Book Reviews

Technopoles of the World: The Making of 21st Century Industrial Complexes. M. Castells and P. Hall. London, Routledge, 1994, x + 275 pp, £45.00 hb, ISBN 0 415 10014 3, £14.99 pk, ISBN 0 415 10015 1 pb.

Transport and Communications Innovation in Europe. G. Giannopoulos and A. Gillespie (Eds). London, Belhaven Press, 1993, xii + 369 pp, £42.00 hb, ISBN 1 85293 269 4.

The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. F. Fisher and J. Forester (Eds). London, UCL Press, 1993, 327pp, £14.95, pb, ISBN 1 85728 183 7.

Regional Development in the 1990s. The British Isles in Transition. P. Townroe and R. Martin (Eds). London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers and Regional Studies Association, 330pp, £22.50 pb, ISBN 1 85302 139 3.

Urban Land and Property Markets in France. R. Acosta and V. Renard. London, University College Press, 1993, 166pp, £40.00 hb, ISBN 1 85728 050 4.     

GRAVITY MODEL APPLICATIONS IN HEALTH PLANNING: ANALYSIS OF AN URBAN HOSPITAL MARKET*

ABSTRACT. In this paper a gravity model is formulated to model a hospital patient flow system. Both spatial and nonspatial measures of separation are used to estimate the model. Travel time was found to provide improved fits over linear distance in modeling patient flow behavior. Transformations of travel time (square root and log) were found to improve model performance further. Model diagnostics suggested additional spatial separation measurw, separation measure parameters demonstrated stability over time. The model is used to forecast the effects of health care financing reform and hospital closure on patient flows in an urban hospital market. Universal health coverage was found to dramatically improve access to hospital services for lower income patient populations. Hospitals at risk for closure were forecast to receive increased patient flows. Medical school hospitals are expected to lose patients after implementation of health reform, with important implications for graduate medical education. Hospital closures were shown to have negative effects on access to services in poor neighborhoods, but relatively little effect on access in the system as a whole.     

CORN HYBRID SELECTION AND CLIMATIC VARIABILITY: GAMBLING WITH NATURE?

Farmer adaptation to climatic variability is explored via an analysis of corn hybrid selection in southern Ontario. Corn hybrid varieties are available for a wide range of conditions, including accumulated heat, measured as Corn Heat Units (chus). Hybrids with higher chu ratings generally have higher yields, so long as there is sufficient heat for them to mature. Farmers choose their hybrid varieties prior to the growing season, in the face of uncertainty about the chus that will accumulate at their location. Farmers in the sample counties showed a consistent tendency to adjust their hybrid selection on the basis of the previous year's growing conditions. After the high chu year of 1991, farmers chose significantly more longer-maturing and potentially higher-yielding, but riskier varieties. After the lower chu years of 1992 and 1993, farmers' hybrid selections became markedly more conservative. L'étude de I'adaptation des fermiers aux changements climatiques se fait par une analyse de /'hybridation du maïs au sud de l'Ontario. Les variétés de maïs hybrides conviennent à différentes conditions climatiques in-cluant la chaleur accumulée, mesurée en Unitées de Chaleur de Maïs (ucms). Les hybrides ayant une valeur ucm plus élevée donnent généralement un rendement plus élevéà condition qu'ils bénéficient d'assez de chaleur pour mûrir. Les fermiers des comtés sélectionnés ont démontré une tendance persistante à baser leurs sélections d'hybrides en fonction des conditions de crois-sance de I'année précédente. Depuis 1991, année ayant connu un taux élevé d'UCM, les fermiers ont opté pour un type d'hybride à croissance prolongée, au potentiel de rendement plus élevé mats également plus risqué. Les années 1992 et 1993 ayant connu un niveau ucm moins élevé, les fermiers ont alors sélectionné des hybrides plus traditionnels.     

Forecasting Structural Change With a Regional Econometric Input-Output Model

The sophistication of regional economic models has been demonstrated in numerous ways, most recently in the form of linking several modeling systems or in the expansion in the number of equations that can be manipulated successfully to produce impact analyses or forecasts. In this paper, an alternative perspective is employed. What do regional macro-level forecasts indicate about the process of structural change? A new methodology is illustrated that enables analysts to make forecasts of detailed structural change in the interindustry relations in an economy. Using a regional econometric input-output model developed for the Chicago metropolitan region, derived input-output tables are extracted for the period 1975–2016. These tables are then analyzed to determine the forecasted direction of structural changes for the region. The innovation illustrated here is based on a model that exploits the general equilibrium spirit of computable general equilibrium models through the adjustment of input coefficients to clear markets.     

Inward investment and economic development in Poland

This paper summarizes results of a research project funded by the Overseas Development Administration of the UK Government. Its aims were to explore the nature and extent of foreign direct investment in Poland, and to assess the extent of integration of such investment with the indigenous economy. The research involved interviews with Polish government ministries, banks, development agencies, inward investors and indigenous firms. It concludes that there are numerous financial and technical obstacles to indigenous business development. The majority of inward investors aim to serve the Polish and other Central and Eastern European markets rather than simply selling cheaply produced products to the West. Moreover, most have already developed significant local sourcing from Polish suppliers.     

A MIXED-FREQUENCY MODEL OF REGIONAL OUTPUT*

ABSTRACT. This paper proposes a new method for estimating a monthly regional production model. The technique involves treating the region's monthly industrial output as a latent variable, which is in turn a function of capital (prosed by energy usage) and labor inputs. Annual observations on regional value added correspond to the summation of the unobservable monthly series over the 12 months, while changes in the national Industrial Production index help infer the series' month-to-month fluctuations. The model is estimated using the Kalman filter and the method of maximum likelihood. The estimates are used to compute monthly indices of regional value added for 15 individual 2-digit industries, and for the aggregate manufacturing sector in the Seventh Federal Reserve District. In a comparison of out-of-sample forecasting accuracy, the mixed-frequency model outperforms both the traditional parametric Cobb-Douglas and nonparametric Atlanta methods over the 1988–89 forecasting horizon.