The role of foreign direct investment in an old industrial region: The case of the Basque country and Japanese FDI

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been used as a tool to improve the competitiveness of countries or regions affected by a structural crisis focused in the industrial sector. Spain, in general, has implemented this strategy successfully. However, the inflows of FDI in Spain have been concentrated in the most dynamic regions: Madrid and Catalonia especially. The Basque Country, typified as a declining old industrial region, has not benefited from this inflow owing to its low attraction for foreign investors. Furthermore, the sectors in which FDI is located are mature ones. The result is that FDI in Spain is increasing the gap between the growing and the declining regions. This fact is clearly detected when the case of Japanese FDI is analysed: Japanese FDI in the Basque Country is scarce and marginal when compared with that directed to the regions of Madrid and Catalonia.     

Between a principled and a consequentialist logic: theory and practice of secession in Catalonia and Scotland

This paper inquires into whether the three types of arguments usually formulated in the normative literature on the legitimacy of secession – i.e. communitarian, choice, and remedial arguments – are articulated (or not) by separatist parties in Catalonia and Scotland. It concludes that these actors do use such arguments, but they tend to merge them in different combinations making a pluralist case for independence rather than developing monist reasoning as most political philosophers do. Furthermore, it finds a fourth type of argument which is under‐theorised in the relevant literature. This is an instrumental argument whereby independence is depicted not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieve better welfare and governance for the national population. It further proposes a fourfold theoretical scheme that links communitarian and choice arguments to a principled logic based on the belief in the existence of an absolute right to self‐determination and remedial and instrumental arguments to a consequentialist logic that legitimates secession on the condition that it serves the achievement of specific ends.     

THE EFFECT OF ACCESSIBILITY ON PRODUCTIVITY IN SPANISH MANUFACTURING FIRMS

This paper evaluates the impact of accessibility on the productivity of Spanish manufacturing firms. We suggest the use of accessibility indicators of workers and commodities, integrating transport, land use, and individual components, computing real distances or traveling times using the Spanish full road network. Estimated firms’ total factor productivity is explained as a function of the accessibility indicators and additional control variables. Results evidence the crucial role on firms’ productivity to the accessibility of commodities and to a slightly lesser extent the workers.     

A Comprised Archaeological History of Taiwan through the Long-Term Record of Heping Dao,Keelung

We present the results of six years of archaeological work carried out in Heping Dao, Keelung, northern Taiwan. The site has revealed a rich archaeological record spanning a sequence that comprehends most of the history of Taiwan, including the most salient historical landmarks in it. The study of this long-term sequence of habitation in Heping Dao throughout prehistory to current times, allows us to attempt a historical archaeology of the longue duree of the place that in turn enables the establishment of comparisons between periods and raising of specific questions, among them: the general understanding of cultural transformation along the Neolithic and the Iron Age, and in turn the transition Iron Age/Aboriginal historic times in Taiwan, which in our view has to be observed as a history of continuity rather than of interruptions; the recognition of the Chinese presence in Taiwan in the pre-European period; the implantation of the European colony and its effects on the local populations; the differing material remains and impacts caused by the presence of pre-European Chinese and the Qing occupation; and the potential for a comparison between the European and the Japanese colonial projects as seen in the material record.     

Universalism within: The tension between universalism and community in progressive ideology

Social-democratic parties face a dilemma between the universalist ethos of their socialist tradition and the nationalism that they share with the other political actors of the state where they act. In this paper, we examine comparatively the position of the Spanish party Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and the Catalan party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) on three political debates that pertains to the link between welfare and identity in Spain. We show how these parties experience opposite tensions between nationalism and the universalism of their left-wing ideology. Whereas ERC calls for a withdrawal from the Spanish system of social security, the PSOE advocates imposing on Catalonia a symmetric form of solidarity with the rest of Spain, despite recognising the region's different identity. Above all, both parties take identity for granted as a pre-political factor that ‘naturally’ justifies differential treatment, according to ERC, or equalising federalism, in the case of the PSOE.     

Higher education institutions,economic growth and GDP per capita in European Union countries

This paper presents an estimation of the contribution of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to economic growth and the Gross Domestic Product per capita of the European (EU) countries over the period 2000–2015. For this purpose, we analyse the universities’ effects on the supply side of their national economies, especially the contribution of the R&D of HEIs to technological capital of the European (EU) countries. We proposed a methodology of counterfactual scenarios, which assume a hypothetical situation in which HEIs do not exist, to estimating the effects of HEIs, applying techniques of growth accounting. The results obtained indicate that these effects are a significant source of growth in European (EU) countries, contributing to mitigating the adverse effects of the periods of crisis. The estimates show that GDP per capita would currently be more than 11% higher than that corresponding to a scenario without HEIs. The results obtained also show significate differences in GDP per capita between European (EU) countries associated with the activity of HEIs.     

Frank H. Knight le risque comme critique de l'économie politique

In this paper we try to throw some light on the Knightian distinction between risk anduncertainty attending to a number of previous contributions to philosophy and economics. On the economists' side, we propose to read Knight's distinction in the light of the distribution controversy that took place in theQuarterly Journal of Economics at the end of the xix^th century. On the philosophers' side, the pair risk/uncertainty can be analysed in view of Knight's epistemological sources, as opposing a sort ofprobabilistic positivism to anagnostic variety of positivism. His philosophical commitments can be of use in explaining why Frank Knight closes down the distribution controversy, proposing instead a reconstruction of economics as a rational choice science.     

Schooling in the University Town: The Racial Capitalist Foundations of Education

This article focuses on how educational institutions are crucial sites for understanding how racial capitalism and anti-Black violence are reproduced. Centring Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina (UNC), and its neighbouring town of Carrboro as a university town built by racial capitalist and anti-Black practices, I analyse how the university functions as a social reproductive force that structures the town and its local public education system. Building on my ethnographic research, Black studies literature, and Black geographic thought, I argue that the university partakes in the political, economic, and ideological restructuring of a community that enables hierarchical differences to be produced in schools in terms of how success is rooted with liberal notions of the individual and proximity to whiteness. Paying attention to these relationships challenges us to think about the need for the total eradication of oppression in all forms to truly have liberated educational spaces.