The Geography of Demilitarisation: Do Regional Economic Disparities Affect the Spatial Distribution of Military Base Closures?

Very few researchers have focused on the question of: if and to what extent, regional economic disparities affect military base closures. In this paper, we aim to explain regional patterns of military base closures in the Czech Republic, a country that has experienced a sharp decline in military employment and expenditures since the beginning of 1990s. Three groups of predictors of closure were considered: local (size, age, location and hierarchical position of the military base); regional (wages, unemployment, city size, the initial level of militarisation of the district); and national-level predictors (geostrategic priorities and restructuring of the Czech Armed Forces). Our research is informed by the theory of public choice and its application to the decision-making processes concerning military base closures and realignments. We employed a combination of regression models to determine which group of the above-mentioned factors affected the spatial distribution of military bases in the period 1994–2005. While geostrategic factors (such as distance from the border with West Germany) and restructuring of the army (type of a military base) were the most important, regional economic disparities showed no significant correlation with the intensity of military base closures/downsizing. We did not demonstrate that military bases in economically lagging regions had been systematically protected in the Czech Republic.

Cross-provincial Cross-region Power Trading Optimization Modeling

Background: China's power resources are unevenly distributed in geography, and the supply-demand imbalance becomes worse due to regional economic disparities. It is essential to optimize the allocation of power resources through cross-provincial and cross-regional power trading. Methods: This paper uses load forecasting, transaction subject data declaration, and route optimization models to achieve optimal allocation of electricity and power resources cross-provincial and cross-regional and maximize social benefits. Gray theory is used to predict the medium and longterm loads, while multi-agent technology is used to report the power trading price. Results: Cross-provincial and cross-regional power trading become a network flow problem, through which we can find the optimized complete trading paths. Conclusion: Numerical case study results has verified the efficiency of the proposed method in optimizing power allocation across provinces and regions.

Regional corruption variability in the European countries

Quantification of the corruption rate in smaller sub-national areas is still a significantly unexplored area. Sub-national resolution of corruption rate could bring an entirely new dimension to the theory of causes and consequences of regional disparities. There are numerous reasons why to focus on this issue. Perhaps the strongest one is that if corruption negatively affects the economic performance, as many studies claim, the elimination of corruption in certain regions may be the key for the elimination of regional economic disparities and thus increase the economic performance of the state. Analysis of regional corruption may also lead to the creation of regional anti-corruption provisions that can bring a reduction of corruption rate at the national level. The main goal of this article is formulated in this context. A new corruption quantification method reflecting inter-regional differences in the level of corruption in the European countries is designed. Using this method, it is possible to draw a comparison of individual NUTS II regions and identify those which are more affected by corruption than the others. A high level of corruption variability was confirmed for NUTS II regions, especially in Italy. Because of this variability, it could be very deceptive to evaluate the country as a whole from the corruption level viewpoint. Keywords: Corruption, world bank, European union, economic performance, regional disparities, control of corruption.