Core-periphery Structure Research Articles (Page 7)

Abstract This article critically evaluates the network‐centrism of much of contemporary world cities research and queries its capacity to unveil key accumulation processes under financialized globalization. Our object of inquiry is the world city archipelago (WCA), a material yet non‐contiguous space of world city ‘islands', which is (re)produced through the socio‐spatial practices of advanced producer services (APS) firms as they assist in constructing (financial) accumulation strategies for their clients. Scrutinizing the WCA with a singular focus on networks can veil dynamics that lead to internal stratification and hierarchy between world cities and their constitutive outside. Alternatively, these veiled dimensions are better grasped by territorial, scalar and place‐based abstractions. As an example, we unveil WCA space by studying the space of APS practices in three recent cases of Eurobond issuance. By comparing these three instances through an encompassing approach, a bounded geography of a financialized accumulation space is identified, which contains London and other world cities as a necessary space of dependence but also stretches out to various contingent spaces of engagement at the fringes of the WCA network: offshore jurisdictions and places of debt origination. We conclude by making the case for a heightened sensitivity in respect of core–periphery structures that exist between the WCA and its outside, but also within the WCA itself.

In qualitative research (QR), teaching is essential to the production and reproduction of knowledge both substantively and institutionally. Despite this, teaching QR has not received much scholarly attention. This Special Issue will address this problem by conceptualizing the teaching of QR as involving a set of transgressive practices that sustain and realize critical perspectives and practices in QR. It emphasizes that the teaching of QR is context specific and that what and how to teach need to be interrogated. The Special Issue includes two clusters of articles: (a) four full-length articles contributed by qualitative practitioners from the geopolitical South, aboriginal scholars within the Western core, and scholars in “scientific” fields in the core. It also includes (b) five shorter articles that address key concepts and/or principles of QR. As a catalyst, the Special Issue facilitates discussion and disrupts existing domination along the core–periphery, Aboriginal–non-Aboriginal, and science–social sciences divides.

ABSTRACTThis essay offers a critical reexamination of the works of Friedrich List by placing them in the context of nineteenth-century imperial economies. I argue that List's theory of the national economy is characterised by a major ambivalence, as it incorporates both imperial and anti-imperial elements. On the one hand, List pitted his national principle against the British imperialism of free trade and the relations of dependency it heralded for late developers like Germany. On the other hand, his economic nationalism aimed less at dismantling imperial core–periphery relations as a whole than at reproducing these relations domestically and expanding them globally. I explain this ambivalence with reference to List's designation of imperial Britain as the prime example of successful economic development and a model to be emulated by late industrialisers. List thereby fashioned his ideas on national development out of the historical experience of an empire whereby he internalised its economic logic and discourse of the civilising mission. Consequently, List's national economy culminated in an early vision of the global north–south relations, in which the global industrial-financial core would expand to include France, Germany and the USA, while the rest of the world would be reduced to quasi-colonial agrarian hinterlands.

Counterparty risk denotes the risk that a party defaults in a bilateral contract. This risk not only depends on the two parties involved, but also on the risk from various other contracts each of these parties holds. In rather informal markets, such as the OTC (over-the-counter) derivative market, institutions only report their aggregated quarterly risk exposure, but no details about their counterparties. Hence, little is known about the diversification of counterparty risk. In this paper, we reconstruct the weighted and time-dependent network of counterparty risk in the OTC derivatives market of the United States between 1998 and 2012. To proxy unknown bilateral exposures, we first study the co-occurrence patterns of institutions based on their quarterly activity and ranking in the official report. The network obtained this way is further analysed by a weighted k-core decomposition, to reveal a core-periphery structure. This allows us to compare the activity-based ranking with a topology-based ranking, to identify the most important institutions and their mutual dependencies. We also analyse correlations in these activities, to show strong similarities in the behavior of the core institutions. Our analysis clearly demonstrates the clustering of counterparty risk in a small set of about a dozen US banks. This not only increases the default risk of the central institutions, but also the default risk of peripheral institutions which have contracts with the central ones. Hence, all institutions indirectly have to bear (part of) the counterparty risk of all others, which needs to be better reflected in the price of OTC derivatives.

Full Core modeling techniques for research reactors with irregular geometries using Serpent and PARCS applied to the CROCUS reactor

Transnational cocaine and heroin flow networks in western Europe: A comparison

Dynamic agglomeration patterns in a two-country new economic geography model with four regions

Few studies have examined core–periphery genetic patterns in tropical marine taxa. The core–periphery hypothesis (CPH) predicts that core populations will have higher genetic diversity and lower genetic differentiation than peripheral populations as a consequence of greater population sizes and population connectivity in the core. However, the applicability of the CPH to many tropical marine taxa may be confounded by their complex population histories and/or high (asymmetric) population connectivity. In this study we investigated genetic patterns (based on mtDNA) across the latitudinal range of the neon damselfish Pomacentrus coelestis (36°N, Japan – 37°S, east Australia). We suggest a novel hypothetical framework for core–periphery genetic patterns and extend typical analyses to include genealogical analyses, partitioned β‐diversity measures (total β SOR , turnover β SIM , and nestedness‐resultant β SNE ), and analyses of nestedness. We found that the existence of two divergent lineages of the neon damselfish led levels of genetic diversity to deviate from CPH expectations. When focusing on the widespread lineage (Pacific clade) nucleotide diversity was higher in the core, supporting the CPH. However, genetic patterns differed toward the northern and southern peripheries of the Pacific clade. The turnover of haplotypes (pairwise‐β sim ) increased over distance in the north, indicative of historical colonization with little contemporary migration. In contrast, although turnover was still dominant in the south (β SIM ), there was no relationship to distance (pairwise‐β sim ), suggesting the influence of more contemporary processes. Moreover, the haplotype compositions of populations in the south were nested according to latitude, indicating immigration from lower latitudes toward the southern periphery. By extending the typical characterizations of core–periphery genetic patterns we were able to identify the effects of lineage sympatry on measures of genetic diversity and contrasting demographic histories toward the latitudinal peripheries of the neon damselfish's range.

This paper employs the network approach to study the structure and nodes’ role of the world coal trade network. Based on the bilateral coal trade data of 212 countries (or regions) over the period from 2001 to 2010, this study analyses the world coal trade network, the network’s directionality and heterogeneity, and the roles of network nodes. It is found that the size of the world coal trade network is relatively stable, while the trade links and volume have been growing overtime. Because of the buyer–seller dual structure between exporters and importers, the network shows strong directionality. It also exhibits heterogeneity because of the uneven distribution of trade among different countries. In general, most countries can be classified as the in-nodes, followed by the middleman-nodes, then the cycle-nodes and out-nodes. Finally, the web shows a remarkably significant core–periphery structure and core–half-an-edge–edge structure and the core layers of each model are quite stable.

Bank Networks: Contagion, Systemic Risk and Prudential Policy

Abstract Most studies concerned with empirical social networks are conducted on the level of individuals. The interaction of scientists is an especially popular research area, with the growing importance of international collaboration as a common sense result. To analyze patterns of cooperation across nations, this paper investigates the structure and evolution of cross-country co-authorships for the field of economics from 1985 to 2011. For a long time economic research has been strongly US centered, while influencing real-world politics all over the globe. We investigate the impact of the general trend of increasing international collaboration on the hegemonic structures in the “global department of economics.” A dynamic map of economic research is derived and reveals communities that are hierarchical and structured along the lines of external social forces, i.e. historical and political dimensions. Based on these findings, we discuss the influence of the core-periphery structure on the production of economic knowledge and the dissemination of new ideas.

X-ray microtomographic analysis of α-tricalcium phosphate-poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid nanocomposite degradation

Predicting Urinary Stone Composition Based on Single-energy Noncontrast Computed Tomography: The Challenge of Cystine

The concept of travelling wave reactor (TWR) applies the mechanism of self-sustaining and propagating nuclear fission travelling waves in fertile media of 238U and 232Th to achieve very high fuel utilization. Based on this concept, a stepwise radial fuel shuffling strategy was proposed and applied to a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) loading metallic 238U fuel. The multi-group deterministic neutronic code ERANOS with JEFF3.1 data library was used as a basic tool to perform the neutronics and burnup calculations. The inward fuel shuffling calculations were first performed in a 1-D cylindrical case for parametric understanding, and then extended to a 2-D R-Z case. The shuffling calculations for the 1-D and 2-D SFR model yielded some interesting results. The asymptotic keff varied parabolically with the characteristic fluence, while the burnup increased linearly. The highest burnup achieved in 2-D case was 38%. The power peak shifted from the fuel outlet side (core centre) to the fuel inlet side (core periphery) in both 1-D and 2-D cases and the corresponding peaking factor decreased dramatically along with the characteristic fluence. The present research demonstrated that the proposed stepwise radial fuel shuffling in the sodium fast reactor achieved the characteristics of the traveling wave reactor.

This study presents a core–periphery model to determine the optimal size of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), building on Jeanne and Ranciere [2011. “The Optimal Level of International Reserves for Emerging Market Countries: A New Formula and Some Applications.” The Economic Journal 121: 905–930]. While the periphery is subject to a probability of losing access to external credit, the core's incentive for setting up an ESM stems exclusively from the spillover effects present in the case of periphery default. The model develops regional best response functions, determining a set of feasible ranges for the total ESM size, given optimal regional contributions. The model is then calibrated to the European Economic and Monetary Union. If costs from default are reasonably high, the probability of the periphery not having access to external credit is sufficiently large, and spillover effects to the core are present, both the core and the periphery have an interest in contributing to the ESM. Calibration and sensitivity analysis suggest that the optimal ESM size is between the current and twice the size of the agreed-upon ESM.

The aim of this paper is to analyse and discuss the heterogeneity level between the old and new EU member states in terms of welfare state development. In order to discuss the research questions, we performed the cluster analysis that provides the overall survey of the welfare state development and besides that, the results were divided into four dimensions: demographic, economic, institutional and social. In comparison with the thematic literature, we modified the dimensions, including our original institutional dimension, and added a dynamic point of view. The cluster analysis resulted in the existence of three clusters: Core cluster, Periphery cluster and Eastern cluster. The Eastern cluster is still relatively stable and covers in a total of nine of the ten Central and Eastern European countries that were included in the analysis: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia (hence apart from Slovenia). On the other hand, using the dimensional approach, the CEE countries were grouped together with the old EU member countries, both from the Core cluster and from the Periphery cluster, within the economic and institutional dimensions. Therefore, we conclude that the new EU member countries, nowadays, do not form an internally homogenous group in terms of the features of their welfare state.

Envisaging the future of tourism anywhere is difficult but is amplified when making predictions for the dynamic and rapidly changing Asia-Pacific region. The purpose of this conceptual article is to problematize a 2030 Asia-Pacific tourism future by modeling one polarized and probable scenario, theoretically framed within the mobilities paradigm and the core–periphery model. This scenario proposes that planning for the development of Asia-Pacific tourism will be heavily influenced by a growing tourist trend for experiences in the “pleasure periphery” while the contemporary pattern of increasing urbanization will continue to mobilize the required workforce toward the core. This scenario models divergent tourist and worker mobilities between the core and periphery. By focusing a scenario on this increasingly important discrepancy between labor supply and tourism demand, we can identify the challenges for those areas representative of this divergence that tourism development and destination stakeholders must plan for before 2030.

Competition in the traditional sector does not matter for the ‘Core–Periphery’ model

This study explores mortality related to temporary employment, about which very little is known to date. In 1996, a health survey was carried out in the French region of Lorraine, and all members of 8,000 randomly chosen households were followed up for mortality over a 13-year period. Mortality of subjects in relation to their employment situation at baseline was analysed using a Cox survival regression. In comparison with permanent workers, for unemployed men, we found age and occupation-adjusted hazard ratios (HR) of 4.1 for all-causes of death and 3.9 for non-violent causes, and for male temporary workers a HR of 2.2 for both all-causes and non-violent causes of death. Bad health, tobacco smoking and alcohol misuse explained 17% of the excess risk for the unemployed and 41% of that for temporary workers. The observation of large mortality inequalities across the labour market core-periphery structure has important policy implications, particularly in terms of prevention focused on unhealthy behaviours among male unemployed and temporary workers.

This article analyzes the core–periphery dynamics that characterize the International Relations discipline. To this end, it explores general insights offered by both science studies and the social sciences in terms of the intellectual division of labor that characterizes knowledge-building throughout the world, and the social mechanisms that reproduce power differentials within given fields of study. These arguments are then applied to International Relations, where specific factors that explain the global South’s role as a periphery to the discipline’s (mainly US) core and the ways in which peripheral communities place themselves vis-à-vis International Relations’ (neo)imperialist structure are both explored.