REGIONAL INEQUITY AND SOVIET CONCERN FOR RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN INDUSTRALIZATION
Regional inequity has been an important national issue in most industrial societies. Measures to reduce inequity usually include the location of more industries in rural and small-town areas. The USSR has always possessed a strong ideologically based concern for regional inequity, but it was not until the 1960's that the matter was given serious attention. The last three five-year plans have called for more industry in small towns and rural villages. Life in these areas is to be made more attractive, labor resources more fully utilized, local economies improved, and the out- migration of people reduced. However, there are obvious barriers to industrialization in rural and small-town areas, and as in most industrial nations, the reduction of regional inequity is a slow and difficult process.
Distance as an explanatory factor in urban growth rates: a test for Moscow Oblast.
The hypothesis that urban growth rates are geographically biased in favor of cities situated close to large centers of the USSR is tested in the case of Moscow Oblast, which offers a large central city and a large sample size of surrounding cities. Testing for this subset of cities confirms the significance of distance as an explanatory factor in urban growth. This situation resembles trends in large urban agglomerations elsewhere in the world, where suburbanization is an important factor. In the Soviet case, the attractiveness of central cities and the priority given to investment in proximity to such centers appear to be the crucial elements. Further cross-cultural studies of urban agglomeration trends are proposed. (Portions of this research were supported by a City University of New York Grant-in-Aid, PSC-BHE Research Award (11522), and by a Shuster–National Science Foundation Grant.)
Did the metamorphosis from Export Processing Zones to Special Economic Zones improve the efficiency of trade enclaves in India?
In this paper, the efficiency of seven conventional Special Economic Zones in India is analyzed, by adopting a stochastic production frontier technique, for the period between 1986–1987 and 2007–2008.Results indicate that although the efficiency scores of these enclaves have improved over the years, specifically with the introduction of the SEZ policy (2000–2001), it is far below the threshold level as identified in the literature. Besides, one can also observe a discrepancy emerging between better export earning zones and efficient zones. On the determinants side, policy intervention and large geographical area, accompanied by clustering of units, are found to have impacted the efficiency scores of these enclaves positively.