Romania's Railways under Transition: Reorganisation Rehabilitation and Regional Development
The paper attempts a review of the Romanian Railwaysduring transition. The first half of the paper considers the fall intraffic and the resulting financial problems which have made itdifficult to maintain the system and continue with any development.The organisation has been restructured so that separatefreight and passenger companies can now concentrate on specificbusiness and compete on the market while the infrastructurecompany is catching up on the maintenance backlog andis proceeding slowly with further electrification. The secondsection concentrates on the European project for high-speedtransport corridors and especially the interest of Romania'srailways in Corridors Four and Nine. Although there have beendelays over several years in starting the complex work of upgrading,contracts for the first phase of Corridor Four (Bucharest-Ctimpina) have now been signed, a new passenger coachrunning 200 km/his in service and locomotive upgrades are underway.The significance of all this for regional developmentlies in the fact that remarkably little of the 1989 network hasbeen closed and the system has remained basically intact tocope with the upswing in the economy that has taken placefrom 2000 onwards. The high-speed corridors, which include anumber of variants, comprise suffteient axes to afford directlinks with the economic macro regions while additional projectsare on hand to improve cohesion on the eastern frontier wherethe most serious development challenges exist.
Romania´s Position in the Transeuropean Transportation Networks
..................................................................................................................191 1 historical development of Romania ́s transportation system ...............................192 2 current situation of Romania ́s transportation system .........................................196 3 major goals regarding the transport infrastructure development strategy ...........211 4 conclusions ..........................................................................................................216 5 References ............................................................................................................217
Complexity, Network-Decisions And Alternative Risk Premia: Some New Theories Of Structural Change And Portfolio Decisions.
Structural Change is the basis for many decisions such as government fiscal and monetary policies, government interventions, corporate-expenditure decisions, corporate strategic decisions, portfolio management decisions in finance; household allocation decisions, etc.. Structural change in industries and national economies is increasingly more difficult to detect partly because of the growth and dominance of Complex Systems and “Networks” in modern industries and economies – such Networks and Complex Systems include GVCs (global value chains), retail store networks; franchising networks; internet networks; services networks; credit-chains in industries; online social networks; etc.. The relationship between Complexity and Structural Change is well established in the physics, applied math and economic dynamics literatures. Traditional definitions and modeling of structural change have erroneously focused on changes in labor, technological progress, market share, and or capital – which are grossly inadequate in the new economy and post- global financial crisis (as confirmed by changes in the global retailing and housing industries and other industries). Also the modeling of structural change seems to be constrained by the availability of data, and often omits the relationship between structural change on one hand, and globalization, financial stability and international financial contagion. This article: i) introduces the Operations Strategy Model of structural change, explains how it differs from the Lewis Model of Structural Change; and explains the often omitted relationship between operations strategy (of companies and government agencies) and structural change; ii) introduces other new Complexity-based models/theories of Structural Change in industries; iii) reviews the relationships among Operations Research, Complexity and Structural Change; iv) explains the symbiotic relationship between structural change on one hand, and economic growth, financial stability, financial contagion and globalization; v) discusses the significant gap between academic research and practice and explains some issues and factors that should be considered in the development and testing of structural change models; vi) explains how alternative risk premia can be generated from new models of Structural Change.