The sentimental city: the lost urbanism of Pierre Mac Orlan and Guy Debord

Behind a high stonewall surrounding a rural farmhouse in Auvergne, Guy Debord, the ex‐Situationist theorist and activist, retreated. The grungy, cheap‐thrill Parisian urbanism of his youth was no more. Paris had died in his arms of a fatal illness that has seen off other great cities. Economic forces and planning initiatives had assassinated his rebel underworld, and culprits are still at large, still awaiting trial in the people's court. This essay embraces Debord the other side of the wall, dialoging with Pierre Mac Orlan, one of his favorite novelists. In so doing, we enter the phantasmal zone of the sentimental city, the city both real and make‐believe, defunct and yet‐to‐be. Mac Orlan's ideas about passive and active adventuring are explored here, to unlock the Pandora's box of Debord's urbanism. The essay approaches the capitalist city with a poetic gloss and reveals a realm richer and deeper than most social scientific urban research can grasp. Alongside Mac Orlan, Debord retraces his steps through urban ruins, and recaptures an everyday melancholy of backstreets and damaged people, of twilight nooks and crannies and shadowy bars. In Debord's sentimental city, it isn't so much the past that one regrets as the future. Derrière un haut mur de pierre entourant une ferme d'Auvergne, s'est retiré Guy Debord, l'ancien théoricien et militant situationniste. L'urbanisme parisien minable et décadent de sa jeunesse n'existait plus. Paris était mort dans ses bras d'une maladie désastreuse qui a emporté d'autres grandes villes. Forces économiques et initiatives d'aménagement ont assassiné son milieu rebelle et les coupables courent encore, dans l'attente d'un procès populaire. Cet essai voit Debord de l'autre côté du mur en train de dialoguer avec Pierre Mac Orlan, l'un de ses écrivains favoris. Ainsi, nous entrons dans l'illusion de la ville sentimentale, ville à la fois réelle et imaginaire, défunte et survivante. Les idées de Mac Orlan sur l'aventurier actif et passif y sont examinées afin d'ouvrir la boîte de Pandore de l'urbanisme selon Debord. L'approche de la ville capitaliste revêt un vernis poétique, révélant un univers plus riche et plus profond que ce qui peut être saisi par la plupart des recherches urbaines en sciences sociales. Aux côtés de Mac Orlan, Debord revient sur ses pas, traversant des ruines urbaines, retrouvant une mélancolie au quotidien des bas‐quartiers et d'une pègre abîmée, des coins et recoins obscurs et des bars mal éclairés. Dans la ville sentimentale de Debord, ce n'est pas tant le passé que l'on regrette, mais plutôt l'avenir.     

Asian development and poverty reduction strategies: Integrating fisheries into the development discourse

Asia is the world’s foremost capture fishery and aquaculture producer. It is also home to the majority of the world’s fishers and marine fleet (decked and undecked). Consequently, there is every reason to expect that this importance is reflected in national development discourses. This article identifies the socio-economic importance of fisheries in the region in terms of its contribution to primary exports, domestic protein consumption, employment and poverty alleviation. We then analyse national development and poverty reduction strategy documents using a content analysis methodology previously applied to measure the extent to which environmental or forestry issues had been mainstreamed into national policy documents. This enables us to identify those countries that have currently integrated fisheries into the national development discourse – and those that have not. We conclude by proposing two strategies to enable the more effective integration of fisheries into the development agenda.     

Creating network bridges for university technology transfer: The medici fellowship programme

This paper evaluates a fellowship scheme aiming to overcome attitudinal and operational barriers towards university technology transfer. We propose barriers exist because of the focus of many academics exclusively within a peer review research network. We explore the case of the Medici Fellowship programme that was implemented in biomedical departments across five universities located in the midlands of England. Our evidence suggests that such fellowship programmes, through the retraining of academics, may have a positive impact on the commercialisation of research. In particular, the fellows, through the enhancement of their social and human capital, are able to act as agents of attitudinal change in their host departments and are seen to build bridges into external business networks that can provide early stage funding, market and legal information and help identify potential customers for nascent academic entrepreneurs.     

Commercial Real Estate Return Performance: A Cross-Country Analysis

This paper investigates the return performance of publicly traded real estate companies. The analysis spans the 1984–1999 time period and includes return data on over 600 companies in 28 countries. The return data reveal a substantial amount of variation in mean real estate returns and standard deviations across countries. Moreover, standard Treynor ratios, which scale country excess returns by the estimated beta on the world wealth portfolio, also reveal substantial variation across countries in excess real estate returns per unit of systematic risk. However, when we estimate Jensens alphas using both single and multifactor specifications, we detect little evidence of abnormal, risk-adjusted returns at the country level. We do, however, find evidence of a strong world-wide factor in international real estate returns. Furthermore, even after controlling for the effects of world-wide systematic risk, an orthogonalized country-specific factor is highly significant. This suggests that real estate securities may provide international diversification opportunities.     

The Predictability of Equity REIT Returns: Time Variation and Economic Significance

This article presents evidence on predictability of excess returns for equity REITs relative to the aggregate stock market, small-capitalization stocks, and T-bills using best-fit models from prior time periods. We find that excess equity REIT returns are far less predictable out-of-sample than in-sample. This inability to forecast out-of-sample is particularly true in the 1990s. Nevertheless, in the absence of transaction costs, active-trading strategies based on out-of-sample predictions modestly outperform REIT buy-and-hold strategies. However, when transaction costs are introduced, profits from these active-trading strategies largely disappear.     

Union use of social media: a study of the University and College Union on Twitter

The importance of the Internet to trade unionism has not gone unnoticed by academics, and while many have perceived the need for unions to engage in social media, there has not been any study of how unions use social media. This paper provides a systematic examination of union social media use in terms of method, scope and content. The University and College Union (UCU) Twitter account was used as a case study. Tweets (n = 1,615) were collected over a four‐month period (January 1–April 30, 2014) from the official UCU account with followers (n = 12,301) also categorised to determine who is listening. Findings are discussed with reference to earlier debates on union use of the Internet. We find that while UCU has moved with technological developments by using Twitter, the content of the union's messages remain in line with traditional union communication, and the engagement opportunities of social media are underutilised.     

Comparing Cournot and Bertrand Equilibria in the Presence of Spatial Barriers and R&D

Review of Industrial Organization - We compare the equilibria under Bertrand and Cournot competition in the spatial barbell model where spatial barriers and process R&D are involved. We...     

A review on cost-effectiveness analysis of agri-environmental measures related to the EU WFD: Key issues, methods, and applications

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) explicitly integrates economics into water management and water policy in Europe. Specifically, Article 11 and Annex III of the Directive call for a cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of alternative mitigation measures as a requirement in formulating Programme of Measures (PoMs) to achieve ‘good ecological status’ for all waters in Europe. As agriculture is supposed to be the major contributor to diffuse water pollution, CEA of agri-environmental measures has been given paramount importance in establishing the PoMs. This paper summarises the status, significance, and methodological limitations of WFD-related CEA studies in Europe. Cases from the United Kingdom, countries surrounding the Baltic Sea and central and southern Europe were included in the review. Review results indicate that most WFD-related CEA studies: (1) were based on models of ‘representative’ farms without capturing the variability among real-world farms; (2) concentrate on a single ecological effect of measures or are based on cost estimates of the sectors directly involved in the pollutant-reduction programme (i.e., co-benefits, trade-offs, and external costs were not examined); and (3) did not incorporate uncertainties in both cost and effectiveness estimates. Based on the review results, the paper suggests policy implications and recommendations for future research in the field.     

Do option open-interest changes foreshadow future equity returns?

Recent work considers whether information is simultaneously reflected in both option and equity markets. We provide new evidence supporting Black’s (Financ. Anal. J. 31:36–72, 1975) conjecture that information is first revealed in option markets. Specifically, changes in call and put open-interest levels have predictive power for future equity returns. Large increases in call open interest are followed by significantly increased equity returns. Put open-interest increases precede weaker future returns, but the relationship is considerably less pronounced in the presence of certain controls. The recent change in the call-to-put open-interest ratio has predictive power as to equity returns over the following week, even after controlling for numerous factors.