CARMA 2018 - Call for Papers

2nd International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics

July 12 - 13, 2018. Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain
http://www.carmaconf.org
twitter: @carmaconf

Research methods in economics and social sciences are evolving with the increasing availability of Internet and Big Data sources of information. After the great success of the first edition, the CARMA Conference has become a leading forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and advances on how emerging research methods and sources are applied to different fields of social sciences as well as to discuss current and future challenges.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Internet and Big Data sources in economics and social sciences
  • Social media and public opinion mining
  • Google Trends and Search Engine data
  • Web scraping
  • Geospatial and mobile phone data
• Big Data methods in economics and social sciences
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Internet econometrics
  • Information quality and assessment
  • Crowdsourcing
• Internet and Big Data applications
  • Official statistics
  • Tourism forecasting
  • Business analytics with social media
  • Social behavior and mobility patterns
  • Consumer behavior, eWOM and social media marketing
  • Politics and social media
  • Bibliometrics and sciencetometrics
• Digital transformation and global society
  • Privacy and legal aspects
  • Electronic Government
  • Smart Cities
  • Industry adoption
  • Gender bias

If you are interested in organizing a special session as part of CARMA 2018, please contact the organization at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Submission deadline: 23 March, 2018
Acceptance notification: 11 May, 2018
Camera ready due: 28 May, 2018
Conference: 12-13 July, 2018

Valencia is the third largest city in Spain and is located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It embraces culture and tradition from the past combined with singular architecture, exciting gastronomy, nightlife, and beautiful white sand beaches. Valencia is the capital city of the Comunitat Valenciana region, which is major tourist destination in summer. More info at:

http://www.visitvalencia.com/en/home

Authors from all over the world are invited to submit original and unpublished papers or extended abstracts, which are not under review in any other conference or journal. All submissions will be peer reviewed by the program committee based on their originality, significance, methodological soundness, and clarity of exposition.

Submissions (extended abstracts or full papers) must be written in English and should be in PDF format. They must follow the instructions in the template file, available in Microsoft Word format at:

http://www.carmaconf.org/template.docx

Full-paper length must be between 4 and 8 pages (A4 size), incorporating all text, references, figures and tables. Extended abstracts (which will not receive a DOI) should not exceed 3 pages.

These guidelines are strict: papers failing to adhere to the guidelines (by being more than 8 pages, altering margins or not following the template) will be rejected without consideration of their merits. Submissions imply the willingness of at least one author to register, attend the conference, and present the paper.

CARMA 2018 is using the OCS platform of UPV Press to manage the submissions. In order to submit your paper, you must first create an OCS account. OCS will provide you with a submissions homepage where you can register your paper submission and make appropriate changes. The submission website is:

http://www.carmaconf.org/submissions/

The organizing committee looks forward to welcoming you all to a fruitful conference with open discussions and important networking to promote Internet and Big Data research across Economics and Social Sciences.

The workshop will take place at the Department of Economics and Management at the University of Florence on May 3rd-4th, 2018.

Interested contributors should send an extended abstract of 300-500 words to the email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. from December 1st, 2017 till February 15th, 2018. Please indicate a suggested track theme.

The acceptance of proposals will be notified by March 15th, 2018.

Registration and fee: Fee will cover lunches and coffee breaks during the days of the workshop.

Registration will open from March 15th . Fee information will be published on the workshop website.

Local organizers: Luciana Lazzeretti This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and Francesco Capone
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Co-organizers: Silvia Rita Sedita (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Annalisa Caloffi (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), University of Padova; Rafael Boix (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), University of Valencia; Josè Luis Hervas (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Polytechnic University of Valencia.

The workshop will be supported by the University of Trento, Ermanno Tortia (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

VISIT THE WEBSITE: http://www.clusters.unifi.it

City-REDI (Regional Economic Development Institute), University of Birmingham (UK), is embarking on the development of a set of analytical tools to assist stakeholders in the West Midlands region to address significant policy challenges over the next several decades. We have two fully-funded PhD studentships (3 years full-time equivalent) to support City-REDI quantitative research team led by Professor Raquel Ortega-Argilés under the topics of regional economic systems and microdata analysis.  Deadline 23 of February. More information can be found here:  https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/business/research/city-redi/new-opportunities.aspx

Dear Colleagues,

Sorry for cross-posting.

Please see below a Call for Papers for a Special Session at this year's ERSA Congress in Cork:

Registration details: https://ersa.eventsair.com/QuickEventWebsitePortal/58th-ersa-congress-cork-28-31-august-2018/ersa2018/ExtraContent/ContentSubPage?page=2&subPage=3

Abstract submission deadline: 28th February
Abstract submission: https://ersa.eventsair.com/PresentationPortal/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2FPresentationPortal%2F58th-ersa-congress-cork-28-31-august-2018%2Fsa

Special Session: http://bit.ly/2BtZCEn 

S15 Entrepreneurship and regional development: new perspectives on a complex relationship

Convenor(s) Felix Modrego; Maria Giulia Pezzi

There is currently a widespread consensus that entrepreneurship plays a key role in contemporaneous regional development. Evidence from diverse national contexts point at positive effects of entrepreneurship on a wide range of regional development outcomes, such as employment creation (Acs and Arminton, 2004), local innovation (Acs and Plummer, 2005; Beugelsdijk, 2007), competitiveness (Bosma et al., 2011), growth (Stephens et al., 2013), structural transformation (Gries and Naud, 2010) and poverty reduction (Tmavada, 2010). Such evidence has stimulated the implementation of numerous regional development policies, involving sizeable resources, targeted to the promotion of entrepreneurship and business creation around the world (Johnson, 2005; Sternberg, 2012; Stephens et al., 2013).

The relationship between entrepreneurship and regional development is, however, far from being straightforward, and compelling arguments challenge the unequivocally positive role of entrepreneurial activity on local development outcomes. Shane (2009), for instance, argues that most start-ups create few and precarious jobs, are non-innovative and face a high probability of failure. Van Praag and Versloot (2007) based on an ample meta-analysis of empirical studies conclude that many of the supposed effects of small and new businesses are not larger than those of large/old/incumbent firms. Economic models of entrepreneurship and growth usually arrive at the result that there are optimal levels of entrepreneurship in the economy, and point at the risk of an excess of entrepreneurship leading to a sub-optimal allocation of human (Michelacci, 2003) or financial (Meza and Webb, 1987) resources. From an operational point of view, some authors point at methodological problems obscuring the relationships between entrepreneurship and development, such as ill-constructed definitions (Carree and Thrurik, 2003), imperfect metrics of regional entrepreneurship (Parker, 2009), and/or endogeneity problems obscuring the attribution of causal effects (Glaeser et al., 2015). These arguments have even led some authors to make emphatic calls to discourage, instead of encourage, current entrepreneurship support initiatives (Shane, 2009; Parker, 2007).

Given the intellectual interest and the policy relevance of the topic, a critical, evidence-based reflection on the role of entrepreneurship for regional development seems timely and necessary. After all, entrepreneurship is only one among many possible regional ‘growth regimes’ (Audretsch and Fritsch, 2002), and there is no a priori reason to believe that it is more effective than other alternative paths, such as, for instance, one based on the growth of local incumbent firms.

The session aims at contributing to the reflection on the roles of entrepreneurship for regional development. It proposes a cross-disciplinary approach to the understanding of the potential and challenges for entrepreneurship as a tool for strengthening regional and local economies. The session encourages, particularly, the submission of papers addressing innovative aspects and methodological advancements to the study of the relationships between entrepreneurship and regional/local development. This includes (but does not limit to):

• Broadening the understanding of the effects of entrepreneurial activity on regional development outcomes (e.g. on poverty, inequality, small firms’ productivity, work and life satisfaction, etc.).
• Evidence stemming from developing and emerging economies.
• Theoretical and practical approaches to the study of local entrepreneurship as a form of resilience to the implications of geographical and economic marginality.

• Innovative experiences and approaches to enhance the pro-development effects local entrepreneurship.
• Considerations on regional gender variations in entrepreneurship and the factors influencing them.
• Rigorous and comprehensive evaluations of place-based interventions aimed at spurring local entrepreneurial activity and/or of entrepreneurship support programs pointing at kick starting local/regional development processes.
• Assessment of the conditions that influence (e.g. favor or hinder) the emergence of Community-Based Enterprises in regions, and how CBE impact on grassroots efforts toward local development.
• Methodological innovations, such as innovative data sources and/or research designs that tackle major challenges obscuring the relationship between entrepreneurship and regional development outcomes (e.g. definitions, metrics, endogeneity problems). 

Maria Giulia Pezzi, PhD Social Anthropology
Post-Doc Researcher - Social Sciences Unit 

University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Funded Ph.D. Positions to Study Public Policy

We are recruiting our 2018 Public Policy Ph.D. Cohort. We have a number of funded graduate assistant positions which include a stipend, tuition, and health insurance. 

The priority deadline for applicants seeking funded positions is Feb. 15th, and we will continue reviewing applications on a rolling basis until all positions are full. To learn more about our program and students see our webpage at https://publicpolicy.uncc.edu/

Dear Colleagues,

The next Applied Economics Meeting will take place in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) the 7th and 9th of June, 2018. You can find additional information in the website: http://encuentros.alde.es/en

We inform you that the deadline for submitting the complete paper has been extended until next 8th March, 2018:

https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/conference.cgi?action=login&db_name=EcuentroXXI

Kind Regards,

Mariam Camarero                                                 Mª Josefa García Grande

Scientific Committee Coordinator                        Local Committee Coordinator

"The Geography of craft beer brewing and consumption: local entrepreneurialism and tourism development” is the title of the next RSAI-GSSI Summer Workshop organized by the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) area of Social Sciences, in cooperation with the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), the North American Regional Science Association (NARSC) and the University of Toledo.

The event is intended to provide a unique opportunity to pre-doctoral students and early career scholars (Associate Professors or below) to actively participate in a 2-day workshop focused on the role that craft breweries can play in economic and tourism development at a variety of scales - neighbourhood, city, and regional. The last session of the workshop will be dedicated to the pre-doctoral students, who will have a chance to present their research topics and receive feedback from internationally renowned Professors and early career scholars working on similar topics. In addition to that, two relevant case studies will be presented by local entrepreneurs: Apecchio and L’Aquila. Located in the Marche region of Italy, Apecchio is the home to three craft breweries and has used their existence to leverage the village’s tourism industry. L’Aquila is home to two craft brewery (Anbra - Anonima Brasseria Aquilana, and Alkibia). Moreover, the students will have the chance to meet and exchange ideas with the 30 Ph.D. candidates currently enrolled in the “Urban Studies and Regional Science” program at GSSI and 7 postdocs, in an international, multidisciplinary and stimulating environment. GSSI, in collaboration with RSAI and NARSC, will offer 10 scholarships to 2nd or 3rd year doctoral students for an intensive, two-day program with in-depth working sessions on topics related to the practical and theoretical significance of craft-beer brewing in regional development and on local entrepreneurialism. The final aim of this workshop is to provide 10 pre-doctoral and 10 early career scholars (associate professors or below) working on similar research topics with a chance to create a research network on this growing area of research. Favouring informal knowledge exchange (during lunches, social events and a craft beer tasting event) will be an integral part of the workshop. We also plan a number of follow-up activities. These include a special issue of a refereed academic journal and the organization of special sessions at regional science conferences such as NARSC and ERSA. The Workshop format is a 2-day meeting. It includes time for research, discussion and paper presentations – combining conventional parallel workshop sessions, plenary sessions and keynote speeches, where the participants can present their current research projects. 

Call for papers is now open, the deadline for applications is March 31st 2018. 

For more information on the full programme and how to submit your application, please read here: http://www.gssi.it/seminars/seminars-and-events-2018/item/2229-rsai-gssi-summer-workshop-the-geography-of-craft-beer-brewing-and-consumption-local-entrepreneurialism-and-tourism-development

Maria Giulia Pezzi, PhD
Social Anthropology

PostDoc Research Fellow, Social Sciences Unit
GSSI - Gran Sasso Science Institute
Via Michele Iacobucci 2
67100 L’Aquila (AQ), Italy