Abstract

The role of airports has become increasingly important with globalization. To have a regional airport is an especially important asset for retaining companies in the region as well as attracting new economic activity to the region. A well-developed transport infrastructure can be seen as a facilitator that allows the economic potential of a region to be realized. The provision of transportation does not, however, automatically lead to economic growth. It may also be the other way round: economic development leads to the better transport infrastructure and accessibility, stressing demand side elements. This paper aims to shed further light on the relationship between regional airports and economic performance. We ask whether accessibility is a key factor to economic success, or rather a consequence of it. In order to test the relative importance of various effects, the Granger non-causality method in a panel framework is applied. The Granger method exploits the fact that in time series there is temporal ordering, and the belief that effects cannot occur before causes. The empirical analysis is based on European level annual data from 86 regions and 13 countries on air traffic and regional economic performance in the period 1991-2010. The results revealed that for at least some regions (and possible all), there is statistical evidence of Granger causality from air traffic to regional growth but these processes are not uniform in all regions. The categorization of the regions into three groups of equal size according to their peripherality showed significant causality in peripheral regions and indicative causality in intermediate regions, while in core regions no significant causality was found. Hence, peripherality indeed matters: the more remote the region is the more important for it is to have efficient air connections. The evidence of the opposite direction of causality - from regional development to air traffic - was only partial and homogenous.

Abstract

The sea and the coasts are drivers of Europe’s economy as many of the economic activities as well as large part of trade depend on the sea. At the European level there is strong political pressure to enhance the growth of maritime economy sectors. The European Union has developed the Integrated Maritime Policy to support the sustainable development of the seas and oceans. The aim is to reach a good environmental status of European seas by 2020. The value of this study is to provide fresh insight into the topic by examining the empirical relationship between the sustainable Blue Growth and Marine Spatial planning. The purpose is to make a relatively short introduction to questions like what is the potential of sustainable Blue Growth, how can maritime spatial planning (MSP) contribute to sustainable Blue Growth, and what are the cross-border elements of MSP. The experiences of previous MSP projects, EU policy reports and scientific articles with MSP in their focus are used as a source to answer these questions. So far there have been only recommendations towards sustainable Blue Growth, and each country remains responsible for designing and determining the format and content of maritime plans. MSP processes should be developed both at national and international levels. Renata Kozak

Abstract

Introduction The International Maritime Organization and the European Parliament (EP) have stated that ships must lower sulphur emissions significantly in a specific region in Northern Europe, that is, in the Sulphur Emission Control Area (SECA), where sulphur content in bunkers is not allowed to exceed 0.1 percent. The Nordic companies have been examined somewhat marginally from the point of view of the SECA-directive, and how it will affect the cost-efficiency of the industry. Document type: Article