Search

This paper investigates the interactions between policy drivers and academic practice in international research collaboration. It draws on the case of the Open Research Area (ORA), a funding scheme in the social sciences across four national research agencies, seeking to boost collaboration by supporting “integrated” projects. The paper discusses the scheme’s governance and its place within the European policy space before turning to awarded researchers’ perceptions of its originality and impact on their project’s emergence and development. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory, we analyse the scheme’s capacity to challenge researchers’ habitual collaborative practice as well as the hierarchical foundations of the social science field. We relate the discourses of researchers, located in France, Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, to such structural dimensions of the academic profession as, disciplinary cultures, institutional environments and national performance management of research careers. The paper argues that the ORA introduced novel mechanisms of power sharing and answerability in social sciences research capable of unsettling the autonomy of the scientific field. This analysis offers a new perspective on the often unquestioned superiority of the model of international collaboration induced by schemes such as the ORA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances a structural inter-temporal model of labour supply that is able to simulate the dynamics of labour supply in a continuous setting and addresses two main drawbacks of most existing models. The first limitation is the inability to incorporate individual heterogeneity as every agent is sharing the same parameters of the utility function. The second one is the strong assumption that individuals make decisions in a world of perfect certainty. Essentially, this paper offers an extension of marginal-utility-of-wealth-constant labour supply functions known as “Frisch functions” under certainty and uncertainty with homogenous and heterogeneous preferences. The lifetime models based on the fixed effect vector decomposition yield the most stable simulation results, under both certain and uncertain future wage assumptions. Due to its improved accuracy and stability, this lifetime labour supply model is particularly suitable for enhancing the performance of the life cycle simulation models, thus providing a better reference for policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines a Granger causality test and a VAR model to investigate the relationships among oil price shocks, global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU), and China’s industrial economic growth. Based on monthly data from 2000 to 2017, we reveal that GEPU and world oil prices jointly Granger cause China's industrial economic growth; world oil prices have a positive effect on China's industrial economic growth, while GEPU has a negative effect. Further analyses investigate the asymmetry effect of oil prices and find that the negative component shows a more significant impact on China's industrial economic growth. The results are robust to different oil price and EPU proxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While developing Islamic economics as a discipline, it is necessary to define the nature, scope and subject- matter in order to clarify the object of study and indicate the boundaries of its reach. Islamic economists in this regards have put effort to define Islamic economics to inform readers about its underlying norms and aspirations as well as the objectives it intends to serve. This paper attempts to observe Islamic economists' approaches in defining Islamic economics. Classification of various definitions proposed by Islamic economists will also be discussed. By this observation we will be able to see the different points of view among the scholars in conceiving Islamic economics' subject matter, as well as see the shades of thought in determining Islamic economics' object of study and the level of development of Islamic economics as a body of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the influence behavioural economics has had on economic policy over the past few years, and also tackles the question of what developments in the near future are likely to look like. To do so, the paper illustrates three exemplary cases, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, by first listing major policy implementations of recent years which bear a distinct touch of influence by behavioural research, and then taking a closer look at the background and expertises of important policy makers’ advisory boards. The main research goal is to provide a comparative assessment in order to answer the question of whether or not behavioural economics has gained in importance in economic policy (advice) over the past decade, and whether, given the present state, this development is likely to continue. The paper concludes that behavioural economics has indeed found its way into economic policy quite rapidly, but this is not true unanimously: countries such as Germany show a very different development from the United Kingdom and the United States, two of the forerunners of building on behavioural research, in this respect. It is also argued that, although policy advice does of course not necessarily translate into actual implementation, given the interest in behavioural economics and related topics especially in important international institutions (the OECD, World Bank etc.), this overall trend is likely to continue.

The intention of this paper is to explore the internationalization efforts of German pork producers towards Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with a special focus on recent dynamics, market development strategies and policy conditions. The added-value potentials offered by CEE countries have become increasingly lucrative for the German pork industry, particularly as the domestic market currently shows a certain degree of saturation in terms of consumption. The results of this study which is mainly based on qualitative interviews with selected pork producers from North-West Germany reveal that transnational pork production networks between Germany and CEE are shaped by a high degree of fragility and discontinuity. This is reflected not only by the fluctuating development of foreign trade in piglets, live hogs and pork products, but also by the uncertainty and hesitancy of the interviewed pork producers with regard to business operations in CEE markets. It will be shown that the policy conditions on the national level still have a clear impact on internationalization processes in the pork industry. The paper further illustrates that the configuration of transnational pork production networks can be explained, in part, by insights from the global production networks (GPN) and the agri-food geographies literature.

The objective of the paper is the determination and criticism of existing EU SME Policy evaluation standards and of existing alternatives enabling the discussion of improvements. The paper uses a comparison of different evaluation methods applied by the OECD, the EU and Sweden and of funding programmes provided by KfW and the German Ministry of Economics; therefore, the paper is an explorative case study. Findings: OECD and EU evaluations do not determine causal relationships between funding allocation and effects. The evaluations of the KfW and the German Ministry of Economics use an empirical quantitative approach and determine direct causal relations. In order to fulfil the requirements of legitimizing functions for the SME policy, it is recommended to further develop the EU funding policy and evaluation according to the “German model” both in terms of the institutional framework and in terms of the evaluation of impacts through funding policy measures. Definition of minimum requirements and alternative possibilities for EU SME policy evaluation in order to close the legitimisation gap between the allocation of tax money and impact proof (cost-benefit ratio).

Objective: To characterize the impact of widespread inventory management policies on stock-outs of essential drugs in Zambia’s health clinics and develop related recommendations. Methods: Daily clinic storeroom stock levels of artemether-lumefantrine (AL) products in 2009–2010 were captured in 145 facilities through photography and manual transcription of paper forms, then used to determine historical stock-out levels and estimate demand patterns. Delivery lead-times and estimates of monthly facility accessibility were obtained through worker surveys. A simulation model was constructed and validated for predictive accuracy against historical stock-outs, then used to evaluate various changes potentially affecting product availability. Findings: While almost no stock-outs of AL products were observed during Q4 2009 consistent with primary analysis, up to 30% of surveyed facilities stocked out of some AL product during Q1 2010 despite ample inventory being simultaneously available at the national warehouse. Simulation experiments closely reproduced these results and linked them to the use of average past monthly issues and failure to capture lead-time variability in current inventory control policies. Several inventory policy enhancements currently recommended by USAID | DELIVER were found to have limited impact on product availability. Conclusions: Inventory control policies widely recommended and used for distributing medicines in sub-Saharan Africa directly account for a substantial fraction of stock-outs observed in common situations involving demand seasonality and facility access interruptions. Developing central capabilities in peripheral demand forecasting and inventory control is critical. More rigorous independent peer-reviewed research on pharmaceutical supply chain management in low-income countries is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of politics on economic policy is not fully understood. The challenge to ensure political inclusiveness and economic prosperity remains. Perhaps, one way to attain this objective is by increasing political competition. This paper gathers empirical evidence from Pakistan, a country with a checkered political history characterized by episodes of representative, non-representative, and indirectly elected governments. In recent years, the country has witnessed a gradual strengthening of democratic rules with economic progress. Focusing on nine elections held over 1970 to 2015 the authors measure political competition and estimate its impact on economic policy. Contrary to popular conceptions about Pakistan’s economy, they find a positive association between lack of political competition and poor economic policy. This finding holds at national as well as subnational levels in Pakistan and withstands a number of robustness tests.