Regional Sciences

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.

In recent years, the so-called sharing economy has spread all over the world and, through the proliferation of online peer-to-peer platforms, provides a marketplace that matches sellers who want to sell/share their underutilised assets with buyers who need them. One of the well-known and heavily debated manifestations of the sharing economy is an accommodation provider platform called Airbnb. Airbnb is experiencing astonishing growth provoking several intense debates, regulatory challenges, and political battles due to its wide-spread effects on rental and real-estate markets. Thus, it is important to analyse the uneven spatial effects of the phenomenon. This paper aims to map Airbnb’s presence in New York City but, going beyond visual inspection, it analyses the socio-economic factors influencing the spatiality of Airbnb in the American metropolis. After collecting data from various data sources, we performed a statistical analysis (correlation, regression analysis) to determine the socio-economic conditions of areas and revealed those factors that may affect the spatial distribution of Airbnb listings in the city. Results highlight that (1) Airbnb supply concentrates in those parts of New York City with a young population, (2) there is a significant number of housing units, and (3) the number of points of interest is high.

In recent years, the so-called sharing economy has spread all over the world and, through the proliferation of online peer-to-peer platforms, provides a marketplace that matches sellers who want to sell/share their underutilised assets with buyers who need them. One of the well-known and heavily debated manifestations of the sharing economy is an accommodation provider platform called Airbnb. Airbnb is experiencing astonishing growth provoking several intense debates, regulatory challenges, and political battles due to its wide-spread effects on rental and real-estate markets. Thus, it is important to analyse the uneven spatial effects of the phenomenon. This paper aims to map Airbnb’s presence in New York City but, going beyond visual inspection, it analyses the socio-economic factors influencing the spatiality of Airbnb in the American metropolis. After collecting data from various data sources, we performed a statistical analysis (correlation, regression analysis) to determine the socio-economic conditions of areas and revealed those factors that may affect the spatial distribution of Airbnb listings in the city. Results highlight that (1) Airbnb supply concentrates in those parts of New York City with a young population, (2) there is a significant number of housing units, and (3) the number of points of interest is high.

Development policy that mainly focuses on economic growth has triggered increasing regional disparity in Indonesia, exacerbated by the concentrated develop- ment of growth centers that generate backwash effects rather than spillover effects. Balanced regional development is needed and can be initiated through a spatial system approach, where the growth centers and their hinterlands are developed simultane- ously as an integrated system. The aim of this research is to define newgrowth centers that can stimulate the optimal utilization and interaction between regional resources for generating more balanced and efficient development. Three interrelated models are developed to address this: (1) an inter-regional input–output (IRIO) optimization model to generate optimal resource use and improve development performances, (2) a transportmodel to determine an optimal inter-regional input–output network, and (3) a P-median model to define newgrowth centers and their hinterland areas. Results from the first model show that setting land resource limitations, demand compliance, and goals to increase economic growth, people’s income, and government tax can create higher and equally distributed value of total output. The second model indicated that the optimal flow of input–output increased intensity of economic transaction among provinces, although it was still dominated by interaction between Java and Sumatra. The third model identified seven new growth centers comprising Medan, Tanjung- pinang, Palembang, Balikpapan, Gorontalo, Makassar, and Ternate.

Abstract

The chapter begins with a discussion of how communications technologies have reduced the influence of distance on the location of economic activity. The origins of network analysis in regional science are described. The importance of social networks and social network science in sociology and related disciplines during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are explained. This is followed by a discussion of new discoveries concerning the structure of the Internet that took place in the late 1990s. The rise of social media, the continued development of social network science and the popularity of social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in the new millennium are then depicted along with new research findings that derive from connectivity and contagion processes within social networks. The chapter concludes with an account of methods for determining the importance of distance in the new world of social networks.

Living in a country’s largest metropolitan centre has a negative effect on subjective well-being. Although documented in many developed economies, the reasons for this particular geography of well-being are still poorly understood. Meanwhile a separate body of research has shown that the holding of extrinsic or personally focused values is also associated with lower levels of subjective well-being. This paper demonstrates the link between the two. It draws on the European Social
Survey (ESS) 2012 to show how metropolitan residents in Finland are more likely to hold extrinsic values such as power and achievement.
KEYWORDS
human values; value dissonance; subjective well-being; life satisfaction; Finland

The information age is also an era of escalating social problems. The digital transformation of society and the economy is already underway
in all countries, although the progress in this transformation can vary widely. There are more social innovation projects addressing global and local social problems in some countries than in others. This suggests that different levels of digital transformation might influence the social innovation potential. Using the International Digital Economy and Society Index (I-DESI) and the Social Innovation Index (SII), this study investigates  how digital transformation of the economy and society affects the capacity for social innovation. A dataset of 29 countries was analysed using both simple and multiple linear regressions and Pearson’s correlation. Based on the research findings, it can be concluded that the
digital transformation of the economy and society has a significant positive impact on the capacity for social innovation. It was also found that the integration of digital technology plays a critical role in digital transformation. Therefore, a country’s progress in digital transformation is beneficial to its social innovation capacity. In line with the research
findings, this study outlines the implications and possible directions for policy.

Many theoretical and practical works aim at describing the spatial structure of Europe, where spatial relations have undergone continuous
change. The article gives an overview of models describing the spatial structure of Europe. The models’ diversity is highlighted, without
any claim to the completeness of the list of models discussed. The authors describe the economic spatial structure of Europe through
bidimensional regression analysis based on a gravity model. With the help of the gravity model, they generate a spatial image of the
economic spatial structure of Europe. With the images, the appropriateness of the models based on different methodological backgrounds
can be justified through comparison with the authors’ results. The authors aim to contribute to understanding the European economic
spatial structure through a new methodological approach, rather than to create and show a new model that overwrites existing ones.

Innovation is considered a key variable for determining regional economic resistance. However, a very few studies aiming to determine the existence of a relationship between innovation and regional resilience - in its various dimensions - have been carried out until now. Our paper aims at narrowing the gap in this regard by looking at the ability of 'resistance' showed by the Italian provinces (NUTS3 level) in the 2008-2014 recessionary period. Our statistical analysis reveals that innovation, proxied by employment variation rate in high tech sectors, is not clearly associated with 'resistance' at the regional level. Other variables such as diversity of regional economic activities, GDP variation rate, population density and geographical location are actually associated with a higher degree of resistance, while related variety shows an inverse and statistically significant correlation.

Multiregional dynamic models of economic growth rarely capture the interdependencies among regions that are geographically distant and/or often underestimate the importance of these linkages. This bias has become more and more serious because travel and transportation costs continue to decrease, while new telecommu-nication and information technologies enable business activities to readily take place between geographically remote locations. The conceptual framework in this study–modelling the network of regions–is based on well-known spatial economet-ric methods and provides alternative ways to inte-grate network interdependencies of economic ac-tivities into many fields, as well as modelling tech-niques such as spatial computable general equilib-rium, input-output, and dynamic econometric models.

This study extends previous research by providing a large-scale analysis of Framework Program collaboration patterns from a multidimensional perspective. We use detailed data on Framework Program cooperation to map research collaboration patterns across European regions, focusing on the intensity between industry and research institutions. Using these data, we profile European NUTS3 regions along the institutional and spatial dimensions of their collaboration networks. The results show that cooperation intensities correlate among types of collaboration: most of the regions are either weakly or strongly cooperative along most of the cooperation dimensions. However, a significant group of moderately developed regions shows selective collaboration patterns, mostly with an external focus.

The authors have examined the large variation in adolescent fertility rates between and within countries to better understand the regional and
individual factors underlying early childbearing. Using low spatial level data from the Lithuanian Census, they found that there is a high degree of regional differentiation within Lithuania, with differences of up to 20-fold between rates in different regions. Therefore, they investigated whether the regional differentiation in adolescent fertility rates is
determined by different regional contexts or by the individual characteristics of teenage mothers. Surprisingly, the results of their
regression models showed that the regional context did not have a large effect on adolescent fertility – the large differences between regions appeared due to the unequal spatial distribution of socio-economically
disadvantaged teenagers. Their results also showed that women who had their first child during adolescence were statistically significantly different from those who postponed motherhood: those who gave birth
during adolescence were more likely to belong to ethnic minorities (1.4 times more likely), receive government benefits (10 times), live in
large households (10 times), and reside in rural areas (1.4 times). They were also more likely to terminate their education early, acquiring only a primary (7 times more likely) or lowersecondary (8 times) education. The study’s findings suggest that public strategies and policies should address individual factors to reduce adolescent fertility rates and regional disparities. Teenage mothers should be supported to return to the education system as early as possible, thus preventing a further
widening of the gap between their socioeconomic status and that of their childless peers.

Administrative areas are arbitrarily designed and do not necessarily reflect the geographical patterns of socioeconomic and labor market activity. Labor market areas (LMAs) are required to analyze spatial labor market activity and provide a framework to guide spatially-explicit employment policy development. This resource describes a data source of a set of recently created labor market areas for Chile.

The present paper introduces the most common methods of regionalizing national inputoutput
tables. First we describe the different groups of methods based on our review of the
international literature regarding regionalization. Then we focus on particular methods that
can be applied for Hungarian counties highlighting their advantages and disadvantages and
synthetize the empirical results of them again based on the literature. On the basis of these
experiences we attempt to create a complex method fitted to the available Hungarian
regional data. For better understanding in the end we apply our method on an illustrative
example consisting of three regions with hypothetical sectors and data.