Search

We implement an experimental design based on a duopoly game in order to analyse the impact of public subsidies on the willingness to cooperate in research and development (R&D) activities. We first implement six experimental markets by exogenously varying the level of knowledge spillovers (low or high) and the intensity of competition in the product market (low, intermediate, or high). We find that the probability of cooperation increases in the level of spillovers and decreases in that of market competition. We then replicate the six experimental markets by subsidising subjects who cooperate. Whenever they are sufficient to change the incentive structure of the game, subsidies substantially increase the probability of cooperation, causing, however, a reduction of R&D investments. Overall, our evidence suggests that, depending on the characteristics of the market, the provision of subsidies is not always desirable. These might be redundant because firms have sufficient private incentives to invest cooperatively in R&D, or even counterproductive, as they might induce firms to significantly reduce R&D investments compared to the noncooperative scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sino-Iberoamerican Interaction / Interacción Sino-Iberoamericana is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In a recent article, Kyle Stanford gives an account of what he terms "externalisation", understood as our tendency to objectify or externalise moral demands and obligations. According to Stanford, externalisation is a distinctive feature of our moral psychology which is adaptive since it enables and preserves cooperation. I claim that the main issue with this account is that it assumes an overly psychological and individualist, inward-to-outward looking perspective. I advocate taking an alternative perspective that turns the spotlight to social practices and the social reality they create. I show how, seen in this light, norm externalisation becomes a side-effect instead of an adaptation deserving of a special explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing global daily news coverage on interactions between stakeholders in G20 countries, this research offers a near-real-time analysis of changing interaction patterns between Russia and other G20 economies after the onset of open military conflict. Building on an event study over eight months, further analyses of reciprocal response dynamics point to potentially costly short-term consequences of sanctions, such as the breakdown and diversion of international cooperation amongst major economies in a broader sense. Once such a reciprocal cooperation decay has set in, re-establishing international cooperation between major societal actors may take considerable time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

900 In bank resolution, swift and effective cooperation of different actors is of essence, particularly in cross-border cases. While the same can be said about cross-border insolvency management generally, the European framework for the recovery and resolution of failing banks and, in particular, the centralisation of resolution powers within the Single Resolution Mechanism stand out as particularly complex – and, at the same time, remains to some extent untested to the present date. Against this backdrop, the present article explores the statutory framework for cooperation between the Single Resolution Board, the European Central Bank in its capacity as supervisory authority within the Single Supervisory Mechanism, National Resolution Authorities and Third Country authorities. It concludes that, while the legal and institutional arrangements governing inter-agency cooperation are generally sound, operationalisation in actual cases might still be exposed to unexpected disruptions, especially in cases where political interests are at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Throughout history, disasters have had a defining impact on individuals, governments, and society as a whole. The terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 and several catastrophic hurricanes in the gulf region have brought disaster response and emergency management to a new level of visibility and importance in the United States. The increased media coverage of international disasters, such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the Earthquake in Haiti in 2010, have resulted in international disaster response and recovery efforts becoming a larger part of foreign policy for developed countries. The changing scene of disaster response and recovery has also resulted in a rapid increase in the number of private organizations emerging to assist in the wake of such catastrophes. There are significant cross-cultural dynamics and interoperability issues that become apparent when new actors (governments, businesses, organizations, etc.) enter an unfamiliar disaster environment which could reduce the operational efficacy of both local and foreign actors. In this project we propose an approach to support and guide decision makers in emergency environments on how to select and develop relationships to improve resource utilization and project outcomes in the wake of a disaster. Using game theory, we provide an initial approach for the development of a decision support framework for emergency managers entering a disaster environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article mainly contends that since the real and expected benefits from the European Union (EU) and NATO were not delivered sufficiently from Turkey's perspective, Turkey looked for alternatives and collaborated with Russia more intensely in recent years. Turkey's cooperation with Russia was also facilitated by several global, political, economic, conjectural, security-related, and individual-level factors. Another argument of the study is that despite Turkey's intensive collaboration with Russia, it is not feasible for Turkey to build a strategic partnership with it in the short- and medium-term at the expense of its relations with NATO and the EU. The main reasons for this are, in addition to the institutional and social shortcomings, geostrategic divergences, Russia's inadequacy as an economic actor, the pitfalls of an asymmetric relationship with Russia, the security risks posed by Russia, NATO's continuing importance for Turkey's security needs, and the incompatibility of Russia's and Turkey's political systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India has traditionally been seen in terms of the interaction of two different trends—cooperation and competition. At the same time, the positive or negative dynamics of China–Indian contacts have mostly been shaped by the extent to which the political leadership of China and India have been prepared at various times to be guided by pragmatic interests and the desire to overcome the legacy of the past. This set of problems includes long-standing territorial disputes, New Delhi's suspicions of the "all-weather strategic partnership" between Beijing and Islamabad, as well as the sensitive issues of Tibet and the Dalai Lama. Although the idea of ChIndia, as a condominium of the global interests of the two Asian giants and a manifestation of their growing interdependence, is no longer relevant, this article argues that cooperation or confrontation between China and India should not be linked solely to historical matters, but should be viewed from a broader regional and international perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent German health care reforms were intended to increase efficiency and quality of medical supply by introducing managed care (MC). Participation of physicians in MC contracts, however, is still limited. This study econometrically identifies factors determining physicians' MC participation. The data has been obtained from a telephone survey among 500 German physicians. Economic implications of our results regarding future MC development in Germany are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Monatsschrift fuer Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Among the many technical challenges that continue to have an impact on the effective resolution of large, complex, internationally active banking institutions and groups, the cross-border coordination of measures taken in different jurisdictions clearly is one of the most difficult to address. Given complex - and usually conflicting - vested national interests in home and host jurisdictions, cooperation requires not just a robust decision-making infrastructure, but also depends on the predictability of the economic outcomes of resolution - and on the fairness and reliability of ex ante commitments to joint burden-sharing. Given the dimension of these preconditions, it is hardly surprising that some jurisdictions, including, notably, the USA, have opted for 'isolationist', unilateral resolution actions vis-à-vis foreign-owned banks instead. The present article critically evaluates the new framework for cross-border bank resolution under the European Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive and the Single Resolution Mechanism as a counter-example, and identifies residual shortcomings in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate that people are more willing to take risks in a stag hunt game when the agent of uncertainty is another person, thereby promoting cooperation. Recent social cognition research suggests an explanation for this pattern, which is based on the idea that games that align interests between subjects activate a trust mindset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coercion is a much-discussed topic in the linguistic literature. This article expands the usual range of cases at the most subtle and the extreme end: it demonstrates how coercion extends into semantic flexibility on the one hand and into idiomaticity on the other. After discussing a broad variety of coercion cases in syntax and morphology and briefly reviewing the equally diverse literature, we identify three mechanisms - selection, enrichment, and override - that have alternatively been proposed to account for coercion effects. We then present an approach that combines all three mechanisms, arguing that they can be unified along a single axis: the degree of top-down influence of complex structures on lexical semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess the effect of two antithetic non-monetary incentive schemes based on grading rules on students' effort, using experimental data. We randomly assigned students to a tournament scheme that fosters competition between paired up students, a cooperative scheme that promotes information sharing and collaboration between students and a baseline treatment in which students can neither compete nor cooperate. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that competition induces higher effort with respect to cooperation, whereas cooperation does not increase effort with respect to the baseline treatment. Nonetheless, we find a strong gender effect since this result holds only for men while women do not react to this type of non-monetary incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Information -- Wissenschaft und Praxis is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the individual contributions from literary studies, the factors that make cognitive literary studies linked to cognitive science and the potential of cognitive literary studies.

Intense partisanship and the permanent election mentality permeate Congress, such that bipartisanship is rare. Yet we contend that in overlooking intra-party compromises, observers both exaggerate the negative implications of partisan polarization and inflate the merits of inter-party cooperation. We show that in situations of unified government in this polarized era, meaningful compromises to enact major legislation may occur within heterogeneous parties instead of between polarized counterparts. Through an examination of health care reform in the 111th Congress, we demonstrate the significance of these intra-party compromises. While acknowledging that partisanship and the constant campaign cycle prevented bipartisan collaboration on health care reform and created a poisonous atmosphere, we nonetheless do not fuel the common anxiety over vitriolic partisanship - the same partisanship enhanced the importance of intra-party compromise for passing landmark legislation. Given that partisan tensions are not diminishing, our research also may provide food for thought for policy analysts. The article draws on material from one author's informal, in-person conversations with over a dozen key actors in 2010 and 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Information -- Wissenschaft und Praxis is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I first discuss two aspects of a social order and cooperation which might be of high relevance: the problem of a spontaneous emerging of a social order, and the relation between exchange and cooperation. In doing so, I also discuss the role of production in separating areas of cooperation from those of competition. Second, I look more closely at the motivations for cooperative behaviour. It is argued that of the four kinds of motivation mentioned by Leist only two, self-interest and altruism, are really necessary to explain cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decade since Partners and Rivals: Representation in U.S. Delegations (2000) was published, Congress has experienced increased levels of party polarization. Congressional scholars have since concluded that this polarization trend has dramatically changed the context for deliberation, competition, and cooperation in the U.S. Senate. However, scholars have not explored the ties between increased polarization and representation within Senate delegations. In this article, we evaluate whether the dynamic of cooperation and competition among same-state Senators still exists along the lines identified in Partners and Rivals, or whether it has become merely a folkway of the past. We find that same-state Senators still construct distinct legislative portfolios designed to garner public attention and support, and that this still reflects a commitment to representation in the Senate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the costs of negotiating treaties, signatories may defer the resolution of uncertainty to the future rather than include all possible states of nature in a treaty. This particularly will be the case when addressing uncertainty will increase the negotiating costs. In such a context, the existence and form of compliance institutions is of particular importance. We develop a formal model to consider the relationship among treaty negotiation, compliance institutions, and uncertainty over future states of nature. In our model, states of nature determine the costs of compliance with a treaty. We explain that when resolving uncertainty is deferred to the future and compliance costs are unobservable, an escape clause facilitates viability of a treaty. When escape is considered to be de jure compliance, and signatories are incompletely informed about one another ’s compliance costs, an incentive for opportunistic breach arises. In such a context, we demonstrate that a dispute resolution mechanism that discloses compliance costs of a signatory invoking escape can deter spurious use of the clause. We incorporate uncertainty through the specification of a discrete time, continuous-state stochastic compliance function. Because many policies for which treaties are negotiated exhibit persistence in their costs of compliance, we contrast compliance cost processes with and without persistence. We explain how persistence in compliance costs that exhibit uncertainty may undermine the effectiveness of an escape clause, even with a dispute resolution mechanism. Persistence also increases the cost of negotiation by increasing the expected costs of compliance, which may result in fewer commitments, rendering the treaty less viable. We examine two options to mitigate these effects: dynamic adjustment of commitments through an institutional compliance structure specified in the treaty, and renegotiation. When an escape clause fails to preserve compliance under persistence, dynamic adjustment may be more likely, as renegotiation requires a stronger commitment to the agreement. When dynamic adjustment entails periodic scheduled reconvening of signatories, however, compliance may be undermined and disputes may be more frequent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of an increased incidence of complex natural disasters around the world, the international donor community plays a critical role in mobilizing support to fragile and weak states, lacking adequate emergency response capacities, infrastructure, and health service. The United States and the European Union are two of the most important players in these efforts, both in terms of supporting the UN system and by providing resources and personnel at disaster sites. But to date, few studies have assessed what challenges and opportunities the U.S. and the EU face when mobilizing for international disaster relief. This article sets out to fill this gap by studying the response to the January 2010 Haiti earthquake. In so doing, this article draws on three categories of capacities: "public leadership," "inter-agency coordination," and "civil-military cooperation," to identify common challenges and opportunities in response capacities and in order to generate recommendations for strengthening transatlantic disaster responses in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical infrastructure protection policy in the United States is broad and complex. The partnership of actors lead by the Department of Homeland Security incorporates "traditional" areas of infrastructure such as water treatment plants and road construction, but also new areas such telecommunications, banking, the food supply, and information systems or "cyberinfrastrucure." Critical infrastructure protection policy depends upon these actors working together in large, yet loose partnership to identify and mitigate risks to critical infrastructures. In many cases, however, the only thing that these actors have in common is that DHS has designated them to be "critical infrastructure." How can DHS exhort participation on the parts of different actors? Is this exhortation working? This article examines the efforts of DHS to build a partnership for CIP by specifically looking at mechanisms by which DHS can build commitment to CIP amongst partners (in this case, actors in sectors). A broader contribution of this article, however, is to assess the relative infrastructure focus or coherence of each DHS-designated sector of CIP that is involved in the national plan to protect critical infrastructure. The article relies upon data from federal budgets, sector participant attention to CIP, congressional hearings, and public laws to examine efforts to build new or leverage existing commitment in partners for CIP. I conclude that many of DHS efforts are working, but that success in building commitment is largely confined to sectors with existing ties to earlier conceptions of CIP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year the world experiences numerous disaster events, both human-made and naturally occurring. These calamitous occurrences are of concern to health care providers for many reasons, not the least of which the reality that their incidence is increasing. Mounting event frequency and magnitude, coupled with increasing world population, results in human impacts that are devastating. Frequently these events call for the deployment of military force, to restore order and secure devastated neighborhoods, or to provide other forms of aid, including healthcare. These military forces often work in concert with community-based, civilian volunteers who participate in disaster response as part of non-governmental agencies. Thus, for health professionals both civilian and military, disaster events are of great concern. This review of the literature provides an overview of disaster studies and anecdotal articles that reveal some of the difficulties and lessons learned over time and recommend research topics for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new and unique framework for the promotion of cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the fields of innovation and advanced technology development. The goal is to strengthen the Palestinian Authority's economic basic structure, using the experience and know-how gained by Israel in these fields. We consider the development of a new project: a Palestine-Israel Virtual Incubator (PIVI). This project suggests a new Israeli-Palestinian cooperation pattern, in sectors and types of economic activity that are not based mostly on unskilled workers but are based instead on relatively advanced technology, including innovation, upgrading of old technologies, and high-tech activities, using the skilled workforce that already exists or is in the process of being formed in the Palestinian Authority. This project may provide a long-term catalyst for a new type of economic and scientific cooperation between Israel and Palestine, involving the US and other countries. The basic concept in our proposal is that the virtual incubator will allow high-tech and innovative firms to benefit from the expertise and professional networks of the different existing incubators, thus increasing the array of services available and exposing the companies to greater business opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-consuming and costly religious rituals pose a puzzle for economists committed to rational choice theories of human behavior. We propose that either through selection or a causal relationship, the performance of religious rituals is associated with higher levels of cooperation. To test this hypothesis we design field experiments to measure the in-group cooperative behavior of members of religious and secular Israeli kibbutzim, communal societies for which mutual cooperation is a matter of survival. Our results show that religious males (the primary practitioners of collective religious ritual in Orthodox Judaism) are more cooperative than religious females, secular males and secular females. Moreover, the frequency with which religious males engage in collective religious rituals predicts well their degree of cooperative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication is typically considered to be guided by principles of cooperation, requiring the consideration of the communication partner's mental states for its success. Miscommunication, in turn, is considered a product of noise and random error. I argue that communication proceeds in a relatively egocentric manner, with addressees routinely interpreting what speakers say from their own perspective, and speakers disambiguating their utterances with little consideration to the mental states of their addressees. Speakers also tend to overestimate how effective they are, believing that their message is understood more often than it really is. Together, these findings suggest a systematic cause for miscommunication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international community injects millions of dollars into the Middle East region every year. The main objective of this funding is to create a desirable impact either in economic or socio-political parameters. The standard economic tools are limited to the economics impact only; therefore a more comprehensive method is required. Using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method together with a ranking method, we developed a credible systematic tool that can be used by the international community to achieve maximum efficiency under certain budget constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models of job tournaments and competitive workplaces more generally predict that while individual effort may increase as competition intensifies between workers, the incentive for workers to cooperate with each other diminishes. We report on a field experiment conducted with workers from a fishing community in Toyama Bay, Japan. Our participants are employed in three different aspects of fishing. The first group are fishermen, the second group are fish wholesalers (or traders), and the third group are staff at the local fishing coop. Although our participants have much in common (e.g., their common relationship to the local fishery and the fact that they all live in the same community), we argue that they are exposed to different amounts of competition on-the-job and that these differences explain differences in cooperation in our experiment. Specifically, fishermen and traders, who interact in more competitive environments are significantly less cooperative than the coop staff who face little competition on the job. Further, after accounting for the possibility of personality-based selection, perceptions of competition faced on-the-job and the treatment effect of job incentives explain these differences in cooperation to a large extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We identify market failures in the development of regional cooperation projects in the Middle East. We use a database of planned projects in the last decade and evaluate their qualities from three main perspectives: micro-economic viability, feasibility and regional impacts. Market failures are evaluated as the gaps between the values of these perspectives, and are assessed for various types of regional cooperation projects. We find that projects of cooperation in infrastructure and public services, on a bilateral or multilateral basis, defined here as "high profile", are more characterized by heavier regional impacts, and therefore by stronger macro-economic externalities and socio-political externalities. The existence of such market failures requires a policy of stronger involvement of the public sector for the support of this type of projects. Business economic cooperation projects are mostly "low profile" (implemented separately in single countries) and tend to be based on micro-economic viability and therefore do not require a significant public intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional cooperation projects between countries in the Middle East are expected to provide benefits to all parties involved but their feasibility is subject to social, economic and political constraints. This article uses a database of planned projects in the last decade and tries to detect types of projects that are less sensitive to the constraints. A typology of projects shows the prevalence of two main groups. A first group of projects avoids constraints by focusing on relatively high micro-economic viability but with low intensity of cooperation: these are economic-business projects and some infrastructure projects that are based on mere coordination between countries and mostly implemented separately in a single country. A second group of projects are infrastructure and public services projects that involve a number of countries, and implementation through joint planning and management. We conclude that the response to the constraints for regional cooperation is found in the concentration in projects that do not require any intensive continuous contact between the populations, by choosing business projects that are implemented separately in each country, or public projects that are jointly implemented, but on the basis of cooperation between public officers, not necessarily the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing the rationale for climate policy, one utility category is often neglected: secondary benefits. This is surprising because the consideration of secondary benefits would increase the attractiveness of climate policies from a national point of view. It would however also affect the behavior of states in international negotiations on climate protection. On the basis of a chicken game, it is argued in this article that secondary benefits support national incentives to behave cooperatively. International cooperation in climate policies thus becomes more probable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]