Can the New Deal’s three Rs be rehabilitated? A program-by-program, county-by-county analysis

We examine the importance of Roosevelt’s “relief, recovery, and reform” motives to the distribution of New Deal funds across over 3000 US counties, program by program. The major relief programs most closely followed Roosevelt’s three Rs. Other programs were tilted more in favor of areas with higher incomes. For all programs spending for political advantage in upcoming elections was a significant factor. Roosevelt’s successful reelections were based on developing specific programs for a broad range of constituents, delivering on his stated goals, but also spending more at the margin for political purposes.     

What drives technology transitions? An integration of different approaches within transition studies

This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of transition drivers by reviewing four major strands of inquiry in transition studies: Multi Level Perspective (MLP); Strategic Niche Management (SNM); Transition Management (TM); Technological Innovation Systems (TIS). To the best of our knowledge, none of these contributions have so far provided a clear-cut classification of main drivers of transitions, as evidenced by the difficulty of practitioners in reaching goals as entrepreneurs, or policy makers in supporting economic growth. We believe that these theoretical streams share views relating the origin and drivers of transitions and that the analysis of the multi-level developments and systemic sub-processes by using the Integrative Propositional Analysis (IPA) allows for a more comprehensive identification of transition drivers. By mapping causal relationships within each perspective and by developing an integrative framework that takes in due account of overlaps between theories, we derived a new conceptual structure for the identification of transitions’ drivers.     

Effective ways to grow urban bus markets – a synthesis of evidence

This paper provides a synthesis of the evidence on the patronage growth performance of bus improvement measures in urban settings. The evidence includes a summary of experience in Europe, North America and Australasia focusing on service improvement measures including network structure and service levels, bus priority measures, vehicles and stop infrastructure, fares and ticketing systems, passenger information and marketing, personal safety and security and synergy effects of measures. The source is the research literature and documented experienced from a series of studies undertaken by the authors over the last decade. It includes the results of an international bus expert ‘Delphi’ survey concerning bus improvement measures focussed on patronage growth. The paper synthesises the evidence to identify measures which are most likely to grow patronage including consideration of cost-effectiveness of measures.     

Boosting the spread of new technologies: an integrative propositional analysis of diffusion policies

ABSTRACT

Although many studies have recognised the importance of defining specific public policies to encourage technology diffusion, many authors fail to provide a clear view about either the policies that affect the diffusion of technologies or the effect of the different political instruments. Adopting a content analysis of papers that directly or indirectly refer to the diffusion of a new technology, this study applies the integrative propositional analysis (IPA) methodology to: (a) identify the repertoire of the different diffusion policies identified by previous studies; (b) classify these policies according to the type of instruments that they use; (c) analyse the impact of each policy on the different adoption factors that may inhibit or foster the diffusion of a new technology; and (d) evaluate the scope of each type of policy in terms of the number of affected adoption factors.     

Evaluating density forecasts: forecast combinations,model mixtures,calibration and sharpness

This paper reviews current density forecast evaluation procedures, and considers a proposal that such procedures be augmented by an assessment of ‘sharpness’. This was motivated by an example in which some standard evaluation procedures using probability integral transforms cannot distinguish the ideal forecast from several competing forecasts. We show that this example has some unrealistic features from a time series forecasting perspective, and so provides insecure foundations for the argument that existing calibration procedures are inadequate in practice. Our alternative, more realistic example shows how relevant statistical methods, including information‐based methods, provide the required discrimination between competing forecasts. We introduce a new test of density forecast efficiency. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Measurement and Characteristics of Professional Forecasters' Uncertainty

Several statistical issues that arise in the construction and interpretation of measures of uncertainty from forecast surveys that include probability questions are considered, with application to the Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters. Substantial heterogeneity of individual forecasters' uncertainty is found, together with significant persistence in their relative uncertainty, which is a new finding in professional forecast surveys. It is an individual characteristic akin to the individual optimism and pessimism already established in the literature on point forecasts; the latter is also found in the current dataset, now in a bivariate sense with respect to joint inflation and output growth point forecasts. Whether disagreement among point forecasts is a useful indicator of uncertainty is shown to depend on the underlying macroeconomic environment. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The price of human capital in a pre-industrial economy: Premiums and apprenticeship contracts in 18th century England

Training through apprenticeship provided the main mechanism for occupational human capital formation in pre-industrial England. This paper demonstrates how training premiums (fees) complemented the formal legal framework surrounding apprenticeship to secure training contracts. Premiums varied in response to scarcity rents, the expected productivity of masters and apprentices, and served as compensation for the anticipated risk of default. In most trades premiums were small enough to allow access to apprenticeship training for youths from modest families.