Resources access needs and capabilities as mediators of the relationship between VC firm size and syndication

Drawing from the resource-based view and transaction costs economics, we develop a theoretical framework to explain why small and large firms face different levels of resource access needs and resource access capabilities, which mediate the relationship between firm size and hybrid governance. Employing a sample of 317 venture capital firms, drawn across six European countries, we empirically assess our framework in the context of venture capital syndication. We estimate a path model using structural equation modeling and find, consistent with our theoretical framework, mediating effects of different types of resource access needs and resource access capabilities between VC firm size and syndication frequency. These findings advance the small business literature by highlighting the trade-offs that size imposes on firms that seek to manage their access to external resources through hybrid governance strategies.     

Consumer involvement in health research: a UK scoping and survey

Consumer involvement or patient and public involvement (PPI) in health research is a UK policy imperative and a prerequisite for many funders. PPI in research is defined as research carried out with or being carried out by the public (or service users), rather than research on patients and public as subjects or participants. Despite the clear policy driver, there is relatively little empirical evidence on the extent, processes and impact of user involvement in research. This paper aims to add to the international evidence base on PPI in research by providing a key overview of current trends and impacts. In order to understand the current extent and variation of PPI in research, a scoping exercise and survey were carried out on selected UK studies. Six research topic areas (cystic fibrosis, diabetes, arthritis, dementia, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and public health) were selected to ensure a range of designs, study populations and histories of PPI in research. A total of 838 studies (non‐commercial studies and not older than 2 years) were contacted. The response rate for the scoping was 38% and the survey 28%. In the scoping, 51% of studies had some evidence of PPI and in the survey 79%. The most common PPI activity was steering committee membership and reviewing patient information leaflets. There appeared to be some blurred roles with patients participating as research subjects as well as carrying out patient involvement roles. A major finding was the limited amount of available information about PPI in publicly accessible research documents. We suggest that the invisibility of this type of involvement and the lack of routinely collected information about PPI results in a lack of shared understanding of what optimal PPI in a study should look like, with important implications for practice. Furthermore, without a framework to review PPI it is difficult to know if different approaches to PPI have a different impact on key outcomes of the research.     

Does school matter for educational achievement? a two-way nested-error components analysis

School effectiveness is a much-debated question both at an analytical level and as a policy issue. In this paper we used a two-way nested-error components educational production function model to evaluate the relative importance of latent class and school variables in explaining student school achievement. The analysis is carried out with a sample of Montreal francophone public elementary school students. As for the observable variables, the empirical results suggest that the latent class and school variables are negligible with respect to the latent personal and socioeconomic variables. Related policy issues are discussed in the conclusion.     

From Occupation to Recuperation: Property,Politics and Provincialization in Contemporary Madrid

Recent debates have once again engaged with the substance and meaning of urban politics within our increasingly complex and startling contemporary landscapes. Yet these debates, while giving nods in the direction of feminist and postcolonial scholarship, largely work through traditional lenses of class, labor and the dynamic workings of neoliberal capitalism. In this article, I focus on spaces of difference and their engagement with the urban to demonstrate how politics ‘happens' in locations often left off the map of both scholarship and popular imaginaries, and, crucially, how those locations can, in fact, illuminate shifting political arrangements elided by other methodologies. By juxtaposing European okupa debates with postcolonial discussions of urban informality, I trace what I argue is a new iteration of squatting within a city both ravaged by edicts of neoliberal austerity and buoyed by the efflorescence of social movements and alternative political projects. I then explicate the role of property in constituting the urban within Spain, using the concept of ‘provincialization'. In doing so, I think relationally between systems of property and emergent forms of insurgency to argue that we are witnessing an anticipatory politics that fundamentally challenges hegemonic relationships between everyday citizens and regimes of property ownership.     

Claiming Rights To Mobility Through The Right To Inhabitance: Discursive Articulations from Civic Actors in Montreal

How do claims for rights to mobility intersect with grievances pertaining to spatial justice in the city? This article addresses the issue by studying the concrete connections made by activists promoting car alternatives in Montreal. The activists' discursive categories point to the centrality of their conditions of inhabitance in their claims for certain rights to mobility. The discourses are analysed in the context of demands for safe spaces to walk and cycle in Montreal, and in the context of opposition to the rebuilding of the Turcot highway interchange. The article discusses internal dynamics of collective action, as well as the external influences and controls on activists contesting automobility to various degrees and with different spatially grounded priorities. The claims for rights to mobility rely on locally articulated priorities for better conditions of inhabitance, yet with a transversal reliance on a shared sense of threat and vulnerability, and on the representations of a community (whether local or multi‐scalar), enabling changes in the physical framing of mobility.     

Is Globalization Weakening the Inflation–Output Relationship?

This paper investigates whether trade and financial openness has weakened the inflation–output trade‐off and caused a shift in the preferences of monetary authorities. Based on the backward‐looking Phillips curve and a Taylor‐type interest rate rule, our results for France, the UK and the USA for the 1970–2012 period do not provide support for the relevance of globalization in making inflation less responsive to output expansions. Moreover, the change of preferences of Central Banks towards growth‐oriented objectives is neither due to higher trade nor to financial globalization.     

Does “hot money” drive China's real estate and stock markets?

The paper investigates the extent of the impact from “hot money” or speculative capital inflow on the fluctuations of China's real estate market and stock market. The results indicate that hot money has driven up property prices as well as contributed to the accelerating volatilities in both markets due to its enormous size and its short-term characteristic of investing. In particular, we find that hot money ranks as the second largest contributor in the fluctuations of China's real estate prices. In the “risky” regime, which corresponds to more inflows and higher volatility of hot money, the effects are even more prominent.