Search

This paper introduces a new and easy-to-determine indicator for research evaluation, namely the percentage of reviews (PR) within a group of papers (articles, notes and reviews). Because reviews are commissioned from, or submitted by, relatively senior researchers, their frequency plausibly provides a measure of the esteem in which a country's (or institution's) top researchers are held. We show that, just as with citation indicators, PR has increased with time, and that it varies substantially with major scientific field and by country, but rather less with sub-field and research level within medical research. It correlates quite well with national citation measures although manifesting an Anglophone bias, and also with the propensity of smaller European countries to co-author papers with US researchers. Two worked examples are given to show potential applications of the new indicator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To develop students' critical thinking is one of the primary goals of a modern democratic school system. However, what is to be developed has been the matter of long‐standing debate. One particular area of conflict has been what role is played by the knowledge concerning the object to be critically thought about. The 'specifists' have asserted that knowledge about the object is the core. The 'generalists' have claimed that there is no need for any actual profound knowledge. Typically, this debate has been held at a theoretical and philosophical level. In this paper, I will make an empirically based contribution to the debate. In a unique approach, I will use a number of student essay responses to argue in favour of a specifist view, and at the same time to question some of the generalists' basic assumptions. The paper ends with an appeal to the generalists to provide us with proper clarification regarding the questions I raise. This is important as they hold the dominant position in the field. If they are to continue to do so, we need to be clear about the accuracy of their basic assumptions. This becomes even more essential as the generalist research has been severely criticised for producing inconclusive results, as well as the fact that the generalist view on critical thinking has been adopted by major policymakers both in Europe and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The top 100 most cited papers in social work journals in 2000–09 were recently listed in a British Journal of Social Work paper by Hodge, Lacasse and Benson. The citations of these 100 papers in a two-year period (2007–09) were identified and a further manual web-based search was conducted to identify some key features of the citing sources. Descriptive statistics are presented on language of publication and national location of citing authors, as well as type of citing source. Bivariate analysis was conducted of the national location of cited journal by national location of citing first author. This analysis shows a strong tendency towards within-country citation in both the UK and USA, providing some evidence of intellectual chauvinism amongst social work academics and, more specifically, evidence of a Great Atlantic Divide. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a systematic account of the idea and content of regional innovation systems following discoveries made by regional scientists, economic geographers and innovation analysts. It considers the conditions and criteria for empirical recognition and judgement as to whether scientifically analysed, concrete cases of innovation activity warrant the designation of regional innovation system. The paper concludes by claiming that the source for Europe's innovation gap with the United States rests on excess reliance on public intervention, which signifies major market failure. The future will require widespread evolution of public innovation support systems along with stronger institutional and organizational support from the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online platforms can support health and educational professionals in their daily work; however, it is challenging to keep online platforms sustainable. This paper aims to indicate the most important factors of platform sustainability from the perspective of professionals involved in online platforms. Further, it aims to understand how these factors operate. A mixed methods study was carried out among professionals from Europe, Australia, the USA and Canada. In the first phase, the importance of 54 factors from the literature was assessed with a questionnaire among 17 professionals. The relative importance of the factors and the consensus regarding this importance were calculated using median scores and interquartile deviations. In total, 19 factors were selected representing general characteristics, characteristics related to the platform, communication, visitor and context. In the second phase, insight was gained regarding the experiences with those factors through 12 individual Skype interviews. The most frequently mentioned important factors of platform sustainability were (i) having sufficient time, resources and expertise, (ii) user friendliness and (iii) creating a sense of belonging. Platforms should use a planned approach to address a combination of factors directly from platform development. Gaining long-term resources is challenging and should be considered from the start of a project by building partnerships. To promote user friendliness, platforms should be simple, have a clear set-up and provide high-quality tools. Finally, establishing a sense of belonging could be supported by branding and face-to-face networking activities. For all aspects, involving visitors and stakeholders is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: measures of physical capability may be predictive of subsequent health, but existing published studies have not been systematically reviewed. We hypothesised that weaker grip strength, slower walking speed and chair rising and shorter standing balance time, in community-dwelling populations, would be associated with higher subsequent risk of fracture, cognitive outcomes, cardiovascular disease, hospitalisation and institutionalisation.Methods: studies were identified through systematic searches of the electronic databases MEDLINE and EMBASE (to May 2009). Reference lists of eligible papers were also manually searched.Results: twenty-four papers had examined the associations between at least one physical capability measure and one of the outcomes. As the physical capability measures and outcomes had been assessed and categorised in different ways in different studies, and there were differences in the potential confounding factors taken into account, this made it impossible to pool results. There were more studies examining fractures than other outcomes, and grip strength and walking speed were the most commonly examined capability measures. Most studies found that weaker grip strength and slower walking speed were associated with increased risk of future fractures and cognitive decline, but residual confounding may explain results in some studies. Associations between physical capability levels and the other specified outcomes have not been tested widely.Conclusions: there is some evidence to suggest that objective measures of physical capability may be predictors of subsequent health in older community-dwelling populations. Most hypothesised associations have not been studied sufficiently to draw definitive conclusions suggesting the need for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the papers within the economics literature that have examined the questions of immigrant welfare use and the responsiveness of immigrants to the incentives created by welfare systems. While our focus is largely on papers looking at the European case, we also draw on studies from the United States, in particular on issues where the European literature is thin. One set of papers asks whether immigrants who are more likely to use welfare are attracted to more generous welfare states. The results from these papers are not clear-cut. Another set of papers asks if immigrants use welfare more intensively than natives and if they assimilate out of or into welfare participation. In most cases, the unadjusted data show higher use of welfare by immigrants, although for some countries, for example Germany, this can be explained by differences in immigrants' characteristics. Yet another set of papers finds that the rate of welfare use by existing migrants can influence the welfare use of newly arrived co-nationals. We illustrate some of these issues by looking at immigrant welfare use in Ireland and the UK. Immigrants in the UK appear to use welfare more intensively than natives, but the opposite appears to be the case in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context/problem: Comparative analysis of relative and absolute mortality differentials between socioeconomic groups are now available. These show consistently increasing relative increases in mortality differentials but complex trends in absolute mortality differentials. Objective: This paper provides an analysis of relative and absolute trends in mortality by cause of death and socioeconomic group (SEG) from 1984 to 2008 among men and active women aged 30-64 years in Ireland and compares these results with recent European and US studies to give an overview of trends. Methods: This paper uses mortality data from the Irish Central Statistics Office from 1984 to 2008 to calculate standardized death rates by age, sex, socioeconomic status and cause of death showing trends in SEG inequalities in mortality in Ireland. These show which specific causes of death are driving all-cause mortality trends. Results: SEG differentials in all-cause mortality among men and women have been increasing since the 1980s. Some of this increase reflects larger falls in cardiovascular causes among advantaged groups, but the trend is largely accounted for by increasing inequalities in mortality in digestive, neoplasm and external causes of deaths. Conclusions: These findings are in line with international findings that show that socioeconomic differentials in digestive, neoplasm and external cause deaths are driving general socioeconomic differentials in all-cause mortality. External cause deaths may have been influenced by levels of economic activity, particularly in construction, during the economic boom among manual workers. Furthermore, deaths from digestive diseases during the 1990s and 2000s may well be the result of increases in liver disease associated with excessive alcohol consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate a model-free term structure of the ex ante dividend risk premium by combining two data sets with different information about future dividends. We aggregate survey forecasts about future dividends for single companies over multiple horizons to construct a term structure of expected S&P 500 dividend growth rates. We use European call and put option prices on the S&P 500 to estimate the term structures of options-implied dividend growth rates and risk-free rates. Applying the method to 2004–2021 data offers a new, ex ante perspective on the conditional time variation of the term structure of the dividend risk premium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tier 1 exposure tools recommended for use under REACH are designed to easily identify situations that may pose a risk to health through conservative exposure predictions. However, no comprehensive evaluation of the performance of the lower tier tools has previously been carried out. The ETEAM project aimed to evaluate several lower tier exposure tools (ECETOC TRA, MEASE, and EMKG-EXPO-TOOL) as well as one higher tier tool (STOFFENMANAGER®). This paper describes the results of the external validation of tool estimates using measurement data. Methods: Measurement data were collected from a range of providers, both in Europe and United States, together with contextual information. Individual measurement and aggregated measurement data were obtained. The contextual information was coded into the tools to obtain exposure estimates. Results were expressed as percentage of measurements exceeding the tool estimates and presented by exposure category (non-volatile liquid, volatile liquid, metal abrasion, metal processing, and powder handling). We also explored tool performance for different process activities as well as different scenario conditions and exposure levels. Results: In total, results from nearly 4000 measurements were obtained, with the majority for the use of volatile liquids and powder handling. The comparisons of measurement results with tool estimates suggest that the tools are generally conservative. However, the tools were more conservative when estimating exposure from powder handling compared to volatile liquids and other exposure categories. In addition, results suggested that tool performance varies between process activities and scenario conditions. For example, tools were less conservative when estimating exposure during activities involving tabletting, compression, extrusion, pelletisation, granulation (common process activity PROC14) and transfer of substance or mixture (charging and discharging) at nondedicated facilities (PROC8a; powder handling only). With the exception of STOFFENMANAGER® (for estimating exposure during powder handling), the tools were less conservative for scenarios with lower estimated exposure levels. Conclusions: This is the most comprehensive evaluation of the performance of REACH exposure tools carried out to date. The results show that, although generally conservative, the tools may not always achieve the performance specified in the REACH guidance, i.e. using the 75th or 90th percentile of the exposure distribution for the risk characterisation. Ongoing development, adjustment, and recalibration of the tools with new measurement data are essential to ensure adequate characterisation and control of worker exposure to hazardous substances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The huge increases in debt-GDP ratios following the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, which are unprecedented except in times of war, has focused attention on the viability of the fiscal positions of EU countries and the US, how to assess this and the likely future evolution of these positions. This paper proposes an indicator of the fiscal stance which computes the fiscal adjustment required to reach a specific debt-GDP targeted given the forecasts of future deficit and interest rates obtained from an unrestricted (recursively-estimated) VAR model. The index is easy to compute and can be decomposed to disclose the different contribution of revenue, expenditure, nominal yields, inflation and growth to the fiscal stance. For this reason it provides a transparent and detailed measure of the fiscal stance, particularly suitable for multi-country surveillance. As a result, the index improves on the tax-gap indicators widely used by governments and international agencies, and is far more informative than formal econometric tests of fiscal sustainability. The time series of the indicator for individual EU countries and the US show that their fiscal position has fluctuated considerably over the last 40 years, and has particularly deteriorated since 2007. The index predicts that the adjustment required to restore pre-crisis debt-GDP levels are higher for high debt countries like Greece, Italy and Portugal. They become more severe the shorter is the time horizon for the adjustment. As a large degree of uncertainty surrounds the assessment of the fiscal stance in the medium and long run, we argue that policy makers should inform their policy based on the worst case scenario predicted by the indicator. - Vito Polito and Michael Wickens [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shows that mispriced deposit insurance and capital regulation were of second-order importance in determining the capital structure of large U.S. and European banks during 1991 to 2004. Instead, standard cross-sectional determinants of non-financial firms’ leverage carry over to banks, except for banks whose capital ratio is close to the regulatory minimum. Consistent with a reduced role of deposit insurance, we document a shift in banks’ liability structure away from deposits towards non-deposit liabilities. We find that unobserved time-invariant bank fixed-effects are ultimately the most important determinant of banks’ capital structures and that banks’ leverage converges to bank specific, time-invariant targets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the existence and importance of financing constraints for R&D investments in large EU and US manufacturing companies over the period 2000-2007. The main results obtained by estimating error-correction equations suggest that the sensitivity of R&D investments to cash flow variations are important for European firms while US firms do not appear to be financially constrained. In terms of policy implications, these results suggest improving the conditions for access to external capital to finance R&D activities in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the impact of differences in practice between European and US national statistical offices when classifying R&D expenditure by industry. We examine the impact of these differences on the role of the services sector in the EU-US R&D investment gap. According to official statistics, services industries appear to explain nearly the entire EU-US R&D intensity gap (US services have much higher R&D intensities). We argue that this is almost entirely the result of a statistical artefact: EU statistical offices redistribute R&D in the services sector to the corresponding manufacturing sectors to a much greater extent than in the US. Thus the EU R&D deficit against the US does not specifically emanate from the services sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct a simple endogenous growth model to analyse the relationship between the composition of fiscal policy, economic growth and employment. The government sets different tax rates on labour income, capital income, and private consumption to finance productive expenditures, utility-enhancing consumption expenditures, and transfers related to structural non-employment. Our model is able to explain the different employment and growth records of European Countries and the US since the 1990s. We use the model to investigate the strength of the effects of various fiscal policy shocks on steady state employment and growth. We also develop the transitional dynamics for many variables, including welfare. Our results highlight the trade-offs that may occur between performance indicators, and between the short and the long-run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the advanced economies. It begins with a discussion of the demographic issues that have played such a large role in the debate on immigration. This is followed by a section on the main problems involved in estimating the fiscal impact of immigration and then a summary of the international evidence on this topic, mostly from Europe and America. Separate sections on the UK and on low-fertility countries follow. The main conclusions are as follows. Highly skilled migrants normally make a large fiscal contribution, whereas unskilled migrants are likely to impose a net cost on native taxpayers if they settle in the receiving country. However, even unskilled migrants may be net contributors if they eventually depart and make few claims on government expenditure while in the country. Most empirical studies find that the fiscal contribution of the immigrant population as a whole is quite small. The positive contribution of some migrants is largely or wholly offset by the negative contribution of others. This finding holds across a variety of countries and methodologies. Estimates of the net fiscal contribution of immigration normally lie within the range ±1 per cent of GDP. There are a few exceptions, but these refer to countries experiencing demographic collapse and they are based on unrealistic assumptions about the inter-generational allocation of future taxes and government expenditure. With more realistic assumptions, the overall fiscal benefit of immigration is quite small, even in these countries. These findings suggest that, in general, there is no strong fiscal case for or against sustained large-scale immigration. The desirability or otherwise of large-scale immigration should be decided on other grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides summary statistics from the KEINS database on academic patenting in France, Italy, and Sweden. It shows that academic scientists in those countries have signed many more patents than previously estimated. This re-evaluation of academic patenting comes by considering all patents signed by academic scientists active in 2004, both those assigned to universities and the many more held by business companies, governmental organizations, and public laboratories. Specific institutional features of the university and research systems in the three countries contribute to explaining these ownership patterns, which are remarkably different from those observed in the USA. In the light of these new data, European universities' contribution to domestic patenting appears not to be much less intense than that of their US counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances our understanding of university spin-off creation and development in environments outside the high-tech cluster of the USA. It adopts a multi-level approach in its examination of this phenomenon in diverse institutional environments. In particular, units of analysis involving universities, technology transfer offices, spin-off firms, finance providers and individual entrepreneurs and teams are analysed. Policy implications are analysed and recommendations are proposed for current policy on university spin-offs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are crucial to the development of the European Research Area. However, unlike in the USA, the availability of quantitative indicators for individual HEI at the European level is severely limited by several methodological issues, data availability problems and national institutional constraints. The paper discusses strategies for collecting and validating data from different national sources; the limitations of the available data for different categories of indicators and, finally, the influence of the heterogeneity of the national HEIs on comparability at the European level. Based on the experience of two recently completed projects, the paper shows that, despite these problems, it is possible to collect relatively coherent data on European HEIs and to develop a set of consequential indicators. Further, it provides advice on how to exploit them for comparative purposes in a sensible way. It concludes by indicating areas where major improvements are urgently needed, and advocates a European S&T Indicators Platform to maintain and develop these data sets long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can European economics become "the most dynamic and competitive in the world"? Using readily accessible data, this paper documents the following aspects. (i) Today, the United States outperforms Europe by a factor of the order of 3, with no clear trend; the Lisbon goal is not in sight. (ii) Europe is not homogeneous; the United Kingdom and the small countries in north central Europe significantly outperform the Big 4 continental countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain); we conclude that the Big 4 should accept English as the lingua franca of economics and implement major institutional reforms. (iii) Some 35 leading economics departments (a dozen from each of these three areas) account for 75% of Europe's research output. (iv) The concentration of research in leading departments is substantial but not exclusive; it is comparable in Europe and the United States, but leading U.S. departments have incomparably more resources and also benefit from access to an integrated labor market. (v) Few PhD programs are of efficient size, especially in Europe, so further concentration is needed. (vi) Second-best funding of higher education calls for block grants to efficient programs; in Europe, these should be organized at the EU level. We conclude with a modest proposal (e15 million per year) consisting of block grants to leading departments and to young academic researchers. Our optimistic verdict is that substantial progress toward the Lisbon goal is in sight, but it requires significant departures from current practices. (JEL: I21, I23) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a three-region framework to examine the effects of European currency unification on EMU and US inflation rates. It considers ways in which increased participation in the EMU might influence inflation choices in Europe and the United States. It also considers how alternative monetary policies and parameter values might influence the extent of participation in the EMU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scandals of corporate governance in the United States and Europe in the aftermath of the TMT bubble captured the public imagination. In play were the interests of senior executives in relation to investors, prompting debate over countries' standards of corporate governance in the global market place. Ahold was (and is) an especially important instance, involving significant internal accounting and reporting failures and poor public disclosure of market-sensitive information. Ahold is also a global corporation cross- listed on major financial markets. In this paper, we report the analysis of market trading in Ahold stock between Amsterdam and New York. It is shown that greater volatility in Amsterdam daily closing prices presaged the crisis to come in Ahold shares implying leakage of information to privileged local insiders, It is also shown that in the aftermath of Ahold's crisis, management responded to the lack of global investor confidence by improving transparency and governance standards consistent with the expectations of global investors. Implications are drawn for the pricing of corporate governance and the process of convergence in national standards of corporate governance. The continuity of different regimes of governance is subject to inter-market arbitrage especially if corporations seek to maintain and enhance their reputations in the global financial market place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wave of financial irregularity in the USA in 2001-2 culminated in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A worldwide stockmarket bubble burst over this same period with the actual market decline being proportionately more severe in Europe. Yet, no corresponding wave of financial scandals involving a similar level of companies occurred in Europe. Given the higher level of public and private enforcement in the USA for securities fraud this contrast seems perplexing. This paper submits that different kinds of scandals characterize different systems of corporate governance. In particular, dispersed ownership systems of governance are prone to the forms of earnings management that erupted in the USA, but concentrated ownership systems are much less vulnerable. Instead, the characteristic scandal in such systems is the appropriation of private benefits of control. This paper suggests that this difference in the likely source of, and motive for, financial misconduct has implications both for the utility of gatekeepers as reputational intermediaries and for design of legal controls to protect public shareholders. The difficulty in achieving auditor independence in a corporation with a controlling shareholder may also imply that minority shareholders in concentrated ownership economies should directly select their own gatekeepers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few case studies exist of applying a sustainable livelihoods approach in Europe or North America. Those that do, suggest that the approach can significantly contribute to community development in a Northern context. This paper describes work in progress in an English market town and looks at differences and commonalities between a sustainable livelihoods approach and the method currently employed by the Countryside Agency. Early lessons indicate that a sustainable livelihoods approach can contribute by building on current methods, including for example, the development of greater understanding of the make-up of a community. Shared learning from both approaches can play a part in building best practice in North and South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the ethnic conflicts in former Yugoslavia, particularly in Kosovo, is presented. It explains the slow response of the international community on the conflict, including the U.S. which did not want to be involved in the conflict because it considered the problem primarily as a European issue. It discusses Europe's challenges in addressing migration issues, as well as why Europeans need to change their attitudes toward immigration and immigrants.

This paper presents the results of research on the effects of organizational level and population or industry-level clocks on organizational mortality rates. It reports estimates of a model in which the effect of organizational age varies by organizational size and the effect of density varies by population age. Analysis of data on the mortality experiences of all firms that produced automobiles in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States during 18 85-1981 reveals complex patterns of effects of organizational age and size. The results concerning density and population age generally support a recent extension of the theory of density-dependent organizational evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How will countries handle idiosyncratic macroeconomic shocks under the single currency? Since the regional adjustment patterns currently prevailing within European currency unions are likely to prevail at the national level under the single currency, looking at the ways in which European countries react to internally asymmetric shocks today provides a good preview for the answer to that question. In this paper, we compare the USA with Germany, Italy and the UK, and with Canada, which is closer to Europe than the USA in its labour market and fiscal institutions. Europe's (and to some extent Canada's) model of regional response differs from that of the USA. Changes in regional real exchange rates are small in all countries. Outside of the USA, however, there is more reliance on interregional transfer payments, less on labour migration, and the pace of regional adjustment appears to be slower. If EMU aims at the same degree of economic and social cohesion that its constituent nations enjoy today, this suggests that its members may find it hard to resist the eventual extension of existing EU mechanisms of income redistribution -- a transfer union. We propose an alternative strategy based on a relaxed Stability Pact, further strictures against central EU borrowing, labour market and fiscal reform, and the issuance by individual member states of debt indexed to nominal GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on several papers and memorandums related to economic conditions in various countries. The Parliamentary documents for 1886 will contain a good deal of evidence of the increasing uneasiness as to the condition and prospects of the foreign trade of England. A Blue Book has been issued, giving the rates of duty levied on imports by the different European countries and the United States; and a second is to give the duties levied by the British colonies, these returns being on the plan of the similar documents published in 1882. The Commission on the Depression of Trade have also collected and published reports from the English consuls, showing the impediments to British trade in the different countries. Another snippet reports that the opening of fertile wheat lands in the United States, and the cheap transportation of grain to Europe have had an influence not only on England and Ireland, but on France, Germany, and Russia. French and German legislation has been invoked to protect the farmer. But now an interesting movement is in progress among the Russian peasants, by which the former serfs are becoming separated from the land. At the time of the emancipation of the serfs, Russia controlled the wheat markets of Western Europe; while the prices of agricultural products were high, and even rising.

This special issue celebrates the work of Bengt-Åke Lundvall on his 70th birthday. In the 1980s and 1990s he was a key player among a small group of academics in the USA and Europe that developed a new, systemic approach to the study of the interactions between science, innovation, and policy. He contributed to the popularity of the approach in the policy community in several ways, among other things through his period as Deputy Director at the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry at the OECD between 1992 and 1995, and through his later work for the European Commission, as evidenced among other things by the highly influential booklet, The Globalising Learning Economy: Implications for Innovation Policy. His strong emphasis on learning, a hallmark of Lundvall's approach, is also evident in much of his recent work. This issue has six papers written by some of his collaborators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matten and Moon (2008) distinguish American and European perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on the basis of their explicitness, attributing this divergence to differences in respective national business systems, but do not explain which specific institutional differences generated this divergence. This paper extends their work by arguing that the key difference was the defeat of American labour by the new giant American corporations of the twentieth century, a defeat that was itself a product of structural limits to democracy and a weak legacy of corporatist regulation. The triumph over labour gave American corporate executives a free hand in managing their workforces, but victory also brought full responsibility for enhancing efficiency and winning public acceptance. By the 1920s, executives responded by claiming to manage according to principles of social responsibilities. While explicit CSR lost relevance during the crises of Depression and World War II, it has reasserted itself since then, especially since the rise of neo-liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”Arnold J. ToynbeeIn the present paper I am going to analyse the discourse about the conflict between the rule of law and the responses to the terrorist challenge in the US and in Europe (especially in Germany).1 Besides showing that the structure of the discourse is complicated but also surprisingly similar, we are going to see what kind of implied presuppositions explain disagreements in the debates. I am also going to argue on a pragmatic2 basis that a new paradigm (or rather: loosening our idea) of the rule of law is unnecessary, even dangerous as we might be unable to tackle the original challenge for which rule of law was developed, namely the limitation of or fight against the arbitrary use of government power. Giving up this idea, especially an integral part of it, the prohibition of torture, would also endanger the identity of Western societies. In exceptional situations, on an ad hoc basis, the breach of constitutional requirements might, however, be morally justifiable in order to save lives or the constitution as a whole. But the illegality of these acts has to remain clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Deal produced a fundamental change in the structure of American government. The national government came to play a much larger role in the financing of social welfare programmes, while administration of the programmes was largely located at the states. Both the purely national and the shared ‘federal’ parts of the welfare system were characterized by impersonal rules. The political economy of how the rules came about and how the New Deal experience may have contributed to Americans changing their views on the danger of dealing with the national government is the primary focus. The paper closes with speculations about the possible effect of changing views on American participation in the Second World War after 1939. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How babies should best be fed was a pressing question at a time when infant mortality in many parts of Europe and North America was well above 100 per 1,000 live births, and recognised to be strongly associated with ‘improper feeding’. This paper compares and contrasts three national answers to this question. In France a gravimetric method, in Germany a caloric method and in the USA a volumetric method of calculating how much milk infants needed to thrive was developed and adopted in the 1890s. Each was born of and reflected local traditions of paediatric care, cultures of nutritional science and professional interests. These three apparently conflicting, but actually complementary approaches to infant feeding were not reconciled until the 1920s when a new generation of paediatricians succeeded the champions of each. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two data sets are contrasted: country-level data (R&D performed by business in a particular sector and country (BERD) and company-level data (R&D financed by a particular company regardless where R&D investment is performed). About half of the overall EU vs. US R&D gap is in the information and communications technologies (ICT) sector. In turn, this ICT R&D gap has two faces. Country data suggest that the gap is largely intrinsic: the EU displays lower R&D intensities in several sub-sectors, while ICT sector size and composition are quite similar. On the other hand, company data suggest that the gap is instead structural: the sector size and composition of sub-sectors differ greatly, while R&D intensities are similar. One major explanatory factor lies in international flows of R&D and value added. Companies tend to allocate a larger share of their value added and a smaller share of R&D outside their home markets. In the sub-sectors which include much larger and more numerous US companies, these flows are unbalanced, and (BERD) R&D intensities are thus higher in the US than in Europe, everything else being equal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The patent system has gained political attention in both Europe and the US as the core regulatory regime of an increasingly knowledge-based economy. Both Europe and the US have recently engaged in a series of efforts to reform their patent systems. These efforts reflect a shift from a legal and administrative emphasis on harmonization and globalization toward greater attention to issues of innovation and competition. However, the complexity of the systems, the asymmetric distribution of costs and benefits of change, the diversity of economic and political interests, and the high technical profile of this regulatory field, make reform slow and difficult. Whereas Europe focuses on regional integration, the US focuses on substantive and procedural solutions to perceived failings and abuses. This paper aims to provide an overview of the trajectory of reform in each jurisdiction and to consider whether and how the experiences of each may be of value to the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a Keynesian model which describes three countries trading merchandise and financial assets with one another. It is initially assumed that all three countries have independent fiscal policies but that two of the countries share a currency, hence the model can be used to make a preliminary analysis of the conduct of economic policy in `the eurozone' vis-à-vis the rest of the world—'the USA'. The main conclusion will be that, if all three countries do indeed operate independent fiscal policies, the system will work under a floating currency regime, but only so long as the European central bank is prepared to modify the structure of its assets by accumulating an ever rising proportion of bills issued by any `weak' euro country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomonitoring programs in the United States and Europe demonstrate the vast array of data that are publicly available for the evaluation of exposure trends, identification of susceptible populations, detection of emerging chemical risks, the conduct of epidemiology studies, and evaluation of risk reduction strategies. To cultivate international discussion on these issues, the ILSI Health and Environmental Sciences Institute convened a scientific session at its annual meeting in January 2006 on “Integration of Biomonitoring Exposure Data into the Risk Assessment Process.” This Forum paper presents perspectives from session speakers on the biomonitoring activities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Research Council Committee on Human Biomonitoring for Environmental Toxicants, the German Commission on Human Biomonitoring, and the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute Biomonitoring Technical Committee. Speakers noted that better estimates of biological concentrations of substances in the tissues of human populations can be combined with other exposure indices, as well as epidemiological and toxicologic data, to improve risk estimates. With this type of combined data, the potential also exists to define exposure levels at which hazard and risk are of minimal concern. Limitations in interpreting biomonitoring data were discussed, including the need for different criteria for applying biomonitoring data for exposure assessment, risk assessment, risk management, or disease prevention purposes. As efforts and resources are expended to improve the ability to apply biomonitoring exposure data in the risk assessment process, it is equally important to communicate the significance of such data to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of fiscal policy as a stabilization device has all but vanished, more or less explicitly in Europe and de facto in the United States. The practical consequences have not been entirely satisfactory, in either place. So it is important and timely that the Oxford Review is devoting a special issue to the macroeconomics of fiscal policy. In this paper I want to discuss two underlying questions about the eclipse of fiscal policy. Why did this happen and was it a good idea? And if it was not a good idea, then what follows? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The character of subsidies for the construction of professional sports stadiums is changing in Europe and the United States. The incidence of these subsidies and the manner in which they are changing offers insight into an evolving relationship between the public and private sectors in building sports facilities. The changing financial imperatives this paper identifies and analyses suggest that the myopic concerns of cities coupled with powerful financial incentives for leagues and teams to build stadiums account for the spate of facilities constructed in the USA since Joe Robbie stadium in 1987. Growing public scepticism and resistance to stadium construction has been responsible for the private sector bearing a larger portion of the stadium construction costs, but teams have been more than compensated with increasingly generous leases. Cities have placated the public through the imposition of taxes that are either too small per capita to justify strong resistance or through deflecting the tax burden stadiums impose to non-residents. Since cities taken together are adopting the same strategies, the reality is that stadiums collectively are being paid for by local taxpayers. The public will continue to pay for stadiums until cities recognize their shared interests and take a collective stand against the professional sports monopolies. As long as the leagues continue to maintain an excess team for franchises, cities will continue to comply with team and league financial demands while searching for ways to placate an increasingly sceptical taxpaying public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces a symposium of EEA-funded studies that evaluate economics research in Europe. The paper considers some general issues in evaluations, paying special attention to the problem of selecting journal weights, and notes some special features of the individual studies. Despite their very different approaches, the same group of institutions tend to appear at the top of all lists, though individual ranks are sensitive to the choice of more or less elitist journal weights. All the studies show that the gap between economics research in Europe and the United States is narrowing, but remains very wide. (JEL: A10, J44) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extreme variability of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) makes it possible to conduct transmission studies on the basis of genetic analysis and to trace global and local patterns in the spread of the virus. Two such patterns are discussed in this paper. First, in many European countries (e.g., Scotland and Germany), homosexual men tend to be infected with a subtly different variant of HIV-1 than intravenous drug users. In other European countries (e.g., Norway and Sweden), a distinction is also found between the two risk groups; but based on available data, the distinction is a different one. The second pattern is a worldwide tendency for homosexual men in many different geographic regions around the world to carry HIV-1 subtype B, the variant that is most prevalent in the Americas, Europe, and Australia. In contrast, people infected via other routes (mostly heterosexual contact) in those same countries carry a mixture of other subtypes. Biologic differences between the viruses infecting different risk groups have not been found; the most likely explanation for the findings is different epidemiologic patterns. Although data are still scarce, the authors attempt to use these patterns in the reconstruction of the worldwide spread of the HIV epidemic. Am J Epidemiol 2000;152:814–22. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This commentary highlights 2 international studies on real-world treatment trends and patterns among patients with metastatic castration-sensitive and resistant prostate cancer and how interventions targeting physicians and patients can bridge the gap between evidence-based medicine and real-world practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the book "Monopoly and Competition and Their Regulation. Papers and Proceedings of a Conference held by the International Economic Association," edited by E.H. Chamberlin. Monopoly and competition have been a widely discussed topic among economists. The eight articles in this book that describe the state of competition in eight different countries in Europe and the U.S. are as different as is the statistical information available in these countries. The book contains a statement of the issues involved, accounts of the empirical information available, appraisals of various attempts to deal with the monopoly problem, and restatements of most of the important approaches and ideas in the field. It is not surprising that several of the articles condemn competition, both as a form of market organization and as a theoretical standard to judge the performance of an economy. The difference between American and European efficiency is mostly due to a difference in technological efficiency. Efficiency is relevant to many contemporary economic problems, among them the problem of economic growth.

The article presents the authors' reply to a letter from D. Meyre regarding their systematic review and meta-analysis on the associations of variants of proprotein convertase subtilisine/kexin type I gene (PCSKI) with obesity. The reply addresses Meyre's criticisms of what he perceives as errors in the paper including an assertion that meta-analysis included 2 overlapping cohorts and suggestion that the analysis was underpowered to find significant association of rs632 with body mass index.

Background and Objectives Grandparents are key resources in grandchildren care globally. However, mixed findings indicated that multiple role engagement may enhance well-being and bring demands on grandparent caregivers in different contexts. This systematic review examines the association between the intensity of grandparent caregiving and their health and well-being (i.e. physical, mental, cognitive, and life satisfaction) by continent and country/region. Research Design and Methods Systematic searches were conducted in 4 databases. Peer-reviewed articles with quantitative designs published between 1990 and November 2021 were identified. A rigorous selection process was followed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. The studies were critically appraised, and their results were narratively synthesized. Results Sixty-five articles from 29 countries/regions were included. Findings suggested a concave curvilinear relationship between the intensity of grandparent caregiving and their health and well-being, with the optimal caregiving intensity varying across sociocultural contexts. In Europe, Oceania, the Middle East, and South America, providing supplementary or occasional care seems beneficial for grandparents' health and well-being, especially supporting dual-earner families. In East Asia, economic resources appear to buffer the adverse effect of primary care on grandparents' well-being. In the United States, findings vary across ethnicity/race. Discussion and Implications Collectively, the intensity of grandparent caregiving, health, and well-being is complicated by grandparents' roles in the family and cultural differences. Acknowledging the bidirectional relationship between well-being and grandparents' capacity for providing care, the well-being as outcome is a limitation. Despite so, this systematic review calls for culturally-tailored family programs to support grandparent caregiving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses vaccination hesitancy among people in Europe and U.S. with reference to the article published in "Journal of Public Health". Topics discussed include development of strategic approach against widespread misinformation and conspiracy theories on COVID-19 vaccines, research published by EU agency Eurofound on the vaccine hesitancy among adults in Europe, and progress on COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in US.

We compare the labour market response to region-specific shocks in Europe and the United States and to national shocks in Europe and investigate changes over time. We employ a multilevel factor model to decompose regional labour market variables and then estimate the dynamic response of the employment level, the employment rate and the participation rate using the region-specific variables and the country factors. We find that both in Europe and in the United States labour mobility accounts for about 50% of the long-run adjustment to region-specific labour demand shocks and only a little more in the United States than in Europe, where adjustment takes twice as long. In Europe, labour mobility is a less important adjustment mechanism in response to country-specific labour demand shocks that cause stronger and more persistent reactions of the employment and the participation rate. However, we detect a convergence of the adjustment processes in Europe and the United States, reflecting both a fall in interstate migration in the United States and a rise in the role of migration in Europe. Finally, we show that part of the difference between Europe and the United States in previous studies may be due to the use of different data sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that the U.S. European centrality is urgently needed toward cohesive and comprehensive transatlantic ‘One Health' approach in addressing global COVID19 response and health security. Topics include multifaceted and multilateral global COVID-19 ‘One Health' approach and develop an enhanced transatlantic post-pandemic recovery; and role of European Union (EU) joint procurement of medical countermeasures to large-scale disease outbreaks with considerable public support.