Alexander Blandon Lopez (p), Janeth Gonzalez-Rubio, John Alexander Blandon-Castaño

Luís Lopes

This project aims to identify the main determinants of the adequate insertion of small cocoa producers in Tolima in the Global Value Chain (GVC) and to propose strategies to strengthen their competitiveness.
The questions that motivate this research include the following: ¿What conditions are required for small farmers to "adequately integrate" into global value chains? ¿What are the main opportunities, risks and limitations faced by cocoa producers in Tolima to integrate into global value chains? and ¿what strategies can be used to strengthen their competitiveness?
Based on the Global value chain analysis methodology, the first step is to establish the participation of the country and Tolima in the cocoa GVC in terms of: production, export and consumption of domestic cocoa, the specialty cocoa niche, prices, actual and potential buyers, and standards. In turn, the actors and power relations along the different links of the GVC are identified, including the State, farmers, processors, exporters, guilds, and research centers. This is condensed into a map for the cocoa value chain in Tolima.
The Tolima cocoa value chain was selected for the study using as criteria the producer associations that are the most representative of the region, some export and others have high export potential, participate in the generation of added value and employment and by the degree of association of small producers. The samples have been taken under a non-probabilistic selection criterion, also called targeted or by convenience.
The study is being conducted by convenience sampling that includes two associations from each of the main cocoa producing municipalities of Tolima (Chaparral, Rioblanco, Ataco, Planadas) in southern Tolima, and the Multiactive Cooperative of Agricultural Producers of Northern Tolima "Riqueza Ancestral" which is made up of five associations of producers of specialty cocoa, including cocoa liquor plant and marketer of the own brand CACAO A5, based in Mariquita. They are: Agrocames of Palocabildo, Aprocal of Alvarado, Asprafal of Falan, Asocamelias of Mariquita, Asosanpedro of Armero Guayabal. The municipalities where these associations selected for the study are located account for about 70% of the total cocoa production in the department by 2021
Finally, strategies are designed to strengthen the competitiveness of small-scale cocoa producers in Tolima to promote their proper insertion in the GVC

Eunji Jeon (p), So Young Sohn

Alexander Blandon Lopez

Smart healthcare innovation improves the state of disparity in medical resource distribution and preserves public well-being with personalized care on time by actively adopting digital technologies. Understanding the knowledge spillover process of smart healthcare and the roles of each region during the process may provide critical information to facilitate smart healthcare innovation in regions. However, knowledge diffusion mechanisms in the regional aspect have been understudied in the smart healthcare sector. How does smart healthcare knowledge spillover within and between regions? Do the regions with specialized knowledge of smart healthcare only act as knowledge creators or also as brokers? Based on the smart healthcare-related triadic patent families applied at the European Patent Office, we investigate the knowledge spillover process at a local cluster, national, and continent level over time. We identify dynamic brokerage patterns of regions changing over time via citation network analysis, especially from the perspectives of gatekeeper, representative, and liaison. We compare the brokering capacity of the regions with specialized knowledge in both digital and healthcare sectors compared to that of other regions. The findings of this study may provide an understanding of the smart healthcare technology evolution process and strategic insight into the future direction of research and development for each region.

Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho (p)

Eunji Jeon

The particularities of the agricultural sector and its importance for the sustainability and competitiveness of our societies justify the definition of specific policy instruments supported by subsidies for the farmers. These contexts assume particular relevance in the European Union countries, considering the measures designed by the respective institutions in the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy. From this perspective, this research aims to analyse accurate models and important variables to predict the amount of financial support (subsidies) received by the farmers in each European Union agricultural regions. To achieve these objectives, statistical information from the Farm Accountancy Data Network was considered, as well as machine learning approaches proposed by new solutions. The design of adjusted policies for the great diversity of realities in the European Union context is always a difficult challenge and the findings here identified may bring relevant contributions for the respective stakeholders, namely bringing more insights to support farmers and policymakers.

Acknowledgments: This work is funded by National Funds through the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the project Refª UIDB/00681/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDP/00681/2020). This research is also funded by the Enovo company. This study was carried out under the international project “Agriculture 4.0: Current reality, potentialities and policy proposals” (CERNAS-IPV/2022/008). Furthermore we would like to thank the CERNAS Research Centre and the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu for their support. This work is too co-financed by the PRR - Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência (República Portuguesa) and the European NextGeneration EU Funds (https://recuperarportugal.gov.pt) through application PRR-C05-i03-I-000030 - "Carb2Soil – Reforçar a Complementaridade entre agricultura e pecuária para aumentar a fertilidade dos solos e a sua capacidade de sequestro de carbono.".

Yuting Yang (p), Jiayi Lu, Freke Caset, Ben Derudder

Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho

In the regional science literature, the concepts of agglomeration externalities and network externalities are both used to make sense of the economic performance of cities and city-regions. When it comes to explaining regional productivity, the debate on the relative importance of both types of externalities is ongoing. This paper contributes to this debate, focusing on externalities in urban regions through the lens of a polycentric development framework that is specific to China. Drawing on enterprise investment data, we apply a spatial econometric model and adopt an instrument variables strategy to test several hypotheses linking both types of externalities to regional spatial structure and regional productivity.
Our analysis adds to the existing literature in three main ways. First, we consolidate the concept of network and agglomeration externalities in one framework. Second, we use spatial-econometric methods to investigate whether network relations provide spatial spillover effects. Third, we adopt an instrumental variable strategy, which allows to collect robust evidence to verify the hypothesized causal effects.
Our results suggest that both are important drivers of regional productivity, but that agglomeration externalities contribute relatively more. At the same time, our findings suggest that network externalities in Chinese URs are becoming increasingly important.We find no interaction effects between agglomeration and network externalities, with the latter not being contingent upon geographical proximity and more prominent in urban regions with higher levels of polycentricity. Compared to agglomeration externalities, which are geographically confined, network externalities can generate spatial spillovers. We reflect on our results in the possible research agenda and policy implications on regional economic development.

Carlos Carreira, Luís Lopes (p)

Yuting Yang

Few countries experienced the consequences of the global downturn of the late 2000s as intensively as the peripheric Southern EU economies. In the Portuguese case, the real GDP decreased 1.6% annually from 2009 to 2013, with a peak in 2012, at -4.1%, after austerity measures implemented by the 2011 IMF-ECB-EU Troika. Despite this severe domestic slump, exports demonstrated a remarkable resilience. After tumbling 8.1% during the global trade collapse of 2009, exports quickly recovered and grew, on average, by 7.5% annualy between 2010 and 2013.
Our aim is to investigate, firstly, whether productivity growth or the reduction in profit margins explains the export boom during the collapse in domestic demand and, secondly, whether the behaviour of firms differs between regions. The reason is that the negative shock in domestic demand, which freed up production capacity, may have pushed producers to sell their products in foreign markets. This survival-driven exports strategy, which is not due to an increase in competitiveness as postulated by the self-selection hypothesis, was perhaps only possible by lowering markups (“vent-for-surplus” hypothesis).
Our sample covers all firms with more than 10 employees of the manufacturing and service tradable sectors, over the period 2010–2014. It comprises 34,410 firms, making up 117,782 firm-year observations. To test our hypotheses, we will first focus on continuing exporters increasing their exports (intensive margin) and then on entering the export market (extensive margin).
The empirical results show that firms respond to a negative shock in domestic demand by engaging in foreign markets and increasing their exports, which supports the hypothesis of substitutability in times of crisis. We confirm that more productive firms tend to export, which is consistent with the self-selection hypothesis. However, we also observe that firms increase exports by lowering markups during recession (“vent-for-surplus” hypothesis). Location plays an important role in determining firms’ propensity to export. In particular, the mark-up effect is higher in the North region than in the other regions (the elasticity is twice as high), while the productivity effect has a greater impact on firms in the Centre. Firms in the Alentejo appear to be less exposed to the slump in domestic demand, so that they also reduce the markup less.
This study is the first to analyse the differences between Portuguese regions in terms of the determinants of the export decision or propensity to export, particularly the role of profit margins in times of negative shocks.