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It is often assumed that leaders serve as focal points around which followers rally when confronted with a coordination problem. This research begins with one component of leadership—its coordinating role—and disentangles how leadership matters for followers. This analysis proceeds as a simple one-sided signaling game from leaders to followers and investigates when a leader's signals are credible. The empirical analysis is based on a series of laboratory experiments in which groups of four actors were involved in a series of one-stage coordination games. The findings show that although leadership is crucial for coordinating followers, it is not a panacea. The introduction of uncertainty about the type of leader markedly decreases the ameliorating impact of leadership.

"Nuclear Strategy" published on by Oxford University Press.

Why do some states agree to suspend their weapons programs in exchange for compensation while others fail to come to terms? I argue that the changing credibility of preventive war is an important determinant of arms construction. If preventive war is never an option, states can reach mutually preferable settlements. However, if preventive war is not credible today but will be credible in the future, a commitment problem results: the state considering investment faces a "window of opportunity" and must build the arms or it will not receive concessions later on. Thus, agreements fail under these conditions. I then apply the theoretical findings to the Soviet Union's decision to build nuclear weapons in 1949. War exhaustion made preventive war not credible for the United States immediately following World War II, but lingering concerns about future preventive action induced Moscow to proliferate. (International Interactions (London)/ FUB)

Abstract: Different research communities have developed various approaches to assess the credibility of predictive models. Each approach usually works well for a specific type of model, and under some epistemic conditions that are normally satisfied within that specific research domain. Some regulatory agencies recently started to consider evidences of safety and efficacy on new medical products obtained using computer modelling and simulation (which is referred to as In Silico Trials); this has raised the attention in the computational medicine research community on the regulatory science aspects of this emerging discipline. But this poses a foundational problem: in the domain of biomedical research the use of computer modelling is relatively recent, without a widely accepted epistemic framing for model credibility. Also, because of the inherent complexity of living organisms, biomedical modellers tend to use a variety of modelling methods, sometimes mixing them in the solution of a single problem. In such context merely adopting credibility approaches developed within other research communities might not be appropriate. In this paper we propose a theoretical framing for assessing the credibility of a predictive models for In Silico Trials, which accounts for the epistemic specificity of this research field and is general enough to be used for different type of models. This work was supported by the Mobilise-D project that has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No. 820820. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). Content in this publication reflects the authors' view and neither IMI nor the European Union, EFPIA, or any Associated Partners are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.

Der Beitrag untersucht den Auftritt von Korrespondenten in Nachrichtensendungen des deutschen Fernsehens während des Irakkrieges 2003. An einigen exemplarischen Analysen wird gezeigt, wie das Problem der Herstellung von Glaubwürdigkeit medialrhetorisch reflektiert werden kann und welche pragmatischen Lösungen Korrespondenten von CNN (Michael Savidge), RTL (Antonia Rados) und ARD in den ersten Tagen des Irakkrieges von 2003 gefunden haben. Die televisuelle Textur der Korrespondentendarstellungen dient weniger der Benachrichtigung über den Krieg als der Beglaubigung der Nachricht und soll den Augenzeugenstatus des Korrespondenten etablieren und erhalten. "Beglaubigung funktioniert im Fernsehen über die Herstellung einer simulierten Doppelpräsenz: Einerseits muss den Zuschauern vor Augen geführt werden, wo auf der Welt sich der Korrespondent befindet und wie dieser Ort mit dem Kriegsereignis zusammenhängt, andererseits müssen sich die Reporter als vertrauenswürdige Oratorfiguren vor der Kamera in Szene setzen und ihren Beobachterstatus überzeugend herstellen. Unterschiedliche Verknüpfungen dieser beiden televisuellen Elemente führen zu unterschiedlichen Beglaubigungsstrategien und offenbaren, was die jeweiligen Reporter und Sender in der Kriegsberichterstattung für angemessen halten." (RG)

The objective of this paper is to derive the characteristics of an effective fiscal governance framework, focusing on the incentives that ensure a commitment to the fiscal rules. We study this problem with the use of econometric tools, complementing this analysis with formal modelling through the lens of a dynamic principal-agent framework. Our study shows that both economic and institutional factors play an important role in incentivising countries' fiscal efforts. Fiscal balances are affected not only by the economic cycle, but, among others, by the level of public debt and the world economic situation. We find that the existence of numerical fiscal rules, their strong legal entrenchment, surveillance mechanisms, and credible sanctions binding the hands of governments have a significant impact on curbing deficits. The relationship between the Commission and European Union (EU) Member States (MS), where the EU authorities act as a collective principal that designs contracts for MS, has elements in common with the assumptions of the principal-agent framework. These are: asymmetry of information, moral hazard, different objectives, and the ability to reward or punish the principal. We use a dynamic principal-agent model and show that to ensure good fiscal performance, indirect benefits should be envisaged for higher levels of fiscal effort. In order to account for the structural differences of exerting effort by different MS, it is efficient to adjust fiscal effort to the level of indebtedness. To ensure a commitment to the rules, MS with difficulties conducting prudent fiscal policies should be required to exert less effort than the MS with more modest levels of debt.

Much recent criticism of policy analysis (PA) has focused on its characteristic rationalist/positivist framework. It is argued that the traditional evaluative criteria of science are not entirely adequate for PA. An alternative external standard for PA seeks to deal with certain subjective elements & with the problem of multiple methods, while retaining an essentially rationalistic perspective. A "credibility standard" is proposed by which the chief criterion for assessing a PA product rests not on conformance to any particular method or result but, instead, on the basis of its credibility. Credibility as used here is a broad concept that includes not only conventional views about validity & technical quality, but also other factors (many of which are contextual) that influence PA users' assessment of the utility of particular PA products. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 95 References. Modified AA

Credibility and the international monetary regime : theoretical and historical perspectives / Michael D. Bordo and Ronald MacDonald -- Credibility and fundamentals : were the classical and inter-war gold standards well-behaved target zones? / Paul Hallwood, Ronald MacDonald, and Ian Marsh -- Interest rate interactions in the classical gold standard, 1880-1914 : was there any monetary independence? / Michael D. Bordo and Ronald MacDonald -- Realignment expectations and the US dollar, 1890-1897 : was there a peso problem? / by C. Paul Hallwood, Ronald MacDonald, and Ian W. Marsh -- The inter-war gold exchange standard : credibility and monetary independence / Michael D. Bordo and Ronald MacDonald -- Crash! : expectational aspects of the UK's and the USA's departures from the inter-war gold standard / C. Paul Hallwood, Ronald MacDonald, and Ian W. Marsh -- Did impending war in Europe help destroy the gold bloc in 1936? : an internal inconsistency hypothesis / Paul Hallwood, Ronald MacDonald, and Ian Marsh -- Sterling in crisis, 1964-1967 / Michael D. Bordo, Ronald MacDonald, and Michael J. Oliver -- On the mean-reverting properties of target zone exchange rates : some evidence from the ERM / Myrvin Anthony and Ronald MacDonald -- Credibility and interest rate discretion in the ERM / Hali Edison and Ronald MacDonald

This article addresses a key problem confronted by immigration judges (IJs) in their assessment of the asylum claims of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children – who are often not allowed to speak or participate in their own hearings – namely the manner in which asylum legal procedure is intertwined with an IJ's decision to refuse the claim on the basis of adverse credibility. This article has three linked aims: to examine research that looks at how IJs decide credibility; to set out an ethnographic approach to better understand IJs' decision-making; and to argue that asylum tribunals need to adopt appropriate guidelines.

5: Dilemmas of information and accountability: foreign aid donors and local development NGOsIntroduction; NGOs involved in development assistance: an overview of the actors; Why is credibility a problem?; Implications for donors; Implications for NGOs; Conclusions; 6: In defense of virtue: credibility, legitimacy dilemmas, and the case of Islamic Relief; Virtue under attack; Islamic Relief; Giving while Islamic; Nothing to hide; Card-carrying humanitarians; The benefits and costs of legitimacy in the West; Conclusion; 7: Monitoring repayment in online peer-to-peer lending; Introduction.

Prior theories of individual behavior in recognizing public problems have centered on the role of policy entrepreneurs; institutional effects; information; and cultural, political, and social pressures. Our extension of these theories suggests that policy problem recognition is an attitudinal evaluation process. If the information is considered valid and the new attitude is negative in valence, then a policy problem is recognized. To test this theory, we use an embedded experiment in a national survey to measure the effect of persuasive messages on the concern for global warming. We find that the negativity of the message and the credibility of the source of the message both affect the level of increase in concern for global warming. Further, the impact of the message from the source is conditional based upon the recipient's ideology. This suggests that policy problem recognition is attitudinal and thus incorporates both analytical and affective components.

"As political science has come to depend more and more on quantitative methods, with a significant focus on causal identification (put simply, "what causes what"), there has been a growing concern that the questions scholars address are getting smaller, shrinking to include only those topics for which the so-called "identification problem" can be satisfactorily solved. Yet even if this problem cannot yet be solved for many important and complex topics--democracy, inequality, violence, stability, and many more--there is much left to learn; in particular, clear theories that provide better insight into the central mechanisms at work. These theories can help orient new empirical work, thus fueling a virtuous cycle between empirical and theoretical insights. In this ambitious book. Ashworth et al address this key challenge in the field with a new vision of how to connect empirical and theoretical work, one rooted in the idea of "all else equal." Theory, the authors argue, implicitly rests of the idea of "all-else-equal," and it's precisely this question that empirical work attempts to confirm. Thus theory and empirics have an intrinsic connection, and in recognizing this scholars can bridge the gap between the two. The first part of the book examines the "all-else-equal" connection and goes on to show how how theoretical models yield empirical implications and how substantive identification is the lynch-pin of a credible research design. The second part then follows the progressive back-and-forth between theory and empirics in existing scholarship, breaking these interactions into five types: reinterpreting, elaboration, distinguishing, disentangling, and modeling the research design. Each chapter in this section provides concrete examples, discussing a handful of papers that illustrates the relevant interaction between theory and empirics. The overall goal of the book is to facilitate a closer and more productive interaction between theory and empirics in social science"--