Suchergebnisse

Does development aid attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in post-conflict countries? This article contributes to the growing literature on effects of aid and on determinants of FDI by explaining how development aid in low-information environments is a signal that can attract investment. Before investing abroad, firms seek data on potential host countries. In post-conflict countries, reliable information is poor, in part because governments face unusual incentives to misrepresent information. In these conditions, firms look to signals. One is development aid, because donors tend to give more to countries they trust to properly handle the funds. Our results show that aid seems to draw FDI—however, this is conditional on whether the aid can be considered geostrategically motivated. We also show that this effect decreases as time elapses after the conflict. This suggests that aid's signaling effect is specific to low-information environments, and helps rule out alternative causal mechanisms linking aid and FDI.

AbstractThe emphasis placed on choice of social care provider means that there is an increasing need to furnish service users with reliable and up‐to‐date information on provider quality. In England, encouraging users to leave online feedback on providers is seen as one of the ways of improving the supply of information. However, using these channels for social care raises a number of issues, for example, the challenge of generating enough content to be of value, and the need to protect the anonymity of potentially vulnerable users. This article aims to summarize these issues, by drawing upon the experience of an established ratings site (TripAdvisor), and of heath service rating systems, as well as literature on decision‐making and behaviour across social care and related sectors. The article concludes that online ratings can assist users to choose providers, however, they will need to be supported by carefully designed processes to maximize their usefulness.

Ageism research tends to lump "older people" together as one group, as do policy matters that conceptualize everyone over 65 as "senior." This approach is problematic primarily because it often fails to represent accurately a rapidly growing, diverse, and healthy older population. In light of this, we review the ageism literature, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between the still‐active "young‐old" and the potentially more impaired "old‐old" (Neugarten). We argue that ageism theory has disproportionately focused on the old‐old and differentiate the forms of age discrimination that apparently target each elder subgroup. In particular, we highlight the young‐old's plights predominantly in the workplace and tensions concerning succession of desirable resources; by contrast, old‐old predicaments likely center on consumption of shared resources outside of the workplace. For both social psychological researchers and policymakers, accurately subtyping ageism will help society best accommodate a burgeoning, diverse older population.

Abstract
Representing an event in abstract (vs. concrete) terms and as happening in the distant (vs. proximal) future has been shown to have important consequences for cognition and motivation. Less is known about factors that influence construal level and perceived temporal distance. The present research identifies one such factor and explores the implications for persuasion. Four studies show that an independent self-view is associated with abstract representations of future events and with perceiving these events as happening in the more distant future, whereas an interdependent self-view is associated with concrete representations of future events and with perceiving these events as happening in the more proximal future. Furthermore, a match (vs. mismatch) between the temporal frame of an advertisement and the self-view of the recipient leads to systematic changes in advertisement effectiveness and product appeal. These results add to the construal level theory and the self literatures and have practical implications for advertisers.

This paper analyzes the PhD labour market in connection to the Research and Innovation countries' performance. Research and Innovation is essential for competitiveness in a global economy and doctorate holders have the skills and attributes to both engage in world-class research and make productive contributions in a wide spectrum of professional roles in innovation, in particular, in the private sector. However, in the recent literature little attention has been paid to measure the doctorate's employment in the private sector, their role in the public-private research linkages and their effects on the innovation performance of the countries. The recruitment of PhD graduates in the private sector should be considered a key avenue in converting publicly funded basic research into commercialized innovations, technological progress and productivity growth. The aim of this paper is to examine which policies are boosting the PhD employment especially in the business sector and how these policies affect the research and innovation performance of the countries.

In French, the "modalités verbales" combine modal verbs ("auxiliaires") with infinitive verbs ("complements"), like "can do" (pouvoir faire), "to want to say" (vouloir dire). This grammatical structure is very usual. It is more frequent than the past participle combined with to have (avoir) or to be (être). The specific choices of each speaker are calculated. Three indices are also used in order to measure the "tension". Application on large sets of French political discourses, literature and native speakers. ; Etude de la modalité verbale en français. Cette construction associe un auxiliaire modal suivi d'un complément à l'infinitif, comme "pouvoir faire", "vouloir dire", etc. Ces constructions sont plus fréquentes que celles associant un participe passé précédé d'un auxiliaire avoir ou être. Un test statistique permet de mesurer la singularité de chaque locuteur. Cette étude est complétée par trois indices de tension. Application à de grands corpus du discours politique, de la littérature et de la langue orale.

Proceedings of: International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation. SemEval-2013 : Semantic Evaluation Exercises. Took place in 2013 June, 14-15, in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). The event Web site in http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/semeval-2013/ ; The DDIExtraction 2013 task concerns the recognition of drugs and extraction of drugdrug interactions that appear in biomedical literature. We propose two subtasks for the DDIExtraction 2013 Shared Task challenge: 1) the recognition and classification of drug names and 2) the extraction and classification of their interactions. Both subtasks have been very successful in participation and results. There were 14 teams who submitted a total of 38 runs. The best result reported for the first subtask was F1 of 71.5% and 65.1% for the second one. ; This research work has been supported by the Regional Government of Madrid under the Research Network MA2VICMR (S2009/TIC-1542), by the Spanish Ministry of Education under the project MULTIMEDICA (TIN2010-20644-C03-01). ; Publicado

Scientific literature generally identifies factors that influence social change and the accessibility to education: physical, political, economical and cultural fields. It is logical that the discussed political, economical and social field changes and power distribution in social space had direct effect on the structuring of society, the institution of education and the accessibility to education. However, it must be noted that the transformation of the institution of education cannot replace economical and political reforms, above all, it becomes a catalyst and the object of power and influence distribution. The exclusive focus on social, economic, educational opportunities and the great influence of the mentioned fields on the institution of education consolidate the pragmatic, instrumental concept of education, overshadow specific personality-linked and its power development-related aims of education, devalue the significance of personality and humanistic and cultural outlines within the theoretical reflection on education and its practice.

Mainstream literature in international relations understands negotiations in terms of power politics and/or bargaining processes between rival national interests to account for states' negotiating stands. Using definitions and questions initially defined by Thomas Risse, this study of processes at work in the biodiversity regime underlines instead their deliberative dimension and its contribution to positive negotiation outcomes. However, the article also challenges the dominant understanding of deliberation in global environmental politics that focuses on the participation of non-governmental organizations and other interest groups in the 'public space'. Instead it identifies deliberative elements in the negotiation process proper, stressing in particular the importance of the relationships developed between governmental delegations through series of closed meetings of selected participants. This contribution uses for illustration the negotiations leading to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization.

This article contributes to the growing body of literature on government transparency by developing a model for studying the construction of transparency in interactions between governments and stakeholders. Building on theories about complex decision making, a heuristic model is developed that consists of a strategic, a cognitive, and an institutional perspective. To test the model's value, it is applied to two empirical cases: Dutch schools and the Council of the European Union. Applying the model to the school case provides insights into the connection between the introduction of transparency and the transformation in arrangements for safeguarding school quality. The case of the Council of the European Union highlights the role of transparency in the transformation of the council from a supranational to an intergovernmental body. The article concludes that the heuristic model, together with in‐depth, longitudinal case studies, helps us understand government transparency in relation to broader transformations in the public sector.

Municipal boundary reform (municipal amalgamation) has been done in many countries in recent years as the result of a push to enlarge the size and coverage of local government units, which in turn is driven mainly by the prospect of economies of scale. However, in a notable body of previous literature, the enlargement of local government has not led to reduction of public expenditures. Decision-making before amalgamation might affect to public expenditure after amalgamation. This study uses Japanese municipal-level data and argues for a relation between the choice of public administration distribution method and expenditure after amalgamation. The results show that a plan for distributed or decentralized facility method is more likely to be adopted in a larger administrative jurisdiction and in one with large differences in finances or political structures between amalgamated sub-regions. In turn, a plan for distributed facilities has the effect of pushing up administrative expenditure.

Noting that 'one size does not fit all' in the case of the finance-growth (FG) nexus, a growing body of literature has recently focused on uncovering economic conditions under which financial development could be beneficial (detrimental) to economic development. We look into these conditions by means of a flexible semiparametric approach which allows the long-run FG nexus to depend on measurable economic states. Using annual data for 74 economies spanning the period 1975-2005, we find that the level of financial development shows a strong positive impact on the FG nexus. Moreover, although the impact of finance on growth is generally higher in high-income economies, allowing for intra-group variations reveals scenarios where the impact could be higher in low-income economies. However, the FG link could also be negative if low- and lower-middle-income economies have very large governments or are extremely open to international trade.

Although Nigeria is blessed with abundant natural and human resources, yet the country remains underdeveloped. In line with this, consensus is emerging that ethnic politics and social conflicts are the most fundamental factors to this underdevelopment. In this study, the authors supported the view, through the content analysis of literature reviewed, that ethnic politics and social conflicts have hindered political, economic and social developments in the country. In many instances, they have slowed down the development process, which is essential for pulling Nigeria out of poverty and placing it more firmly on the path of stability and sustainable development. In order to combat these challenges and encourage development in the country, this paper recommend that, Nigerians should aim at operating a true federalism, cultivate a suitable political culture, and out-grow ethnic rancor and stop blaming ethnicity for any social policy that affects a group unintentionally. ; This paper was published in Turkey

An interdisciplinary literature suggests that institutional environment features are significant determinants in the location of foreign direct investment. Weak institutional environment features are considered to have a negative effect on capital inflows. Conversely, empirical studies have found that investors locate in host countries providing high rates of return despite weak institutional environment features. Switzerland is home to some of the most important global investors and one of Europe's largest global investors. Swiss foreign direct investment is an interesting case to examine since it has been nurtured in a well-established institutional environment. In this paper, we evaluate Swiss foreign direct investment located in 56 countries over the period 2005-2009 using statistical and machine learning techniques. From our analysis two models emerge suggesting that Swiss investment favours countries with high political stability and high accountability. However, we also find that Swiss investment does not necessarily discriminate against countries with weak institutional environments.

Different disciplines have analyzed binary choices to model collective behavior in human systems. Several situations in which social dilemma arise can be modeled as N-person prisoner's dilemma games including homeland security, public goods, international political economy among others. The purpose of this study is to develop an analytical solution to the N-person prisoner's dilemma game when boundedly rational agents interact in a population. Previous studies in the literature consider the case in which cooperators and defectors have the same learning factors. We obtain an analytical equation to find equilibria in the N-person prisoner's dilemma game in the general case when agents have different learning factors. We also introduce a more realistic approach where probability values are bounded between zero and one and therefore eliminates the possibility of infeasible probability values. Since no analytic solution can be derived in this case, agent based simulation is used to analyze the asymptotic behavior of the resulted dynamical system.