The actorness of the President of the Republic in Italian foreign policy: a quantitative narrative analysis of two case studies (1999–2013)

In this paper, we address the topic of policy actorness in Italian foreign policy to characterize the understudied role of the President of the Italian Republic (PoR). We apply quantitative narrative analysis (QNA) as the methodological tool of our study, answering two research questions to which the academic literature has so far produced limited responses: (a) whether the PoR can be considered a relevant actor in Italian foreign policy and (b) which factors can affect the Italian PoR’s relevance in foreign policy. Considering the Italian PoR’s Diary as the unit of analysis and source of data, we study the two crucial cases of Ciampi’s presidency (1999–2006) and Napolitano’s first presidency (2006–2013). QNA allows us to quantify and compare, while maintaining an actor-centred approach, the relations of the two PoRs with the most relevant actors in foreign policy. The results of our analyses highlight the relevance of the Italian PoR figure, identifying the main areas of influence of the Italian head of state and their changes over time. We conclude providing a few hypotheses to interpret the outcomes of our analyses on the PoR’s role in Italian foreign policy.

     

How to refuse a vote on the EU? The case against the referendum in the House of Commons (1974–2010)

Under what conditions do politicians oppose referendums especially to decide questions of European integration? Existing literature has identified reasons why governments and political parties pledge to hold non-mandatory referendums to ratify EU treaties or determine a country’s participation in the EU project, and some studies have analysed the effect of voter demand and attitudes towards EU referendums. This study examines the positions politicians themselves take towards popular participation in decision-making on the EU. The paper presents a summative content analysis of parliamentary debates in the United Kingdom between 1974 and 2010, tracing MPs’ arguments against using referendums to determine the UK’s participation in EU integration. Our results indicate that the range of claims made by MPs in the House of Commons against referendums on European matters has narrowed over time, although opposing arguments have continued to fall into the same set of four argumentative strategies. We find that institutional arguments, reflecting a Burkean understanding of representative democracy, consistently predominate over arguments that cite practical, political and manipulation concerns.     

Engaged Scholar(ship) in purchasing and supply management (PSM): Creative tension or squeezed in the middle?

Purchasing and supply management research influences practice through the advancement of knowledge and theoretical principles and is positioned as an academic discipline. For the individual researcher, it calls for skills and experience that can be associated with engaged scholarship. This paper explores tensions inherent in engaged scholarship, that arise during the quest to interact closely with professionals to ensure relevance and impact while living up to research quality criteria. The paper concludes that the individual researcher in a field such as PSM is easily left with guidelines that point in multiple directions regarding personal achievement and institutional merits.     

Why Do Landlords Include Utilities in Rent? Evidence from the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study (HDS) and the 2002 American Housing Survey (AHS)

This study assesses the decision to include utilities in the rent and the effect of this decision on rents. We utilize individual house-level data from the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study (HDS) and 2002 American Housing Survey (AHS), and determine that the cost of meter installation is not the only reason that utility costs are included in rent. We find evidence that landlords include utilities in the rent to attract more customers. Additionally, our findings demonstrate that utility inclusion behavior differs significantly between old and new building owners. For the hedonic rent estimation, we find that the decision to include the cost of utilities in the rent raises rent.     

Do TFP and the relative price of investment share a common I(1) component?

Results from cointegration tests clearly suggest that TFP and the relative price of investment (RPI) are not cointegrated. Evidence on the alternative possibility that they may nonetheless contain a common I(1) component generating long-horizon co-variation between them crucially depends on the fact that (i) structural breaks are, or are not allowed for, and (ii) the precise nature and timing of such breaks. Not allowing for breaks, evidence points towards the presence of a common component inducing positive long-horizon covariation, which is compatible with the notion that the technology transforming consumption goods into investment goods is non-linear, and the RPI is also impacted upon by neutral shocks. Allowing for breaks, evidence suggests that long-horizon covariation is either nil or negative.Assuming, for illustrative purposes, that the two series contain a common component inducing negative long-horizon covariation, evidence based on structural VARs shows that this common shock (i) plays an important role in macroeconomic fluctuations, explaining sizeable fractions of the forecast error variance of main macro series, and (ii) generates ‘disinflationary booms’, characterized by transitory increases in hours, and decreases in inflation.     

Maintaining (Locus of) Control? Data Combination for the Identification and Inference of Factor Structure Models

Factor structure models are widely used in economics to extract latent variables, such as personality traits, and to measure their impact on outcomes of interest. The identification and inference of these models, however, highly depend on the availability of rich longitudinal data. To overcome the common problem of data scarcity, this paper proposes to combine datasets that each identify some part of the likelihood, thereby recovering the identification of the complete model. The performance of the approach is demonstrated by a Monte Carlo experiment. We apply this technique empirically to study the impact of locus of control on education and wages. Our strategy allows us to elicit the distribution of pre‐market locus of control from a sample of young individuals, and to measure its impact on education and wages in a sample of adults. Our findings indicate that the effect of locus of control on wages mainly operates through education. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Environmental Sustainability assessment 2.0: The value of social media data for determining the emotional responses of people to river pollution—A case study of Weibo (Chinese Twitter)

Urban river pollution has brought about serious challenges to residents in terms of bodily health and emotional well-being. Based on a social media platform, Chinese Twitter (Weibo), this paper proposes a research framework to investigate the emotional responses of people according to four dimensions: trends, seasons, space and dynamics (TSSD). This study presents several important findings. First, negative responses were much more common than positive ones across all seasons, 22.8% and 9.2%, respectively, which means that river pollution adversely affects residents' well-being in general. Second, negative responses are likely related to local garbage piles, landslides, heavy rains, traffic jams, and demolition, while positive reactions are likely related to beautiful weather or spending time with family members. Third, summer and winter are more likely to induce negative emotions than spring and autumn, with the negative index of summer or winter approaching 80%. This study confirmed that social media data are of great value in measuring the behaviors and emotional responses of humans to their surrounding environment.     

The StoNED age: the departure into a new era of efficiency analysis? A monte carlo comparison of StoNED and the “oldies” (SFA and DEA)

Based on the seminal paper of Farrell (J R Stat Soc Ser A (General) 120(3):253–290, 1957), researchers have developed several methods for measuring efficiency. Nowadays, the most prominent representatives are nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) and parametric stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), both introduced in the late 1970s. Researchers have been attempting to develop a method which combines the virtues—both nonparametric and stochastic—of these “oldies”. The recently introduced Stochastic non-smooth envelopment of data (StoNED) by Kuosmanen and Kortelainen (J Prod Anal 38(1):11–28, 2012) is such a promising method. This paper compares the StoNED method with the two “oldies” DEA and SFA and extends the initial Monte Carlo simulation of Kuosmanen and Kortelainen (J Prod Anal 38(1):11–28, 2012) in several directions. We show, among others, that, in scenarios without noise, the rivalry is still between the “oldies”, while in noisy scenarios, the nonparametric StoNED PL now constitutes a promising alternative to the SFA ML.     

How does(n't) Urban Shrinkage get onto the Agenda? Experiences from Leipzig,Liverpool, Genoa and Bytom

This article discusses the question of how urban shrinkage gets onto the agenda of public‐policy agencies. It is based on a comparison of the agenda‐setting histories of four European cities, Liverpool (UK), Leipzig (Germany), Genoa (Italy) and Bytom (Poland), which have all experienced severe population losses but show very different histories with respect to how local governments reacted to them. We use the political‐science concepts of ‘systemic vs. institutional agendas’ and ‘policy windows’ as a conceptual frame to compare these experiences. The article demonstrates that shrinkage is hardly ever responded to in a comprehensive manner but rather that policies are only implemented in a piecemeal way in selected fields. Moreover, it is argued that variations in institutional contexts and political dynamics lead to considerable differences with regard to the chances of making shrinkage a matter of public intervention. Against this background, the article takes issue with the idea that urban shrinkage only needs to be ‘accepted’ by policymakers who would need to overcome their growth‐oriented cultural perceptions, as has been suggested in a number of recent writings, and calls for a more differentiated, context‐sensitive view.     

The Significance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the 21st Century: Will Such Institutions of Higher Learning Survive?

The United States is still dealing with institutional racism in higher education. For most of the past two centuries, African Americans were forced to attend segregated colleges and universities. Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) played a particularly important role during that long period. In many states, there would have been no institutions of higher education at all, were it not for federal legislation (the Morrill Act of 1890), the actions of religious institutions, and the persistent efforts of black Americans to gain an education, despite the obstacles. Even the seemingly race‐neutral G.I. Bill of 1944 had the pernicious effect of reinforcing racial segregation in both higher education and housing. Given this history, it comes as no surprise that some predominantly white institutions of higher education (PWIs) do not show a sustained commitment to educate African‐American students in this country, although they are often eager to recruit black student athletes for their various sport programs without much regard to the education received by those same athletes. Our inability as a nation to even talk intelligently about these intractable educational problems is disturbing. Indeed, diversity is not paramount for some PWIs, particularly in regards to hiring minority faculty. Perhaps more significantly, HBCUs are still necessary in our society today because they have been the mainstay of educating African Americans at the college and university levels. Black communities throughout our nation are still being devastated by economic polarization and by racial discrimination endemic to higher education at white institutions. The need to address the problem of racial discrimination in higher education remains as strong as ever.     

Are high‐performance work practices (HPWPs) enabling or disabling? Exploring the relationship between selected HPWPs and work‐related disability disadvantage

We develop the organizational characteristics element of Stone and Colella's (1996) framework by drawing on the Ability–Motivation–Opportunity (AMO) model to assess the relationship between high‐performance work practices (HPWPs) and work‐related disability disadvantage. We develop competing “enabling” and “disabling” hypotheses concerning the influence of selected HPWPs (competency testing, performance appraisal, individual performance‐related pay, teamworking, and functional flexibility) on disabled relative to nondisabled employees. An empirical assessment of these competing hypotheses using matched employer–employee data from the nationally representative British Workplace Employment Relations Study 2011 reveals a negative relationship between these HPWPs when used in combination and the proportion of disabled employees at the workplace, although this relationship disappears in workplaces with a wide range of disability equality practices. While disabled employees report lower work‐related well‐being than their nondisabled counterparts, we find limited evidence that this is associated with the presence of HPWPs.     

C. Van Tuyckom, & K. J?reskog, “Going for gold! Welfare characteristics and Olympic success: an application of the structural equation approach.” Quality & Quantity (in press)

Winning medals at the Olympic Games has become an objective that countries worldwide want to achieve. In line with research devoted to the predictors of success, the present article examines the connection between certain welfare characteristics (political, social, and economic development) and the probability of success in the 1984 and 2004 Olympics. We expected to find that structural macro conditions still predict Olympic success. Using welfare indicators as formative instead of reflective indicators (Bollen, Qual Quant 183: 77–85, 1984, p. 65), the results of our Structural Equation Model reveal that both economic and social development had an effect in 1984, as well as in 2004. Political development was only significant in 1984. As for the control variables, population size was significant in both 1984 and 2004. Sporting tradition and geographical conditions had no effect at all. The model fit is very good with a chi-square of 6.62 with 5 degrees of freedom (p =  0.25).