Search

Public transport is a pivotal utility in increasing the long-term sustainability of cities. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in promoting a sustainable modal shift that reduces dependence on private vehicle use. This strategy has involved several specific actions, among them employing price differentiation between the two substitutes considered in this research – public transport and private cars. Governments can influence fares in different ways. However, fiscal policy governing applicable taxes is one that is often neglected in the literature. This paper investigates the relationship between the market share of public transport and taxation – in particular, value added tax (VAT), which is levied on three main products: public transport fares, fuel, and vehicle ownership. The results show that taxes matter, but not all taxes are determinant. A lower VAT rate on public transport fares and a higher tax rate on vehicle ownership can lead to an increase in public transport's market share. Taxing car utilization through VAT on fuel does appear to be significant. • Taxes matter in promoting the use of public transport. • The normal VAT rate decreases public transport's market share. • Taxes on ownership are more effective in shifting demand than taxes on usage. • An increase in tax on fuel is relatively inelastic in relation to the use of public transport. • Ownership-related taxes do indeed have a positive effect on increasing public transport use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges encountered by established firms transforming their linear business models into circular business models (CBMs) have received extensive research attention. Such firms have experience and market foothold but tend to adopt an incremental approach to CBMs due to risks of business model cannibalization. However, there is relatively limited research on the challenges experienced by new ventures developing CBMs from scratch – circular new ventures. New ventures are often agile, experimental and deploy disruptive CBMs even though they lack resources. The lack of knowledge specific to this topic is constraining for entities such as incubators and accelerators that seek to facilitate the emergence and scale-up of circular new ventures. Furthermore, researchers cannot presume that the challenges experienced by established firms are the same for new ventures when developing CBMs. Thus, the aim of this article is to explore the challenges that new ventures experience while developing circular business models from scratch, synthesize the sources of these challenges and provide practitioner implications to overcome them. In doing so, we studied 70 circular new ventures across Europe. Our article makes four original contributions to the literature. First, our study is seminal in using a large cross-country dataset to qualitatively analyse the empirical challenges of new ventures developing circular business models. Second, we identify which challenges are generic for CBMs, which challenges are specific for certain CBM types and for circular new ventures in particular. Third, we show that the challenges of circular new ventures are determined by their: (i) type of circular business model, (ii) industrial sector, (iii) institutional context, and (iv) new ventures liabilities. Altogether, we highlight that while circular new ventures and new ventures experience several similar challenges, circular new ventures particularly struggle to scale-up due to their liabilities of newness and smallness which limits their resources and legitimacy to enter strategic partnerships crucial for new venture survival. • Analysed empirical challenges of circular new ventures. • The challenges are determined by at least four factors. • Type of CBM, industrial sector, institutional context, new venture liabilities. • Circular new ventures struggle to scale-up due to liabilities of new ventures. • Survival of the circular new ventures is dependent on strategic partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Theories of partner selection emphasize the principal role of available partners in the relationship market. As education is a common socioeconomic attribute through which individuals choose a mate, macrostructure theory highlights the importance of the asymmetric change in educational attainment seen in Europe. As women increasingly participate in tertiary education, this restructuring might result in the decline of traditional hypergamous unions. OBJECTIVE We aim to verify previous results confirming the decline of educational hypergamy and the rise of hypogamy, which has been found to be related to women's growing educational advantage. We also wish to provide a current picture of this process in Europe by looking at the youngest cohort available during the analysis. METHODS We pooled nine waves of the European Social Survey and examined trends in seven cohorts. Apart from simple percentage differences in education, we reconstructed the indices of female educational advantage (F-index) and the prevalence of hypergamy (Hindex), with provided correlation statistics and fitted linear trend lines. RESULTS Our results corroborated the findings of previous multi-country analyses. In nearly all selected countries, women were more present in higher education than men, resulting in a uniform increase in the female educational advantage. Parallel to this, hypergamy declined through the cohorts, which correlated with women's emerging educational lead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several controversial issues related to challenges in the post-marketing studies of biological drugs, including biosimilars, were discussed at the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) 2019 Mid-Year Meeting in Rome (Italy) in April. In recent years, the marketing of biosimilars has been growing, thus offering opportunities for wider access by patients to high-cost biological drugs as well as ensuring the economic sustainability of national healthcare systems. Through the comparability exercise required for marketing approval, the similarity of biosimilars to the reference products in terms of efficacy, safety and quality has to be demonstrated in pre-marketing studies. In Europe, the 15 years of experience of marketing of biosimilars has allowed the accumulation of a significant amount of scientific evidence confirming the comparability of the benefit–risk profile of biosimilars and originators. However, some aspects remain to be addressed both from a scientific and regulatory perspective, such as interchangeability and the automatic substitution of originators and biosimilars. The (long-term) monitoring of all biological drugs, including biosimilars, in real-world settings is warranted, with the ultimate goal of integrating pre- and post-marketing evidence relating to the aforementioned open questions. This conference report describes priorities, data sources and methodological strategies for the post-marketing surveillance of biological drugs in the era of biosimilars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate gender differences in employment status trajectories of young Europeans during their initial labour market experience, and the way in which they are affected by some labour market institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis is based on EU-SILC longitudinal data (waves 2006–2012), and focusses on young people aged 16–34. Monthly information on self-declared employment statuses for 36 months is used to define "employment status trajectories". Young people are observed in two different phases: the first three years after leaving education (first phase) and a three-year window, starting around four years after the end of education (2nd phase). Multinomial logit models are used to estimate the probability of following different trajectory types as a function of individual characteristics, macroeconomic conditions and institutional indicators. Findings: Results show that, in the first phase, women and men face on average the same difficulties in entering the labour market. When controlling for the presence of children, non-mothers have higher chances than men to enter rapidly and successfully into the labour market, whereas young mothers have the same chances. In contrast, in the second phase women experience more fragmented pathways than men, even if they do not have children. A less stringent regulation on dismissals of employees with regular contracts could enhance women's employment opportunities in the school-to-work transition, but it would have detrimental effects for both men and women in the subsequent years. On the contrary, a more stringent regulation on the use of temporary contracts would have beneficial effects for women, with no adverse effects for men. Originality/value: The paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it takes a broader perspective on youth labour market integration by considering two phases of individuals' initial working life. Second, it combines an explicit attention to the first "significant" employment experience with a focus on individual trajectories, by adopting a new method to group trajectories. Third, it shows how the effects of labour market institutions vary by gender, highlighting the importance of considering gender-specific consequences when discussing or adopting labour market reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]