Multi-level Governance and Global Climate Change in East Asia

Climate change is an issue that requires integrated action at multiple levels of government and within the spheres of politics, economics, and society. National, regional, and local governments have both distinct and complementary roles in developing climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. Compared with the attention that has been given to international and national activities in East Asia, relatively limited attention has been paid to the role of urban and regional governments in combating global climate change. Cities and provinces are initiating their own climate action plans, positioning themselves as environmental model cities, and joining local, national, and international networks for climate change. This article examines urban and prefectural climate policies in China, Japan, and South Korea within a multilevel governance framework.     

How limiting is finance for Dutch dairy farms? A dynamic profit analysis

Accessibility to financial resources is considered a prevalent problem in the agricultural sector. We develop an approach to quantify the long-term opportunity costs of financial constraints in relation to peers who do not face any financial constraints. Using data on past financial performance, we assess creditworthiness and the size of an additional accessible bank loan to farmers. Combining this with data on reported expenditure, we determine the accessible finance. We quantify the opportunity cost as the forgone dynamic profit (intertemporal profit in current-value terms) from financial constraints. Using data envelopment analysis, we apply our approach to 264 specialised Dutch dairy farms for the years 2006–2017 and explore the potential impact of changes in finance provision for several scenarios. Our results show an increasing gap between frontrunners and other farmers, as the latter generate progressively less dynamic profit in comparison to their best peers. The gap between the dynamic profit of the average farm and that of its best peers from their production and investment decisions made over the span of 1 year grew from €40,040 in 2009 to €114,548 in 2017. However, the growth is not driven by insufficient access to finance. Financial constraints can only explain 6% of the forgone dynamic profit in 2009 and as little as 1% for 2017. The number of farms classified as financially constrained in comparison to their peers decreases in our sample from 44% in 2009 to 8% in 2017. This suggests that non-financial factors are driving the growing gap.     

Reputational recovery under political instability: Public debt in Portugal, 1641–83

This article examines the reputation recovery of Portugal's public debt during the war of liberation against the former Habsburg ruler. Using novel datasets on long- and short-term debt and nominal interest rates, this study provides evidence that the sovereign borrower used debt credibility to build a pact of regime in a revolutionary context with implications for financing the war. The Portuguese kings followed an implicit budget balance rule as a reputational scheme, which made Portugal an exceptional case of military success with a low debt-to-GDP ratio and low interest rates. These conclusions contribute to the literature in various attributes of war finance, debt management, and state-making by showing that default avoidance could be as important to military success as fiscal capacity.     

The ethical implications of collecting data in educational settings: discussion on the technology and engineering attitude scale (TEAS) and its psychometric validation for assessing a pre-engineering design program

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - K-12 Engineering Education has placed a lot of attention on students’ attitudes or predispositions towards science and technology....     

The entanglement of time and cost deviations in public projects

There is growing concern regarding cost and time overruns in public projects. However, despite the extensive literature on the subject, there is relatively little research on the impact of time overruns on cost overruns. This study assesses whether larger time deviations can lead to larger cost deviations. Our hypothesis is that a project with a time overrun is more likely to also have a cost overrun. The authors used a sample of 208 projects in Portugal, with data collected from the Portuguese Court of Auditors. Using the data, a number of econometric models were developed: Ordinary Least Squares, Generalized Linear Model, Tobit, and Probit. The instrumented variables and structural equation modelling techniques were applied to address potential endogeneity in the data. The analysis was controlled for factors such as political, governance, economic, and project variables. The results suggest that larger time deviations are associated with larger cost deviations. The inference is that projects that take longer to complete also tend to suffer from cost overruns.