Search results

International audience ; This chapter traces the evolution of legal conditions meant to support the production and flourishing of "commons-based peer production" in a diversity of fields covered by copyright, mostly in the digital realm. From software to creative works, including scientific articles, cultural heritage, public sector information, and open data, a wealth of digital, knowledge, intellectual or information commons can be peer produced. The rules which guarantee that they can remain in the commons, under open conditions, have been the subject of heated debates about the politics of technology and heavy legal fine-tuning along the years, opposing different definitions and nuances in openness reflecting underlying philosophies within the peer production political economy, such as liberal and commons-based approaches.

The Openness Position Paper published by the Arqus European University Alliance emphasises that Arqus institutions, in line with the policies, roadmaps and strategies of the EU and a wide range of stakeholders, are striving jointly to make further progress towards realising Open Science. The Position Paper identifies and acknowledges aims and values of Open Science and relates them to values, principles, and standards shared by the Arqus Alliance, followed by a vision for a future with Open Science. In the interest of a nuanced picture, the Position Paper discusses not only desired effects, but also possible areas of tension related to Open Science. It presents a wide range of specific aims and recommendations for each of the eleven elements of Open Science defined by the Arqus Openness Task Force: Governance Publications (including Open Access) Data (including research data management, FAIR and Open Data) Infrastructures (including support staff, Open Science software and tools, repositories, Open Labs) Methods (including source code, preregistration, materials, workflows, protocols, lab notes) Awareness and training (including education of early-stage researchers) Evaluation (including Open Metrics, research assessment, Open Peer Review, rewards and incentives) Communication (including multilingualism) Citizen Science Open Education Open Innovation The Position Paper concludes with an annex that highlights the progress already made in the implementation and support of Open Science practices at Arqus institutions.

AbstractIn this paper, we explore the relationship between international trade openness and two major political distortions, political uncertainty, and political polarization. We consider two measures of trade openness, the trade expenditures and the number of trade partners, as well as their volatility. As political distortions and trade characteristics of the country are endogenously related, we instrument the political uncertainty by the standard deviation of the effective political leaders' ages of a country and the minimum age of the political leaders of a country's neighbors. We find that political uncertainty reduces the level of trade openness and increases the volatility of trade openness while political polarization negatively affects both the level and the volatility of trade openness. We propose a simple theoretical model that provides the intuition on the relationship between political distortions and trade openness.

Purpose
Using an extensive data set of 137 nations spanning the period 2002–2014, this paper aims to examine the effect of banking sector openness on entrepreneurship, as measured by new business entry rate.


Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a panel data estimation framework covering 137 nations during 2002–2014. This study uses fixed effects, two-stage instrumental variables, two-step systems-generalized method of moments and difference-in-difference estimation methodologies.


Findings
Greater banking sector openness significantly increases new business formations. This paper finds a one-unit increase in the share of non-residential bank loans leads to 1.25 new business start-ups in the average nation. Likewise, a unit increase in the ratio of external to domestic deposits raises new business formation by 1.31 new businesses. Furthermore, the positive impact of banking sector openness on entrepreneurial activities is strengthened in nations with deeper financial markets, ones with better business environments to start a business and those with higher economic growth and development.


Practical implications
These findings have key implications for policy measures on both institutional business entry reforms and banking sector openness and the interaction between the two. From a policy perspective, the results show greater banking sector openness can only maximize its benefits on entrepreneurship in the presence of an effective institutional framework and sound macroeconomic fundamentals in host nations. It is also imperative that policymakers simplify regulations for the entry of new businesses. Additionally, achieving higher economic growth rates and greater economic affluence should allow both current and potential business owners to respond better to changes in financing conditions like greater access to loans from foreign banks.


Originality/value
Entrepreneurship and new business formation are central to any economic and business activity in a nation. The entrance of new firms into an economy creates jobs, fosters research, diffusion of knowledge and innovation and contributes to economic growth. Liberalizing a nation's banking industry may represent an invaluable source of capital for new entrepreneurs and foster the creation of new companies. However, there is scant literature that has empirically examined the impact of opening up a nation's banking sector on new business formations.

Studies of hegemonic stability tend to specify periods when hegemony is present or absent in the world system. Periods in which hegemony is present are expected to exhibit openness for trade. Periods in which hegemony is absent should be associated with trade closure. Partially as a consequence of this nominal measurement strategy, scholars continue to be unsure whether hegemony & systemic leadership are linked to the openness of the world's trading system. We contend that analysts need to devote more attention to the sources of preponderance & less to its arbitrary presence or absence. Focusing on the US, 1870-1990, we first articulate a theory linking certain political-economic systemic leadership variables to trade openness, in terms of the directions, signs, & diffusion speed of the causal links. We then estimate Granger causality & distributed lag models to test our predictions empirically. The empirical results support our theoretical interpretation. The Granger causalities between world trade openness & the systemic leadership variables are found to be reciprocal, with the effects of systemic leadership on world trade openness working faster than those of world trade openness on the hegemon. World trade openness exerts a negative effect on systemic leadership, while systemic leadership promotes world trade openness. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 109 References. Adapted from the source document.

SUMMARYOne of the key features of research on income inequality is the search for a Kuznets curve. Two curvilinear relationships in particular have been documented in the literature: one between inequality and income and the other between inequality and environmental factors. More recently, inequality and its link to trade liberalisation has received a good deal of attention, not least because it is among the major controversies provoked by the globalisation process. The outcomes for developing countries of greater openness do not fit neatly with the predictions of standard trade theory. Given this, it is natural to ask whether the relationship between trade openness and inequality may be better understood in terms of the Kuznets hypothesis. To this end, the study tests the Kuznets hypothesis in the context of trade liberalisation using data for Latin America. The evidence is new and is consistent with the Kuznets hypothesis: inequality increases with trade openness until a critical level of openness is reached after which inequality begins to fall. The curvilinear relationship between openness and inequality suggests that Latin American countries should continue with trade liberalisation measures but also introduce redistribution policies to ease the (initial) adverse consequences of liberalisation.

Using a panel dataset of 206 non‐U.S. subnational governments from 31 countries between 2004 and 2010, this study investigates the relationship between economic openness and sub‐sovereign borrowings. We find that financial openness generates a positive impact on the size of subnational obligations in developing countries but a negative effect in developed countries. It also improves the credit ratings of subnational jurisdictions regardless of the country's development status. However, trade openness does not show any effects on subnational borrowings. To account for these findings that cannot be fully explained by existing theories, we propose a new efficiency hypothesis.

This article explores the issues surrounding the notions of secrecy and openness in donor insemination (DI). Secrecy in DI is first placed in historical context, with an outline of some of the main reasons that secrecy has been advocated. The concept of openness is then introduced, and some of the arguments for a more open approach to DI are presented. On this basis, the responses of various governments to calls for more openness are outlined, and the social policy implications of these are discussed. It is concluded that more openness in DI would be advantageous to all of those involved. Couples, professionals, and policymakers are therefore urged to reexamine their views about the need for maintaining secrecy in the area.

Trust and openness are central concerns in humanistic psychology. A typology of trust, openness, and related variables is presented and utilized as a framework for the listing of associated research instruments. Thirteen of the instruments are suggested for current use in studies of trust and openness.