REGIONAL ECONOMIC GROWTH AND CONVERGENCE, 1950-2007: Some Empirical Evidence

Georgios Karras*
University of Illinois at Chicago
March 2010

                                                                                                                   
Abstract:

This paper investigates and compares the experience of several geographic regions with economic growth and convergence in income per capita.  Income per capita is correlated positively with saving rates and negatively with population growth rates, though the explanatory power of these two variables varies by region.  The empirical findings are broadly supportive of conditional convergence at an estimated average annual rate that has ranged from 0.8% in Europe to 1.7% in Asia.  It is also shown that the speed of convergence is far from constant over time: it has been steadily falling in the OECD and the Americas, but steadily increasing in Asia. JEL classification: O40. read more

Keywords: Solow Growth Model, Economic Growth, Convergence.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SHRINKAGE OF ATENQUIQUE DECLINACION DEL DESARROLLO AMBIENTAL Y ECONOMICO DE ATENQUIQUE

Jose G. Vargas-hernandez, M.B.A.; Ph.D.
Departamento de Mercadotecnia y Negocios Internacionales Centro Universitario de Ciencias Economico Administrativas U de G. Periferico Norte 799 Edificio G-306 Zapopan, Jalisco

Abstract:

This paper focuses on the environmental and economic shrinkage impact it has had the transfer of  ownership from state owned Paper Mill Company to a corporate private ownership as an effect of the ongoing economic process of globalization, after the industrial boom of the paper mill during the second half of the last Century. The paper also focuses on how the employees of this Paper Mill Company live and how they have been affected by globalization and how they feel about their paper mill’s new corporate owners. The methodology used was descriptive and exploratory. A sample of ten workers at the Company who lived in Atequique was chosen for an interview. The town of Atentique was settled and grew up in terms of population, social and economic development in the same way that the Industrial Company of Atenquique did during the period when the company was property of by the Mexican State. After the Company has been privatized, the town started declining and shrinking in these three variables. The impact on the environmental and economic development has initiated the shrinking and declining of Atenquique but also of the surrounding cities and towns.

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Key words: Atenquique, environmental development, economic development. Shrinkage, neoliberal model, globalization.

GEOGRAPHY OF MICRO-STATES: MAIN ARISING ISSUES

Sidiropoulos George
Department of Geography, University of the Aegean
University Hill, 81100 Mytilene, Greece

Abstract:
News is often interspersed with reports from small islands. Reference is often made to them due to their small size, or due to their administrative autonomy or financial regime; usually attracting the common interest. Actually, what are the so-called microstates, virtual lands, unrecognized state entities, or ephemeral states? Their de facto distance from the centers of socio-economic developments contributes to the conservation of both their traditional social web and their natural environment, but at the same time,  it deprives them the opportunities to keep in pace with the modern developments and renders them under the status of isolation.  On the one hand, the barrier resulting from natural obstacles acts like a filter that bars the introduction of opportunistic innovations, and on the other hand geographical proximity would make contact with progress feasible. In other words, situation acts as an immune system which secures the better health of microstates. read more

Keywords:  Microstate, micronation, small economies, insular space, quasi-state, sovereignty, development.