Danilo Camargo Igliori

Employment Growth of Small High-Technology Firms and the Role of Horizontal Clustering: Evidence from Computing Services and R&D in Great Britain 1991-2000

This paper provides new evidence that, controlling for other effects, the growth of employment in high-technology SMEs depends on the initial horizontal clustering. The paper focuses on employment change over the period 1991-2000 in computing services and research and development (R&D) industries analysed at the local and county level within Great Britain. A new measure is proposed to map clustering in each sector. In the main section of the paper, spatial econometric models are estimated controlling for supply- and demand-side conditions, human capital, the local economic environment and spatial externalities in order to isolate the effect of initial clustering level. The estimates support the hypothesis that clustering is a cause of employment growth, although there are important differences of geographical scale at which this effect operates for the two sectors considered. The paper raises some important issues regarding the implied dynamics associated with the evolution of clustering.

DETERMINANTS OF TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN AGRICULTURE AND CATTLE RANCHING: A SPATIAL ANALYSIS FOR THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON

The determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture and cattle ranching are closely related with the debate involving the conservation-development trade-off in the Brazilian Amazon. Concerned with balancing development and environmental conservation, policy makers and academics have emphasized the importance of choosing ways of selecting areas where land use restrictions would be established. In order to understand the relationship between spatial patterns of deforestation and the associated distribution and characteristics of economic activity, issues regarding technical efficiency are clearly important. This paper aims to identify the socio-economic and environmental determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture and cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon emphasizing their relationship with spatial processes of deforestation and development. The study is structured in two parts. The first part is concerned with measuring technical efficiency for agriculture and cattle ranching in each geographical unit focusing on the production relationship between inputs and outputs. The second one focuses on the variation in the efficiency measure explained by exogenous factors and includes the spatial analysis. We adopt the model proposed by Battese and Coelli (1995) where the production function and the exogenous effects influencing technical efficiency are estimated simultaneously.

Reconciling Conservation and Development: A Dynamic Hotelling Model of Extractive Reserves

The instrument of extractive reserves has been advertised as a novel approach to reconciling biodiversity conservation and economic development. The empirical literature analyzing extractive reserves, however, delivers an ambiguous assessment of its success. This paper asks whether extractive reserves are capable of delivering long-term development benefits, even in theory. The analysis is carried out by assessing the long-run viability of an extractive reserve under a set of favorable conditions, through a dynamic model of spatial competition. We show that for extractive reserves to be even theoretically viable, a number of restrictive conditions have to be fulfilled. (JEL Q32)

Employment Growth of Small Computing Services Firms and the Role of Horizontal Clusters: Evidence from Great Britain 1991–2000

In recent years, two overlapping topics have received particular attention by governments and researchers throughout the world, particularly in Europe. The emergence of local economies based on high-technology clusters and the role of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the generation of employment.

Property Rights Conservation and Development: An Analysis of Extractive Reserves in the Brazilian Amazon

The economic literature of property rights has been assessing the impact of different community based arrangements on the efficiency of natural resource management of specific areas. Differently, other strands of development economics and policy-oriented research have been concerned with issues such as poverty alleviation, technological progress and the capability to compete in market economies, which go beyond the local areas where traditional communities live and include the wider economy. The extractive reserves in the Brazilian Amazon offer perhaps one of the most interesting cases for investigating the connections between these two approaches in the context of tropical forests. It is based on the idea that the combination of public property with collective use in particular forest areas can generate competitive and, at the same time, sustainable exploitation of its natural resources. This paper aims to analyse whether the existing property rights support the joint objective of conservation and development. Our main result is that current property rights systems are efficient only with respect to competition in markets for existing extractive products. This finding points out to a fundamental contradiction between the static structure of the property rights systems and the dynamic nature of two most promising development paths, namely the discovery of new products and the supply of biological inputs for plantations. The current model of extractive reserves based on the design of internal property rights fails to taken into account the broader economic context where the reserves must generate a viable revenue stream. We conclude therefore that under the current set of institutions, the development objectives inherent in the extractive reserves model are likely to face probably considerable challenges to be accomplished in the future.

Empty spaces in the crowd. Residential vacancy in São Paulo’s city centre:

In the past decades, when São Paulo became the national manufacturing centre, it has experienced great population growth. Since then, many housing problems have emerged. In addition, the difficulties that inner cities face in attracting jobs and maintaining economic activities are particularly challenging. Indeed, even if many cities have successfully regenerated their central areas, the so-called inner city problem is still very much alive in the case of São Paulo. As a result although the city centre has abundant urban infrastructure it still has plenty of vacant spaces, including residential buildings. One could say that São Paulo’s city centre is characterised by a large number of empty spaces in an area that is simultaneously crowded with buildings and urban facilities. This paper intends to contribute to the empirical analysis of the determinants of vacancy rates, with a particular focus on historical city centres, using São Paulo Metropolitan Area as our case study. Our empirical analysis relies on district-level data for the years 2000 and 2010, and combines standard spatial econometric methods with hedonic modelling. Our results suggest that there are three main groups of determinants: individual buildings characteristics, mobility of households and neighbourhood quality. We find evidence that the historic central city is a distinctive submarket, needing special urban policies. Its determinants work differently when compared with the housing markets of other areas across the city.

Espraiamento urbano e periferização da pobreza na região metropolitana de São Paulo: evidências empíricas

bana. Para comprova-lo se propos a construcao de um indice de espraimento a partir da analise de mapas da area urbanizada, a evolucao das densidades populacional e de empregos e a evolucao dos gradientes de densidade. Seus determinantes sao buscados em analise econometrica. Os resultados indicam que houve espraimento no periodo mais recente analisado e que esse fenomeno se da a partir da ocupacao das periferias por populacao de baixa-renda. palavras-chave | expansao urbana, crescimento urbano, periferia urbana, descentra lizacao, morfologia urbana.

Plata, paño, cacao y clavo: "dinero de la tierra" en la Amazonía portuguesa (c. 1640-1750)

El objetivo de este articulo es discutir como la economia y la sociedad de la Amazonia portuguesa colonial (de mediados del siglo XVII a mediados del siglo XVIII) se organizaron a partir de la ausencia de moneda metalica; por otro lado, se analizan las razones que llevaron a la Corona portuguesa a no autorizar la circulacion de monedas metalicas y las implicaciones que tuvo esa politica en la region

Determinants of Vacancy Rates in the Sao Paulo's Metropolitan Area: A Spatial Approach

Sao Paulos metropolitan area is one of the largest urban spaces in the world. As it happens with any other large metropolitan area, understanding its structure, problems and dynamics is not a simple task. The structure of cities has been studied by urban economics ever since von Thunens land use theory was adapted to urban contexts. Research on property and housing markets has followed a related but different approach. On the one hand, housing markets have been modelled with emphasis on the specific features of properties such as durability, heterogeneity, and construction costs. On the other, focusing on the supply and demand adjusting mechanisms and considering properties as assets, research on real estate finance has been developing and applying a variety of valuation methods. These three areas of investigation have not always been connected in a systematic manner. Yet, we argue that there is a case for integrating them to address a number of urban issues due to their intrinsic spatial dimension. This paper attempts to contribute to this integrated approach through an empirical analysis of the determinants of residential vacancy rates in Sao Paulos metropolitan area. We combine standard spatial econometric methods with hedonic modelling to analyse a data cross-section at district level for the year 2000. Our results suggest that there are two main groups of determinants: One related to local characteristics of housing markets and another constituted by individual building features.