Distribution Of Public Investment Research Articles

Soft Power of Higher Education as a Global Leadership Factor

Introduction. The main objectives of foreign policy of any state include the extension of its influence in the international arena. In the era of information and knowledge, one of the most effective tools for this task is soft power of education. In this respect, education is seen as a promising soft power instrument, which long-term character allows a country to promote not only its cultural, scientific and technological achievements, but also its cultural values and norms of social organisation. Today, universities are also seeking to strengthen their positions in global education rankings, which are used to define the status and reputation of a particular university in the global market of educational services. This ranking serves as a guide for future students and their parents, when choosing a prestigious education location and when developing individual career paths.The aims of the present research are the following: to analyse soft power of higher education as a soft power mechanism, which allows a country to achieve and maintain leadership positions in the international arena; to specify conditi ons, factors and barriers that determine the position of universities in global ranking systems.Methodology and research methods. The methodological framework is based on the concept of soft power and the theory of internationalisation of higher education. The empirical study was conducted following the tradition of qualitative sociological research. In 2018, a series of semi-structured interviews was conducted among Ural Federal University employees, whose responsibilities were related to the promotion of the university on the global educational market. The Ural Federal University (UrFU) can be considered representative in terms of practices aimed at attracting foreign students to the BRICS countries. In addition, UrFU is a place where the concept of a network BRICS University was realised in 2017. A total of 5 expert interviews were conducted. The collected data were analysed in the context of the World Bank statistics on the money spent by the BRICS countries on education and R&D during the 1999–2015 period (% of GDP), as well as the data provided by the QS World University Rankings – 2019 to analyse the reputation of BRICS universities.Results and scientific novelty. The case study of Ural Federal University allowed the authors to consider the specific practices of BRICS zones for attracting foreign students. The authors analysed the specifics of actions taken by a university to promote its international leadership positions in the international space on the example of students from China. It is shown that the role of global ranking systems (institutional and faculty) in the choice of a university is steadily growing. At the same time, factors determining the attractiveness of the Ural Federal University for foreign students, in particular for Chinese students, include a reasonable level of tuition, the quality of the education and the formed ethnic social networks. For them, the Russian education is expected to be a factor in achieving a higher social status in their home countries. This demonstrates the effective role of education as a soft power instrument, although in the long-term perspective. The authors identified a number of findings concerning the barriers faced by Russian universities on the way to recognising them as global actors of higher vocational education. It is possible to enter the Top 500 best world universities; however, the task of maintaining the achieved position in global rankings is more complicated and cannot be completed without a steady increase in the performance over several years. A world-class university should attract gifted youth, qualified teachers and researchers. The reduction in the number of talented people and research results leads to the loss of geopolitical mission by the educational organisation. Inadequate funding may prevent universities from breakthrough and sustainable improvement of their reputation.Practical significance. The research findings might be useful for managers of higher education and for strategists involved in positioning and making forecasts of educational institutions development. Also, the present findings can be applied by specialists engaged in the issues of educational policy, distribution of public investments, as well as the issues of international interaction and competition between states in order to realise national interests and support national economy in the country in the long term.

Urbanisation and sustainability: the role of the spatial allocation of property rights and public investment

The aim of this paper is to perceive the sustainability of urban development around the world looking into the effect on urbanisation of unsustainable factors such as the spatial distribution of rents from natural resources and the spatial allocation of public investment. First, a principal component analysis on World Bank data is undertaken to understand the specific contexts where cities emerge. Second, a regression analysis is done to relate the level and rate of urbanisation not only with the GDPpc, as suggested by the literature, but also with the variables that differentiate the specific contexts of urbanisation. It is concluded that, beyond the importance of the GDPpc, the level of urbanisation can be explained by less sustainable factors such as the spatial allocation of property rights of natural resources and the spatial distribution of public investment. It is also shown that remittances from migrants and population aging have a crucial impact on the rate of urbanisation.

Neoliberalismo y ocupación del territorio en México

El autor analiza los antecedentes y características de la política regional en el periodo 1989-1994, señalando que esta política incluye las ventajas comparativas para facilitar la localización de industrias maquiladoras en el norte del país. En el artículo se analiza también la desigual distribución de la inversión pública, canalizada en una mayor proporción hacia entidades con superiores niveles de ingreso, en detrimento de aquellas que presentan elevados índices de marginación

Social environment and industrial clusters: the effects on public investment distribution

Using balance sheet data from a sample of 6,996 public firms in the manufacturing industry, we analyse the distribution of public investments in Iran at a very detailed geographical level, i.e., the provincial level, a region which comprises an urban area and the limited geographical area surrounding it. In this paper, we test the impact that unplanned economies and social capital have on the distribution of public investments. While the findings regarding the social variables are mixed, the important role played by unplanned economies is confirmed. Our analysis shows that investments by people are attracted by those areas that combine industrial cluster characteristics with an unplanned economy.

Decentralization's Effects on Public Investment: Evidence and Four Lessons from Bolivia and Colombia

This paper examines decentralisation in Bolivia and Colombia to explore its effects on the uses and spatial distribution of public investment, as well as government responsiveness to local needs. In both countries, investment shifted from infrastructure to social services and human capital formation. Resources were rebalanced in favour of poorer districts. In Bolivia, decentralisation made government more responsive by re-directing public investment to areas of greatest need. In Colombia, municipalities increased investment significantly while running costs fell. Six important lessons emerge from the comparison. For decentralisation to work well, (i) local democracy must be transparent, fair and competitive; (ii) local governments must face hard budget constraints; (iii) central government must be scaled back; (iv) significant tax-raising powers must be devolved; and (v) decentralization is composed of distinct, separable components, the sequencing of which is important. Lastly, (vi) what decentralisation achieves, and whether it is advisable, hinge on how central government behaved pre-reform.

Path Dependency and the Allocation of Public Investment in Mexico

The distribution of public investment within federal states is often subject to significant political discretion. Yet one of the possible consequences of such discretion is the appearance of path dependency in the way in which public investment is distributed. Mexico offers a unique example of the effect of path dependency in resource allocation, as there has been no political competition over more than seventy years. The authors seek to examine the dynamic structure of the regional distribution of public investment empirically, to test for the existence of path dependency and the influence of the different federal governments in Mexico. They use time-series intervention analysis methodology to study the structure of, and the influence of government change in the allocation of, public investment in Mexico between 1971 and 1999. Findings suggest the existence of path dependency in the distribution of public investment in Mexico during all except for the most recent governments. In other words, federal government change made little difference to the way in which public investment was allocated. Path dependency was only broken in the 1990s, coinciding with the setting up of the North American economic integration process, which in turn led to the loss of public support for the single political party, the Partido Revolitcionario Institucional or PRI, which had been in power in Mexico over the last seventy years.

Intramural Land Price Gradients and The Factors Affecting Their Fluctuations

I studied on the urban land price gradients and on the factors affecting their fluctuation in the Tokyo Metropolitan cities, and reported the results of the studies at the First Pacific Regional Science Conference. Then, I attempted to find out the relation between the rates of changes of gradients and the patterns of urban developments and the types and amounts of public investment for these 34 cities. The causes which will decide the fluctuations of the gradients seem to be not only the types and amounts of public investment or patterns of urban developmen but also rates of growth or the modes of distributions of urban population of the cities. But, such a presupposition had not been completely confirmed in the research above mentioned.In this paper, I attempted to clarify more distinctly the causes of the fluctuation of the land price or its gradients in the relation to the industrial structure, population density, residential distribution, and distribution of public investment, by intramural investigation using more detailed statistics per square kiro-metre than above-mentioned inter-cities investigation. I measured the gradients of land prices along 5 lines of railways during 8 years in the city of Yokohama. At the same time, we could measure the gradients of population density and their fluctuations along the same lines. Then, we could find out more clearly the relations between the flcutations of land price gradients and the fluctuations of population density gradients. And I could test the presupposition that causes affecting the land price gradients due to the distribution of population, public investment on road or other public transportation systems along the directions, that is the pattern of urban development.If we could advance this investigation more in detail considering this paper as a progressive paper, we might use the confirmed relationship for the political purpose of land use planning or city planning, by clarifying the relationship between the index of the land use density such as population density or public investment and the land price.