INNOVATION, Sustainability & Cities

Work in Progress

Does Voluntary Regulation Supplement or Substitute for Organizations’ Readiness for Climate Change? Evidence of The Impact of Voluntary Regulation on Green Public Procurement by Alexis Yong, Horacio E. Rousseau, Inés Alegre, Pascual Berrone & Joan Enric Ricart

Does voluntary environmental regulation have a larger impact on organizations with high willingness and ability to address climate change or on those lacking such features? To examine this theoretical puzzle, we focus on how European Union Directive 2014/24, which promoted the incorporation of environment and climate-related criteria for awarding procurement contracts, shaped the adoption of green public procurement (GPP) across Europe’s regional governments. Benefiting from the simultaneous enactment across all member states on April 18, 2016, we employ a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impact of this voluntary regulation across regional contracting entities with high and low levels of readiness – the willingness and ability to incorporate green and climate-related issues into their decision making. Using various economic, social, and environmental variables as indicators of readiness, we find robust and consistent evidence that regional governments with higher readiness are more likely to adopt GPP in their contracting activities. However, after the enactment of Directive 2014/24, government entities with low readiness levels showed a more significant increase in GPP adoption. These findings suggest that voluntary regulation may not accelerate sustainability across all regional governments but instead represent a minimal device to compensate for defects of readiness in organizations that external and internal constraints prevent from acting sustainably. We discuss the implications of these findings to extend research on voluntary environmental regulation to government organizations and inform practice on designing climate-related initiatives for greater impact.

Competing for Public Contracts: The Role of Patent Text Readability in Winning R&D Contracts by Alexis Yong

This study examines whether patent text readability improves firms’ competitiveness in the market of government procurement contracts, especially in R&D. Revealing information is not a common habit among firms. Most firms rely on secrecy to keep their competitive advantage safe and their inventions protected from competitors’ replication. However, firms operating in markets characterized by high contracting hazards might be willing to disclose sensitive information to mitigate information asymmetry, increase the expected value of the R&D outcome, and then further receive the awarded contracts. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, I find that average firms which write less readable patent texts and include fewer in-text scientific citations receive more allocation of R&D procurement contracts. These results open the discussion to non-market strategies and disclosure of innovation. Firms might be writing less readable, vaguer patent texts to increase their access to a wider range of public funds for innovation.

The Effect of Urban Growth on Urban Sustainability? A QCA Exploration by Alexis Yong

The paper analyzes the overlapping roles between economic factors of production such as basic infrastructure, workforce, urban planning, and technology, on the sustainability pillars in an urban setting. In particular, the study explores the intricate relationship between the endogenous forces driving urban growth and the economic, environmental, and social outcomes for a global sample of cities. I find that cities around the world combine these factors in very different ways to achieve sustainable performance, with no one unique combination of factors explaining urban performance across the world. The QCA method used in this study allows me to identify two main trade-offs urban policymakers encounter when dealing with urban growth policies. First, the attraction of talented people to cities relates to low levels of environmental quality, as air pollution increases with larger populations. Second, high levels of urban economic performance are related to high-income inequality levels, as people from lower economic backgrounds migrate to more dynamic cities in search of a better future.

Other Publications


Pre-Doctoral PUBLICATIONS on:    International Trade 

Books

Maritime Business Networks in the South American Pacific

The book explores how market power is held and exercised by a few companies operating in the South American Pacific maritime industry. These firms exert market power through a complex network of vertical integration combined with vertical contracts along the logistic chain (land transport, port operator and shipping line). We identify diverging strategies from “global” and “regional” logistic operators. The main effect of market power is seen in discretionary pricing and increased time delays due to maritime route alterations. Although the market structure in the maritime industry is very similar in the four countries under analysis, the effect on discretionary pricing and route alteration vary considerably since the final effect is moderated by the applicable regulations and standards of each country.


Chapters in Books

Peru’s Economic Boom and the Asian Connection (Ch. 3)

This book chapter analyzes recent economic and diplomatic relations between Peru and Asia, with emphasis on China, Japan and the Republic of Korea. In the last decade, Peru has experienced remarkable economic growth, driven by global demand for its minerals and other natural resources, combined with sound macroeconomic policies and a firm commitment to international trade. Although Peru´s relations with Asia tend to reinforce its overall position as a mineral exporter, the country has not experienced significant “de-industrialization”. On the contrary, through aggressive pursuit of free trade agreements (FTA) and new foreign investment, trade with Asia has increased in scope and diversity, with considerable dynamism in value-added exports to China and Japan. The authors conclude that if Peru is going to take better advantage of these opportunities over the longer term, to achieve a more diversified and productive economy, greater state leadership and strategic public policies will be necessary.


Peru and the APEC Value Chains: What is the role of logistic networks in competitiveness? (Ch. 1)

As tariff barriers have been significantly reduced, the new challenges of further economic integration cover a wide spectrum of non-tariff areas. One of strategic importance is the provision of transport services, as it stablishes the basic link for a competitive connectivity with the main markets of the world. A bad configuration of the transport networks, to which a country has access, would have a detrimental effect on the costs of trade and consequent competitiveness of the goods and services it trades. Even worse, faling to acknowledge the importance of this, could lead to severe trade diversion and loss of agglomeration forces and economies of scale. In this line, the current research carries out a detailed comparative analysis of the main ports on the west coast of South America, as well as the characteristics of the main cargo routes provided by the shipping lines involved. We put special emphasis on analysing the role of port operators and shipping lines, due to possible linkages within the logistics chain that could affect the configuration of the transport network to which a country has access.

Working Papers

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