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By placing particular attention to the socio-economic dimension, this thesis explores the role of three pillars of an educational system: decentralization, early education and curricular tracking. The first article focuses on an experiment in Mexico that aimed to increase parental empowerment in the school's decision-making. Results show that increased participation produced an increase in cognitive abilities, however, this was mediated by the SES of the student. The second article brings an international perspective by comparing the evolution of the achievement gap over time in 32 countries. The findings suggest that tracking and vocational enrollment are important explanatory mechanisms of the cross-country variability in achievement gaps. The third article studies whether early education is associated with adult outcomes but concentrating on a particularly vulnerable population in the United States: GED recipients. Results show that participation in early education is associated with greater odds of graduating high school over attaining a GED. Esta tesis explora el rol de tres pilares de un sistema educativo: descentralización, educación temprana y seguimiento curricular. El primer artículo estudia un experimento en México que tuvo como objetivo aumentar el empoderamiento de padres en la toma de decisiones en la escuela. Los resultados muestran que mayor participación de los padres aumentó las habilidades cognitivas de sus hijos. Sin embargo, esto fue mediado por el SES del estudiante. El segundo artículo compara la evolución de la brecha de logros en 32 países. Los hallazgos sugieren que el seguimiento curricular y los estudios vocacionales pueden ser mecanismos explicativos de la brecha. El tercer artículo estudia si la educación temprana está asociada con resultados positivos en la adultez en Estados Unidos. Los resultados muestran que la participación en educación temprana está asociado con mayores probabilidades de graduarse de la escuela secundaria en comparación con la obtención de un GED.

We use an exogenous change in German Federal law to examine how entrepreneurial support and the ownership of patent rights influence academic entrepreneurship. In 2002, the German Federal Government enacted a major reform called Knowledge Creates Markets that set up new infrastructure to facilitate university-industry technology transfer and shifted the ownership of patent rights from university researchers to their universities. Based on a novel researcher-level panel database that includes a control group not affected by the policy change, we find no evidence that the new infrastructure resulted in an increase in start-up companies by university researchers. The shift in patent rights may have strengthened the relationship between patents on university-discovered inventions and university start-ups; however, it substantially decreased the volume of patents with the largest decrease taking place in faculty-firm patenting relationships. ispartof: FEB Research Report - MSI_1604 nrpages: 46 status: published

This policy paper aims to compare what policies are developed in Italy for the management of chronic patients in order to improve population health, quality of care and patient experience and reduce per-capita cost. The paper also aims to identify the key trends and evolutionary trajectories across the Country. Methodology: The analysis focuses on 10 Italian Regions and the time span of observation is 7 years (from 2014 to 2020). Data collection and analysis adopts mixed methods in order to have a more in-depth picture of the contextual factors, mechanisms and outcomes. It includes a desk research of the literature and documentary analysis; semi-structured interviews; a theory driven evaluation of 12 programmes identified at the regional level; and a Consensus Conference to discuss and validate the results with an Expert Panel Group. Conclusions: The paper firstly describes the main policies developed in Italy in the last seven years; secondly, it discusses six main trends and clusters them into three strategies: demand management strategies; strategies to improve the management of comorbid and frail patients; and strategies to improve the coordination between levels of care and the patient journey; thirdly, it discusses eight trends and evolutionary trajectories which are now emerging.

This paper evaluates the current focus of EU policy makers on small and medium-sized, young independent firms in high-tech sectors. Therefore, the effect of subsidies on both R&D input and R&D output is compared between independent high-tech young firms (NTBFs), independent low-tech young firms (LTBFs) and their non-independent counterparts. A treatment effects analysis reveals that full crowding-out with regard to public funding is rejected for all firm types. However, the treatment effect is highest for independent high-tech firms. The indirect effect of subsidies on R&D output is evaluated within a patent production framework. These results show that independent high-tech firms have no lower output effects than other firms and thus suggest that the current policy focus on certain firm types is not ineffective. ispartof: FEB Research Report MSI_1506 nrpages: 33 status: published

We examine how the ownership of intellectual property rights influences patenting of university-discovered inventions. In 2002, Germany transferred patent rights from faculty members to their universities. To identify the effect on the volume of patenting, we exploit the researcher-level exogeneity of the 2002 policy change using a novel researcher-level panel database that includes a control group not affected by the law change. For professors who had existing industry connections, the policy decreased patenting, but for those without prior industry connections, it increased patenting. Overall, fewer university inventions were patented following the shift from inventor to institutional ownership. ispartof: FEB Research Report MSI_1502 nrpages: 39 status: published

Accreditation of healthcare providers has been established in many high-income countries and some low- and middle-income countries as a tool to improve the quality of health care. However, the available evidence on the effectiveness of this approach is limited and of questionable quality, especially in low- and middle-income countries. We exploit the interventions introduced under Egypt’s health sector reform program between 2000 and 2014 to estimate the effect of health facility accreditation on family planning, maternal health, and child health outcomes. We use difference-in-differences fixed-effects and propensity score matching difference-in-differences models. To do so, we spatially link women to their nearest mapped health facilities using their global positioning system coordinates. We find that accreditation had multiple positive effects, especially on delivery care and child morbidity prevalence. The effects appear to weaken over time though. Our findings suggest that facility accreditation can be effective in improving family planning, antenatal care, delivery care, and child health, but stress the need to study how the effects can be sustained.

This study investigates the efficacy of public R&D support. Compared to most existing studies, we do not stop at substitution effects or general innovation outcome measures, but we are interested in knowing where the policy effect is highest: on innovation close to the market (i.e. incremental innovation) or on innovation that is still far from the market and hence more risky and radical. Using firm level data from the period 1999 to 2011, we find that the policy hits where the market failure is highest, that is, for radical innovation. Taking into account that the Swiss funding agency encourages collaboration, we find no evidence that the impact of the policy is positively effected by various R&D collaboration patterns. ispartof: FEB Research Report MSI_1417 nrpages: 37 status: published

Applying a variant of a non-parametric matching estimator, we consider European funding and national funding as heterogeneous treatments, distinguishing and simultaneously analyzing the effect these treatments have on innovation input and performance. In terms of input, getting funding from both sources yields the highest impact. If funding from only one source is received, EU grants have higher effects. In terms of output, holding innovation expenditures constant, funding from both sources display higher sales of market novelties and future patent applications at the firm level. If only one grant is obtained, we find superiority for national funding. ispartof: FBE Research Report MSI_1111 nrpages: 39 status: published

Global budget (GB) arrangements have become a popular method worldwide to control the rise in healthcare expenditures. By guaranteeing hospital funding, payers hope to eliminate the drive for increased production, and incentivize providers to deliver more efficient care and lower utilization. We evaluated the introduction of GB contracts by certain large insurers in Dutch hospital care in 2012 and compared health care utilization to those insurers who continued with more traditional production-based contracts, i.e., cost ceiling (CC) contracts. We used the share of GB hospital funding per postal code region to study the effect of contract types. Our findings show that having higher share of GB financing was associated with lower growth in treatment intensity, but it was also associated with higher growth in the probability of having at least one hospital visit. While the former finding is in line with our expectation, the latter is not and suggests that hospital visits may take longer to respond to contract incentives. Our study covers the years of 2010–2013 (2 years before and 2 years following the introduction of the new contracts). Therefore, our results capture only short-term effects. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10198-019-01114-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background In 2005, China established an internet-based Tuberculosis Information Management System (TBIMS) to monitor changes in tuberculosis (TB). Many scholars have conducted epidemiological research using TBIMS; however, few studies assessing control strategies have been performed based on this platform data. Henan province is a high TB incidence area in China where, in addition to following the nationwide TB strategies, a series of local intervention combinations have been implemented. Objective Our study aims to evaluate the impact of nationwide TB intervention combinations on epidemiological changes and determine whether Henan province can achieve the World Health Organization’s (WHO) goal of reducing TB incidence by 50% and TB mortality by 75% by the year 2025. Methods We used descriptive statistical methods to show the spatial and temporal distribution of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) reported to the TBIMS database from 2005 to 2018, and logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the risk factors of bacteriological-positive TB. The dynamic compartmental model and Bayesian melding approach was adopted to estimate the burden of TB under the impact of different TB control policies. Results In total, 976,526 PTB cases were notified to the TBIMS in Henan in a period of 14 years. Although the overall incidence of PTB declined from 91.4/105 to 58.5/105, and the overall incidence of bacteriological-positive PTB declined from 44.5/105 to 14.7/105, the WHO’s 2025 goal could not be met. The distribution of high incidence and poverty-stricken counties were basically overlapped. Men, farmers and herdsmen (in rural areas), and subjects aged ≥60 years were more likely to develop bacteriological-positive PTB. The increasing treatment success for drug-susceptible tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis has not provided the desired reduction in incidence and mortality. Conclusions To achieve the targeted goal, while improving the cure rate of TB, new active (rather than passive) detection and intervention strategies should be formulated based on epidemiological characteristics in Henan province.

Policy interventions aimed at affecting a specific behavior may also indirectly affect individual choices in other domains. In this paper we study the direct effect of tobacco excise taxes and smoking bans on smoking behavior, and the indirect effect on eating behavior and body weight. Using very detailed clinical data on individual health, smoking, and dietary habits, we show that antismoking policies are effective in reducing smoking, but their consequences on eating behavior dramatically depend on the specific implemented policy. Increasing excise taxes on tobacco decreases body weight and caloric intake, and it improves the quality of eaten food. Smoking bans, instead, do not significantly affect body weight, although they impact on the diet composition. Smoking bans in restaurants induce a significant rise in the quality of food and in daily caloric intake. Conversely, smoking bans in bars negatively affect the quality of the daily diet, as individuals eat more fats and less fibers, and drink more alcohol and caffeine.

This paper provides a systematic literature review of studies investigating the effect of an intervention on the efficiency of a decision-making unit, when efficiency is computed using nonparametric frontier approaches. This paper offers a guide for future research by identifying patterns in (1) the fields of application, (2) applied efficiency models, and (3) analysis of efficiency determinants. Our findings indicate that, despite the prominent role of frontier techniques in the analysis of public sector performances and the importance of the effectiveness and the policy perspective, these two approaches have long been kept separate. Nevertheless, the combination of efficiency and effectiveness is fundamental to evaluate public interventions and to detect inefficiencies at the policy level, especially in key sectors such as education, health, and environment.

Climate change is one of the largest challenges facing mankind, and the question of how to reduce carbon emissions has raised extensive concern all over the world. However, due to the lack of mechanisms to explain the impact of political factors on environmental regulatory tools, the evaluation of carbon emissions reduction is insufficient in the majority of previous studies. How to better explore the path of carbon emissions reduction has become the key for China to achieve carbon neutralization as soon as possible. Based on a quasi-natural experiment regarding China’s carbon emission trading policy, this paper adopts a difference-in-differences model to address the impact of political mobility on China’s carbon emissions trading policy, and the selected pilot and non-pilot provinces of this policy in China enabled the model to be matched. Using a panel database with 30 provincial administrative units as the observation objects, the results show that China’s carbon emissions trading policy and the horizontal mobility experience of the provincial governors exert a significant positive effect on carbon emission reduction. Additionally, this study identifies a latent factor previously ignored by the existing literature: the correlation between political factors and carbon emissions. This verifies our theoretical hypothesis that officials transferred from the provincial level tend to have higher performance regarding carbon emission reduction. This paper also provides suggestions for the central government to further plan and implement carbon emission reduction policies and mobilize the incentives of local officials in environmental governance.

Implementing green development is important to realizing a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, and has attracted the attention of governments all over the world. This paper uses the PMC (Policy Modeling Consistency) model to make a quantitative evaluation of 21 representative green development policies issued by the Chinese government. The research finds: firstly, the overall evaluation grade of green development is good and the average PMC index of China’s 21 green development policies is 6.59. Second, the evaluation of 21 green development policies can be divided into four different grades. Most grades of the 21 policies are excellent and good; the values of five first-level indicators about policy nature, policy function, content evaluation, social welfare, and policy object are high, which indicates that the 21 green development policies in this paper are relatively comprehensive and complete. Third, most green development policies are feasible. In twenty-one green development policies, there are: one perfect-grade policy, eight excellent-grade policies, ten good-grade policies, and two bad-grade policies. Fourthly, this paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of policies in different evaluation grades by drawing four PMC surface graphs. Finally, based on the research findings, this paper puts forward suggestions to optimize the green development policy-making of China.

Aim There is a growing literature analyzing money laundering and the policies to fight it, but the overall effectiveness of anti-money laundering policies is still unclear. This paper investigates whether anti-money laundering policies affect the behavior of money launderers and their networks. Method With an algorithm to match clusters over time, we build a unique dataset of multi-mode, undirected, binary, dynamic networks of natural and legal persons. The data includes ownership and employment relations and associated financial ties and is enriched with criminal records and police-related activities. The networks of money launderers, other criminals, and non-criminal individuals are analyzed and compared with temporal social network analysis techniques and panel data regressions on centrality measures, transitivity and assortativity indicators, and levels of constraint. Findings We find that after the announcement of the fourth EU anti-money laundering directive in 2015, money laundering networks show a significant increase in the use of foreigners and corporate structures. At the individual level, money launderers become more dominant in criminal clusters (increased closeness centrality). This paper shows that (the announcement of) anti-money laundering policies can affect criminal networks and how such effects can be tested.

Nonpharmaceutical policies for epidemic prevention and control have been extensively used since the outbreak of COVID-19. Policies ultimately work by limiting individual behavior. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of policies by combining macro nonpharmaceutical policies with micro-individual going-out behavior. For different going out scenarios triggered by individual physiological safety needs, friendship needs, and family needs, this paper categorizes policies with significant differences in intensity, parameterizes the key contents of the policies, and simulates and analyzes the effectiveness of the policies in different going-out scenarios with simulation methods. The empirical results show that enhancing policy intensity can effectively improve policy effectiveness. Among different types of policies, restricting the times of going out is more effective. Further, the effect of controlling going out based on physiological safety needs is better than other needs. We also evaluate the policy effectiveness of 26 global countries or regions. The results show that the policy effectiveness varies among 26 countries or regions. The quantifiable reference provided by this study facilitates decision makers to establish policy and practices for epidemic prevention and control.

This paper provides a systematic literature review of studies investigating the effect of an intervention on the efficiency of a decision-making unit, when efficiency is computed using nonparametric frontier approaches. This paper offers a guide for future research by identifying patterns in (1) the fields of application, (2) applied efficiency models, and (3) analysis of efficiency determinants. Our findings indicate that, despite the prominent role of frontier techniques in the analysis of public sector performances and the importance of the effectiveness and the policy perspective, these two approaches have long been kept separate. Nevertheless, the combination of efficiency and effectiveness is fundamental to evaluate public interventions and to detect inefficiencies at the policy level, especially in key sectors such as education, health, and environment.

With the commitment to peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, the text analysis of policies related to peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality has become a hot research topic in China. However, current domestic and foreign research mainly focuses on the impact and enlightenment of carbon emission measurement and other aspects and rarely optimizes the road to carbon neutrality through the analysis of policy texts. Based on both domestic and international research results, this paper takes 11 central government, ministry, province, and city policies as the research object, uses the PMC index model to calculate the PMC indices of the 11 representative documents, and draws surfaces. The results indicate that nearly half of the policies have excellent scores, but some policies still have deficiencies in terms of guarantee incentives and policy coverage. Given these shortcomings, this paper proposes that the government should provide technical assistance to industrial enterprises in addition to certain subsidies to reduce the energy consumption of enterprises in production and achieve sustainable development. While popularizing and developing low-carbon technology, enterprises should pay attention to personnel training and management, and use the digital economy to empower the transition to eco-friendly production. Based on the above research, the main contributions of this paper are as follows: to make theoretical and practical preparations for carbon neutralization and to provide suggestions for optimizing policies.

As a comprehensive benefit coordination mechanism, ecological protection compensation has received increasing attention internationally. China has also introduced a series of policies to promote ecological protection compensation mechanism improvement. The evaluation of ecological protection compensation policies is the main basis for the formulation, adjustment and improvement of the policy. Based on the front-end perspective of policy formulation, this paper selects 10 ecological protection compensation policies issued by the State Council and various ministries in China from 2006 to 2021. A text mining-based PMC index evaluation system using the ROSTCM tool is constructed to quantitatively evaluate these 10 typical policies, and four representative policies are selected for comparative analysis. The overall design of China’s ecological protection compensation policies is reasonable, and 5 out of 10 policies have good PMC index scores, which are: P1, P2, P5, P7 and P9; and 5 are at acceptable levels, which are: P3, P4, P6, P8 and P10. However, the PMC surface and the concavity index indicate that there are still some limitations that need to be improved, including the obvious internal differentiation of the policies, the single effectiveness of the policies, and the insufficient incentive and guarantee measures. Finally, this paper provides suggestions for the optimization of ecological protection compensation policies accordingly.

This paper offers a new way of assessing government cash transfers using a social welfare function framework. It demonstrates how one can use soci al welfare functions to measure the efficiency of such program s without requir ing the specif ication of a poverty line or particular poverty measures . The paper introduces three alternative principles of targeting, which provide a basis for measuring program efficiency. By applying the methodology developed in this paper , we compare the targeting efficiencies of 44 countries , which include both middle and high income countries.

Enterprise Risk Management is the latest form of risk management. It has become an essential part of best business practices. Under the Financial Administration Act of 1985, the Treasury Board Secretariat was established to serve as the management agency for the government. Within this mandate is included best management practices. This paper examines the Treasury Board Secretariat’s main risk management guidance, the Guide to Integrated Risk Management and how it assists government departments, agencies, and organizations in implementing Enterprise Risk Management based on key principles. This paper evaluates whether or not the Guide to Integrated Risk Management does a good job is outlining those principles in an effective and explicit way for public servants within the federal government.

This paper studies the performance of machine learning predictions for the counterfactual analysis of air transport. It is motivated by the dynamic and universally regulated international air transport market, where ex post policy evaluations usually lack counterfactual control scenarios. As an empirical example, this paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on airfares in 2020 as the difference between predicted and actual airfares. Airfares are important from a policy makers’ perspective, as air transport is crucial for mobility. From a methodological point of view, airfares are also of particular interest given their dynamic character, which makes them challenging for prediction. This paper adopts a novel multi-step prediction technique with walk-forward validation to increase the transparency of the model’s predictive quality. For the analysis, the universe of worldwide airline bookings is combined with detailed airline information. The results show that machine learning with walk-forward validation is powerful for the counterfactual analysis of airfares.

Pereira, M., Neves, F. T., & Neto, M. D. C. (2022). The application of randomised controlled trials for urban policy evaluation in smart cities: a systematic literature review. In Livro de Resumos da Conferência do Projeto de Investigação Científica “Fatores de Transformação Urbana (DRIVIT-UP)” em conjunto com I Conferência sobre Ciência de Dados para Ciências Sociais e VI Conferência de Planeamento Regional e Urbano. [Abstract book from the Conference of the Scientific Research Project “Drivers of urban transformation (DRIVIT-UP)” a joitly event with I Conference on Data Science for the Social Sciences And VI Conference on Regional and Urban Planning] (pp. 38-40). UA Editora. https://doi.org/10.48528/pkzd-wz70 The policy evaluation is mandatory in developing and implementing urban planning instruments. The literature shows that Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), being the most rigorous experimental method for obtaining high-quality evidence, are most suitable for policy evaluation (Neves, de Castro Neto, & Aparicio, 2020; Pearce & Raman, 2014). However, in an urban context can be challenging to implement this type of experiment (Athey & Imbens, 2017). The advent of smart cities brings new types of data and information that allows the use of these challenging experiments to evaluate the creation and implementation of a policy in the different stages (Barbero et al., 2016). Nevertheless, there is still a lack of application of this technique to planning policies evaluation.This paper aims to create a clear vision of the application of the RCT in urban planning policies evaluation. Building on the question “How has the RCT been used in urban planning policy evaluation in smart cities context?”, a research query with related keywords was created to use on the different databases, such as ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus and Science Direct. The results were organized and screened following the PRISMA methodology. The references were organized by intervention goal, study sample, unit of analysis, and randomization method.The results suggest different types of interventions having their major difference related to the randomization unit, and also show a lack of evaluation of the effect of policies on urban interventions. This literature revision systemizes the research that uses RCT for urban planning policies evaluation. The increase of available data and analytical tools allows applying RCT experiments and improving decision-making. Therefore, this provides better insights into the whole policy process opening an opportunity to design data-driven public policies. This can be especially powerful in identifying the adverse effects of a policy, allowing proper adjustments to be made (Ubaldi, Van Ooijen, & Welby, 2019).The increase of the data available makes possible the use of RCT experiments for different urban dimensions controlling the required factors on the experiment, permitting the rigorous quantification of the effect of policy on the evaluated dimension. This methodology is increasing in interest for planning programs and has exciting results, but it is harder to implement (Pearce & Raman, 2014). This paper brings the overall vision of applying this method in a smart city’s context, giving a helpful roadmap to the implementation of this methodology. publishersversion published

Carbon taxes are commonly seen as a rational policy response to climate change, but little is known about their performance from an ex-post perspective. This paper analyzes the emissions and cost impacts of the UK CPS, a carbon tax levied on all fossil-fired power plants. To overcome the problem of a missing control group, we propose a novel approach for policy evaluation which leverages economic theory and machine learning techniques for counterfactual prediction. Our results indicate that in the period 2013-2016 the CPS lowered emissions by 6.2 percent at an average cost of €18 per ton. We find substantial temporal heterogeneity in tax-induced impacts which stems from variation in relative fuel prices. An important implication for climate policy is that a higher carbon tax does not necessarily lead to higher emissions reductions or higher costs., Economics Working Paper Series, 19/317 and 19/317bis

This paper discusses identification of causal intensive margin effects. The causal intensive margin effect is defined as the treatment effect on the outcome of individuals with a positive outcome irrespective of whether they are treated or not (always-takers or participants). A potential selection problem arises when conditioning on positive outcomes, even if treatment is randomly assigned. We propose to use difference-in-difference methods - conditional on positive outcomes - to esti- mate causal intensive margin effects. We derive sufficient conditions under which the difference-in-difference methods identify the causal intensive margin effect in a setting with random treatment., Economics Working Paper Series, 18/302

Policy is an important support for risk society to prevent and resolve crises. Based on the content analysis of the policy text and PMC-Index model, this paper takes texts of 327 public health emergency response policies (PHERP) at the central level in China from 1989 to 2022 as the analysis object, designs an indicator system, and combines qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the existing policies. The results of content analysis indicate that current policy focuses on emergency rather than preventive control, the main policy-making and issuing authority is the Ministry of Health and policies are mostly issued in the form of notice. The PMC-Index of ten selected policies is all ranked above acceptable, which means that the overall quality of policy text is relatively high. However, the PMC-Surface shows that there is still considerable variability in the scores of the main indicators for each policy. The top three main scoring indicators are policy nature, policy evaluation and policy instrument, while the bottom three are policy time, policy release agency and policy target groups, which reminds us that the design of policy text can still be improved in terms of optimizing policy time, policy issuing institutions and expanding policy target groups. In response to these problems, this paper puts forward six suggestions for optimization.

Agricultural cooperatives are professional organizations that increase farmers’ incomes through market failure corrections, livelihood resilience, and sustainable rural development. The main purpose of this paper was to evaluate the policy effects of the construction of demonstration cooperatives for farmers in China. The authors of this paper used the propensity score matching (PSM) method to evaluate the policy effect of the construction of demonstration cooperatives based on questionnaire survey data on 509 farmer cooperatives in 10 counties in Sichuan Province of China. On this basis, the inverse probability weighting-regression adjustment (IPWRA) method was used as a robustness test. The authors of this study were the first to systematically and comprehensively assess the policy effects of demonstration cooperatives while considering selectivity effects. The empirical results show that the Chinese government’s construction of demonstration cooperatives has significant policy effects, especially regarding policy support in improving the economic strength, service capacity, product quality, and social response of demonstration cooperatives. However, the policy effect of improving the democratic management of cooperatives is not significant. It is recommended that the government continue to strengthen policy support in improving the economic strength, service capacity, product quality, and social response of demonstration cooperatives. Simultaneously, more effective measures should be taken to promote the democratic management of model cooperatives.

Energy users who don’t participate in efficiency and conservation programmes despite ongoing outreach are often referred to as ‘Hard-to-Reach’ (HTR). These individuals or organisations can include, e.g., low income or vulnerable households; renters; and small businesses. More effectively engaging HTR audiences is key to ensuring everyone benefits equitably from low-carbon energy transitions and related (policy) interventions. This is even more so the case in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing implications for energy use and affordability for the most vulnerable (and newly-vulnerable) members of our society.Within this context, the main purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which HTR energy audiences have been impacted by COVID-19. Our primary method for this work was a comprehensive, critical literature review and a compilation of official statistics. We also collected survey, interview and focus group data during 2020 COVID-19 pandemic responses in the U.S., UK, NZ and Sweden. The geographical scope is determined by a 3-year project focusing on HTR energy users and implemented in partnership with the User-Centred Energy Systems Technology Collaboration Programme (Users TCP) by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Key findings we highlight and discuss in this paper:● Sweden has taken a different approach to manage COVID-19, yet when it comes to mobility, declines in demand (~25%) have shown relatively similar patterns to countries with stricter measures. ● In the UK, energy debt is growing due to higher domestic consumption arising from lockdown measures and the reduced income of many households. Most households (72%) have increased their energy (monthly gas and electricity bills are up £32) use. In response, 36% are turning thermostats down and 27% limiting lighting.● In the U.S., a survey of 1,000 energy customers found that more than 50% are using more energy, and monitoring their energy use less; 15% reported postponing a utility bill. ● NZ’s model COVID-19 “elimination” response has included housing, financial support, and specific energy payments to date, though unhealthy and unaffordable housing remains a major issue.Whereas the pandemic has exacerbated several elements of the HTR policy discourse (e.g. impacts on vulnerable and/or low-income households), our findings also reveal several opportunities and critical aspects for policy makers, researchers and utilities to identify and engage HTR energy users.

Most countries put significant amounts of time and effort in writing and issuing high-level policy documents. These are supposed to guide subsequent national defence efforts. But do they? And how do countries even try to ensure that they do? This paper reports on a benchmarking effort of how a few "best of breed” small- to medium-sized defence organisations (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) deal with these issues. We find that most countries fail to link goals to resources and pay limited attention to specific and rigorous ex-ante or post-hoc evaluation, even when compared to their own national government-wide provisions. We do, however, observe a (modest) trend towards putting more specific goals and metrics in these documents that can be - and in a few rare cases were - tracked. The paper identifies 42 concrete policy "nuggets” - both "do's and don'ts” - that should be of interest to most defence policy planning/analysis communities. It ends with two recommendations that are in line with recent broader (nondefence) scholarship on the policy formulation-policy implementation gap: to put more rigorous emphasis on implementation (especially on achieving desired policy effects), but to do so increasingly in more experiential ("design”) ways, rather than in industrial-age bureaucratic ones ("PPBS”-systems). © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Based on a literature review and theoretical mechanism, this paper takes the implementation point of the adjustment and transformation policy for old industrial cities as the breakthrough point, and uses a regression model to explore the impact of the adjustment and transformation policy of these old industrial cities on urban carbon emissions. This paper also robustly tests the effective mechanisms and environmental hypotheses. Overall, the implementation of the adjustment and renovation policy has significantly reduced the carbon emissions of old industrial cities by about 0.068 units. Compared with the control group cities, the pilot cities reduced carbon emissions by an average of about 310,000 tons after the implementation of the policy. Based on a summary of the excellent Chinese case experience and an empirical analysis, it can be concluded that improvements in the green innovation capacity of old industrial cities, the agglomeration of high-end service industries, and the strengthening of ecological restoration are important mechanisms that lead to reduced carbon emissions. There is no subsequent exacerbation of the carbon intensity of neighboring cities, and there is insufficient evidence to prove pollution via neighboring transfers and use of the beggar-thy-neighbor policy. The extended analysis shows that the “inverted U-shaped” CO2 Kuznets environmental curve hypothesis is significantly present in the sample of old industrial cities, but most cities do not cross the threshold. In 2013, about 60% of the urban sample economic growth and carbon emissions showed signs of tapping into potentials and increasing efficiency (absolute decoupling) and intensive expansion (relative decoupling). In old industrial cities, the proportion of relative decoupling shows a fluctuating upward trend. In the future, the government should accurately select its own development orientation and actively seek the “best balance” between economic growth and a green and low-carbon path.

Aim of study: This paper evaluates the effect of pre-accession EU grants on beneficiaries in the agri-food sector using a quasi-experimental approach on the case of Croatia. An insight into the available literature reveals a lack of rigorous research and evaluation of the results of using these funds in Croatia as well as in other beneficiary countries.Area of study: Republic of Croatia, Europe (2006–2017).Material and methods: Two datasets were used: (1) financial and structural data on the population of Croatian enterprises for the 2003–2017 period, and (2) data on SAPARD and IPARD grants in the 2007–2016 period. Data were analyzed using counterfactual impact analysis, i.e., a combination of difference-in-difference approach and propensity score matching.Main results: The grants showed to have a positive effect on firm survival, as well as positive effects on obtaining bank loans and increasing turnover, value added, employment, and total factor productivity. Heterogeneous treatment effects show that the grants resulted in the greatest additionality for micro-sized firms located in Central Croatia. Cost-benefit analysis estimates an increase in the value added, which outweighs scheme-induced costs by 120% in the short run and 90% in the mid run.Research highlights: Pre-accession programs in Croatia had a positive impact on the beneficiaries’ growth and business performance indicators in both short and mid term. This paper also promotes the application of similar research in other EU candidate countries where the same or similar funds are implemented.

Along with the deep comprehension and accumulated practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR), people are increasingly aware of the positive role of the government in the development of CSR. Chinese governments at all levels have issued many policies to guide and regulate CSR behavior in Chinese enterprises. However, there has been little research on the evaluation of CSR policy’s effectiveness. In this paper, we conducted a text analysis of 76 corporate social responsibility policies (CSRPs) and statistics of high-frequency words. Based on the existing policy evaluation index system, combined with the characteristics of CSRPs, we constructed a CSRPs content evaluation index system based on the policy modeling consistency index (PMC-index) model. Additionally, we conducted content analysis and quantitative evaluation of six CSRPs selected from different levels and regions of government agencies. The results show that the evaluation levels of the six policies were all good, which could play a positive role in the CSR development of their policy objectives. However, policies in different regions show obvious differences in the design of implementation suggestions and incentive and constraint measures, and there is a large space for further optimization. This study not only provides specific policy optimization suggestions for the government and enterprises based on case studies but also provides methods for evaluating the content of CSRPs, filling the research gap in this field.

This paper evaluates how policy shaped the emergence of electric mobility in three countries, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark, between 2010 and 2015. Whereas previous studies have looked at the effects of separate policy instruments, this paper gives insights in the interaction effects of instruments on the diffusion of battery electric cars between five policy areas. Based on analysis of synergetic, contradictory and pre-conditional effects, we find that an effective policy mix includes: fiscal incentives that mirror the actual carbon footprint of the respective vehicles; non-fiscal demand-side incentives; centrally financed and/or coordinated charging infrastructure; clarity regarding the choice of technology that will be supported. Moreover, development of a domestic, e-mobility-related industry and a high share of renewable energy strengthens the legitimization of e-mobility support. The findings help designing policy mixes in the transition to electric mobility.

Paper [I] investigates the energy efficiency of multi-dwelling buildings in Sweden to find out whether the ownership type matters. More specifically, we investigate whether rental apartment buildings are less energy efficient than cooperative apartment buildings and whether public ownership has a negative impact on energy efficiency. A conceptual framework is presented to illustrate that such differences could be explained by the split incentives problem and deviations from profit maximizing interests. The empirical analysis is based on a unique dataset that combines data from energy performance certificates with ownership data on residential units. The results indicate that cooperative apartment buildings are significantly more energy efficient than buildings with rental apartments. The results also indicate that publicly owned buildings have somewhat lower energy performance than privately owned ones. Paper [II] Incomplete information may be one reason why some households do not invest in energy efficiency even though it would benefit them to do so. Energy performance certificates (EPCs) have been promoted to overcome such information shortages. In this paper, we investigate whether EPCs together with mandatory home energy audits make households more likely to invest in energy efficiency. Our study takes advantage of the mandatory nature of the EPCs to avoid the potential selection bias problem that typically applies to studies using voluntary energy audits as the treatment. Our treatment group consists of single-family houses in Sweden sold from 2008, i.e., when EPCs became legally required in connection with sales of residential buildings, to 2015; while the control group consists of houses sold between 2002 and 2008, i.e., without an EPC. The results show that there is no statistically significant treatment effect for most of the measures that a household can take to improve the energy performance of their house. The significant treatment effect that we do find concerns a few heating system-related measures. Paper [III] The price of district heating in Sweden is unregulated and differs substantially among different networks. This paper investigates if the price variation can partly be explained by ownership status, i.e., whether the network companies are privately- or municipally-owned. The empirical analysis is based on data on district heating prices, ownership status, and network characteristics for the period 2012-2017. The results show that prices are higher in privately-owned district heating networks than in municipally-owned networks, especially in the fixed component of the price. It is argued that municipal and private companies’ divergent objectives may be part of the explanation for these differences. Finally, district heating prices are positively correlated with the market prices for heat pumps, regardless of ownership, which suggests a general price-setting strategy based on the price of substitutes. Paper [IV] assesses whether and to what extent income and the stringency and enforcement (S&E) of environmental regulation influence compliance with the EU Waste Hierarchy (EWH), i.e., how EU member states treat waste. The EWH prioritizes waste prevention and re-use over recycling, which is ranked above waste to energy (WtE), while incineration and landfilling are the least preferred options. Biennial panel data for the period 2010–2016 is used to create a compliance index based on the waste treatment alternatives in the EWH. The waste (excluding major mineral waste) of 26 European Union countries is examined. This study is the first of its kind to regress an EWH compliance index on income, the stringency and enforcement of environmental regulation, and other variables that are also expected to affect the relative benefits and costs of waste treatment, such as population density, heating demand, and electricity prices. The shares of landfilling, incineration, WtE, and recycling are also modeled to capture the effect of these variables in the waste treatment mix. The stringency and enforcement of environmental regulation are found to have a positive effect on compliance with the EWH, which has increased over time.

In this paper, we analyze a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) that was introduced in Catalonia on May 1, 2017. The Bill established the requirement of a 100% pass-through of the tax to the final consumer and two levels of the tax: 0.08 euro/liter for products with 5-less than 8 g of sugar and 0.12 euro/liter for products with 8 g of sugar or more. Previous literature focusing on the impact of SSB taxes finds that pass-though is only complete in the long-term. Our paper provides new evidence that, when the tax increases prices substantially and immediately, the sales response is also significant. In particular, we estimate that the new SSB tax in Catalonia reduced SSB purchases by 7.7%. We document that part of this reduction is substituted by an increase in sales of zero/light drinks (substitution effect). Importantly, the reduction in purchases is stronger in areas with a higher incidence of obesity, in areas with higher household incomes and for products with higher sugar content.

This paper offers a new way of assessing government cash transfers using a social welfare function framework. It demonstrates how one can use social welfare functions to measure the efficiency of such program s without requir ing the specif ication of a poverty line or particular poverty measures . The paper introduces three alternative principles of targeting, which provide a basis for measuring program efficiency. By applying the methodology developed in this paper , we compare the targeting efficiencies of 44 countries , which include both middle and high income countries .

The article introduces the special section on “Geographical Clustering and the Evaluation of Cluster Policies”. We first provide a motivation of cluster policies and briefly review the state of the art in cluster evaluation research. We proceed with summaries of the papers comprising the special section, which take different perspectives and cover distinct facets of cluster policy evaluation. The papers identify challenges for evaluation by highlighting the variety of approaches towards cluster policies addressed at different policy levels. Additional challenges for an identification of policy impact result from the complexity as well as the timing of policy effects. Thus, proper evaluations should employ and combine a broad set of evaluation methods. Based on the main lessons learned, we finally propose several avenues for future research to cope with these challenges.

When properly implemented, Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) achieve a high degree of internal validity. Yet, if an RCT is to inform policy, it is critical to establish external validity. This paper systematically reviews all RCTs conducted in developing countries and published in leading economic journals between 2009 and 2014 with respect to how they deal with external validity. Following Duflo, Glennerster, and Kremer (2008), we scrutinize the following hazards to external validity: Hawthorne effects, general equilibrium effects, specific sample problems, and special care in treatment provision. Based on a set of objective indicators, we find that the majority of published RCTs does not discuss these hazards and many do not provide the necessary information to assess potential problems. The paper calls for including external validity dimensions in a more systematic reporting on the results of RCTs. This may create incentives to avoid overgeneralizing findings and help policy makers to interpret results appropriately.

Agent-based modeling has recently gained popularity in the field of simulation and modeling. Due to their characteristic properties, agent-based models (ABMs) allow for an improved and flexible way of modeling complex systems. Social dynamics is one such a complex system, which has complex components, such as demography, sociology, economics, psychology, health, and so on. Demography is one of the bigger and more important sub-systems of this complex system. In this paper, we have focused on utilizing the potential of ABM techniques to analyze the underlying processes in social demography. We propose and implement a holistic ABM that can be used for analysis, understanding, and prediction of socio-demographic processes as well as a tool for policy design and evaluation. The proposed model incorporates well-known factors affecting demography and provides ease and flexibility of adding newer factors. In this paper, we considered the use case of Korea and utilized the Korean census data for model development. Many ABMs have been proposed for demography but most of them not only have limited functionalities, but also lack the suitable usage of agent-based modeling itself. The proposed approach is wide-ranging, flexible, and general and can be reused by simply making changes in the initial data set for the analysis of the target society. We exhibit the validation of the proposed model, as well as its usage by executing virtual experiments for socio-demographic analysis and prediction.

This paper empirically investigates the heterogeneous impacts of the media sentiment about policies with different themes on the real estate market in China. Based on the policy texts collected from both official and unofficial sources, we construct sentiment indices to capture the sentiment about policies with different themes, including real estate policies, fiscal policies, monetary policies, land policies, healthcare policies, household registration policies, and education policies, using text mining methods. Mediation models and GARCH models are then established to examine the impact of these sentiment indices on the real estate market. The E-GARCH model is established to examine the asymmetric effect of positive and negative sentiment on real estate market. The results show the following: (1) The real estate market in China is more affected by the policy sentiment on official media compared with the unofficial ones. (2) Policy sentiment affects the real estate price through the mediating variables of interest rate, real estate construction area, and real estate sales. (3) The impacts of sentiment with different themes on the volatility of the real estate market are heterogeneous. (4) The impacts of policy sentiment on official media are more pronounced in a tight government-policy environment than those in a loose one. (5) The effect of negative unofficial media policies sentiment on real estate price is bigger than the positive unofficial media policies sentiment.

This paper investigates the long-term causal effects of receiving an ERC grant on researcher productivity, excellence and the ability to obtain additional research funding up to nine years after grant assignment. We use data on the universe of ERC applicants between 2007-2013 and information on their complete publication histories from the Scopus database. For identification, we first exploit the assignment rule based on rankings, comparing the outcomes of the winning and non-winning applicants in a regression discontinuity design (RDD). We fail to find any statistically significant effect on research productivity and quality, which suggests that receiving an ERC grant does not make a difference in terms of scientific impact for researchers with a ranking position close enough to the threshold. Since RDDs help identify a local effect, we also conduct a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis using the time series of bibliometric indicators available, which allows us to estimate the effect on a wider population of winning and non-winning applicants. Differently from the RDD results, DID estimates show that obtaining an ERC grant leads to positive long-term effects on scientific productivity, impact and the capacity to attract other EU funds in the fields of Chemistry, Universe and Earth Sciences, Institutions and Behaviours, Human Mind Studies and Medicine. Further analysis of heterogeneous effects leads us conclude that the positive results obtained with DID seem to be driven by the top-ranked applicants in these fields.

Doutoramento em Economia Boas práticas de regulação antitruste e de concorrência exigem, como qualquer política econômica, bons modelos e evidências empíricas. Os modelos ajudam a colocar problemas em perspetiva, descobrir mecanismos e produzir previsões sobre a economia. Além de testar as previsões do modelo, a evidência empírica fornece elementos necessários para avaliar a política e superar distorções. Nesse sentido, esta tese é guiada pelo desejo de contribuir para a política de concorrência no Brasil em questões relacionadas às interações entre o poder de mercado das empresas, os mercados de trabalho, a desigualdade e o papel das autoridades antitruste. Nosso trabalho adota inicialmente uma abordagem macroeconômica e teórica, revelando mecanismos pelos quais o poder de mercado afeta a desigualdade de renda em países em desenvolvimento como o Brasil. Em seguida, a tese se propõe avaliar como o trabalho do CADE, a autoridade antitruste brasileira, tem sido capaz (ou incapaz) de lidar com as distorções concorrenciais legais (concentração) e ilegais (conluio), nos mercados de fatores (trabalho) e de produtos, e, por consequência, com suas consequências na distribuição de renda. Nos últimos anos, o papel do antitruste na distribuição de renda tem se destacado. Desde a década de 1980, o markup preço/custo marginal aumentou significativamente em algumas economias desenvolvidas, em especial nos Estados Unidos, juntamente com a percentual do PIB incorporado aos lucros das empresas. Já a participação da renda do trabalho no PIB tem caído. Vários trabalhos empíricos e teóricos (De Loecker et al., 2020; Edmond et al., 2018; Colciago and Mechelli, 2020) sugerem que o agravamento da desigualdade de renda nos Estados Unidos é resultado da falta de concorrência nos mercados. O relativo enfraquecimento da regulação antitruste seria uma das causas desse processo. Baker and Salop (2015), por exemplo, argumentam que a política antitruste dos EUA deveria ser reformulada para fazer mais, deixando de considerar como orientadores apenas a eficiência econômica ou os excedentes do consumidor. Para os autores o antitruste deveria também priorizar casos que beneficiem a classe média e os desfavorecidos, tomando decisões com critérios que foquem os consumidores mais pobres. No entanto, o poder de mercado e, em particular, a desigualdade e os baixos salários não se limitam aos Estados Unidos e ao mundo desenvolvido. De facto, as evidências sugerem que a falta de concorrência em mercados essenciais em países como o Brasil é um problema ainda mais premente. Como afirma o Crane (2015), nos países em desenvolvimento, a riqueza e a renda estão mais concentradas no topo; os mercados de ações são pouco desenvolvidos; os mercados de trabalho têm baixos níveis de concorrência; e os sindicatos são, em geral, mais fracos. No Brasil, os 10% mais ricos recebem quase 60% da renda agregada anual do país, enquanto nos Estados Unidos essa proporção é de 45%, e na Suécia, 30% (World Inequality Database1). Além disso, o país tem adotado, ao longo dos anos, estratégias de crescimento baseadas em políticas de substituição de importações, com impacto negativo nos níveis de competição dos mercados. Essas políticas geraram certa industrialização e crescimento econômico, mas a ampla presença do governo, planejando ou atuando diretamente nos mercados, distorceu os incentivos, principalmente pelo controle de preços e fomento à formação de oligopólios em setores industriais estratégicos. De acordo com Fiuza (2001), esse conjunto de políticas governamentais teve o papel de estabelecer mercados incontestáveis e tornar as posições de mercado mais rígidas e estáveis. Em uma lista de países em desenvolvimento, classificados por seus níveis de markups preço/custo médios, produzida por De Loecker and Eeckhout (2020), o Brasil está entre os três primeiros, junto com Peru e Colômbia, com um rácio preço-custo de 1,61. Além disso, esse índice variou muito pouco nas últimas décadas, período em que houve uma reestruturação e fortalecimento do sistema antitruste brasileiro. Da mesma forma, apesar de um declínio no índice de Gini calculado a partir de pesquisas domiciliares na primeira década dos anos 2000, estudos recentes mostram que, quando se dados de renda obtidos em outras fontes de informação (como o imposto de renda, que capta com mais eficiência rendas de capital), a desigualdade permanece estável (De Souza, 2018). A relação causal entre desigualdade e poder de mercado não deve ser estabelecida de forma anedótica, apenas por meio de fatos estilizados. Portanto, nosso primeiro capítulo (“Poder de mercado e desigualdade: um modelo para a economia brasileira”) visa identificar teoricamente os mecanismos pelos quais o poder de mercado afeta a desigualdade em um país em desenvolvimento. Para tanto, primeiro motivamos nosso modelo empiricamente, estimando a associação entre desigualdade e markups (usando uma abordagem Panel VAR com dados dos estados brasileiros). Embora nossos resultados não possam ser considerados evidências causais em sentido estrito (não há estratégia de quase-experimento ou estrutura de variáveis instrumentais), a evidência estatisticamente robusta, relacionando positivamente um choque de markup à desigualdade, orientou o desenvolvimento do nosso modelo. Em seguida, construímos um modelo dinâmico de equilíbrio geral e o calibramos para reproduzir a economia brasileira. Esse modelo é baseado na estrutura tradicional do Real Business Cycle, mas possui um conjunto de fricções úteis para mimetizar a distribuição da renda e da riqueza brasileira (entre três quantis de renda/população - 50% inferior, 49% médio e 1% superior). Nosso modelo é razoavelmente diferente de outros que tentam simular relações de poder de mercado e desigualdade para a economia dos EUA. Primeiro, é computacionalmente mais leve, pois não há uma estrutura completa de agentes heterogêneos, mas uma versão estendida do modelo tradicional de dois agentes. Além disso, é mais adequado lidar com a economia brasileira, pois, além da heterogeneidade na participação no mercado de ativos, há também a heterogeneidade na qualificação da mão de obra e na elasticidade da oferta de trabalho. Outra característica essencial do modelo é o comportamento oligopolista (produto) e oligopsonístico (lado do fator) endógeno das empresas. Juntos, essas especificidades permitem reproduzir a resposta do Gini a um choque momentâneo no markup, identificada empiricamente. Além disso, o modelo contribui para política de concorrência ao descrever como o comportamento oligopsonístico afeta o funcionamento do mercado de trabalho e a dinâmica da desigualdade. As repercussões do poder de mercado sobre a desigualdade de renda e salários, mecanismo destacado no modelo do primeiro capítulo da tese, é um aspeto ainda ausente na literatura e na prática antitruste em países em desenvolvimento como o Brasil. Nosso segundo capítulo (“Poder de Mercado, Salários e Desigualdade: evidências do Brasil”) buscou preencher parcialmente essa lacuna. A primeira parte do capítulo permanece em nível agregado/macro, analisando dados entre mercados/setores. Com acesso a uma base que combinada dados de empregador-empregado no Brasil, primeiro caracterizamos a evolução temporal da concentração do mercado de trabalho local (HHI municipal do emprego). Em seguida, construímos um modelo de efeito fixo com variáveis instrumentais para verificar a associação entre concentração do mercado de trabalho local, desigualdade de renda e salários. Por fim, na última parte do segundo capítulo, estudamos um mercado específico para avaliar o efeito de processos de fusão e aquisição sobre mercado de trabalho (como nosso modelo revela, os salários são um mecanismo fundamental que conecta o poder de mercado à desigualdade). Uma abordagem de diferença-em-diferenças (DiD) foi implementada para verificar se uma transação de fusão e aquisição impactou os ganhos dos trabalhadores no setor bancário brasileiro. Durante décadas, prevaleceu entre a comunidade antitruste a visão de que o mercado de trabalho não era uma preocupação para a política de concorrência porque era inerentemente competitivo. As evidências neste trabalho vão contra essa noção. Os resultados do capítulo mostram que existe uma ligação potencialmente danosa entre poder de mercado e salários, gerando um efeito regressivo sobre a desigualdade de renda. O último capítulo da tese (“Comportamento pós-cartel: avaliando os efeitos da política antitruste no mercado brasileiro de combustíveis”) tem um perfil puramente de avaliação política e foca na capacidade das autoridades antitruste brasileiras de reestabelecer um mercado competitivo no setor de combustíveis. Os gastos com transporte, nos quais os preços dos combustíveis sâo muito relevantes, representam uma parcela de 18% do orçamento das famílias brasileiras (superior aos gastos com alimentação), segundo a mais recente Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares (POF-IBGE 2017-2018). Portanto, o impacto distributivo dos esquemas de fixação de preços é considerável. Um estudo do CADE (Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica) estimou que um cartel de combustíveis de Brasília, esquema que conseguiu elevar os preços em pouco mais de 8%, causou, em um ano, cerca de US$ 75 milhões em prejuízos aos consumidores. Os artigos que avaliam os efeitos da ação antitruste sobre esquemas de cartel geralmente buscam apenas quantificar o impacto sobre os preços, com métodos como regressões antes e depois, diferença-em-diferenças ou abordagens de controle sintético. No entanto, essas metodologias têm algumas desvantagens, principalmente, a exigência de estabelecer uma data exógena ou um evento inovador com base em suposições que podem não ser precisas. Além disso não capturam uma dinâmica pós-cartel que considere uma possível reemergência da conduta ilegal. Para superar essas fragilidades observadas em outros estudos, aplicamos duas metodologias, Structural Break Analysis (Bai and Perron Test) e Markov Switching Regressions, a quatro casos de cartéis identificados no mercado brasileiro de combustíveis (Brasília, Belo Horizonte, São Luís e Londrina), buscando analisar a eficácia das políticas de concorrência. Como teste comparativo entre os procedimentos MSR e Bai Perron, nosso trabalho mostra que o primeiro foi mais sensível às transições entre regimes, sem perder quebras, e exibiu resultados mais precisos. Do ponto de vista da avaliação da política antitruste, nossos achados indicam uma baixa capacidade das autoridades antitruste para extinguir definitivamente práticas de fixação de preços nos mercados-alvo. This thesis examines the relationships between firms’ market power, labor markets, inequality, and competition regulation in order to inform Brazilian antitrust practice with knowledge and evidence. To do this, we utilized both theoretical and empirical approaches to identify the processes that potentially link the competition policy efficiency to inequality. Our research demonstrates that market power as a whole, and notably in labor markets, can alter not just the economic efficiency but also the distribution of income, which should be a matter of public policy concern (if government utility gives any weights to distribution). The significance of antitrust in income distribution has been emphasized in recent years, particularly in papers focusing on the US economy and other developing countries. But market power, inequality and low wages seems to be an even bigger problem in countries like Brazil, where wealth and income are more concentrated at the top, where labor markets are less competitive (because of industrial policies that try to create national champion firms), and where unions are generally weaker. Identifying some of the mechanisms by which market power affects inequality in a developing country is the objective of our first chapter (“Market Power and Inequality: a model of the Brazilian economy”). We constructed and calibrated a dynamic general equilibrium model to replicate the Brazilian economy. It was capable of mimicking Gini’s response to a markup shock, reproducing the short-run dynamic identified empirically in a pVAR model (implemented with sub-national data from Brazil). The model also showed how oligopsonistic behavior affects the outcomes of the labor market and how that affects the level and dynamics of inequality The effects of market power on income inequality and wages were examined in our second chapter (“Market Power, Wages, and Inequality: evidence from Brazil”). Using a matched employer-employee database from Brazil, the first section of this chapter characterizes the temporal evolution of the local labor markets concentration (municipality employment HHI) and then, with a fixed-effect model with instrumental variables, estimates the relationship between the local labor market concentration, income inequality, and wages. In the second section, a Difference-in-Difference (DiD) setup was conducted to determine if a merger and acquisition transaction affected the earnings of banking industry employees in Brazil. The chapter’s findings suggest that there may be a negative relationship between market power, wages, and inequality. The final chapter (“Post-Cartel Behavior: assessing the effects of antitrust policy on Brazilian fuel market”) evaluates the ability of the Brazilian antitrust authority (CADE) to restore free competition to cartel-affected Brazilian fuel markets. To this end, we applied Structural Break Analysis (Bai and Perron Test) and Markov Switching Regressions to four cases in the Brazilian fuel market (Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, S˜ao Lu´ıs, and Londrina), identifying market dynamics before and after CADE’s anti-collusion actions. Our findings indicate that antitrust authorities have a limited capacity to eradicate price-fixing practices in targeted markets. This has direct implications for CADE’s anti-collusion strategy. It is possible that the fines and criminal penalties imposed on scheme participants are insufficient to deter illegal conduct (especially because they come after years of litigation in court). The case of Braslia, on the other hand, appears to be exemplary of how strong preventive measures coupled with structural ones, aimed at market reorganization, are expected to have lasting effects on price-fixing behavior info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Accessibility is usually evaluated using indicators calculated from spatial data. However, perceived accessibility, defined as the perceived potential to participate in spatially dispersed opportunities, is often poorly reflected by these calculated measures. This paper sets out to explain the mechanisms that lead to these mismatches. A conceptual model is constructed to establish what factors shape perceived accessibility. A schematic framework shows that mismatches between a calculated indicator and perceptions can stem from inaccuracies in awareness as well as from inaccuracies in the measure if the measure fails to take account of the subjective evaluations of accessibility components. When evaluating the performance of land-use and transport system configurations, calculated measures based on spatial and transport data only serve as proxies for how accessibility is actually experienced. This paper argues that bringing perceived accessibility to the fore of accessibility-based planning, by acknowledging and evaluating potential mismatches with calculated accessibility indicators, will advance the evolution from mobility-based to accessibility-based planning.

The papers by Dortet-Bernadet and Sicsic and by Redor in this issue examine respectively the success of R&D financial support programs in stimulating private R&D and the success of subsidized start-ups for the unemployed in creating long-lasting firms. Both papers focus on small French firms. Both programs are found to suffer from a deadweight loss. This comment discusses the results obtained and the policy conclusions that can be drawn from them. It is argued that the deadweight loss is in part unavoidable but that there are ways to limit it, for instance by using a policy mix of R&D tax incentives and subsidies, favoring tax incentives for small firms and subsidies for large firms. It is also recalled that a policy ought to be evaluated from various perspectives. Besides R&D additionality and firm survival a full cost benefit analysis would also consider R&D externalities, firm retention and decrease in unemployment., Mohnen Pierre. Comment: Effectiveness of public support for R&D and entrepreneurship. In: Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, n°493, 2017. Evaluation of public support to small and medium-sized firms. pp. 43-48.

The papers by Dortet-Bernadet and Sicsic and by Redor in this issue examine respectively the success of R&D financial support programs in stimulating private R&D and the success of subsidized start-ups for the unemployed in creating long-lasting firms. Both papers focus on small French firms. Both programs are found to suffer from a deadweight loss. This comment discusses the results obtained and the policy conclusions that can be drawn from them. It is argued that the deadweight loss is in part unavoidable but that there are ways to limit it, for instance by using a policy mix of R&D tax incentives and subsidies, favoring tax incentives for small firms and subsidies for large firms. It is also recalled that a policy ought to be evaluated from various perspectives. Besides R&D additionality and firm survival a full cost benefit analysis would also consider R&D externalities, firm retention and decrease in unemployment.

The papers by Dortet-Bernadet and Sicsic and by Redor in this issue examine respectively the success of R&D financial support programs in stimulating private R&D and the success of subsidized start-ups for the unemployed in creating long-lasting firms. Both papers focus on small French firms. Both programs are found to suffer from a deadweight loss. This comment discusses the results obtained and the policy conclusions that can be drawn from them. It is argued that the deadweight loss is in part unavoidable but that there are ways to limit it, for instance by using a policy mix of R&D tax incentives and subsidies, favoring tax incentives for small firms and subsidies for large firms. It is also recalled that a policy ought to be evaluated from various perspectives. Besides R&D additionality and firm survival a full cost benefit analysis would also consider R&D externalities, firm retention and decrease in unemployment.

In spite of a heated debate over immigration policies in the world, the effects of visa, which is one of the representative tool for immigration control, are uncertain for some aspects. This paper analyzes whether visa relaxation has impacts on both legal foreign visitors and illegally overstayed foreigners focusing on Japanese visa waiver program. The empirical analyses show that visa waiver will increase both legal travelers and illegally overstayed foreigners while it may have a bigger effect on legal visitors than overstayed foreigners.

Background The transition towards a more sustainable energy system is urgent for addressing global environmental and social challenges, and will require transformative changes including improved energy efficiency in the built environment. To reach identified efficiency potentials, various policy instruments have been introduced but their effects are often unclear. In this paper, we argue that the outline of transformative policy strategies will require well-designed evaluations. The objective is to present a theory-based evaluation framework that can be used to assess existing evaluations, in order to support transformative policy strategies. The framework is also applied to provide insights from current Swedish evaluation practices. Methods The theory-based evaluation framework presented builds on evaluation theory, policy analysis and transition research and is arranged around methods, value judgements and use of the evaluations. Moreover, key aspects from transition research are included to provide guidance for transformative efforts in the evaluations. The systematic review presented in the paper is qualitative, covering 33 policy evaluations for energy efficiency in buildings in Sweden, commissioned by Swedish governmental authorities over a decade. Results The results of the review reveal a wide range of evaluations undertaken, using a sound methodological evaluation base that builds on a variety of methods for analysis, and application of multi-criteria analyses. Commonly, however, a rather narrow scope was applied and we note a missed opportunity for triangulation of findings. Key aspects for capturing transformative efforts, such as system-, scale- and multi-actor approaches, as well as visioning, experimentation and learning, were considered to varying extents, but could be more explicit and elaborate. Conclusion In all, we find the proposed theory-based evaluation framework useful for assessing and discussing both robustness and transformative efforts of current policy and evaluation practices. The review of the Swedish policy evaluations further indicates sound evaluation practices, and a foundational structure for identifying and analysing transformative efforts. To fully support transformative changes, we suggest a wider system perspective and a more thorough multi-actor approach and actor involvement in the evaluations. We also stress the need to further link evaluation theory with transition research to design evaluations that can support transformative changes in society.