This study analyses the situation of the Brazilian population vis-à-vis the Social Security System (SSS) using data from PNAD. We chose the 1982, 1992 and 2002 PNAD data to give a series of pictures of the Brazilian population at equal intervals but under different legal instances with respect to the implementation of Social Security legislation. Special attention is given to poverty alleviation and to the impact of some alternatives among the many that may be considered in an eventual reform of the Brazilian SSS. In the simulations the alternative of postponing the eligibility age has had the greatest effect, mainly when one considers the age of 65, which would be the equivalent of eliminating length-of-service retirement. Age testing is also effective for survivor's benefit recipients. Eliminating multiple benefits, though not impressive when figures are in question, is progressive in nature and therefore an alternative to be considered.
The regional process that is taking place in Europe in recent decades, was determined by the awareness of the important role that regional policies hold in the balanced development of territories, the goal being the revival of economic and social development, locally, the economic recovery of more underdeveloped areas, to reduce the differences existing among the levels of development of regions. The action is aimed at increasing the efficiency of public authorities (central, local) in the use of resources they dispose of, in the development of some economic and financial policies aimed at encouraging investments, employment increase, living conditions improvement, taking into account the determinants of balancing regional development (resources, the development of technological processes and knowledge, political and institutional framework). The paper briefly presents the concepts of regionalism, regionalisation, whose common denominator is decentralization, that involves a multilevel governance, as well as the importance which the new model of economic and social development, consisting in the transfer of some prerogatives of the central administrative systems towards local communities, hold in solving problems that occur in regional, local plan.
Europe as we know it, the European Union of 27 countries, has evolved from the European Coal and Steel Union of a few developed countries in a comprehensive economic and political union, which now embraces and unites most of the European continent (EU 2011). Each successive transformation and enlargement of the Union has brought in new people and countries with large differences and particularities. Countries of southern Europe and later the former eastern socialist republics joined the initial core of the developed Western economies. Today, between countries of the European Union, different zones are distinguished in relation to levels of economic and social development. One group consists of the prosperous western and northern economies and includes countries such as Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, or Denmark. The second group includes regional and Mediterranean countries with less developed economies such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece or Ireland. Finally, the third group includes countries of former Eastern economies, relatively weak, completing the transition from socialism to capitalism. In this group are countries such as Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Latvia. The existence of many different countries in a broad geographic area designates the regional problem at three levels. The first level concerns the groups of countries mentioned above. At a second level variation exists within countries. Finally, at a third level, in the unified Europe, differences are between regions across national borders. Many studies argue that while disparities between member countries are decreasing gradually, the disparities within countries are increasing. As a result, the overall gap between the rich and developed regions on one hand and the less developed regions on the other hand is expanding. The current economic crisis has affected almost all European countries but the countries of the European south and the former eastern socialist republics have suffered the most. Our objective in this paper is to quantify regional disparities as expressed by several growth indicators, such as GDP per capita, employment/unemployment rates, household savings and use them to compare the regional disparities at the three levels described above before and after the crisis.
Das Land Mecklenburg-Vorpommern muss in Zukunft mit deutlich geringeren Zahlungen aus den im Rahmen des Solidarpakt II" gewährten Bundesergänzungszuweisungen rechnen. Darüber hinaus wirft auch die demografische Entwicklung, die in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern durch einen starken Rückgang der Bevölkerung geprägt ist, fiskalische Probleme auf. Diesen kritischen Entwicklungen auf der Einnahmenseite stehen erhebliche Ausgabenerfordernisse gegenüber. Die Landespolitik steht vor der Aufgabe, eine fiskalische Struktur zu entwerfen, die diesem Spannungsfeld gerecht wird. Da die kommunale und die staatliche Ebene von den verschiedenen Einnahmen- und Ausgabenentwicklungen möglicherweise unterschiedlich getroffen werden, stellt sich insbesondere die Frage, ob die derzeitigen Finanzbeziehungen zwischen Land und Kommunen den zukünftigen Herausforderungen gewachsen sind. Das vorliegende Gutachten ist diesem Gegenstand gewidmet. Sein Ziel ist es, im Hinblick auf eine umfassende Neuordnung des kommunalen Finanzausgleichs in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern die bestehenden Regelungen und mögliche Alternativen aus finanzwissenschaftlicher Sicht zu bewerten. Dies geschieht im Rahmen der Auseinandersetzung mit drei zentralen Themengebieten: - Einnahmen und Ausgaben der kommunalen Gebietskörperschaften in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. - Finanzkraftorientierter kommunaler Finanzausgleich: Der Gleichmäßigkeitsgrundsatz. - Aufgabenorientierter kommunaler Finanzausgleich: Das 2-Quellen-Modell
A common problem of regional policy is the distribution of funds to regional units. To follow the specific purpose of this budgeting process in a rational way this is often done in a formula allocation on the basis of official statistics. In the paper this is shown with the example of funds for active labour market policy. In Germany, measures of active labour market policy - e.g. training measures, integration subsidies and job creation schemes - are paid from a common budget. For the allocation of these budgetary funds (amounting to EURO 0,194 billion in 2004) to the regions of the Federal Republic of Germany, a formula was developed which was to be based essentially on a labour market indicator. The criteria for the development of a formula allocation were: most accurate fit to the legal guidelines of the Social Code, transparency of the procedure, openness for necessary policy decisions, scientific correctness in implementation, efficiency of the whole process. Here the procedure used in constructing the distribution process is explained and the distribution result is set out. Both were finally passed by the Supervisory Board of the Federal Employment Agency in Germany.
We investigate the effect of residential proximity to recreational trails on childhood body mass index (BMI). We find that children living within 0.5 miles of recreational trails have BMI z‐scores that are 0.0412 to 0.0507 standard deviations lower than those who do not live within 0.5 miles of trails. We also find that living nearby trails reduces the probability of becoming obese by 1.6 percentage points. The impact for BMI z‐score is larger for children qualifying for free or reduced‐price meals and for Hispanic children. These findings suggest that improving neighborhood amenities conducive to physical activity may help reduce disparities in childhood obesity. (JEL I10, R10)
This article investigates the dynamic process of job reallocation across Korean firms from 1985 to 2013 focusing on how the 1997 Korean financial crisis and the subsequent reforms altered job flows. I find evidence that while job reallocation was moderate and acyclical before the crisis, after the crisis it substantially intensified and exhibited procyclicality. Particularly, the reshuffling of employment across firms from different industries and of different sizes significantly occurred during the crisis period. Examining job reallocation from a geographical perspective, I find that the driving forces of regional job reallocation rates depend on the local heterogeneity of industries and geography. (JEL J63, E32, R10)
We use a novel identification strategy to investigate whether regional universities make their local economies more resilient to adverse economic shocks. Our strategy is based on state governments assigning normal schools (to train teachers) and insane asylums to counties between 1830 and 1930. Normal schools later became much larger regional universities while asylum properties mostly continue as small state-owned psychiatric health facilities. Because site selection criteria were similar for these two types of institutions, comparing counties assigned a normal school versus an insane asylum identifies the effect of a regional university. We find that having a regional university roughly offset the negative effects of exposure to manufacturing declines, and we attribute a significant share of this resilience to the resilience of regional public university spending.
A complex interplay of socio-ecological drivers of change exists at the different spatiotemporal scales affecting environmental degradation. This is a key issue worldwide and needs to be understood to develop efficient management solutions. One of the most applied theories in the regional analysis is the U-shaped relationship between environmental degradation and the level of income in a given economic system or Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Specifically, the EKC hypothesis underlines the (potentially positive) role of formal responses to environmental degradation grounded on government policies that are usually more ambitious in wealthier economic systems. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the role of space in EKC, arguing that spatial variability in the environment-income relationship may indicate additional targets for integrated socio-environmental policies. We hypothesize that a spatially differentiated response to environmental degradation could better adapt to differentiated local contexts. Therefore, to achieve this goal, we present a multi-scale investigation of degradation processes at the local level, providing a refined knowledge of the environment-economy linkages considering more traditional, cross-country and cross-region exercises. Our results demonstrated that-together with temporal, sectoral, and institutional aspects-space and, consequently, the related analysis' spatial scales, are significant dimensions in ecological economics, whose investigation requires improvements in data collection and dedicated statistical approaches.
Die Europäische Union wurde zu Beginn des neuen institutionellen Zyklus, als es mit der programmatischen Ausrichtung losgehen sollte, von der COVID-19-Pandemie ausgebremst. Das Wahlergebnis zum Europaparlament hatte die Befürchtungen, Europaskepsis würde zum Signum der kommenden Periode, nicht erfüllt. Auch die Corona-Bewährungsprobe für die Handlungsfähigkeit der Union scheint nach kurzfristiger Rückbesinnung auf die Pandemiebewältigung vor Ort, die bis zur Schließung von Grenzen führte, gut überwunden; während der zweiten Lockdown-Phase im Herbst 2020 soll jedenfalls eine Grenzschließung um jeden Preis vermieden werden. Dennoch deutet die zunehmende Differenzierung der europapolitischen Perspektiven in den Mitgliedstaaten darauf hin, dass ein Weiter so nicht tragen wird, dass die nächsten Schritte der Integration konkrete Antworten auf die Bedürfnisse der Bürgerinnen und Bürger enthalten müssen. Eine neue Debatte um die Zukunft der Europäischen Union ist längst in Gang gekommen, eine interinstitutionelle Konferenz zur Zukunft der EU hätte längst starten sollen und wartet nun auf ihren baldigen Auftakt. Ein in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit und Politik hochgewichteter Maßstab für die Zuständigkeitsvermutung im europäischen Mehrebenensystem ist das Subsidiaritätsprinzip (Art. 5 Abs. 3 EUV). [.] ; At the beginning of the year 2020 the European Union stands just ahead the new institutional cycle. The results of the elections to the European Parliament have not fulfilled the fears about Euroscepticism characterizing the following period. However, the growing differentiation of European policy perspectives in the member states suggests that a simple 'keep it up' will not be the solution such as that the next steps of integration have deliver concrete responses on the citizens' needs. A new debate on the future of the European Union has started, yet: an interinstitutional conference on the future of the EU was foreseen to be inaugurated on Europe Day on 9th May 2020, but due to the Covid 19 pandemic the conference is postponed. In the public and political debate in Germany, the principle of subsidiarity (art. 5(3) TEU) plays a major role for the presumption of competences in the European multilevel system. [.]
Creativity is often highly concentrated in time and space, and across different domains. What explains the formation and decay of clusters of creativity? In this paper we match data on thousands of notable individuals born in Europe between the XIth and the XIXth century with historical data on city institutions and population. Our main variable of interest is the number of famous creatives (scaled to local population) born in a city during a century, but we also look at famous immigrants (based on location of death). We first document several stylized facts: famous births and immigrants are spatially concentrated and clustered across disciplines, creative clusters are persistent but less than population, and spatial mobility has remained stable over the centuries. Next, we show that the emergence of city institutions protecting economic and political freedoms and promoting local autonomy facilitates the attraction and production of creative talent.
We study the effects of a German national cluster policy on the structure of collaboration networks. The empirical analysis is based on original data that was collected in fall 2011 and late summer 2013 with cluster actors (firms and public research organizations) who received government funding. Our results show that over time the program was effective in initiating new cooperation between cluster actors and in intensifying existing linkages. Newly formed linkages are to a substantial amount among actors who did not receive direct funding for a joint R&D project, which indicates an additional, mobilisation effect of the policy. Furthermore, we observe differential developments regarding clusters´ spatial embeddedness. Some clusters tend to increase their localisation, whereas others increase their connectivity to international partners. The centrality of large firms increased over time, indicating their prominent role as preferred partners for R&D cooperation within the clusters while it is the opposite case for public actors.
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis tingkat daya saing ekspor rempah Indonesia di pasar ASEAN dan tingkat intensitas persaingan ekspor rempah dari negara-negara ASEAN. Metode analisis yang digunakan adalah Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), Intra-Industry Trade (IIT), Index of Export Overlap (IEO), dan Index of Export Similarity (IES). Sedangkan data yang digunakan adalah data tahunan periode tahun 2005-2013. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa daya saing rempah Indonesia di pasar ASEAN mengalami perubahan antar periode pengamatan. Pada periode sebelum dan saat krisis ekonomi banyak komoditas rempah Indonesia berdaya saing rendah. Sedangkan pada saat pasca krisis ekonomi kondisi daya saing rempah tersebut mengalami peningkatan, khususnya vanili, kayu manis, jahe, kunyit, safron, timi, daun salam, daun kari, dan lada. Apabila dilihat dari sisi persaingan komoditas rempah negara-negara ASEAN di pasar Indonesia maka intensitasnya cenderung menurun. Lada dari Filipina, vanili dari Thailand, dan cengkeh dari Malaysia dapat menjadi kompetitor yang potensial di pasar rempah Indonesia karena daya saingnya meningkat di saat negara-negara lain menurun. Pemerintah Indonesia dapat melakukan upaya-upaya untuk mempertahankan dan meningkatkan potensi daya saing rempah melalui (a) teknik budidaya yang baik, (b) pengembangan industri hilir, (c) pemanfaatan bursa komoditas, dan (e) perbaikan fasilitasi perdagangan. The study aims at analyzing the level of export competitiveness of Indonesian spices and the intensity level of spices export competitiveness among ASEAN countries. This study used Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), Intra-Industry Trade (IIT), Index of Export Overlap (IEO), and Index of Export Similarity (IES) approaches. The data used were time series during 2005-2013. The results showed that in the period before and during economic crises, most of Indonesian spice commodities are considered in the low level of competitiveness. However, that level has improved after the Indonesian economic crises, particularly for some spice commodities such as: vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, turmeric, thyme, bay leaves, and curry. Seen from the ASEAN countries' spice commodities in Indonesian market, the level of competitiveness tends to decline in the intensity. Philippines pepper, Thai vanilla, and Malaysian clove may become the potential competitors in Indonesian market showing that those countries have increased the level of competitiveness whereas other ASEAN countries have decreased. Indonesian government should maintain and stimulate the potential spice competitiveness through: (a) an application of good cultivation technique, (b) a development of downstream industry, (c) a utilization of commodity exchange, and (e) an improvement of trade facilitation.
A gradually introduced reform of local government accounting made it temporarily likely for municipalities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia to avoid the effective control of their budget by the authorities in charge with overseeing local government budgets and enforcing the existing fiscal rules. Using this arguably exogenous withdrawal of effective fiscal oversight we identify the effects of fiscal restraints and their enforcement on fiscal outcomes. We find that the withdrawal of oversight has a significant and sizeable effect on per capita debt of local governments that were previously constrained by fiscal oversight. Fiscal restraints are important, and oversight and enforcement are key issues for their success.
Schools are essential in forming human capital and in improving the long-term health of the economy. They are also heavily reliant on state and local funds, which were severely depleted during the Great Recession. To alleviate some of the strain on local budgets, the federal government passed and implemented a large stimulus package, which included funds for school districts. However, the stimulus funds were drawn down beginning in 2011, at a time when state and local revenues were still under pressure. In this paper, we use a detailed panel data set of all school districts in New Jersey for the period 1999 through 2012 and analyze the impact of this series of events on New Jersey school finances using a trend-shift analysis. We find that the recession led to cuts in funding and expenditure. While the stimulus served as an effective stopgap against major cuts, the picture was very different once the stimulus funds were depleted, with significantly deeper cuts in both funding and spending. With cutbacks in state aid and the withdrawal of the stimulus funding, local funding played a larger role, despite the fact that local funding was also decreasing relative to trend. Examining the components of expenditure, we find that instructional categories were prioritized over noninstructional, so instructional expenditure only sustained small cuts in the initial years after recession. But when the stimulus dried up and the economy was still stagnating, instructional expenditure received severe cuts. We analyze variations by metropolitan area, and find that Camden experienced the largest cuts while Wayne experienced the smallest (although the declines in funding and expenditure were still significant). Our findings are an important step in understanding how recessions and fiscal policy affect school finances and inform future policy decisions relating to school finances during fiscal crises.
