Contradictions of the Climate-Friendly City: New Perspectives on Eco-Gentrification and Housing Justice

As local governments and corporations promote ‘climate friendliness’, and a low-carbon lifestyle becomes increasingly desirable, more middle- and upper-income urban residents are choosing to live near public transit, on bike- and pedestrian-friendly streets, and in higher-density mixed-use areas. This rejection of classical forms of suburbanization has, in part, increased property values in neighborhoods offering these amenities, displacing lower-income, often non-white, residents. Increased prevalence of creative and technology workers appears to accelerate this trend. We argue that a significant and understudied socio-environmental contradiction also occurs where the actual environmental outcomes of neighborhood transformation may not be what we expect. New research on greenhouse gas emissions shows that more affluent residents have much larger carbon footprints because of their consumption, even when reductions in transportation or building energy emissions are included. We describe an area in Seattle, Washington, the location of Amazon's headquarters, experiencing this contradiction and show a distinct convergence of city investments in low-carbon infrastructure, significant rises in housing prices and decreases in lower-income and non-white residents. We conclude with a discussion of a range of issues that require more attention by scholars interested in housing justice and/or urban sustainability.     

Airport infrastructure spillovers in a network system

Airports in the US air transport network have become increasingly congested, leading to delays for business travelers and freight shipments. Since disruptions in one part of the network exacerbate problems throughout the system, airport infrastructure expansions to enhance air traffic flows confer travel-time savings and reliability benefits, and thus increased worker productivity and shipping efficiency for manufacturing firms. We evaluate such spillovers, and find that higher own-state airport infrastructure implies lower manufacturing costs from both labor- and materials-savings. Airport expansion in connected states has a comparable effect for states with hub airports, and an even greater impact for other states.     

Teaching and learning the nature of technical artifacts

Artifacts are probably our most obvious everyday encounter with technology. Therefore, a good understanding of the nature of technical artifacts is a relevant part of technological literacy. In this article we draw from the philosophy of technology to develop a conceptualization of technical artifacts that can be used for educational purposes. Furthermore we report a small exploratory empirical study to see to what extent teachers’ intuitive ideas about artifacts match with the way philosophers write about the nature of artifacts. Finally, we suggest a teaching and learning strategy for improving (student) teachers’ concepts of technical artifacts through practical activities.     

Enterprise Risk Management and the Financial Reporting Process: The Experiences of Audit Committee Members,CFOs, and External Auditors

The recent financial crisis has brought to the forefront the need for companies to effectively manage their risks. In this regard, one approach that has gained prominence is enterprise risk management (ERM). Importantly, little is known about the link between ERM and the financial reporting process. This link is critical, because it is imperative that financial reporting adequately depicts the financial status (e.g., valuations, estimates) and associated risks of a company as revealed by ERM. Additionally, from an auditing perspective, ERM affects the risks of misstatement, which should impact audit planning. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to examine the experiences of audit partners, CFOs, and audit committee (AC) members (“the governance triad”) on the link between ERM and the financial reporting process. To determine whether members of the governance triad focus on monitoring, strategy, or both, we also examine their definition of and experiences with ERM with respect to agency and/or resource dependence theory. To address these issues, we conduct semistructured interviews of experienced individuals that form the governance triads from 11 public companies. There are three major findings from our study. First, importantly, all three types of participants see a strong link between ERM and the financial reporting process. Second, despite recognition of the broad nature of ERM, the predominant experiences of the actual roles played by triad members center on agency theory, while resource dependence may be relatively underemphasized by all triad members. Finally, CFOs and AC members indicate that auditors may be especially underutilizing ERM in the audit process, suggesting an “expectations gap.”     

Analyzing the Memory Impact of Advertising Fragments

Marketers are making increasing use of very brief messages that mention just a brand name or a brand name with a short headline, as in event sponsorship and program endorsements. There has been debate over the effectiveness of these advertising fragments. This paper introduces an approach for controlled testing of the effects of advertising fragments. Using a reaction-time based procedure, we show that a key effect of advertising fragments is to revive established brand associations, even though these associations are not explicitly communicated. This reactivation occurs not only when these names receive focal attention, but also when they receive nonfocal attention.     

Ethical Decision Making: The Effects of Escalating Commitment

Despite the recent emergence of many new ethical decision making models, there has been minimal emphasis placed on the impact of escalating commitment on the ethical decision making process. In this paper a new variable is introduced into the ethical decision making literature. This variable, exposure to escalation situations, is posited to increase the likelihood that individuals will choose unethical decision alternatives. Further, it is proposed that escalation situations should be included as a variable in Jones's (1991) comprehensive model of ethical decision making. Finally, research propositions are provided based on the relationship between escalating commitment and the ethical decision making process.     

The Effectiveness of Vehicle Safety Inspections: An Analysis Using Panel Data

We examined the effectiveness of state automobile safety inspections and present new evidence from a panel of the 50 states for the years 1981-1993. Our approach incorporated several innovations over previous studies of safety inspections; most significantly, we estimated a fixed-effects model that incorporated state-specific shifts in casualty rates. We found no evidence that inspections significantly reduce fatality or injury rates. Our study also provides evidence on the effects of speed limits, seat belts, and Peltzman's offsetting behavior hypothesis.     

Localisation of Industry in Chile, 1895–1967: Mining Cycles and State Policy

Mining cycles have had an enormous impact in the evolution of the localisation of economic activity, in particular of industry, in Chile. The nitrate cycle was characterised by a labour‐intensive extraction process and activity which was geographically very concentrated. The copper cycle was geographically more dispersed and its activity more capital‐intensive. We stress the role played by the State in the latter de‐concentration due to the impact of regional development policies and assess the importance of factor endowments and agglomeration economies, in the localisation of the manufacture.     

Challenges for land system science

While considerable progress has been made in understanding land use change, land system science continues to face a number of grand challenges. This paper discusses these challenges with a focus on empirical land system studies, land system modelling and the analysis of future visions of land system change. Contemporary landscapes are contingent outcomes of past and present patterns, processes and decisions. Thus, empirical analysis of past and present land-use change has an important role in providing insights into the socio-economic and ecological processes that shape land use transitions. This is especially important with respect to gradual versus rapid land system dynamics and in understanding changes in land use intensity. Combining the strengths of empirical analysis with multi-scale modelling will lead to new insights into the processes driving land system change. New modelling methods that combine complex systems thinking at a local level with macro-level economic analysis of the land system would reconcile the multi-scale dynamics currently encapsulated in bottom-up and top-down modelling approaches. Developments in land use futures analysis could focus on integrating explorative scenarios that reflect possible outcomes with normative visions that identify desired outcomes. Such an approach would benefit from the broad and in-depth involvement of stakeholders in order to link scientific findings to political and societal decision-making culminating in a set of key choices and consequences. Land system models have an important role in supporting future land use policy, but model outputs require scientific interpretation rather than being presented as predictions. The future of land system science is strongly dependent on the research community's capacity to bring together the elements of research discussed in the paper, via empirical data collection and analysis of observed processes, computer simulation across scale levels and futures analysis of alternative, normative visions through stakeholder engagement.