Pawel Gajewski (p), Ageliki Anagnostou

We examine inflation – unemployment trade-offs in Poland, a medium-sized European economy with large regional disparities, linked to deeply rooted differences in economic structures. Some earlier studies suggest a concave dependence between inflation and unemployment gap in most regions. According to the Lipsey’s aggregation hypothesis, this means that the aggregate Phillips curve in Poland can move upwards in the periods marked by regional convergence while regional divergence may shift it downwards. Such conclusion puts regional economic dynamics in the field of interest of monetary policymakers.
The main aim of the paper is to provide more in-depth evidence on the nature of regional inflation-unemployment trade-offs. Explicitly, we focus on spatial interactions, embedded in several types of spatial weight matrices and check the strength of interactions in regions with distinct economic structures. Following the recent critique of the commonly adopted spatial autoregressive (SAR) approach, expressed e.g. by Halleck-Vega and Elhorst (2015), the benchmark method applied in our study is the SLX model, which allows for the spatial weights matrix W to be parameterized and standard econometric techniques to be applied to test for spillovers between endogenous explanatory variables. We employ quarterly data on 16 Polish NUTS-2 regions (voivodshiops), ranging from 2005Q4 to 2017Q3, which ensures a sufficient number of observations to conduct our exercise.
The conclusions confirm that spillovers embedded in the SLX model are significant, i.e. unemployment rate in the near proximity have an impact on the region’s inflation. The SLX model seems to outperform the traditional SAR model, which additionally does suffer from misspecification, as Halleck-Vega and Elhorst (2015) demonstrate. We supplement our evidence with disaggregated price indices and show the varying streams of spill-overs, if price indices of tradable, non-tradable and partly-tradable goods are considered. The paper is encapsulated with policy conclusions and directions for future research. Here, we argue that the extent of regional spill-overs does not completely rule out the possibility of concave regional Phillips curves, i.e. accounting for regional convergence/divergence processes can still raise the effectiveness of national monetary policy.

Rafael González-Val (p), Alfonso Díez-Minguela, Julio Martinez-Galarraga, M. Teresa Sanchis

This paper analyses the long-term relationship between regional inequality and economic development. Our data set includes information on national and regional per-capita GDP for four countries: France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Data are compiled on a decadal basis for the period 1860-2010, thus enabling the evolution of regional inequalities throughout the whole process of economic development to be examined. Using parametric and semiparametric regressions, our results confirm the rise and fall of regional inequalities over time, i.e. the existence of an inverted-U curve since the early stages of modern economic growth, as the Williamson hypothesis suggests. We also find evidence that, in recent decades, regional inequalities have been on the rise again. As a result, the long-term relationship between national economic development and spatial inequalities describes an elephant shaped curve.

See the attached working paper, please.

Patricia Ikouta Mazza (p), Maria Mavri

The Smart City concept has recently emerged as an appealing topic of cities in fighting the continuous increasing of city’s population, the high rate of urbanization, and climatic variations. The complexity of city management drive local governments towards the strong use of technologies to support a higher quality of urban spaces and a better offering of public services. To prevent the rapid urbanization from being a crisis is to operate cities in an innovative way. Making a city “smart” is emerging as a strategy to mitigate the problems generated by the urban population growth and rapid urbanization. Smart Cities ensure sustainable environment with the help of Big Data and Internet of Things.
By “smart”, we mean that the city is more sustainable, livable and efficient. We identify a smart city as one with a comprehensive commitment to innovation in technology, management and policy. In other words, a smart city is a city that can monitor and integrate functionality of all the critical infrastructure like roads, tunnels, airways, waterways, railways, communication power supply, etc., control maintenance activities and can help in optimizing the resources while keeping an eye on the security issues as well.
There is a gap in existing literature of a smart city, because most writers address only technological aspects. Based on the exploration of a wide and extensive array of literature from various disciplinary areas on e-government projects, information technology innovation and urban innovation provides a lens to view a smart city as an innovation in management and policy and consider contexts where a smart city initiative is developed.
To close the gap in the literature about smart cities and in response to the increasing use of the concept, this paper proposes a framework to understand the concept of smart cities. On the basis of extensive and deep research of literature, we have identified seven significant pillars for developing the framework as: Governance, Management, Economic, People, Technology, Infrastructure and Environment. The paper throws light upon how these factors can make the smart city initiative a successful project.

Jonathan Desdemoustier (p), Crutzen Nathalie

Over the past few years, the phenomenon of Smart City has been perceived as a new way to transform cities and territories. Despite the popularity of the phenomenon, the concept is still fuzz and no agreed definition on Smart Cities exists (Allwinkle & Cruickshank, 2011; Anthopoulos & Vakali, 2012; Hollands, 2008; Komninos, Pallot, & Schaffers, 2013). The concept of Smart City addressed an extensive thematic scope. Smart City research is at an interdisciplinary crossroads (Ricciardi & Za, 2015). A challenge is to identify what can make a city to become smarter (Gil-Garcia, Helbig, & Ojo, 2014)? Governance is a recurring and transversal theme (Dameri & Benevolo, 2016; Gil-Garcia, Pardo, & Nam, 2015).

Different aspects and forms of governance in a Smart City are described; multidisciplinary perspective and co-creations are highly promoted (Ben Letaifa, 2015). Smart City publications with governance focus emphasize on interactions between various stakeholders (Meijer & Bolívar, 2016). In the literature on Smart Cities in 2017, what is known about governance and stakeholder’s interactions? Which are the theoretical approaches and empirical researches? Which governance principles are highlighted? Which actors are studied? Which territorial scales are considered?

To respond to these questions, the paper introduces discussions on “Smart Cities, Stakeholders, Actors, Governance and Urban Governance” to better understand these central concepts. Then, a literature review is constructed based on a broad set of papers. An advanced search query within four databases and a methodical selection of papers furnished a set of 61 documents. Afterwards, some epistemological issues are described as the structure/agency and positive-normative debates. Finally, a discussion underlines the trends, gaps and future path of researches thanks to a confrontation of the results with some theoretical and epistemological considerations.

The literature on governance and stakeholders has a late development in the Smart City publications. A fragmentation exists and is reinforced by a literature insufficiently framed by theories. Case studies and empirical researches are dominating. Governmental and private actors remain the two most discussed players, even if, the place of the civil society is gaining importance. The stakeholders’ analyses show considerations to an horizontal integration (Urban Governance Theory: Galès, 1998; Pierre, 2014). However, the vertical integration is not addressed as an essential concern. Researches are mainly concentrated at a micro or mezzo level. Researchers should pay attention to the “multilevel governance”. They should study processes and institution operations in and between varieties of geographical and organizational scales.