Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

There have been a number of surveys of people's housing-tenure preferences in the last few years, all of which show large majorities preferring to own rather than rent their dwelling. Debate rages, however, about how the survey findings should be interpreted. The theoretical debate has not been helped by the limited information supplied in many of the surveys. Using data in the 1978 General Household Survey (GHS), Littlewood made a more detailed analysis of tenure preferences, providing a basis for future longitudinal studies of changing tenure preferences. In the 1988 GHS, respondents were asked the same questions as in 1978 about their housing-tenure preferences. The findings of the 1988 survey have been analysed and, in this paper, those findings are compared with the results of Littlewood's analysis of the 1978 data and provide some important information which can contribute to a theoretical understanding of changing tenure preferences and to the debates about the meaning of expressed tenure preferences. Where possible Littlewood's methods have been replicated; where this was not possible, an attempt has been made to give an explanation in the appropriate part of the text. Also, Littlewood's analysis has been extended in certain areas. However, it is argued that although some important information is provided in this paper, if an understanding of the significance of people's housing-tenure preferences is to be achieved, more in-depth interviewing of a qualitative or discursive nature is needed.

Capital flows in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) are becoming one of the major mechanisms of interaction between Western and East-Central Europe. The major objective in this paper is to assess the extent and distribution of FDI between Czechoslovakia (before its breakup), Hungary, and Poland at the beginning of 1992. A detailed examination of the new investment patterns is followed by an analysis of the capital flows by geographical origin of investors and sector of the economy. In addition, the political and economic reasons for emerging regional differences in terms of FDI are discussed. The conclusions are focused on possible scenarios for future FDI in the region and its importance in the European integration process. It is clear that the benefits of direct Western investment in the former Eastern Europe stretch well beyond narrowly defined economic interests.

Models for short-range forecasts differ from those for intermediate and long-range forecasts because of the possibility of introducing lagged exogenous factors as explanatory variables. It is widely believed that certain exogenous variables, in particular estimates of state income, are useful leading indicators of migration rates. In this paper, panel-data (or longitudinal-data) models are used to represent the relationship between destination-specific out-migration and several explanatory variables. The introduction of this methodology into the migration literature is possible because of some new and improved databases developed by the US Bureau of the Census.

In this paper, data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis are used to investigate the incorporation of exogenous factors as variables in the model. One aim in the paper is to use graphical techniques in the understanding of the relationships between migration and these exogenous factors. These techniques provide insight into the strong relationships suggested by the many gravity models that have appeared in the literature. However, when one also includes additional parameters that are estimable in longitudinal-data models, it turns out that there is little additional information in the exogenous factors that is useful for forecasting.

During the 1978–88 period the public and the Catholic separate boards closed seventeen schools in Saskatoon and twenty-two in Windsor. The repertories of involvements and interactions between the community representatives and the school board officials during the reviews of the closure of these schools are theorized. The empirical analysis utilizes archival data for two episodes of school closures in each city, after which the school boards might have amended their procedures for the closures. The findings illustrate the real and instantiated powers, and the agency skills of the involved community representatives versus those of the school board officials.

In this paper a comparative analysis of the competitiveness and performance of business-service companies in two peripheral regions, Nova Scotia and Scotland, is presented. Several dimensions of performance are investigated for four industries: market research, management consultancy, advertising, and graphic design. Value added per person is one third higher in Scotland compared with Nova Scotia, and Nova Scotian offices derive a much higher proportion of their turnover from government and public-sector contracts. In general, however, a very consistent picture emerges of the relative position of business services in the two regions. Possible demand-side and supply-side causes of such differences are reviewed and potential policy responses considered.

In this paper, the organization of activities designed to promote local economic development (LED) in the USA is explored. The emergence of local economic development networks (LEDNs) as critical mediators in attracting new business investment into metropolitan areas is addressed. These networks comprise private and state organizations with major institutionalized stakes in LED. Each organization has a distinct set of powers and responsibilities which generate a division of labor with respect to the attraction of investment into a locality. It is argued that LEDNs are a means of integrating the activities of the different agents into this division of labor. Also explored are the conditions that lead to the formation of networks mediated by relations of trust as a principal means of organizing for LED. LEDNs are seen to be characterized by various power asymmetries, and the implications of these asymmetries for the politics of LED are explored in the final section. Empirical material is drawn upon from extended interviews with representatives of seventy-eight economic development organizations in four major metropolitan areas in Ohio.

The authors focus on the internationalisation of automotive production in Spain. In the first part of the paper they discuss two main approaches of international production: internalisation theory and network theory. It is argued that both approaches may be applied in a staged model of internationalisation. In the second part they highlight patterns of internationalisation in the Spanish automotive sector in the last two decades, based on data gathered in Spain in the first months of 1991. The results indicate that both theoretical approaches may be invoked to clarify certain aspects of the Spanish case; however, the general staged approach is not supported. The conclusion therefore stresses the need to develop a more integrative approach to internationalisation which is part of a broader theory of spatial-organisational change.

Malaria is a serious problem limiting agricultural colonization in the neotropics, especially in the Brazilian Amazon. We analyze a model that links the disease with deforestation and ecological measures to control the mosquito. In the model the probability of contracting malaria increases with population density, which is a principal endogenous variable in land-use decisions. A higher incidence of malaria reduces labor productivity. Farmers maximize profit by allocating labor between cultivation and health activities that reduce the incidence and severity of malaria. Commodity price changes, transportation improvements, and land clearance costs all affect the prevalence of malaria, and health and labor productivity. A reduction in land clearance costs will improve health and labor productivity but will exacerbate deforestation. An increase in the commodity price and a reduction in transportation costs exacerbate deforestation but reduce the prevalence of malaria, although the resultant change in the equilibrium levels of health and labor productivity is ambiguous.

The integration of the gravity and intervening-opportunities model in the recent paper by Gonçalves and Ulysséa-Neto provokes interesting questions on the role of the number of intervening opportunities on either decreasing or increasing travel. In this note I discuss such issues, as well as making comparisons with recent innovations in spatial interaction theory.