mental health as a pathogenic entity, which significantly influenced their mental health help-seeking behaviours. The findings also highlighted how resettlement to a rural and regional location of Australia may exacerbate many of the factors which contribute to ongoing mental distress in WoRB. Conclusions The findings of the current study build upon existing research which indicates the adverse impacts post-migrations stressors can have on the mental health of individuals of refugee background. Furthermore, this study suggests that the current services and supports available to WoRB resettled in regional locations of Australia are inadequate, and under-resources. These findings are discussed in regard to practical and policy implications which should be addressed to better support the mental health of WoRB resettled in rural and regional locations of Australia.

Decomposition of Industrial Electricity Efficiency and Electricity-Saving Potential of Special Economic Zones in China Considering the Heterogeneity of Administrative Hierarchy and Regional Location

Special Economic Zones (SEZs), an important engine of industrial economic development in China, consume large amounts of energy resources and emit considerable CO2. However, existing research pays little attention to industrial energy usage in SEZs and ignores the heterogeneity of administrative hierarchy and regional location. Considering the dual heterogeneity, this study proposes an improved two-dimension and two-level meta-frontier data envelopment analytical model to decompose the industrial electricity efficiency (IEE) and electricity-saving potential of SEZs in Guizhou Province, China, based on 4-year field survey data (2016–2019). Results show that the IEE rankings of three administrative hierarchies within SEZs are provincial administration SEZs, county administration SEZs, and municipality administration SEZs. The SEZs located in energy resource-rich areas and better ecological environmental areas have higher IEE than those in resource-poor areas and ecology fragile areas, respectively. This study can provide reference for policymakers to formulate effective policies for improving the electricity use efficiency of SEZs in China.

A Framework for Modelling Economic Regional Location Processes Under Uncertainty

This paper deals with the theoretical analysis of the spatial concentration and localization of firms and employees over a set of regions. In particular, it provides a simple site-selection theoretical model to describe the probabilistic framework of the location patterns. The adopted quantitative tool is the stochastic theory of urns. The model moves from the empirical evidence of the deviation of the spatial location of companies from the uniform distribution and of employees from the distribution of firms. Factors leading to such deviations are taken into consideration. Specifically, we formalize a decision problem grounded on the economic attributes of the regions and also on the distribution of the existing firms and employees in the territory. To our purpose, the site-selection model is presented as a stepwise process.

Analyzing User Digital Emotions from a Holy versus Non-Pilgrimage City in Saudi Arabia on Twitter Platform

Humans are the product of what society and their environment conditions them into being. People living in metropolitan cities have a very fast-paced life and are constantly exposed to different situations. A social media platform enables individuals to express their emotions and sentiments and thus acts as a reservoir for the digital emotion footprints of its users. This study proposes that the user data available on Twitter has the potential to showcase the contrasting emotions of people residing in a pilgrimage city versus those residing in other, non-pilgrimage areas. We collected the Arabic geolocated tweets of users living in Mecca (holy city) and Riyadh (non-pilgrimage city). The user emotions were classified on the basis of Plutchik’s eight basic emotion categories, Fear, Anger, Sadness, Joy, Surprise, Disgust, Trust, and Anticipation. A new bilingual dictionary, AEELex (Arabic English Emotion Lexicon), was designed to determine emotions derived from user tweets. AEELex has been validated on commonly known and popular lexicons. An emotion analysis revealed that people living in Mecca had more positivity than those residing in Riyadh. Anticipation was the emotion that was dominant or most expressed in both places. However, a larger proportion of users living in Mecca fell under this category. The proposed analysis was an initial attempt toward studying the emotional and behavioral differences between users living in different cities of Saudi Arabia. This study has several other important applications. First, the emotion-based study could contribute to the development of a machine learning-based model for predicting depression in netizens. Second, behavioral appearances mined from the text could benefit efforts to identify the regional location of a particular user.

A Case Study on Consensus Building With Fisheries for Offshore Wind-Power Generation in Japan

Local fishery unions have a significant authority over the use of marine space in Japan. Building consensus with them on marine space use have been identified as significant barriers to development of offshore wind projects. Creating non-monetary benefits and adding value to the local fisheries is a required strategy for getting fisheries consensus for future offshore wind projects. Previous studies have proposed and evaluated several such benefit creation options. However, there still remains uncertainty of the effectiveness of such benefit creation options. This study aims to compare the local residents’ and fisheries’ preference of the benefit creation options by using questionnaire surveys and stakeholder interviews in three areas. Those valid responses have been selected for the preference analysis by using the DS-AHP multi criteria decision making model. This study shows that project location and other regional differences are significant factors of general residents’ attitudes of offshore wind projects. On the other hand, fishers, the most important stakeholders, preferred added values related to their fishing industry. Additionally, regional location and fishing method is found to have an impact on their preference.

Determinants of Food Insecurity in Rural Areas in Mali

The objective of this study is to identify the determinants of households’ food insecurity in rural areas in Mali, ranked among the most exposed to this phenomenon. The study used data from the national food security and nutritional survey in March 2016. The estimation of the econometric logit model by the maximum likelihood method revealed that regional location, age of household head, household size, level of education of the household head, welfare index and incomes’ diversification sources are the main determinants of households’ food insecurity in a rural area in Mali. The analysis shows that age of household head, size of household and practical of recession cropping affect positively food insecurity while the educational level of household head, welfare index and incomes ’diversification sources affect negatively food insecurity. These determinants are pillars on which policy maker might rely to reduce food insecurity. Therefore, it is desirable for government to orientate more the food insecurity fight programs towards the most affected regions, to prioritize households head with advanced age and those whose size is high, and promote recession cropping during the food insecurity fight plan, improve household education level, promote the household’s welfare and sensitize the households to diversify the sources of their income.

Causes of death in beef cattle in southern Brazil

We determined the prevalence of diseases and pathogens associated with mortality in beef cattle in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, based on pathology laboratory submissions. Postmortem examinations were conducted on 1,277 beef cattle that died between 2008 and 2018. Information regarding age, time of the year, breed, and regional location were analyzed statistically. Most cattle were from the surrounding region of Porto Alegre, and 78.7% of the analyzed cases had diagnostic value. The diagnostic category with most cases was infectious and/or parasitic diseases (60%), followed by toxic and toxicoinfectious (25%). Most cases occurred in the fall. Major disease conditions identified included hemoprotozoal infection (18.2%), rabies (8.2%), and plant intoxications by Senecio spp. (8.5%) and Pteridium arachnoideum (4.6%). Hemoprotozoal infection occurred at a higher frequency in young cattle, mainly in animals up to 1 y old. Intoxication by Senecio spp. was more frequent in cattle 2–3 y old.