Engineering ethics and post-normal science: A French perspective

The paper identifies three failures of current engineering ethics and suggests that a post-normal turn may help redesign a more demanding ethics for engineering practice. Finally it outlines some difficulties that such a post-normal engineering ethics may face, especially in the French context.     

Climate-change lore and its implications for climate science: Post-science deliberations?

Using of the results of survey questionnaires distributed to climate scientists who focus on the German Baltic coast, regional political decision makers on the German Baltic coast and weather observations from the same region, this paper assesses the existence of developing climate-change lore and the implications for the role of climate science in the science–policy interface. The Oxford Dictionary (1993) provides one definition of lore as ‘A doctrine, a precept; a creed, a religion.’ This is the definition adopted for this paper. The paper concludes that the discrepancies among weather observations, scientific assessments and decision makers’ perceptions suggest that climate-change lore exists, or is coming into existence. The paper then discusses the implications for the science–policy interface and suggests that given current trajectories, science could come to play a secondary role to climate-change lore in regional political decision making concerning climate change. To the truth-to-power model of the science–policy interface and the tenets of post-normal science, three additional possibly evolving science–policy configurations (as pertaining to the climate change issue) are offered.     

What is science’s crisis really about?

Present day reasoning about difficulties in science reproducibility, science governance, and the use of science for policy could benefit from a philosophical and historical perspective. This would show that the present crisis was anticipated by some scholars of these disciplines, and that diagnoses were offered which are not yet mainstream among crisis-aware disciplines, from statistics to medicine, from bibliometrics to biology. Diagnoses in turn open the path to possible solutions. This discussion is urgent given the impact of the crises on public trust in institutions. We ask whether the present crisis may be seminal in terms of drawing attention to alternative visions for the role of Science in society, and its relevant institutional arrangements. We finish by offering a number of suggestions in this direction.     

Unrecognized,concealed, or forgotten – the case of absent information in risk communication

There are differing and partially incompatible views about what kind of issues should be included into risk discussions and what kinds of risks should be emphasized and dealt with. While the emergence of new risks has been extensively studied, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles that the absence of information can play in risk debates. Potentially relevant information may be downplayed or omitted and less relevant overemphasized when actors with varying interests, knowledge bases, and risk frames interact. Multiple and cumulative environmental and health risks caused by chemicals and other stressors pose particular challenges for risk communication. We identify and discuss different forms of unrecognized, hidden, and forgotten information by using chemical risks as a case. A widely applicable typology of absent information in risk communication is outlined.     

Getting value for money from your science park

Based on 34 semi-structured interviews covering 25 university–industry collaborations (UICs) at science parks attached to Danish and Norwegian universities, this paper focuses on aspects of value creation and how to measure the performance of UICs. The research findings have resulted in a set of relevant performance measures for the UICs that have the potential to become levers of management for the modern-day university seeking to enhance the pay-off from its third core (mission) activities.     

Backing what works? Social Impact Bonds and evidence-informed policy and practice

ABSTRACT

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) offer an opportunity to explore the use of evidence to inform public policy and commissioning decisions in both discursive and practical terms in what are frequently highly politicized contexts. We identify three potential mechanisms by which SIBs may promote evidence use and explore these through empirical findings drawn from a three-year evaluation of SIBs applied to health and social care in the English NHS.     

新兴市场电子交易平台对货币政策操作的支持

在俄罗斯等新兴转轨国家,金融交易平台在发挥组织市场交易,实现资源配置、价格发现、风险管理等职能的同时,还承担着辅助货币政策操作与传导等宏观金融管理功能,成为金融改革的见证者和推动者。文章从新兴市场上金融电子交易平台与货币当局的历史和现实联系出发,考察电子交易平台支持货币政策操作的宏观功能。     

Thinking practice: Iteration,peer review,and policy analysis in a governmental accounting class

All accounting graduates need strong critical thinking skills to succeed. However, possessing these critical thinking skills upon graduation is particularly crucial for new accountants working in the field of governmental accounting. As public servants at the local, state, and federal levels, they may face both short-term budget constraints and long-term sustainability concerns that cannot be solved with technical skills alone. Due to the proliferation of standards and technical practices across the accounting profession, governmental accounting educators may find it difficult to incorporate critical thinking instruction into their courses. In response to these concerns, this paper presents a project developed for inclusion in a governmental and nonprofit accounting course. Over the course of one semester, students choose a governmental policy topic of interest, conduct background research, evaluate the costs and benefits associated with a policy issue, and prepare recommendations in a written format addressed to the appropriate legislative committee. The project also incorporates review and iterative components that allow students to revise their written work based on feedback from the instructor and classmates. We report results of pre- and post-surveys that suggest that the project offers promise as a vehicle for promoting critical thinking skills among governmental accounting students.     

Changes in the Federal Reserve Communication Strategy: A Structural Investigation

This paper structurally investigates the changes in the Fed's communication strategy since the mid‐1990s through the lens of anticipated and unanticipated disturbances to a Taylor rule. The anticipated disturbances are identified using Treasury bond yield data in estimating a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with a term structure of interest rates. Our estimation results show that the Fed's decisions were unanticipated for market participants until 1999, but thereafter a larger portion of its future policy actions tended to be communicated in advance. We also find that the relative contribution of the anticipated monetary policy disturbances to macroeconomic fluctuations became larger after 1999. The bond yield data is indispensable to these results, since it contains crucial information on an expected future path of the federal funds rate.