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This paper delves into the diverse conceptualizations of the “common good” within the economic discourse and scrutinizes their implications for European integration during the pressing COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a comprehensive literature review, policy analysis, and case study examination, it explores the manifestations of the common good in the context of European Union policies. Two key interpretations emerge from our investigation: the first presents the common good as an ultimate objective, seeking a balance between individual and collective interests achieved via adept economic governance; the second considers it a continuous process underpinned by the principles that direct the journey toward such a balance. Our findings reveal that the EU’s response to the COVID-19 crisis led to shifts in fiscal policies and innovation strategies. The research outcomes demonstrate a marked transition in the EU’s approach, with a stronger focus on social welfare, environmental sustainability, and collective well-being.

Changes in administrative structures in post-communist countries after the change of the political system resulted in the division of tasks performed by public administration. Local self-governments were established and the tasks of meeting the needs of local communities, including the housing needs, became their responsibility. The aim of this research paper is to examine whether these tasks are actually being implemented and to analyze the measures taken by municipalities in this respect. Real estate management was analyzed in terms of selling residential premises by way of tender and without a tender procedure, as well as purchasing residential premises for the implementation of the municipal tasks. The research was carried out on the example of the Municipality of Krakow in the years 2015-2022. The results of the analyses were compared with the results of the research carried out in the Municipality of Oradea in Romania. The data collected in these two municipalities in two different countries revealed completely different approaches of the local authorities to the analyzed issue. In Krakow, the local authorities have developed a long-term programme for managing the municipal housing resources, which is consistently being implemented. The local authorities in Oradea do not take any action to increase the number of available residential premises, or even to renovate them. Instead, they expect action to be taken by the National Housing Agency or private companies.

Nowadays, there is great pressure in cities on the demand and supply of food as well as environmental needs, and where Urban Agriculture emerges in various forms to confront this situation. Indeed, Urban Agriculture is a form of agriculture, highlighting its multiple functions in ensuring food security, maintaining urban ecosystem services, and improve the quality of life. Moreover, the use and transformation of abandoned areas is proving to be an appropriate way of creating new green spaces. This research article focuses on analysing the alignment between governance mechanisms, the distribution of the value created, together with the benefits derived. The comparison is based on four case studies in France, two in Paris ("La Caverne" and "Veni-Verdi") and two in Rouen ("Le Champ des Possibles" and "Le Jardin de l'Astéroïde") with different vocations (social vs economic), and which will serve as a basis for investigations into the theme of Food Governance Structures. This research work consisted of carrying out interviews with the stakeholders involved in Urban Agricultural Projects, as well as on-site visits for analysis and evaluation. An empirical analysis through the NVivo Software is used, which allowed the qualitative analysis of the data. The results show that there are similarities between the different initiatives, such as having a well-structured administrative office headed by a president, treasurer and employees. At the same time, there are a few differences in terms of the type of structure, key priorities and management structure. Indeed, three of the four initiatives evaluated aim to reach out to local residents and to understand the benefits of having agricultural spaces in our cities and to recreate this link with nature, unlike the economic initiative, which focuses more on business and commerce and less on social and educational inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH 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.)

We study how participation in various social protection schemes can mitigate the negative relationship between adverse rainfall shocks and agricultural production, thus acting as a tool for climate change adaptation. We use panel data from Ethiopia, analyzing the influence of these programs on the technical efficiency of smallholder farmers and how these effects on agricultural production change in the presence adverse rainfall shocks. We find heterogeneous effects of social protection. Public works are negatively associated with productive efficiency, especially in the presence of negative shocks. Recipients of free food display higher sales and profits while cash transfers are more neutral to production and positively associated with farming profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of urban regeneration on crime, leveraging recent large-scale regeneration projects—called Transformational Regeneration Areas (TRAs)—in Glasgow, Scotland. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that makes use of variation in both the timing of TRA implementation, and in proximity to these areas to measure exposure to urban regeneration projects. We find a large and significant reduction in crime within 400 m of TRAs but this effect fades as we move further away. Simultaneously, we find no evidence of city-wide reductions in crime after urban regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Job insecurity is one of the risks that workers face on the labour market. As with any risk, individuals can choose to insure against it, and we here consider marriage as one potential source of this insurance. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax, paid by larger private firms when they laid off workers aged 50 or over, led to an exogenous rise in job insecurity for the uncovered (younger workers) in these larger firms. A difference-in-differences analysis using French panel data reveals that this greater job insecurity for the under-50s led to a significant rise in their probability of marriage, and especially when the partner had greater job security, consistent with marriage providing insurance against labour-market risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of Head Start using large-scale, restricted administrative data. Using the county rollout of Head Start between 1965 and 1980 and age-eligibility cutoffs for school entry, we find that Head Start generated large increases in adult human capital and economic self-sufficiency, including a 0.65-year increase in schooling, a 2.7 percent increase in high school completion, an 8.5 percent increase in college enrollment, and a 39 percent increase in college completion. These estimates imply sizable, long-term returns to investments in means-tested, public preschool programs.

Governments and NGOs have invested heavily in fighting corruption by designing anti- poverty programs that maximize transparency and accountability. We analyze whether corruption is still widespread in the context of one such program, a massive make-work scheme in India where every job spell is posted publicly online. Linking millions of administrative job records to local election outcomes, we measure how many jobs they self-deal. In the year after the election, winners of close elections receive 3 times as many workdays as losers and typical villagers, a sum equal to two-thirds their official stipend. We find that corruption persists because of a gap between de jure and actual transparency. Only when citizens have tools to access information in a timely manner does corruption eventually vanish.

The gradual increase in the world population has a significant impact on businesses, productivity, and financial development in the context of rural life. As the population continues to grow, there is increasing pressure on farming systems to produce more food to meet the growing demand. In addition, the growing population can lead to an increased demand for natural resources such as water, land, and forests. This can create challenges for rural communities that depend on these resources for their livelihoods. In this study, it was determined as a problem that the financial system deepened in regions where the savings base was not large enough and the level of savings was not at the desired level. In this context, since improving the management of the rural labor structure and increasing investments in science and technology can also increase farmers’ incomes, the study aims to deepen rural financial reform and increase the efficiency of the financial system in business management. In the study, the key provinces of “The Belt and Road” (except Chongqing and Tibet) were considered as research objects and 2000-2015 annual panel data were used to analyze the threshold regression model. According to the research findings, when the threshold of financial development efficiency is variable, the growth of farmers’ incomes in general is prevented, when the scale of financial development is variable, the effect on farmers’ incomes gradually changes from negative to positive. In line with these findings, it is recommended to strengthen the quality of education of rural workers and promote the integration of urban and rural areas, increase investments in agricultural science and technology, and improve the service system of agricultural science and technology.

Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH 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.)

We identify the causal impact of quarantining welfare payments on Aboriginal children's school attendance by exploiting exogenous variation in its rollout across communities. We find that income quarantining reduced attendance by 4.7 percent on average in the first five months. Attendance eventually returned to its initial level, but never improved. The attendance penalty does not operate through changes in student enrollments, geographic mobility, or other policy initiatives. Instead, we demonstrate that financial disruption may be responsible for the temporary reduction in school attendance. Supplemental analysis suggests that the policy rollout may have increased family discord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do early childhood investments for low-income children narrow the academic achievement gap in elementary school? I study this question in the context of Head Start by using a new variation in federal funding expansions across counties in the 1990s. Using student-level data from Texas, I find that exposure to more generous Head Start funding during childhood significantly improved test scores, particularly for low-income Hispanic students. Hispanics benefited from funding expansions through increased access to Head Start and improvements in program inputs. These advances enhanced their language proficiency and reduced the likelihood of their special education needs during elementary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH 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 Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH 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.)

Many papers use fixed effects (FE) to identify causal impacts. We document that when treatment status only varies within some FE groups (for example, families, for family fixed effects), FE can induce nonrandom selection of groups into the identifying sample. To address this, we introduce a reweighting-on-observables estimator that can help recover the average treatment effect for policy-relevant populations. We apply these insights to reexamine the long-term effects of Head Start in the PSID and the CNLSY and find that the reweighted estimates are frequently smaller than the FE estimates. This underscores concerns with the external validity of FE estimates. The tools that we propose can strengthen the validity of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to analyze the functioning and coverage of the public distribution system in rural Haryana, India.

At the beginning of this article, it was shown that the indicators of the current so-called social distance determined by decision-makers at various stages of the epidemic development are imprecise, do not sufficiently take into account spatial relations, are unclear in public perception, and do not contain specific practical solutions. Therefore, this study undertakes the task of giving the term “social distancing” precise features, defined on the basis of geometry, and providing solutions in typical cases of the living space of the population. The geometry of the distribution of people in various situations of everyday life was considered: people standing during concerts or religious ceremonies, sitting during meals in collective catering rooms and participating in lectures, cultural, entertainment or sports events. In the latter group of tasks, the concept of building a people-distribution scheme must be adapted to the existing, arbitrary grid of real places of a lecture hall, theater hall, cinema, or stadium. The article contains some practical examples with comments and an evaluation of benefits, both in terms of ensuring safety and in terms of effective use of space.

Most studies on benefit sanctions within the German welfare system rely on established datasets about welfare receipt. This paper analyzes how using a dataset from the operational system of the German Federal Employment Agency for processing welfare claims can contribute to further research on benefit sanctions. For this purpose, I use a random sample of welfare recipients with at least one sanction between 2016 and 2018. First, this allows the detailed analysis of time lags between different steps in the sanction process. Second, linking this dataset with established datasets allows the identification of imposed sanctions for which sanction periods could not be (fully) implemented. This is largely explained by individuals leaving the welfare system between sanction events and sanction periods, e.g., by taking up employment. Third, the paper shows differences in benefit cuts across subgroups. This opens up paths for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]