“Brain Drain” or “Brain Gain”? Students’ Loyalty to their Student Town: Field Evidence from Norway

In the global economy regions fight a two-front “war” to attract young people. On the one hand, they compete against more urban areas because young people leave home to study and do not return to their home region (“brain drain”). On the other hand, they struggle to attract new residents, students and entrepreneurs to their local region (“brain gain”). The context is a student town of a strong industrial region characterized by a net export of young people and an increasing demand for highly qualified labour. The purpose is to gain insight into how student loyalty to a student town may be enhanced. A partial least square path modelling approach is used to estimate a structural equation model of student town loyalty. One finding is that the creation of student town satisfaction has more influence on student town loyalty than reputation building. “Social activity” is the most important loyalty driver. This antecedent is mediated through student town satisfaction and reputation, as well as university college reputation. The town municipalities and the university college should thus be coordinated in their effort to increase student town loyalty to bring down the “brain drain” and increase the “brain gain” in the region.     

Preferences for Housing, Jobs, and Commuting: A Mixed Logit Analysis

This paper reports stated preferences of Dutch workers for combinations of housing, employment, and commuting. The analysis uses standard logit models as well as mixed logit models. Estimation results offer insights into the relative importance of various aspects of housing, employment, and commuting. Households dislike commuting and the value of commuting time implied by the model is high in comparison to the wage rate. Nevertheless, preferences for some housing attributes are strong enough to make substantially longer commuting acceptable to most workers. Of special interest is the strong preference for living in small-or medium-size cities, especially among two income households. Using a mixed logit model instead of a standard logit model results in a substantial improvement of the loglikelihood, reflecting the importance of heterogeneity among respondents. If no individual characteristics are incorporated into the model, the mixed logit implies substantially lower average monetary evaluations of most attributes. These differences are much smaller if some individual characteristics are incorporated into the model.     

Probing A Traffic Congestion Controversy: A Comment

Ohta (2001) claims to have resolved a die-hard controversy on traffic congestion modeling by defining an inverse aggregate demand function that has traffic density as its argument—in Ohta's terminology the 'primitive term.'Using this demand function, Ohta shows that 'hypercongestion' may very well be an optimal stationary state. This contribution argues that at least if what road users demand is completed trips, and if time spent on the road while traveling implies a cost, then Ohta's approach is fundamentally flawed. Also the conclusion that hypercongestion can be optimal is no longer valid.     

Scaling the City: The Political Economy of 'Glocal' Development - Brussels' Conundrum

In this contribution, the new position of the city in the urban political economy will be considered in the context of the shifting realities that characterize an increasingly hybridizing and cosmopolitan global (dis)order. We shall argue that globalization is paralleled by a restructuring of the city and with an increasing importance of the urban in a context of intensifying inter-urban competition. The success of cities is dependent on their local 'embeddedness' in institutional and other networks of power. Attention will be paid to the role of local elites and to the need to forge 'growth coalitions'. We shall conclude that the formation of an inclusive and cohesive growth coalition is a key condition for the future development of Brussels in a context of intense inter-urban competition. However, this poses a host of political problems. Not in the least, the fact the new 'glocal' elites often refuse to partake in local institutional or political networks. The commitment to place that invariably comes with a greater 'local' institutional embedding which may militate against their global strategies and aspirations. The key question for 'local' politics then becomes one of how to forge networks and linkages that force 'glocal' elites to become inserted actively in the regional armatures of governance.     

Pagan: the archaeology of a WWII battle never fought in the Northern Mariana Islands

Archaeological and historical investigation of WWII battles fought in the Micronesian archipelago of the Mariana Islands has generally concentrated on the fierce struggles for Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Smaller islands that were neutralised during the U.S. thrust to establish air bases for the bombing campaign over Japan beginning in 1944 have received less attention, but were a strategic link in the Absolute National Defence Sphere. This paper examines the archaeological evidence of Japanese military planning for the defence of the island of Pagan situated north of Saipan, a battle that was never fought. The strategy based on an analysis of fixed weaponry emplacement appears to have been conceived in terms of engagement evolving from a ‘defence-at-the-waters-edge’ tactic in the southern Mariana Islands towards a ‘defence-in-depth’ posture faced in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.