Experiences of Urban Militarism: Spatial Stigma,Ruins and Everyday Life

A key question in urban sociology is how people interpret the urban environment. At a time when cities are increasingly militarized, this question is particularly important for understanding how militarism impacts urban life. However, urban sociologists have not addressed how people experience militarized environments. This article turns to this question by considering the case of Lydda‐Lod, an Israeli city that has been demographically and physically transformed by war, displacement and securitization. Drawing on Wacquant's sociology of spatial stigma and adding insights from works on emotions in (post‐)conflict cities, I examine how poor Palestinians think and feel about the surveilled districts where they live within the city's broader landscape of ruins. I show how the Israeli military, security and policing agencies have collectively produced spatial stigmatization of these districts. I discuss how Palestinians respond to this spatial stigma by attaching a sense of worthlessness to their districts. However, this reproduction of spatial stigma is punctuated by expressions of care for the built environment and by a desire to revalorize collective Palestinian life in the city. I conclude by discussing how a perspective on militarized cities focused on everyday responses to militarism and attentive to marginalities enriches urban sociology and urban studies more generally.     

Sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement in Spain: Different instruments,different quality

The purpose of this paper is to compare the quality of the sustainability information issued following the three most common reporting models: annual report (addressed to shareholders), sustainability report (addressed to stakeholders), and integrated report (addressed to shareholders). To this aim, we create a quality index based on previous literature, analyzing the content of the sustainability information disclosed by Spanish listed companies during the years 2013 to 2015. We find that companies issuing sustainability reports or integrated reports provide higher quality information than companies including their sustainability information within the annual report. We also find that sustainability reports are issued with higher quality than integrated reports. Both findings indicate that companies in Spain are engaged in a dialogue with all stakeholders, not only shareholders. Our results offer insights on the need to improve the framework of the integrated report in order to achieve the objectives of the International Integrated Reporting Council and to get a speed up in the adoption of this new reporting tool.     

Firms' price and wage adjustment in Europe: Survey evidence on nominal stickiness

This paper presents new evidence on the patterns of price and wage adjustment in European firms and on the extent of nominal rigidities. It uses a unique dataset collected through a firm-level survey conducted in 17 European countries and covering various sectors. Several conclusions are drawn from this evidence. Firms adjust wages less frequently than prices, on average every 15 and 10 months, respectively. Price and, especially, wage adjustment exhibit a substantial degree of time-dependence. In particular, wage changes tend to cluster at a specific time of the year, mostly January in the majority of countries. The results of a multivariate analysis indicate that prices are more flexible when competitive pressures in product markets are strong and when labor costs account for a lower fraction of firms' total costs, whereas wages are more flexible when bargaining is decentralized and when the coverage of collective bargaining and the stringency of employment protection legislation are low. Price rigidities are higher in firms with a larger share of high-skilled/white-collar workers.     

A dynamic semester-long social dilemma game for economic and interdisciplinary courses

The authors present a semester-long game to teach the role of economics in natural resources management. The game is framed within a fisheries context: multiple student fisheries harvest fish to maximize yield/profit, which is measured using a piecewise linear function. There are prizes for both the student and the group with the highest semester-long catch, which brings forth the social dilemma associated with dynamic stock externalities in fisheries. The game can be played in large classes, is robust to student attrition, and requires 5–10?minutes per class period. Given its features, it can be used to teach behavioral economic principles in resource management, incentives versus command-and-control regulations, role of cheap talk, social preferences, punishment, and community management as well as solutions such as aquaculture.     

Public budgetary rules and GDP growth: An empirical study on OECD and twelve european countries

We study the long-term effects of budgetary rules on GDP growth rate and analyse the determinants of the short-term GDP growth dynamics. For both a sample of 19 OECD and a subsample of 12 European countries, we show that, in the long run, improvements in the cyclically adjusted budget balance, as well as increases in the tax burden, have negative effects on GDP growth. The highest effect of fiscal policy on GDP growth would be obtained if the structural deficits were used to increase the market size by reducing the tax burden. In line with Barro (1990), a deficit-financed reduction of tax burden has a stronger effect for European than for OECD countries, because in Europe the government size with respect to market size is too large. Therefore, if GDP growth is a dominant policy objective, in Europe specific actions should redress the 2012 Treaty toward a reduction of the tax burden.     

Specialized markets and Chinese industrial clusters: The experience of Zhejiang Province

Local specialized markets and industrial clusters have been a driving force in China's transition from a rural to a market economy, as they have constituted a means for small local producers to access markets since the reform and the launching of the “open door” policies. In this article the industrial development of local industrial clusters endowed with specialized markets is outlined on the basis of fieldwork case studies in Zhejiang Province. In this area of China, tight linkages between the development of industrial clusters and specialized markets are based on social and economic foundations that have propelled the growth of market relations since the late 1970s. Together with local traditions and skills in both handcraft production and commerce, specialized markets accompanied the take-off of industrial clusters following the so-called “Zhejiang model” of development. The role of specialized markets is still crucial nowadays as a powerful channel for the distribution of consumer goods as well as a means of coordination of fragmented productions in China and abroad.     

A cross-national study of corporate governance and employment contracts

Corporate governance (CG) can be seen to operate through a 'double agency' relationship: one between the shareholders and corporate management, and another between the corporate management and the firm's employees. The CG and labour management of firms are closely related. A particularly productive way to study how CG affects and is affected by the employment relationship has been to compare CG across countries. The contributions of this paper to that literature are threefold. (1) An integration of aspects of the labour management literature in the CG debate. (2) Based on a sample of about 1000 firms from 31 countries, we find evidence of complementarities between the CG and the labour management of firms. Extreme cases, in general, outperform mixed cases. (3) Firm differences within countries are more important than scholars have assumed so far. We present the results of the study and implications for future research and for practice.     

Capital Cities in the New EU States—Economic Status Quo and Current Trends

In the course of the economic catching-up process of the new EU states, the capital cities of the countries in central and eastern Europe were the economically most successful regions in their countries. How distinct are economic disparities between the capitals and the rest of the countries today? What were the determinants of the related economic developments? And do current economic trends support the leading position of the capital cities in the new member states?