Economia

Transport is the sector with the fastest growth of greenhouse gases emissions, both in developed and in developing countries, leading to adverse climate change impacts. As the experts disagree on the occurrence of these impacts, by applying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), we have faced the question on how to form transport policies when the experts have different opinions and beliefs. The opinions of experts have been investigated by a means of a survey questionnaire. The results show that tax schemes aiming at promoting environmental-friendly transport mode are the best policy. This incentives public and environmental-friendly transport modes, such as car sharing and car pooling.

This paper develops an application of the analytic hierarchy process to rank the operating cost components of full service and low cost airlines. It takes into account the financial balance sheets and answers to a questionnaire submitted to the managers of selected airlines. The results suggest that the analytic hierarchy process can be appropriately used to obtain the ranking of the costs taking into account different views: financial, management and operative. Rental, office equipment and other supplies costs show the highest importance in the cost ranking, both for full services and low cost airlines. The robustness of the results is tested by Monte Carlo analysis.

Advanced Traveller Information Systems (ATISs) include a broad range of advanced computer and communication technologies. These systems are designed to provide transit riders pre-trip and real-time information, to make better informed decisions regarding their mode of travel, planned routes and travel times. ATISs include in-vehicle displays, terminal or wayside based information centres, information by phone or mobile and internet. In

Water is scarce in many countries. One instrument to improve the allocation of a scarce resource is (efficient) pricing or taxation. However, water is implicitly traded on international markets, particularly through food and textiles, so that impacts of water taxes cannot be studied in isolation, but require an analysis of international trade implications. We include water as a production factor in a multi-region, multi-sector computable general equilibrium model (GTAP), to assess a series of water tax policies. We find that water taxes reduce water use, and lead to shifts in production, consumption, and international trade patterns. Countries that do not levy water taxes are nonetheless affected by other countries' taxes. Taxes on agricultural water use drive most of the economic and welfare impacts. Reductions in water use (welfare losses) are less (more) than linear in the price of water. The results are sensitive to the assumed ability to substitute other production factors for water. A water tax on production would have different effects on water use, production and trade patterns, and the size and distribution of welfare losses than would a water tax on final consumption. JEL Classification: D58, Q25, Q28 Ahmad, M. (2000) Water pricing and markets in the Near East: policy issues and options, Water Policy 2 229-242. Allan, J.A. (1992) Fortunately there are substitutes for water otherwise our hydro-political futures would be impossible.

The paper aims at investigating how EU Regions incorporated the place-based approach (Barca, 2009) to plan their Research and Innovation Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) within the current Programming Period 2014-2020. According with Barca, “a place-based policy is a long-term strategy aimed at tackling persistent underutilisation of potential and reducing persistent social exclusion in specific places through external interventions and multilevel governance. It promotes the supply of integrated goods and services tailored to contexts, and it triggers institutional changes.” According with European Commission (2010) about “Regional Policy contributing to smart growth in Europe 2020”, the development of S3 is crucial “to maximize the impact of Regional Policy in combination with other Union policies”. Smart specialization strategies become a key factor to stimulate private investment. And “they should be integrated into regional development strategies in order to ensure an effective partnership between civil society, businesses and public authorities at regional, national and European levels”. If we consider the theoretical background on S3 (Foray, 2000) as “a process addressing the missing or weak relations between R&D and innovation resources and activities on the one hand and the sectoral structure of the economy on the other” the link between S3 and place-based approach is envisaged is twofold: the former is based on their characterization of a development policy, the latter is based on the value of the different geographical, social, economic features that each territory can express. The transformation of these two theoretical approaches in a policy, within the cohesion policy reform, is recognizable in two drivers for programming the new Agenda 2020. The first is the Theory of Change as a fundamental approach to be followed in building the programming process (why those output/results are necessary to reach the “change”). This implies the use of “indicators” as expression of the policy and related to the value of different territories can express to control and measure the expected change. The second is more related to stimulate at regional level an integrated approach to reach a critical mass of the investment effects/impacts. The current phase of monitoring of the RIS3 through the Sevilla Platform, allows comparing the regional response to the integrated approach envisaged in the link of place- based and smart specialization policies.