Authors:Adrian John Hawley Pages: 5 - 23 Abstract: It is widely reported that there is a data deficit regarding working conditions in the gig economy. It is known, however, that workers are disadvantaged because they are not classed as employees with the result that they lack work-related entitlements and may not be protected by the social welfare safety net. Nor is this compatible with the social market economy enshrined in the European Union treaties. Two obstacles are that labour law and social policy are mainly a national competence and that platforms are reluctant to share data with regulators. In this paper I take the specific case of offline labour platforms intermediated by app and smart phone such as driving and delivering and look for new pathways between access to data and the shaping of public policy in member states with potentially legal certainty. PubDate: 2018-06-27 Issue No:Vol. 7, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Juan Ignacio Martín-Legendre Pages: 24 - 43 Abstract: This paper presents a review of the main available indicators to measure poverty and income inequality, examining their properties and suitability for different types of economic analyses, and providing real-world data to illustrate how they work. Although some of these metrics –such as the Gini coefficient– are most frequently used for this purpose, it is crucially important for researchers and policy-makers to take into account alternative methods that can offer complementary information in order to better understand these issues at all levels. PubDate: 2018-06-27 Issue No:Vol. 7, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Meaza Birhane Haile, Martin Mastalka Pages: 44 - 59 Abstract: The strategic planning process has been implemented into the local governance environment in the Czech Republic during last two decades. But the strategic goals that are expressed in the strategic development documents on the local level are only the part of the issues that are to be fulfilled or solved by the local government. In the everyday practical governance there is always a list of projects that appear from the actual technological, technical, public or political demand. The contemporary decision-making process is based on the personal or collective political decision or on the actual technical demand. But there are also municipalities that are already implementing strategic planning and want to avoid unsystematic interventions and decision-making processes. They try to adopt some attitudes from the corporate sphere to make the decision-making process more open and clear. This paper deals with the methodology of the mid-size city and tries to discuss it and offer some improvements. The paper’s other goals are to offer comparison of typical projects that could be found on the local level and to make a model of results provided by the different methodologies used for the decision-making process, specifically weighted sum average and analytic hierarchy process. PubDate: 2018-06-27 Issue No:Vol. 7, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Isiaka Akande Raifu, Abiodun Najeem Raheem Pages: 60 - 84 Abstract: The bursting of crude oil prices in the international market since mid-2014 has resulted in dwindling oil revenue, which has led to economic recession in Nigeria. The recession has further exacerbated existing socioeconomic problems bedeviling the country. In the light of this, we examined the effect of government revenues (oil and non-oil revenues) on economic growth, both in the short-run and the long-run using autoregressive distributed lag method. Our findings show that government revenues are indispensable to economic growth in Nigeria. In addition, we found that economic growth is more responsive to oil revenue than non-oil revenue. Based on our findings, we advocate for effective and efficient use of government revenues. Furthermore, since oil revenue fluctuates more than non-oil revenue, we further advocate for creation of an enabling business environment geared towards improving the contribution of the non-oil sector to the government revenue base. PubDate: 2018-06-27 Issue No:Vol. 7, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Beatriz Lopez-Bermudez, María Jesús Freire-Seoane, Ignacio de la Peña Zarzuelo Pages: 85 - 101 Abstract: Latin American countries have historically had a strong dependence on trade, and are mostly characterized by being exporters of raw materials and importers of manufactured products. This fact has brought about a less negative impact of the world crisis on economic growth, mainly because of the high prices of raw materials. This paper focuses on this geographical area (the West Coast of Latin America) between 2008 and 2015, and adds to the literature by assessing institutional, port-related and economic factors that influence maritime transport. The analysis makes use of panel data models with fixed and random effects where the Hausman test has been applied in order to define a solid specification of all the ports, as well as to discount the particular peculiarities of each country. It is shown that the analysis of maritime transport requires the analysis of a number of variables apart from trade (volume of TEUs), infrastructures, superstructures (number of calls, gantry cranes), and that other variables, such as port governance, which are sometimes difficult to quantify, need also to be taken into account. PubDate: 2018-06-27 Issue No:Vol. 7, No. 1 (2018)