Ioannis Panteladis, Maria Tsiapa (p), Dimitris Kallioras

This paper investigates the business cycle asymmetries of Greece focusing on the route and the characteristics of regions that are lagging behind with an idiosyncratic and eventually a persistent behaviour. Aiming to disentangle the main components and dynamics that have influenced by several (systemically or non-systemically) ways the Greek regions, the analysis focuses on the NUTSIII level of regions and covers a long time of period (1980-2016) separated it in four sub-periods (1981-1991, 1992-2000, 2001-2007 and 2008-2016) based on substantial and key developments of the economy (introduction in the EU, integration in the Single Market, adaptation of the euro and experience of the deep and protracted economic crisis).

First, it is analysed the degree of business cycle synchronisation of Greek regions using the Hodrick-Prescott filter and it is estimated the regions’ volatility and persistence. In the attempt of capturing the part of regional fluctuations that neither explained by the movements of the national cycle nor by the past behaviour of the regional cycle itself, it is estimated afterwards the idiosyncratic component of each region by a VAR model that uses components of the national cycle and the regional cycle itself with specific time lags. In the next stage, the analysis examines the characteristics of those regions with the higher idiosyncratic component in their cycle. For this reason, a spatial panel model is constructed so as to evaluate whether and how specific economic, structural, technological, geographical or time-specific factors are correlated with that type of regions. Moreover, it is investigated whether regions with important idiosyncratic behaviour have common features with “sheltered economies” (Rodriguez Pose and Fratesi, 2006), which are associated with obsolete and traditional economic activities. The results of the analysis help to enrich the picture of the less developed regions in Greece associating regions with low growth rates (and therefore low level of resilience), idiosyncratic characteristics and sheltered economy in a long time period that reasonably entails different phases of the economy of each region.

Irina Antonova (p), Evgeny Pchelintsev

Company towns are found in a number of different countries at various stages of development. Russia is in early stage of the development of company towns economy but it has already the sufficient input into the concept and the criteria of company towns. This article focuses on company towns located in Kemerovo region, Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions of Siberian Federal District in Russia. These regions are leaders by the number of single-industries, mainly coal mining and metallurgy. We consider the financial statements of the companies located in 41 urban districts and statistics at the municipal level during 2010-2017 to develop spacial and economic models of the diversification efficiency. We conduct the dispersion analysis concluding the inequality in spacial development of single-industry towns. Regression models allow us resume low efficiency in the process of diversification. All considered regions has one dominant, more diversified single-industry town with the other, less diversified monotowns. We came to the conclusion that there are contradictions between special development and economy specialization that is due to the fact that spacial development is focused on the alignment of economic development whereas specialization means reverse process.

Jerome Massiani (p), Elia Raul Antola

Sport events have long been seen as an opportunity to foster local development. This view has however been more and more challenged in the last decades calling for independent and rigorous assessments.
In this context CBA, together with CGE, have been increasingly used to provide policy guidance and may tomorrow challenge the dominant position that Input-Output has held for long in this area.
More than twenty events have now been assessed with this approach, although many of them in documents that were subject only to limited peer review (this includes some master thesis, or some consultancy reports) and a more limited number of papers in scientific journals. Yet no systematic and critical analysis of this area of application is available. The purpose of the proposed contribution is to partly fill in this gap. It will review existing publication and investigate their possible limitations. Interestingly, one notes that these works are usually not published in evaluation journals but rather, whenever published in scientific papers, in sport economics reviews. This reinforce the need of critical examination by the profession.
The proposed contribution is to our best knowledge the first review of this type.
On the whole, existing studies provide a negative evaluation of sport and cultural events with a large majority of negative Net Present Value for host communities.
These studies, however, are moderately convincing. We find that many studies violate well established recommendations in the field of CBA (like computation of cost/benefit ratios without univocal distinction of benefit increase vs cost decrease), and are unclear about important underlying assumptions (like the definition of the relevant territory), and are discussible by many aspects (for instance considering visitors expenditures as a benefit, without consideration of the corresponding production costs).
We suggest guidelines for such studies, hoping that they can provide support in this incipient field, and contribute to establish the credibility of benefit-cost analysis in this area as well.

Yeong Kim (p), Soyeong Lee

It is true that many local small and medium cities in Korea have lost their vitality due to the progress of aging, economic decline in urban areas, the lack of new growth engines, and the declining population. Also, the memories of the locals living there and the place engraved on it are in danger of disappearing quickly for any reason. Despite such situation, the profitability is not likely to be secured, considering the urban regeneration projects in Korea that have been carried out by the privately-led economy. Under the recognition of such problems, individual self-governing have made efforts to preserve the city by seeking meaning and value of urban regeneration under the name of reviving our neighborhood or village creation projects, etc. in order to revitalize local small and medium cities. Nevertheless, such projects still isolate the ‘local residents,’ leading us to wonder ‘for what and for whom’ the projects exist.
Thus, urban regeneration projects in small and medium cities should focus not on the improvement in the physical environment but on the areas’ ‘local residents’ and ‘their projects.’ However, Korea’s urban regeneration projects has often been result-oriented so it is also likely to happen when producing projects on areas with local small and medium cities. Solving these problems first requires us to reflect on the direction of detailed projects plan more seriously.
To select the contents to be utilized in urban regeneration, it is judged that gathering opinions of local residents is more important than any other thing. To solve this problem, the meaning and value of place memory obtained through the survey of local residents were considered in the humanities. In addition, it sought to find elements that could remind the place memory of Sun-Cheon City, and to explore the possibility of a plan to utilize Sun-Cheon City's sustainable urban regeneration and place memory as a detailed projects plan.
The purpose of this study is to find and study the active elements of the residents' locality in cultural urban regeneration projects, to examine the traditional parts that the space site should inherit and the areas that should evolve in the future, and to derive the relationship between elements that should be a research background in the regeneration into new urban spaces. Accordingly, this study intends to present positive outcome for the purpose of the revitalization of local small and medium cities.