Suchergebnisse

AbstractAs a result of the recent economic crisis, in 2011, Portugal signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund (the "Troika"). In exchange for Troika's financial assistance, the Memorandum required the implementation of a specific set of reforms targeted at the healthcare sector. The literature on policy reforms in the context of crisis and conditionality argues that governments have restricted room to manoeuver in responding to external pressure. We challenge this view, finding that even in cases of conditionality and strong external pressures, crisis can be used as a window of opportunity for reforms substantially shaped by domestic policy choices. In the case of Portuguese health reforms, these choices were based on pre‐existing reform plans aimed on resolving country‐specific deficiencies of the healthcare system and were enabled by the two main political parties' strategies of tacit cooperation and blame avoidance. The article emphasizes the need for more fine‐grained analysis of welfare reforms in the crisis that pays equal attention to the institutional characteristics and the political context of the affected countries.

Proponents of charter schools credit them with many advantages over traditional schools. One claim is that school choice yields increased parental participation in voluntary school activities—which we shall call education‐related social capital. In this article we test for the independent effect of school choice on education‐related social capital, controlling for general social capital and other potentially confounding variables. Studies of school choice invariably show that choosing parents have a greater level of general social capital than non‐choosing parents. Consequently, any increase in education‐related social capital could be spurious—due to the fact that choice parents start with atypically high levels of general social capital. We find under controlled conditions that school choice has a small but statistically significant effect on education‐related social capital. However, its effect is considerably smaller than for general social capital, as well as for other traditional predictors such as parental education and the school‐related home resources that parents may provide.

AbstractThis article critically examines recent changes in markets for home (domiciliary) care services in England. During the 1990s, the introduction of competition between private (for‐profit and charitable) organizations and local authority providers of long‐term care services aimed to create a 'mixed economy' of supply. More recently, care markets have undergone further reforms through the introduction of direct payments and personal budgets. Underpinned by discourses of user choice, these mechanisms aim to offer older people increased control over the public resources for their care, thereby introducing further competitive pressures within local care markets.The article presents early evidence of these changes on:

The commissioning and contracting of home care services by local authorities and individual older people.
The experiences and outcomes for individual older people using home care services.
Drawing on evidence from two recent empirical studies, the article describes how the new emphasis on choice and competition is being operationalized within six local care markets. There are suggestions of small increases in user agency and in opportunities for older people to receive more personalized home care, in which the quality of care‐giving relationships can also be optimized. However, the article also presents early evidence of increases in risk and costs associated with the expansion of competition and choice, both for organizations providing home care services and for individual older service users.

Danske pendlere kører fortrinsvist i bil – også i store byer som København. Når rejsetiden er 20 minutter i bil var der blandt pendlere bosiddende i Hovedstaden godt 15 % cyklister, 35 % bilister og 15 % i offentlig transport. De resterende 35 % var enten til fods eller vekslede mellem forskellige transportmidler fra dag til dag. Tilsvarende ved 20 minutter var andelene blandt sjællændere godt 5 % cyklister, 55 % bilister og godt 5 % i offentlig transport. Region Nord- og Midtjylland havde begge 5 % på cykel, 75 % i bil og 5 % i offentlig transport. I Syddanmark sås ved 20 minutters rejsetid 10 % cyklister, 60 % i bil og 5 % i bus/tog. Beregningerne er baseret på data fra en spørgeskemaundersøgelse blandt 2235 pendlere. Vi estimerede elasticitet i transportmiddelvalget med hensyn til rejsetid i bil. Rejsetiderne blev beregnet ved brug af Google Maps Distance Matrix. Pendlerne var alle i beskæftigelse, 18-65 år og med samme fordeling af køn, alder, geografi og uddannelse, som den danske baggrundsbefolkning. Desuden præsenteres en typologi afpendlere, der indeholder 4 overordnede grupperinger. "Bilister uden klare holdninger" (32 %), "grønne pendlere i storbyen" (30 %), "bilister der bor uden for de store byer" (23 %) og endelig "anti-grønne bilister" (15 %). Denne opdeling i pendler-grupperinger indeholdt overraskende få holdninger og kultur.

Female genital fashioning practices, a term encompassing a range of temporary and permanent options for cosmetic genital alteration, are becoming an increasingly prominent part of contemporary beauty regimes. Drawing on a series of 11 small focus groups and 10 interviews with 34 Australian women aged 18–30, this paper explores the ways that cisgender young women negotiate a combination of social pressures, pleasures and influences in their decisions to engage with genital fashioning. These pressures are described by women to emanate from broad social norms, sexual partners, family members, and peer groups. The women in this study demonstrate a nuanced and critical awareness of the cultural context which they inhabit but deploy postfeminist narratives of self-care and enjoyment to make sense of genital fashioning practices. The paper contributes to scholarship on postfeminism by demonstrating the ways that women creatively use the discursive tools available to enable critical reflection on notions of choice. At the same time, the findings in this study constitute an empirical contribution to critiques of postfeminism to reveal the limitations of postfeminist reasoning which ultimately works to curtail or impede the identification of structural problems and constraints.

Objective. This study explores how various measures, ranging from assimilation, to human capital, to family capital, & Holland's career-development theories, affect Asian-American students' choice of college majors. To test our hypotheses, we examine choice of college major using a unique measure based on the early earning potential of a large number of specific majors. Methods. Our data come from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS88). We use the Heckman selection approach to adjust for the nonrandom selection of college attendance & choice of college majors. Results. The findings of the study show little difference between Asian men & white men. On the other hand, there are significant differences among women. Conclusions. Chinese, Filipino, & Southeast Asian women are all more likely to choose more lucrative college majors than white women, controlling for all the other factors. Interestingly, effects of our assimilation, psychological, & some of the family capital measures are quite different for men than for women. 4 Tables, 1 Appendix, 51 References. Adapted from the source document.

This systematic country diagnostic (SCD) discusses on Belize's ability to promote faster poverty reduction and greater shared prosperity which will depend on how well the country deals with its main sources of vulnerability. The main areas in need of a big push that could have the highest potential impact on the twin goals are : (i) improving education and skills; (ii) addressing crime and violence; and, (iii) increasing resilience to climate change and natural disasters. Strengthening resilience to natural disasters and climate change along with improvements in the existing infrastructure in Belize are critical to support the twin goals to end extreme poverty, and promote shared prosperity in poorer segments of society. Sustainable progress towards the achievement of the twin goals of reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity in Belize will also require prioritizing fiscal sustainability. This SCD is structured in six chapters that range from a brief description of the main features of Belize to the discussion of priorities for growth and shared prosperity. Chapter 1 presents the country context, highlighting Belize's main features as a small upper middle income country that faces high volatility associated with its size and vulnerability to exogenous shocks. Chapter 2 discusses trends in poverty and shared prosperity. Chapters 2 through 5 discuss the main underlying factors that have been found to influence Belize's growth performance as well as its economic, social and environmental sustainability. Each of these chapters discuss in greater detail the nature of the challenges, dig deeper into exploring the likely causes of these challenges, and identify policy areas that could be critical for boosting growth and inclusion and ensuring sustainability. These chapters also identify knowledge and data gaps on areas where new information could help strengthen a diagnosis and inform specific actions in the priority areas. The sixth and final chapter has three important and distinctive features. First, it provides a synthesis of the analysis and findings of the previous chapters. Second, it provides a discussion of the approach used to identify the priorities for action in Belize. And, third, it concludes with a discussion of the priorities to boost shared prosperity and ensure economic, social and environmental sustainability in Belize.

Patient choice has become an increasingly visible part of publicly funded health care systems. Since the 1990s, many individuals have gained the ability to select their insurer in social health insurance funded systems, while in tax-funded health systems many patients can now select their primary care and hospital providers. Second opinions about clinical procedures are part of this broad movement toward increased patient involvement in care-related decision-making. One interesting policy question will be whether the coming period of financial austerity will strengthen or weaken the role of choice as health systems seek to deal with the inevitable mismatch of demand for and supply of medical resources.

This article is an attempt to confront the assumptions underpinning rational choice Marxism along with its implications for politics and social theory. That initially calls for setting the new tendency within the Marxian tradition in order to see whether its proponents can deal with the issues deriving from the collapse of the old teleological vision. In this way, the subsequent epistemological critique will be undertaken within a theoretical and practical context. From this critique, it will become apparent that rational choice builds on the utilitarian assumptions of what Marx termed "vulgar materialism" and simply ignores the role of philosophical idealism entirely.

This paper studies selection rules i.e. the procedures committees use to choose whether to place an issue on their agenda. The main ingredient of the model is that committee members are uncertain about their final preferences at the selection stage: they only know the probability that they will eventually prefer the proposal to the status quo at the decision stage. This probability is private information. We find that a more stringent selection rule makes the voters more conservative. Hence individual behavior reinforces the effect of the rule instead of balancing it. For a voter, conditional on being pivotal, the probability that the proposal is adopted depends on which option she eventually favors. The probability that the proposal is adopted if she eventually prefers the proposal increases at a higher rate with the selection rule than if she eventually prefers the status quo. In order to compensate for that, the voters become more selective. The decision rule has the opposite effect. We describe optimal rules when there is a fixed cost of organizing the final election. ; Cet article étudie les règles de sélection d'ordre du jour, i.e. aux procédures utilisées dans tout comité pour décider de discuter d'un sujet donné afin, éventuellement, de changer la politique du comité relative à ce sujet. L'ingrédient principal du modèle est que les membres d'un comité ont une information imparfaite sur leurs préférences lors de l'établissement de l'ordre du jour : ils ne connaissent que leur probabilité de préférer la nouvelle politique proposée lors de la discussion d'un sujet donné, au statu quo. Cette probabilité est une information privée. Nous démontrons que plus la règle de sélection est stricte, plus les membres du comité sont conservateurs ; le comportement individuel renforce donc l'effet de la règle. Pour un électeur, conditionnellement au fait d'être pivot, la probabilité que la nouvelle politique soit adoptée dépend de son option préférée. La probabilité que cette nouvelle politique soit adoptée s'il la ...

This paper studies selection rules i.e. the procedures committees use to choose whether to place an issue on their agenda. The main ingredient of the model is that committee members are uncertain about their final preferences at the selection stage: they only know the probability that they will eventually prefer the proposal to the status quo at the decision stage. This probability is private information. We find that a more stringent selection rule makes the voters more conservative. Hence individual behavior reinforces the effect of the rule instead of balancing it. For a voter, conditional on being pivotal, the probability that the proposal is adopted depends on which option she eventually favors. The probability that the proposal is adopted if she eventually prefers the proposal increases at a higher rate with the selection rule than if she eventually prefers the status quo. In order to compensate for that, the voters become more selective. The decision rule has the opposite effect. We describe optimal rules when there is a fixed cost of organizing the final election. ; Cet article étudie les règles de sélection d'ordre du jour, i.e. aux procédures utilisées dans tout comité pour décider de discuter d'un sujet donné afin, éventuellement, de changer la politique du comité relative à ce sujet. L'ingrédient principal du modèle est que les membres d'un comité ont une information imparfaite sur leurs préférences lors de l'établissement de l'ordre du jour : ils ne connaissent que leur probabilité de préférer la nouvelle politique proposée lors de la discussion d'un sujet donné, au statu quo. Cette probabilité est une information privée. Nous démontrons que plus la règle de sélection est stricte, plus les membres du comité sont conservateurs ; le comportement individuel renforce donc l'effet de la règle. Pour un électeur, conditionnellement au fait d'être pivot, la probabilité que la nouvelle politique soit adoptée dépend de son option préférée. La probabilité que cette nouvelle politique soit adoptée s'il la préfère au statu quo augmente plus rapidement avec la règle de sélection que la probabilité que cette nouvelle politique soit adoptée s'il préfère le statu quo. Afin de compenser cet effet, les électeurs deviennent plus sélectifs. La règle de décision a l'effet inverse. Nous déterminons les règles optimales lorsqu'il y a un coût fixe à l'organisation d'élections.

This paper studies selection rules i.e. the procedures committees use to choose whether to place an issue on their agenda. The main ingredient of the model is that committee members are uncertain about their final preferences at the selection stage: they only know the probability that they will eventually prefer the proposal to the status quo at the decision stage. This probability is private information. We find that a more stringent selection rule makes the voters more conservative. Hence individual behavior reinforces the effect of the rule instead of balancing it. For a voter, conditional on being pivotal, the probability that the proposal is adopted depends on which option she eventually favors. The probability that the proposal is adopted if she eventually prefers the proposal increases at a higher rate with the selection rule than if she eventually prefers the status quo. In order to compensate for that, the voters become more selective. The decision rule has the opposite effect. We describe optimal rules when there is a fixed cost of organizing the final election. ; Cet article étudie les règles de sélection d'ordre du jour, i.e. aux procédures utilisées dans tout comité pour décider de discuter d'un sujet donné afin, éventuellement, de changer la politique du comité relative à ce sujet. L'ingrédient principal du modèle est que les membres d'un comité ont une information imparfaite sur leurs préférences lors de l'établissement de l'ordre du jour : ils ne connaissent que leur probabilité de préférer la nouvelle politique proposée lors de la discussion d'un sujet donné, au statu quo. Cette probabilité est une information privée. Nous démontrons que plus la règle de sélection est stricte, plus les membres du comité sont conservateurs ; le comportement individuel renforce donc l'effet de la règle. Pour un électeur, conditionnellement au fait d'être pivot, la probabilité que la nouvelle politique soit adoptée dépend de son option préférée. La probabilité que cette nouvelle politique soit adoptée s'il la préfère au statu quo augmente plus rapidement avec la règle de sélection que la probabilité que cette nouvelle politique soit adoptée s'il préfère le statu quo. Afin de compenser cet effet, les électeurs deviennent plus sélectifs. La règle de décision a l'effet inverse. Nous déterminons les règles optimales lorsqu'il y a un coût fixe à l'organisation d'élections.