Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Museo De Aguas De Alicante El Agua En El Origen De Alicante Una Visión Histórico-Arqueológica Desde La Prehistoria Hasta La Época Moderna, Pablo Rosser

pablo rosser

A partir de restos arqueológicos, de documentación de archivo y de cartografía histórica, se hace una evolución sobre cómo el agua y su uso permitió el asentamiento de población en Alicante desde el neolítico hasta época contemporánea.

The Future Of Personalization At News Websites: Lessons From A Longitudinal Study, Neil Thurman, Steve Schifferes

Neil Thurman

This paper tracks the recent history of personalization at national news websites in the United Kingdom and United States, allowing an analysis to be made of the reasons for and implications of the adoption of this form of adaptive interactivity. Using three content surveys conducted over three and a half years, the study records—at an unprecedented level of detail—the range of personalization features offered by contemporary news websites, and demonstrates how news organizations increasingly rely on software algorithms to predict readers’ content preferences. The results also detail how news organizations’ deployment of personalization on mobile devices, and in conjunction with …

Contested Migration And Settler Politics In Cyprus, Neophytos Loizides

Neophytos Loizides

Immigration and settler literatures provide contrasting approaches to the evaluation of conflict between ‘newcomers’ and ‘indigenous’ groups. On the one hand, immigration studies emphasize that newcomers, particularly migrants, almost never fight civil wars; on the other hand, studies on settlers in contested territories expect inherently unstable relations between settlers and native populations affected by colonization projects. While each provides strong evidence to support its argument, neither literature has adequately accounted for hybrid cases where the settler and migrant categories have become almost indistinguishable. The article focuses on Cyprus as a paradigmatic such case. Specifically, it looks at populations transferred from …

A Trans-Atlantic Conversation On Responsible Innovation And Responsible Governance, Sally Randles, Jan Youtie, David Guston, Barbara Harthorn, Chris Newfield, Philip Shapira, Fern Wickson, Arie Rip, René Von Schomberg, Nick Pidgeon

Philip Shapira

How can innovation be balanced with responsible governance? Responsible innovation and responsible governance are broad concepts which mean different things to different groups. This paper presents the results of a roundtable held at the Society for Nanotechnology and Emerging Technologies (S.NET) 2011 conference with academics and policymakers from Europe and the US. The results of this roundtable discussion raise issues of definition, lack of consensus, and the role of philosophy versus practical intervention.

A Transformação Dos Sistemas Partidários Da Europa Ocidental, Por Otto Kirchheimer [Tradução], Paulo S. Peres

Paulo S. Peres

Esse texto foi um capítulo de um livro, publicado em 1966, que trazia resultados de pesquisas comparadas sobre os partidos políticos, sob a perspectiva do desenvolvimento político, e que foi parte de uma série de publicações intitulada Studies in Political Development. O tipo partidário catch-all, introduzido aqui por Kirchheimer, ainda é amplamente utilizado nos estudos partidários em todo o mundo, e este texto continua sendo um dos mais citados na Ciência Política até hoje. Embora a maior parte de seus escritos seja na língua alemã e, portanto, inacessível ao grande público, este pequeno trabalho em inglês, mais acessível, portanto, fez …

Arm Chair Activism: Serious Games Usage By Ingos For Educational Change, Payal Arora, Sorina Itu

Payal Arora

The battle between educators and entertainers continue when it comes to gaming. While this is so, the edutainment battleground has expanded to include actors outside formal schooling agencies, namely International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs). These actors employ digital games with the aim to educate and activate towards specific social causes. These serious games are viewed to have tremendous potential for behavioral change through their interactive and persuasive aspects. This paper examines serious games deployed by certain prominent INGOs and analyzes the educative aspects of such new media platforms. What is revealed at the design, audience, and content level compel us to …

Your Kool-Aid Is Not My Kool-Aid: Ideologies On Microfinance Within An Ingo Culture, Payal Arora

Payal Arora

Development investigations focus on synergies of institutional cultures for policy and practice. International non-governmental organisations (INGOs) currently enjoy a privileged position as harbingers of world culture unity. While there is contestation on INGOs as monolithic entities, few studies delve into the voices of actors within INGOs to provide for a more pluralistic perspective. This paper separates the actors from their institution by examining their different socio-cultural takes that drive them. This emphasises that as projects and visions come and go, institutional actors draw on their own philosophy that does not necessarily mirror their institution's stance. Here, the focus is on …

The Folksong Jukebox: Singing Along For Social Change In Rural India, Payal Arora

Payal Arora

In designing digital literacy content for marginalized demographics, we need to garner local resources to structure engaging and meaningful media experiences. This paper examines the socio-cognitive implications of a novel edutainment product in rural India on learning, stemming from an e-development initiative funded by Hewlett-Packard. This product encapsulates a multiplicity of media forms: text, audio and visual, with social-awareness folk themes endemic to the locality. It uses the karaoke ‘same language subtitling’ feature that won the World Bank Development Marketplace Award in 2002 due to its simple yet innovative application that has proven to have an impact on reading skills. …

Market Access And Information Technology Adoption: Historical Evidence From The Telephone In Bavaria, Florian Ploeckl

Florian Ploeckl

Information technology, like the telephone, influences market access; this paper answers the question about a reverse effect, does market access affect information technology, in particular its adoption? Using the historical case of the introduction of the telephone in Bavaria, I demonstrate with a rank, order and stock effects diffusion model how market access affects the diffusion of local telephone exchanges over towns as well as the rate of adoption of telephone lines within towns. The results of a duration analysis show that market access speeds up the diffusion, a spatial correlation specification demonstrates that this is not just a geographic …

Space, Settlements, Towns: The Influence Of Geography And Market Access On Settlement Distribution And Urbanization, Florian Ploeckl

Florian Ploeckl

The spatial distribution of economic activity is strongly linked to the structure of the urban system. The origin and development of the spatial pattern of this system is separated into two stages, the diffusion of settlements and their potential transition to urban status. The theoretical framework incor porates the influence of geographic characteristics and location interdependence as central mechanisms in both stages. Their relative importance for both is tested empirically with the historical settlement pattern in Saxony as a case study. After investigating with a spatial point process approach how geographic endowments and location interdependence shape the spatial distribution of …

Endowments And Market Access; The Size Of Towns In Historical Perspective: Saxony 1550-1834, Florian Ploeckl

Florian Ploeckl

The spatial concentration of people into towns shapes the population distribution, the factors explaining town size are therefore important determinants on the spatial distribution of people. This paper uses a historical case study, Saxony in 1834, to analyze empirically the relative impact of endowments and agglomeration based on the application of a New Economic Geography model. The model and data allow the analysis of the complete population distribution, from large cities down to the smallest village. The results suggest that location characteristics explain the relative size of settlements, but only 9% of absolute town and 2% of absolute village population. …

Political Competition Between Differentiated Candidates, Stefan Krasa, Mattias K. Polborn

Mattias K Polborn

We introduce a framework of electoral competition in which voters have general preferences over candidates' immutable characteristics (such as gender, race or previously committed policy positions) and flexible policy positions. Candidates are uncertain about the distribution of voter preferences and choose policy positions to maximize their winning probability. We characterize a property of voter utility functions (``uniform candidate ranking'', UCR) that captures a form of separability between fixed characteristics and policy. When voters have UCR preferences, candidates' equilibrium policies converge in any strict equilibrium. In contrast, notions like competence or complementarity lead to non-UCR preferences and policy divergence. In particular, …

When Educators Are The Learners: Private Contracting By Public Schools, Silke Forbes, Nora Gordon

Nora Gordon

We investigate decision-making and the potential for social learning among school administrators in the market for school reform consulting services. Specifically, we estimate whether public schools are more likely to choose given Comprehensive School Reform service providers if their “peer” schools—defined by common governance or geography—have performed unusually well with those providers in the past. We find strong evidence that schools tend to contract with providers used by other schools in their own districts in the past, regardless of past performance. In addition, our point estimates are consistent with school administrators using information from peers to choose the plans they …

Conseil Et Coaching Intensifs Pour Demandeurs D’Emploi Âgés : Une Voie Pour Améliorer Leurs Chances Sur Le Marché Du Travail ?, Patrick P. Arni

Patrick P. Arni

(c.f. étude)

¿Adónde Chingados Va México?, Salvador Marti I Puig

Salvador Marti i Puig

No abstract provided.

The Use Of Social Media As A Tool For Collaborative Research On The U.S.-Mexico Border, Jeremy Slack, Scott Whiteford, Sonia Bass, Alison Lee

Scott Whiteford

This paper examines the use of social media in a large bi-national research project. The ongoing project includes a detailed survey of recently deported undocumented migrants in six Mexican cities. We discuss some of the challenges and successes of complex research and data management, including sampling strategies, shared methodological decision-making, coordinating sub-projects and student theses, and dealing with the ever-present challenge of drug-related violence at our field sites. This project is linked to a second ongoing project on migrant-sending communities in Puebla. After discussing the use of technology as a tool for collaborative research, we transition into a discussion of …

Good Enough Governance Wie Kommt Der Südsudan Zu Tragfähiger Staatlichkeit Und Funktionierender Verwaltung?, Marcus Schaper

Marcus Schaper

Sicherheit und staatlicher Aufbau werden heute bei der Stabilisierung und Friedenssicherung fragiler Staaten immer zusammen gedacht. Im Südsudan steht das nächste große Staatsaufbauprojekt an, von dem für die Sicherheitslage in der volatilen Region am Horn von Afrika viel abhängt.

Bisher haben westliche Staatsaufbaustrategien den westlichen demokratischen Nationalstaat und seine Verwaltung zum Vorbild genommen, um Unterstützung beim Aufbau ähnlicher Strukturen zu leisten, zuletzt im Irak und in Afghanistan. Die Ergebnisse dieser Strategien sind sehr durchwachsen. Kritiker führen an, dass die schlechte Performanz an mangelnder Berücksichtigung der Bedürfnisse und vorhandener Governance-Strukturen in den Zielländern liegt.

In der Forschung werden mit hybrid political …

Professional Advice From Randomly Transparent Committees, Saptarshi P. Ghosh, Jaideep Roy

Saptarshi P Ghosh

This paper studies voting behaviour of careerist experts (who have expertise in three independent and equally important dimensions) in a secret committee where voting profiles get `leaked' to the public with an exogenously given probability. We focus on \emph{informative} voting, where every expert votes in accordance to his privately formed posterior probability and \emph{social welfare}, which is the ex-ante gain of the society from a correct decision in every dimension. We show that for informative voting to be obtained as an equilibrium outcome, it is important that the committee uses the unanimity voting rule along with an intermediate probability of …

Media Persuasion And Voter Welfare, Saptarshi P. Ghosh, Jaideep Roy, Peter Postl

Saptarshi P Ghosh

We study information transmission where an informed media, whose interests are partially in conflict with a finite group of rational voters, transmits news items in an attempt to manipulate democratic decisions. In a common-interest two-alternative voting model where due to reputation concerns the media can credibly commit to send any news reliably, we show that even if voters welcome the news when it arrives, media's presence can hurt their ex-ante welfare in both large and small constituencies.

Corporate Performance, Ceo Power And Ceo Turnover: Evidence From Malaysian Public Listed Companies, Rokiah Ishak

rokiah ishak

This paper seeks to determine the impact of firm performance and CEO power on CEO turnover. Research in CEO turnover literature found that corporate performance is frequently used as an indicator to evaluate the effectiveness of CEO effort and findings from most of these studies indicate that the turnover rate of CEO is higher for poor performing firms when compared to well performing firms. Furthermore, social network theory and human capital theory suggest that CEOs gain their power from their educational background; skill and functional background; special expertise; experience; industry specialization; prestige; ownership; age; and length of tenure. This power …

Rummaging Through The Bottom Of Pandora’S Box: Funding Predatory Pricing Through Contemporaneous Recoupment, Shaun D. Ledgerwood, Wesley J. Heath

Shaun D. Ledgerwood

Predatory pricing doctrine is currently a dead area of the law. To proceed beyond summary judgment, a plaintiff must prove the predation created a "dangerous probability" of supracompetitive pricing as the mechanism for recouping the losses “invested” in the predation. This requires proof that the predator sold products below its average variable cost and raised an entry barrier that ultimately enabled the recoupment of profits at some later time. We offer an alternative to this two-phased recoupment model. In this paper we show that a multiproduct retailer can target loss leading behavior in a market segment to punish or eliminate …

Course Outline, Contemporary Issues In Human Development And Policy, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

This is the course outline for 'Contemporary Issues in Human Development and Policy: A New Millennium Perspective' January-May 2012, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai.

Hunger, Ethics And The Right To Food, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

he management of hunger has to look into the issues of availability, accessibility and adequacy of food supply. From an ethical perspective, this paper argues in favour of the right to food. But, for this to become viable, the state has to come up with an appropriate and effective bill on food and nutrition security, address the issue of inadequate provisioning of storage space by state agencies leading to rotting of food grains - a criminal waste when people are dying of hunger; and rely on local level institutions involving the community, that complement the administrative structure to identify the …

Access To Land: Some Issues, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

The paper, or rather note, is a brief review of some existing literature. It underscores the need for improved land access to the tiller from the point of view of both equity and efficiency. Some of the suggestions are: (i) opening up of the land lease market so that tenancy does not go underground (ii) in states like West Bengal where tenancy is protected, provision could be made to make them owners in part of the land while giving up claims for the rest, (iii) reduce transaction costs in land markets, which include fees but also bribes being paid, (iv) …

Understanding Engagement In Science Education: The Psychological And The Social, Stacy Olitsky, Catherine Milne

Stacy Olitsky

Traditionally, engagement as a feature of student action has been the purview of psychologists seeking to identify the individual variables that come together to constitute student engagement. Recognition of the complexity of the concept has led to multidimensional models that include behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. Data for these studies typically are culled from surveys of individual students. However, such approaches have two limitations – there is no place for examining collective engagement and the role of classroom interactions for engendering engagement is not sufficiently emphasized. In this chapter, we explore sociological approaches that can offer the possibility for developing …

Combatting Non-State Actors, Victor H. Sundquist

Victor H Sundquist

Over the years, organizations such as the Hezbollah, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) have provided examples of successful frameworks for the development of violent non-state actors that have the ability to influence populations inside a nation-state. In many instances, these organizations are complex and sometimes maintain state sponsorship links outside of the nation-state itself. Furthermore, well-equipped militias and quasi-governmental frameworks provide services to the local populace in order to broaden the violent non-state organization’s political influence in the area. In fact, some incidents indicate that the populace often depends solely …

Situational Awareness In Mass Emergency: A Behavioral And Linguistic Analysis Of Microblogged Communications, Sarah E. Vieweg

Sarah E. Vieweg

In times of mass emergency, users of Twitter (a popular microblogging service) often communicate information about the event, some of which contributes to situational awareness. Situational awareness refers to a state of understanding the “big picture” in time- and safety-critical situations. The more situational awareness people have, the better equipped they are to make informed decisions. Given that hundreds of millions of Twitter communications (known as “tweets”) are sent every day and emergency events regularly occur, automated methods are needed to identify those tweets that contain actionable, tactical information. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how Twitter is …

"Because That's Where The Money Is": A Theory Of Corporate Legal Compliance, William Bradford

william bradford

Upon his capture in 1934, the legendary bank robber Willie Sutton was asked by FBI agents, Why do you rob banks, Willie? Sutton, who believed the question to be rhetorical, replied, dryly, Because that's where the money is. In other words, Sutton understood his interrogator to be inquiring as to why he robbed banks rather than, say, homes, or gas stations, or church offering plates. Had he understood the query as intended - i.e., what was it about Willie Sutton the impelled Willie Sutton to crime when many others, struggling to survive the Great Depression, were not? - Sutton could …

I Want To See It: A Usability Study Of Digital Content Integrated Into Finding Aids., Tracy M. Jackson

Tracy M. Jackson

This paper presents the findings of a usability study conducted on finding aids from the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives at UNC-Chapel Hill. The study focused on digital content from archival collections that is made available through these finding aids using CONTENTdm (CDM); sought to explore how users accessed and understood this digital content; and followed up on several aspects of a similar usability study conducted at the Southern Historical Collection in 2009. Findings indicated that the digital content integrated into finding aids was largely intuitive but that it could be made more consistently usable; advanced users and users with …

Internal Trade And Aggregate Productivity, Trevor Tombe, Jennifer Winter

Trevor Tombe

The positive link between international trade and productivity is well established. However, research on magnitude and consequences of internal trade barriers, which inhibit the efficient geographic distribution of production within a country, is limited. Unique Canadian data provides an ideal opportunity to measure the magnitude - and impact on productivity - of barriers to internal trade. Using a flexible, micro-founded approach, we measure internal trade barriers between Canadian provinces. We find between-province trade costs average 30%, rising to nearly 50% in poor regions, net of distance effects. We then adapt a new-trade model to estimate the productivity impact of these …