Javier Revilla Diez

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• Prof. Dr.
• Professor and Chair at University of Cologne

Despite the increasing popularity of development corridors, their effectiveness in promoting regional development compared to regional roads remains uncertain. This study utilised satellite imagery to compare land use transformation within a 10km corridor effect zone along the Walvis Bay - Ndola - Lubumbashi Development Corridor (WBNLDC) and region...

This paper examines the emergence and growth potential of Southern regional value chains (RVCs) through the Trinity of Change Agency framework, focusing on the horticulture RVC in Namibia's Zambezi region. The findings highlight that regional actors are crucial yet constrained by system-level structures, such as centralised governance and limited r...

Economic corridors are long-term projects that must address challenges beyond physical infrastructure to become fully operational. Most of these challenges, including institutional coordination, logistical integration, and creating favorable conditions for trade and investment, require complex networks of interaction among the corridor agents. This...

Global and regional agri-food value chains feed societies and are an income source for hundreds of millions of farmers around the world. They are also target areas for action to achieve a global sustainability transformation. Agri-food chains are highly vulnerable in the context of multiple crises, including the global environmental crisis, geopoli...

This paper explores the role of agency in the emergence and evolution of tourism paths in the post-colonial states of Southern Africa. Building on the Trinity of Change Agency concept, we emphasise the critical role of the nation-state by spotlighting the multi-scalarity of institutional entrepreneurship and the impact of triggering events. These e...

Although research on the impacts of climate change on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their adaptation to climate change risks has recently received more attention, the focus on micro-businesses and household businesses is still very limited. Micro-businesses and household businesses are adversely affected by compound flooding events...

In vielen Fällen sind Handelsformen unerlaubt (z. B. Menschenhandel, Handel mit psychotropen Substanzen) oder werden straf- bzw. umweltrechtlich reguliert (Waffenhandel, Handel mit Flora und Fauna). Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen können an der Illegalität oder an der Sozialschädlichkeit des Handelns anknüpfen. Der vorliegende Beitrag widmet sich...

Abstract Since pre-independence, Namibia has faced wealth disparities and unfair distribution of benefits arising from natural resources. Producers, who hold traditional knowledge related to genetic resources, continue to endure poverty. In response, the Government of Namibia collaborated with various stakeholders to develop access and benefit-shar...

Although research on the impacts of climate change on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their adaptation to climate change risks has recently received more attention, the focus on micro and household businesses is still very limited. Micro and household businesses are adversely affected by compound flooding events - a situation that wil...

Urban flooding is a major challenge for many megacities in low-elevation coastal zones (LECZs), especially in Southeast Asia. In these regions, the effects of environmental stressors overlap with rapid urbanization, which significantly aggravates the hazard potential. Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in southern Vietnam is a prime example of this set of pro...

Trade in services has grown more rapidly than trade in manufactured goods in recent decades. Countries from the Global South are chiefly responsible for this shift. The research note draws attention to service investment that originates in Southern economies and is directed at markets of the same (sub)continent. Such dynamics have been neglected by...

Southern African ecosystems are threatened by biodiversity loss, but it remains highly controversial whether nature conservation can be successfully achieved by commodifying ecosystems through tourism or by withdrawing habitats from their integration into globalized production. This article contributes to the debate by applying the global productio...

Since the beginning of the Doi Moi reforms, Vietnam's economy and society have been profoundly transformed. While in 1986 less than 13 million of Vietnam's inhabitants lived in areas classified as urban (20%), the number has risen to more than 30 million inhabitants today (35% of the total population). This massive urbanisation was made possible by...

The editorial introduces into the book which brings together a number of recent research contributions, some of which are drawn from papers presented at the time that were subsequently written up in articles; in addition, a few new articles have been added. These are based on empirical surveys of different contexts and times: Some articles were com...

Eine der Kernaufgaben der Wirtschaftsgeographie besteht darin, die Ursachen und Folgen ungleicher wirtschaftlicher Entwicklung zwischen Regionen zu erklären. Innovationen sind in zweierlei Hinsicht eine wesentliche Komponente, um dieser Aufgabe zu begegnen: Einerseits gelten sie als wichtige Determinante der räumlichen Dynamik der Wirtschaft, ander...

Seit Mitte der 1980er-Jahre setzt die Innovationsforschung in zunehmendem Maß auf die Analyse sog. Innovationssysteme (Freeman und Soete 1997). Damit trägt sie dem komplexen Vorgang von Innovationsprozessen Rechnung, der nicht wie in neoklassischen Theorien linear verläuft und von unternehmerischen Einzelentscheidungen abhängt. Vielmehr hat sich di...

In Namibia, the commercialisation of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) is often promoted as a means to improve rural livelihoods, especially for vulnerable communities. This paper analysed how NTFP value chains are integrated into and contribute to the livelihoods of Khwe and !Xun San harvesters. Accordingly, the working conditions, employment and...

The risk of urban flooding is a major challenge for many megacities in low elevation coastal zones (LECZ), especially in Southeast Asia. Here, the effects of environmental stressors overlap with rapid urbanization, which significantly aggravates the hazard potential in these regions. Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in Southern Vietnam is a prime example of...

Mit dem Ausstieg aus der Braunkohle steht das Rheinische Revier am Anfang eines Jahrzehnte dauernden Transformationsprozesses. Strukturmittel von fast 15 Milliarden Euro sollen in Form von Projektförderung bis 2038 vergeben werden. Grundlage dafür ist das Wirtschafts- und Strukturprogramm sowie ein regionaler Konsens mit Vertretern der Region. Ziel...

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global production networks and challenged the resilience of regional economies to external shocks. The tourism sector was severely affected by the travel bans imposed, as were regions characterised by tourism development, such as Zambezi in northern Namibia. Nonetheless, with the support of the national governmen...

This article outlines the importance of place-based policies derived from knowledge on local realities. Through an analysis of maize policies and their impact on the Zambezi region, Namibia, we illustrate the constraining limitations of insufficiently place-based policies. We highlight the problems of current top-down policies of production promoti...

Due to ‘dark sides’ of global value chain integration, a growing body of literature engages with regional value chains (RVC) as alternative strategy for inclusive regional development. To date, we know little about the conditions and actors under which RVCs evolve. Research dominantly highlights the role of regional lead firms, such as supermarket...

The article invites readers to rethink cities in economic networks against the backdrop of the many ways in which ‘gateway cities’, serving as brokers, interlink their respective hinterlands globally. It adds logistics, industrial processing and knowledge transmission to the more established gateway dimensions of corporate control and related servi...

Community-based Conservation seeks to strike a balance between nature conservation and economic growth by establishing spatial and institutional settings that maintain and even regain biodiversity while simultaneously allowing for sustainable land use. The implementation of community-based conservation blueprints on communal, often agronomically ma...

There is growing scepticism about global value chains because of their association with an unequal global trading system. Regionally coordinated and integrated production in Asia appears to have served as a better mechanism for promoting economic prosperity than direct integration into global markets. This is founded upon regional cooperation on in...

Zahlreiche erdöl- und erdgasreiche Länder gehen davon aus, durch die Einbindung in die globale Erdöl- und Erdgasindustrie von Industrialisierungsprozessen vor Ort zu profitieren. Jedoch entfalten sich solche Effekte aufgrund der Organisation in grenzüberschreitenden Produktionsnetzwerken nicht notwendigerweise direkt im Abbauland. Der vorliegende B...

We illustrate deficits and challenges of insufficiently place based policies, by examining current maize policies in the Zambezi region. By discussing these maize policies in the context of the specific environmental and socio-economic realities of the region, we outline policy deficits which often stem from a lack of knowledge of the particular pl...

Extensive research has addressed the question of why some countries are able to attract a large amount of foreign direct investment (FDI), while others are not. Until now, this research mostly neglected natural disasters as a business risk. In the realm of natural disaster research, some studies have investigated the effect of natural disasters on...

In this editorial introduction to the Special Issue “Rural aspirations—Livelihood decisions and rural development trajectories”, we outline current views on aspirations and their relevance for development research, projects and approaches. Using several examples from Africa, we outline how the combination of the different theoretical perspectives,...

Flooding places continuous stress on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) particularly in developing and transition economies that depend on their firms’ performance but may have not fully developed flood protection infrastructure. Yet, detailed knowledge about whether and how firms take adaptation action against flood hazards, including pote...

There are high aspirations to foster growth in Namibia's Zambezi region via the development of tourism. The Zambezi region is a core element of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), a mosaic of areas with varying degrees of protection, which is designed to combine nature conservation and rural development. These conservation a...

DECIDER Project Newsletter No.1: DECisions for Adaptive Pathway Design and the Integrative Development, Evaluation and Governance of Flood Risk Reduction Measures in Transforming Urban-Rural-Systems ______________________________________________________________________________ DECIDER aims at developing knowledge-based solutions for the design, eva...

In the Zambezi region, seemingly unrelated political visions propagate two development paths: nature conservation to promote tourism and Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), and agricultural intensification. This study examines the unintended interrelations between these top-down visions by linking upgrading possibilities in agricul...

The on-going COVID-19 crisis demonstrates how interlinked and networked our globalized society has become. It is not surprising that the world economy is increasingly studied through a network lens. In economic geography, the predominant approaches in this regard are global production networks (GPNs) and world city networks (WCNs). These have gener...

There are high aspirations to foster growth in Namibia's Zambezi region via the development of tourism. The Zambezi region is a core element of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), a mosaic of areas with varying degrees of protection, which is designed to combine nature conservation and rural development. These conservation a...

Adaptive governance approaches emphasize the crucial role of the private sector in enabling climate change adaptation. Yet, the participation of local firms is still lacking, and little is known about the conditions potentially influencing firms’ adaptation decisions and mechanisms that might encourage private sector engagement. We address this gap...

The World Bank, World Trade Organization and others promote integration into global markets as a certain path towards economic development. Some researchers share this optimism, arguing that development is the record of how one thing leads to another, once peripheral locations have plugged into global networks. Comparing resource peripheries in Sou...

Flood risk in urban coastal areas is on the rise due to increased population , urban growth, environmental degradation, and climate change impacts. State authorities are often overstrained to provide adequate flood risk reduction, including for small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs), the backbone of urban economies in Indonesia. SM...

This is a scheduled Special Issue at the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS). ................................................................................................................................................. The "Call for Papers" is open from 01 Oct 2020 to 30 Sep 2021, while early submissions will be immediate...

Adaptation to various socio-economic risks attendant to climate change represents an increasing challenge for agrarian populations across the Global South. Rural households mitigate risks through both individual and collective strategies that have proven viable for establishing long-term adaptive capacities. However, while the importance of social...

Over the last decades, the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD) has experienced drastic political, socio‐economic, and ecological changes. On a conceptual level, numerous studies started to emphasize that livelihood shifts are driven by not only climate but also socio‐economic and institutional changes. Nevertheless, on an analytical and operational level...

High hopes are pinned on tourism and its catalytic potential to foster growth in remote rural areas. In the Zambezi region of northeastern Namibia, tourism plays a key role in the design of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programmes for nature conservation. Local communities form conservancies, small village-based entities of bo...

Vietnam possesses low innovation potentials because its national innovation system is in a ‘nascent, fragmented state’ (OECD, 2014, p. 15). As in many other formerly planned economies, academic organizations were split up into general research and engineering institutes and higher education organizations (Tran and Nguyen, 2011, p. 122). Hence, Viet...

Although it has been argued that current configurations of extractive industries provide opportunities for developing production linkages, in other words, that “one thing leads to another”, these opportunities are not necessarily realised directly in the resource‐holding countries. This article aims to explain why the greater opportunities for crea...

In developing countries, micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) often cannot substantially reduce their exposure to floods on their own. As state authorities also have difficulty in providing sufficient flood protection, experts argue that collective adaptation initiated by firms can compensate for these shortcomings. However, private...

The Global Production Network (GPN) approach has not yet considered the importance of territorial intermediaries for strategic coupling. This article demonstrates how the prospects of strategic coupling for the case of Vietnam and Indonesia with the oil and gas GPN are affected by the gateway role of Singapore. Based on interviews, the analysis rev...

The concluding chapter returns to the five critical research issues identified in the introduction to the edited volume. It summarises how the book’s chapters have advanced our knowledge on these issues, puts the findings into a broader context and then suggests topics for follow-up research. Particular attention is drawn to four ideas. First, poli...

Tanzania’s Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor (SAGCOT) is a role-model economic growth corridor (EGC). It aims at easing the incorporation of smallholder farmers into global and regional value chains through partnerships with larger agricultural companies. EGCs in general and SAGCOT in particular are not only about upgrading infrastructure. They...

Development largely depends on how given places participate in global economic processes.The contributions to this book address various features of the integration of sub-Saharan Africa into the world economy via value chains, so as to explain corresponding challenges and opportunities. The book deals with five issues that have not been covered ade...

The introductory chapter illustrates the relevance of (research on) global value chains (GVCs) in sub-Saharan Africa. It provides an overview of the state of the art, and outlines the structure of the edited volume. Five key features of GVCs are identified, and the respective chapter contributions summarised: first, governance institutions and thei...

After some initial euphoria, the SIJORI Growth Triangle — formed by Singapore, Johor (Malaysia) and Riau Islands (Indonesia) — seems to have been forgotten. The growth triangle concept was developed to enhance the attractiveness of the three territories for foreign investment. This paper aims to explore whether firms in the oil and gas industry are...

free access until May 25th, 2019: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1YrJ1B5ASBuRm Vietnam is an important case for studying the impact of foreign firms’ backward linkages on local firms’ productivity. As an emerging economy Vietnam became the second most popular FDI destination after China in Pacific Asia since 2014. Our empirical analysis for Vietna...

Many manufacturing firms collocate within coastal urban areas in Indonesia. At these locations, they are severely affected by the most occurring environmental hazard, floods. Although research on firms’ adaptation to environmental hazards is burgeoning, the focus still lies on damage evaluation, support for disaster relief, or on how firms can supp...

Gateway cities have received much attention from urban geographers. In spite of outstanding contributions being made, we think that the concept needs to be revisited with regard to regional development implications. Bringing together research on global production networks (GPNs) and world cities, this article shows that gateway cities are critical...

To date, most of the empirical work conducted on enterprise survival has focused on enterprises in developed countries, while studies on enterprise survival in rural areas of emerging markets remain scarce. This paper attempts to address this gap in the research by using mixed-effects parametric survival models to analyze the effects of factors, at...

Der Sammelband führt die verschiedenen Facetten der Transferforschung der international vergleichenden Berufsbildungsforschung zusammen. Dabei werden sowohl Befunde aus Projekten und länderbasierten Studien diskutiert als auch theoretische sowie pragmatische Ansätze referiert. Das Werk bietet somit einen umfassenden Überblick über die aktuellen Erk...

Multinationale Unternehmen und private vietnamesische Unternehmen besitzen einen zunehmenden Bedarf an qualifizierten Fachkräften. Das vietnamesische Berufsbildungssystem kann diese Nachfrage jedoch aufgrund praxisferner Lehrpläne und des unzureichenden Informationsaustauschs zwischen Berufsschulen und Industrie nicht decken. Während einige multina...

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) is facing notably high levels in current and future flooding. Simultaneously, the ongoing process of rapid industrialization is characterized by the strong emergence of manufacturing firms within the urban area. As manufacturing firms are at the frontline regarding damage caused by flooding, which is often neglected in risk...

Many industrial sites in developing countries and emerging economies face increasing exposure to environmental hazards, e.g. in coastal locations, while being situated within the territory of state authorities which lack in capacity to provide adaptation solutions. It is therefore relevant to ask, whether and how firms engage in adaptation, both in...

"Dynamics in an unequal world" is the motto of the 5th Global Conference on Economic Geography, which will be hosted by the University of Cologne in July 2018. Spatial aspects of inequality on different scales are central to many discourses in economic geography. Economic and social disparities are closely linked to forces of globalisation and have...

After the initial euphoria, the SIJORI Triangle-formed by Singapore, Johor (Malaysia) and Riau Islands (Indonesia)-seems to have been completely forgotten. The growth triangle concept was initiated to enhance foreign investment. This paper aims to explore whether firms in the oil and gas industry are really strategically making use of the different...

download here: https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2018_23@50.pdf - Forty years on, Singapore continues to be the “Houston of Asia”, one of the major oil trading and refinery hubs in the world. - Between 2003 and mid-2016, 90 per cent of greenfield investment in the “Singapore – Johor – Riau Islands Triangle” was concentrated in...

Growth corridors have been an instrument of economic development for decades but have gained new attention in regional economic development policies in recent years, e.g., in Sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia. They are seen by policy makers and private businesses as catalysts of regional economic integration, pushing traditional businesses into...

Manufacturing firms are primarily concentrated in coastal cities like Jakarta and Semarang, where they are affected by floods. Firms are trying to adapt individually to the floods and engage partly in collective adaptation efforts like the construction of large pump systems. Also, city authorities are attempting to reduce the flood risk with intern...

Küstenstädte in Indonesien sind extrem von Überschwemmungen betroffen. Dabei verlieren Menschen nicht nur ihr Hab und Gut, sondern oft auch ihren Job, weil ihre Arbeitgeber die Produktion stoppen müssen. Während Sofortmaßnahmen in der Regel auf die Bevölkerung abzielen, werden Betriebe oft sich selbst überlassen. Da der indonesische Staat angesicht...

Rural areas in Germany are facing severe challenges due to demographic and structural changes. The focus of this paper is on local food supply which is considered to be a key factor in the persistence and sustainability of rural areas. The results presented are derived from a joint research project carried out in Lower Saxony, Germany, between 2012...

The actual extraction of natural resources is territorially tied to their geological occurrence. However, previous studies have shown that a direct strategic coupling with commodity source regions has become increasingly uncommon in the context of the contemporary organization of extractive industries. Instead, extractive Global Production Networks...

Central governments in transition economies often face difficulties enforcing labor and environmental regulations at the subnational level, and this is particularly the case in Vietnam. The diffusion of global corporate social responsibility (CSR) certificates, such as ISO standards, is seen as one possible solution to increase awareness and induce...

In this chapter, Wrana and Revilla Diez bring the disciplines of international business studies and economic geography closer to each other, by conceptualising how multinational enterprises (MNEs) become institutional entrepreneurs in host regions of transition economies. More precisely, they present and discuss the Corporate Social Responsibility–...

In the literature on entrepreneurship, there is an ongoing debate about the impact of regional factors on the entrepreneurial process. To date, most of the empirical work on the influence of regional characteristics on entrepreneurship has focused on developed countries, while empirical work that analyses the regional determinants of micro entrepre...

The importance of private sector engagement on risk reduction is increasingly mentioned over the last years. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 stresses that the private sector should be a crucial partner in achieving disaster resilience. However, the contribution by the private sector is still rare and mostly undertaken by...

In many Southeast Asian countries, such as Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, the appearance of multinational enterprises (MNEs) as a consequence of open and liberal market reforms is increasing the concentration process, especially in and around the capital regions. MNEs are attracted by positive externalities provided by the large agglomerat...

Jakarta has long been affected by floods and the social and economic impacts are enormous. There has been extensive research focusing on the impacts and actions by the government. However, flood adaptation strategies by manufacturing firms, as the most affected business sector, have been largely neglected. This chapter fills the gap firstly, by exa...

The following paper analyses whether becoming self-employed can help to reduce the vulnerability to poverty of rural households. We use data collected during four survey waves in three rural provinces in Vietnam to calculate region-specific logistic panel regressions. The results show that becoming self-employed increases the likelihood of poor hou...

Zusammenfassung Bislang konzentrierte sich die empirische Forschung zu Weltstädten vor allem auf die Beziehungen zwischen Weltstädten. Wir haben wenig über die Verflechtungen zu den Orten gelernt, die durch Weltstädte in bestimmte globale Wertschöpfungsketten eingebunden werden. Dieser Artikel analysiert die regionale Rolle von Städten, indem wir d...

This paper analyses how rural households engage in different segments of non-farm wage labour markets using panel data from three Vietnamese provinces that also include perceived reasons for obtaining employment. We show that it is important to appreciate the heterogeneous nature of rural non-farm wage employment from a livelihood perspective. Diff...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) have promoted vocational training concepts from their home countries as part of their social responsibility in order to acquire better skilled workers, while contributing toward an upgrading of Vietnam's education system. Thus, they potentially become 'Institutional Entrepreneurs', an idea that has been marginally d...

Rural entrepreneurship in developing countries has been continuously portrayed as being necessity-driven or as a survival strategy in the absence of alternatives. In this paper we discuss whether the opportunity/necessity concept derived in the developed world is applicable in the rural context of developing countries. We then test whether opportun...

The underlying spatial forces of firm networking practices are understudied in the literature of economic geography. This paper aims to reveal patterns and mechanisms of networking practices and relates them to China's transitional context based on empirical data from a firm survey in the Pearl River Delta. It addresses the localisation effect as t...

The transition process in Ukraine is far from being completed and large differences among the regions prevail. The adaptation of market-based and reliable institutional arrangements differs strongly among the capital region, the western (Lviv), and the eastern part (Kharkiv) of the country. Conducive regional institutions are necessary for two reas...

Thirty years ago, the Vietnamese government was forced to change its economic policy. The inefficiencies of the economic system led to deteriorating living conditions in the 1980s. During the 6th party congress in December 1986, the communist party decided to reform the economic system, called Doi Moi (renovation). The political elite opted for a g...

The collection of papers in this special issue shows that a better understanding of the role of institutions is needed to understand the developing value chains in the Global South and beyond. Institutional arrangements either formal and/or informal are shaping processes within the value chains. However, these value chain arrangements are not isola...