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This paper analyzes the determinants of stated individual support towards environmental action. The analysis is realized by means of an original Partial Least Squares Path model of Environmental Awareness-Social Capital-Action and it is based on survey data provided in the fifth wave of the World Values Survey (2005–2009) regarding 34.612 individuals from 42 different countries. Besides the global estimates obtained on the whole set of countries, the paper proposes a subsample analysis for developed and developing countries, as well as country analyses for four major economies: China, India, Germany and the United States. We find that environmental awareness and trust in not-for-profit organizations are important determinants of individual action in support of environmentally friendly policies. In general, trust in science and technology does not crowd-out individual support towards the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The present study aimed to perform scientometric assessment of global publications output of research on Azadirachta indica during 1997–2016. Methodology: The present study examined 4900 global publications on A. indica, as indexed and covered in international Scopus database during 1997–2016 with a view to understanding their growth rate, global publication share, citation impact, international collaborative papers share, distribution of publications by broad subjects, productivity and citation profile of top organizations and authors, preferred media of communication, and bibliographic characteristics of high cited papers. Results: The global publications registered 7.61% annual average growth rate, and its citation impact averaged to 13.91 citations per paper. The global share of top 10 countries ranged from 1.91% to 31.04%, with the largest share (53.49%) from India, followed by Brazil (6.12%), USA (6.02%), etc., About 86.82% and 85.81% of the cumulative global publication and citation share comes from top 10 countries during 1997–2016. The cumulative global share of top 10 countries increased from 85.89% to 86.35% from 1997–2006 to 2007–2017. Only top three countries registered relative citation index above the world average of 1.0: UK (1.95), USA (1.71), and Germany (1.42) during 1997–2016. Agricultural and biological sciences contributed the largest global publications share of 48.41%, followed by pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics (22.04%), biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (17.35%), medicine (16.80%), environmental science (13.39%), and other three sub-fields contribution varying from 4.90% to 8.22% during 1997–2016. Eight hundred and forty-eight global organizations and 1589 authors participated in global A. indica research, of which the 25 most productive global organizations and authors together contributed 20.65% and 8.92% global publication share and 22.43% and 12.66% global citation share, respectively, during 1997–2016. Among 4387 journal papers (in 959 journals) in global A. indica research, the top 20 most productive journals together contributed 43.63% global share of total journal publication output during 1997–2016. Conclusion: Totally, 78 publications were found to be high cited, as they registered citations from 100 to 1441 during 1997–2016 and they together received 18,498 citations, averaging to 237.15 citations per paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the recent worldwide trend towards devolution has been driven by the belief that fiscal decentralisation is likely to have a positive effect on government efficiency and economic growth. It is generally assumed that the transfer of powers and resources to lower tiers of government allows for a better matching of public policies to local needs and thus for a better allocation of resources. These factors, in turn, are expected to lead to an improvement in regional economic performance, if subnational authorities shift resources from current to capital expenditures in search of a better response to local needs. In this paper we test these assumptions empirically by analysing the evolution of subnational expenditure categories and regional growth in Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, and the USA. We find that, contrary to expectations, decentralisation has coincided in the sample countries with a relative increase in current expenditures at the expense of capital expenditures, which has been associated with lower levels of economic growth in countries where devolution has been driven from above (India and Mexico), but not in Spain, where it has been driven from below. We hypothesise that the differences in legitimacy between the central or federal government and subnational governments in top-down and bottom-up processes of devolution may be at the origin of the diverse capacity to deliver greater allocative and productive efficiency and, eventually, greater economic growth by devolved governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]