Suchergebnisse

This study examines fuel switching in electricity production following the introduction of the European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) for greenhouse gas emissions. A short-run restricted cost equation is estimated with carbon permits, high-carbon fuels, and low carbon fuels as variable inputs. Shadow values and substitution elasticities for carbon-free energy resources from nuclear, hydroelectric and renewable sources are imputed from the cost equation. The empirical analysis examines 12 European countries using monthly data on fuel use, prices, and electricity generation during the first phase of the European Emissions Trading System. Despite low emission permit prices, this study finds statistically significant substitution between fossil fuels and carbon free sources of energy for electric power production. Significant substitution between fossil fuels and nuclear energy also was found. Still, while 18 of the 20 substitution elasticities are statistically significant, they are all less than unity, consistent with limited substitution. Overall, these results suggest that prices for carbon emission permits relative to prices for carbon and carbon free sources of energy do matter but that electric power producers have limited operational flexibility in the short-run to satisfy greenhouse gas emission limits.

Two decades have passed since the first wave of balanced budget legislation (BBL) in Canada. This passage of time and the recent economic downturn afford researchers the opportunity to evaluate the success of these regulations in encouraging fiscal responsibility. This paper provides both a quantitative analysis of the impact of BBL on expenditure growth and a qualitative assessment of BBL in Western Canada as these four western provinces confronted the Great Recession of 2008–09. On both accounts, our analysis suggests that BBL did not fare particularly well in terms of its original objectives. Our empirical analysis shows that BBL had no discernible effect in restraining expenditure growth relative to revenue growth in most provinces, leaving them in a vulnerable fiscal position to avert deficits during economic recession. We illustrate this vulnerability among Western Canadian governments when confronted with the Great Recession. In other words, BBL was neither strong enough to limit expenditure growth during the good times nor adequate to prevent governments from choosing to run deficits during the bad times. Our analysis suggests that, like any piece of legislation, BBL is only as effective as the political will and public support surrounding it.

The concept of electoral competition is relevant to a variety of research agendas in political science, yet the question of how to measure electoral competition has received little direct attention. We revisit the distinction proposed by Giovanni Sartori between competition as a structure or rule of the game and competitiveness as an outcome of that game and argue that to understand which elections can be lost (and therefore when parties and leaders are potentially threatened by electoral accountability), scholars may be better off considering the full range of elections where competition is allowed. We provide a data set of all national elections between 1945 and 2006 and a measure of whether each election event is structured such that the competition is possible. We outline the pitfalls of other measures used by scholars to define the potential for electoral competition and show that such methods can lead to biased or incomplete findings. The new global data on elections and the minimal conditions necessary for electoral competition are introduced, followed by an empirical illustration of the differences between the proposed measure of competition and existing methods used to infer the existence of competition.

Innovation inducement prizes have been used for centuries. In the United States, a recent federal policy change—the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010—clarified and simplified a path by which all federal agencies can offer innovation inducement prizes, thus intensifying interest in how government agencies can most effectively design and apply such prizes. This paper aims to review and synthesize the academic literature on innovation inducement prizes, to clarify what has been learned that is relevant to current policy discussions, and to highlight unresolved questions that would be fruitful areas for future academic research and policy experimentation. Relative to the existing literature, this paper aims to bridge two gaps. First, I synthesize the academic literature in this area with an eye toward drawing lessons for the types of innovation inducement prizes under consideration by federal agencies under the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act. Second, I discuss the problem of how to evaluate the success or failure of innovation inducement prizes, arguing that careful empirical evaluations of innovation inducement prizes are needed in order to provide guidance to federal agencies (and others) on how to most effectively apply and design innovation inducement prizes. ; National Institute on Aging (Grant Number: T32-AG000186)

Does economic freedom increase the utility of an average citizen? Public choice theory in particular has emphasized the shortcomings of governments and voting processes, and the advantages of relying on markets and individual decision making. However, an increasing amount of people are refusing to accept classical measures like GDP as signs of improvements in welfare. Data on subjective well-being allow economists to test if economic freedom really does improve the overall quality of life. However, existing studies have either failed to control for necessary control variables or lacked theoretical foundation. This paper explains economic and psychological reasons why the influence of economic freedom reaches beyond material well-being. Empirical results from a panel of 86 countries over the 1990-2005 period suggest that economic freedom indeed has a positive effect on happiness. Specifically legal security and property rights, access to sound money, and freedom from excessive regulation are significantly positive throughout the analysis. Regarding freedom to trade, the results show that particularly regulatory trade barriers have a significant negative effect. The positive effect depends on socio-demographic characteristics and is, on average, stronger for poorer countries and left-wing voters, and varies with age.

Legitimacy is a central phenomenon in the realm of every organised society. Its existence is pivotal for the continued existence of structures of governance and political institutions like administrations and legal systems. The legitimation of a political system, or any other social system, is necessary to keep it alive without the use of force. A wide range of hypotheses exists which define legitimacy and try to explain how legitimation is produced by institutions, respectively lent by the subjects of institutions. The evaluation of hypotheses touches on different disciplines, ranging from economics, sociology and political science to psychology, and their various theoretical approaches, from rational choice via cultural theories and organisational studies to behavioural sciences. In this, essay I want to give an overview about the current academic discourse, concentrating on the most prominent and influential works. The paper presents several definitions of what legitimacy entails and how systems and institutions gain legitimacy. Following this review of the academic discourse this essay evaluates the working hypotheses against the backdrop of a particularly interesting empirical case: The case of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), the local government system in India.

The transformation of the public transport system is a common occurrence in cities across the globe and is widely discussed in scholarly and policy circles. However, robust discussion on the transformation of the public transport system, using the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in emerging economies like South Africa, is limited. This article assesses the challenges involved in the transformation of the public road transport system in the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB), with special reference to the BRT system. The empirical data for the study were drawn from the fieldwork, meetings, focus group discussions, and interviews with affected stakeholders and senior managers of NMB who were involved in the implementation of the BRT. The secondary data were drawn from literature, government publications and media. The results reflect that the implementation of the BRT was not easily achieved, as diverse challenges surfaced during the implementation phase. The main challenges include: lack of intensive planning and limited effective stakeholder and affected community engagement. The article concludes that as much as the BRT has credited the public road transportation system innovation in South Africa its implementation was not easy in NMB, and will be an important history for the city.

This book makes an essential contribution to understanding the dynamics of contemporary immigrant inflows and integration in Europe. Though embracing a Continent-wide outlook on migration processes, it accounts, in particular, for Southern and Eastern European perspectives. This is accomplished by analysing the long-term transition countries undergo from net emigration to net immigration, as well as developments in their migrant inflows, integration and policy. Balance is achieved between describing the common European experience and the intra- and inter-regional differences characterising migration's underlying factors and trends. This volume is one of few attempts to conceive of the 'Old Continent' as a common economic and cultural space that fully incorporates its eastern part, while still viewing post-enlargement Europe as an area that – despite nation-specific histories – maintains a high degree of social and political coherence. The book is very comprehensive, with deep insights into aspects of immigration throughout different periods and changing socio-economic environments. Contents come from new empirical evidence, specially designed and collected. A great asset is the mix of authors, representing several academic centres across Europe yet pursuing a common vision of European migration, past, present and future.

The National Weather Service (NWS) is the governmental agency responsible for providing freely available weather forecasts, warnings, watches, and advisories for the protection of life and property. The point-and-click (PnC) forecast webpage is a primary channel through which NWS directly disseminates everyday and hazardous weather forecast information in graphical and textual formats, with a unique forecast for every 2.5 x 2.5 km grid over land in the United States. Because the PnC webpage provides important - and, at times, potentially life-saving - weather information to its millions of users, it is important that the webpage effectively communicates forecast information. This report details a multi-method research project funded by the NWS that (a) assessed the information provided on the PnC webpage from its users' perspectives and (b) designed and evaluated ways to improve how hazardous weather forecast information is communicated on the PnC webpage. Our research revealed a wealth of empirical data about PnC webpage users' uses of, perceptions of, and preferences for the information as well as ways to improve the webpage information to better serve its users. From the results, we identified 13 overarching, key findings as well as important areas for future research.

The dominant paradigm characterizes European Parliament (EP) elections as second-order national elections. Scholars adhering to this view (for example, Marsh, 2008; Reif and Schmitt, 1980; Schmitt, 2005) not only identify these elections as less important, but also emphasize that low turnout in EP elections is unrelated to citizens' support for the European Union (EU). In this article, I challenge this latter proposition. Analyzing all EP elections since 1979, I first find that higher macro-level support for EU membership leads to higher turnout. Second, I discover that changes in aggregate EU support directly trigger changes in turnout rates. Third, a multilevel analysis of Eurobarometer data confirms these macro-level trends at the micro level and finds that citizens who consider their country's membership in the EU "a good thing" have a higher likelihood of voting in EP elections than those who reject it. These findings have both empirical and theoretical implications. Empirically, the low turnout in EU elections is directly linked to citizens' rejection of the EU project. Theoretically, the second-order national election thesis needs to be altered. Turnout in EP elections is driven by not only national-level factors but also citizens' satisfaction with the EU. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

Part 4: Infrastructure and Technology ; International audience ; Standardisation is one of tools of Electronic Government (EGov). It refers to the development where individuals and organizations develop and/or adhere to standard IT solutions and associated work processes. Studies on standardization in information technology (IT) emphasize either only the technical side of standard construction (the 'what' and 'how'), or the socio-organizational side of the contextual processes in which standards emerge (the 'who' and 'when'). Our article has an alternative, socio-technical, approach, which emphasizes 'where' standards crystallize. Our empirical field to find where crystallization occurs concerns the geoIT sector. Through a qualitative approach, the data show that standard crystallization occurs at the hubs of inter-organizational relations, rather than at the top or the bottom of formal organizations. This claim is important because it contradicts the common strategy of standardization, which is largely centralized. Even though government has centralized the creation and distribution of geoIT standards, their actual creation and crystallization occurs at a more decentralized level: across municipalities. The conclusion is that bringing the standardization discussion to a point of where standardization actually happens, provides a better understanding of the socio-technical dynamic of governance of inter-organizational IT.

Northern Ireland remains a deeply divided society. The education system mirrors the broader societal divisions between Catholics and Protestants and the vast majority of students experience an education that remains almost wholly segregated based on religious identification. This paper places that segregation in a political context, by analyzing how the type of political system has impacted education reform as it relates to the development of an integrated education sector. Northern Ireland provides a unique opportunity to test the impact of political systems on education reform because, over the past ninety years, the state has been governed under majoritarian home rule, direct control by an external actor, and consociational home rule. Despite the deeply segmented education system, a group of parents began a concerted push for integrated education beginning in the 1970s. Over the course of three decades, their advocacy spurred substantial reform and served as the catalyst for an integrated education sector that now serves more than five percent of elementary and secondary students. The successes and failures of that movement provide strong empirical evidence that no matter the political system in place, civil society is critical to promoting integrated education reform in deeply divided societies.

Recent patterns of migration indicate that international migrants are not confined to urban gateways. Instead many migrants have settled in new destination areas located in rural and small town areas. While this might appear to be a positive phenomenon for rural areas struggling with decline and stagnation, the reality is that many of these areas are ill-equipped to manage the rate and pace of change that has been witnessed in recent years. Migration to established, typically urban areas has been the subject of extensive research. However, little is known about the way in which migrants navigate their way through social structures as they settle into destinations with little experience of immigration. Using empirical research, this article considers the way in which migrants navigate their way through social structures to establish life in a so-called 'new' migration destination. It analyses the way in which government and civil society respond to their needs of recent arrivals, showing how both NGO's and the statutory sector play an important role in this process. It considers the ramifications for these different sectors and the implications for so-called 'new' destinations as they become more established or 'mature' areas of immigration.