Derive Policy Recommendations Research Articles

Everything comes at a price: The impact of eliminating harmful subsidies in the Spanish marine resources industry

One of the objectives for the European Horizon 2021–2027 is completely eliminating harmful fishery subsidies. Spain was the country that received the greatest amount of the previous European Marine Fishery Funds framed within EU horizon-2020. We explore the potential impacts of eliminating these harmful subsidies in the sectors related to marine resources in Spain. We address it with the novelty of applying an input–output model, disaggregating marine resource activities into three sectors (fishing, aquaculture and seafood processing sector). Our results show that the subtraction of these harmful subsidies will entail significant reductions in the value-added of the analysed sectors, which will impact their supply and demand of inputs affecting the rest of the sectors of the economy. It will affect the final demand for their outputs and the sectors linked to them. We derive policy recommendations to smooth the transition to a fishery-related industry without harmful subsidies.

Recycling photovoltaic modules within a circular economy approach and a snapshot for Türkiye

Solar energy has an important role for increasing renewable energy use and circularity options in the sector are increasing. This study analyses the advances in the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals that aim to create a more equitable and peaceful world and a more livable environment. Studies that are focused on life cycle perspectives, opportunities for end-of-life management, and multiple goals, including climate action as well as responsible consumption and production are compared. This is used to understand synergies between the circular economy and solar photovoltaic technologies in Türkiye. A need analysis survey is conducted with the participation of academic institutions and research centers, producers, and other stakeholders who operate in the solar photovoltaic sector in Türkiye. The results are analyzed across stakeholder categories and used to derive policy recommendations based on the top drivers, barriers, and enablers to increase circularity in the sector. The expected impacts on environmental, economic and social aspects are also questioned to obtain perspectives on possible pathways. For the first time, the realization of sustainable solar photovoltaic waste management in the context of the circular economy is discussed by stakeholders in Türkiye to establish consensus, increase collaboration, and support planning of future opportunities.

Sovereign issuers, incentives and liquidity: The case of the Danish sovereign bond market

The Sovereign Debt Management Office of the Kingdom of Denmark decided in 2017 to pay direct compensation to certain financial intermediaries for providing liquidity in its sovereign bond market. We analyze the extent to which market liquidity and liquidity premia in the Danish sovereign bond market changed in response to this new market design and, in particular, the compensation offered to liquidity providers. We also investigate whether the new compensation scheme for market makers is cost-efficient for the Kingdom of Denmark through lower bond liquidity premia, bond yields and debt service costs. We find that improvements in market liquidity conditions lead to potential savings, net of costs, for the Kingdom of Denmark of DKK 23.12 million over the lifetime of the bonds issued every year as a direct benefit, and to a decrease in interest expenses for the real economy of about 0.07% of nominal GDP as one indirect benefit. From these findings, we derive policy recommendations for the Kingdom of Denmark, as well as other European countries that currently generally employ an indirect rather than a direct compensation scheme.

Sharing the Burdens of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation: Incorporating Fairness Perspectives into Policy Optimization Models

Mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change can be addressed only through the collective action of multiple agents. The engagement of involved agents critically depends on their perception that the burdens and benefits of collective action are distributed fairly. Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), which inform climate policies, focus on the minimization of costs and the maximization of overall utility, but they rarely pay sufficient attention to how costs and benefits are distributed among agents. Consequently, some agents may perceive the resultant model-based policy recommendations as unfair. In this paper, we propose how to adjust the objectives optimized within IAMs so as to derive policy recommendations that can plausibly be presented to agents as fair. We review approaches to aggregating the utilities of multiple agents into fairness-relevant social rankings of outcomes, analyze features of these rankings, and associate with them collections of properties that a model’s objective function must have to operationalize each of these rankings within the model. Moreover, for each considered ranking, we propose a selection of specific objective functions that can conveniently be used for generating this ranking in a model. Maximizing these objective functions within existing IAMs allows exploring and identifying climate polices to which multiple agents may be willing to commit.

Employee participation, job quality, and inequality

PurposeThe purpose is to review the effects of employee participation (EP) in decision-making, ownership and profit on job quality, worker well-being and productivity, and derive policy recommendations from the findings.Design/methodology/approachThe authors summarise results of “declining labour power”, plus theoretical arguments and empirical evidence for the benefits of EP for job quality, satisfaction and productivity.FindingsWorker well-being and job satisfaction are ignored unless they contribute directly to profitability. EP is needed to remedy this situation when employers have market power and unions are weak. The result can be a rise in both productivity and well-being.Research limitations/implicationsThe chief issue here is that there are data limitations, particularly on the well-being effects of participation.Practical implicationsLots of encouraging examples in many countries need legislative help to multiply.Social implicationsIt is quite possible that there could be major implications for welfare and employment.Originality/valueThe authors make the case for public sector subsidies for employee buyouts and new cooperative start-ups, as well as legislation for works councils and profit sharing.

Building a Common Support Framework in Differing Realities—Conditions for Renewable Energy Communities in Germany and Bulgaria

The revised EU Renewable Energy Directive first introduced renewable energy communities into the EU policy framework and requires Member States to implement a support framework for them. Given the broad scientific evidence showing the benefits of community energy for a just energy transition, a successful implementation across all Member States is essential. However, the preconditions for developing support frameworks differ largely between EU nations, as some countries have long-term experiences with supporting renewable energy communities (i.e., Germany and Denmark), while in other Member States, renewable energy communities are notably non-existent (i.e., Eastern European nations). With the purpose of providing scientific evidence to support the development of a policy framework for renewable energy communities in Eastern European Member States, this article compares key factors for the development of such communities in Bulgaria and Germany, combining a literature review with expert interviews to collect primary information on Bulgaria. A country analysis puts these factors into the contexts of both countries, while a cross-country comparison demonstrates that there are significant gaps in the support framework of Bulgaria, although these gaps are, to a lesser extent, also present in Germany. We discuss these shortcomings, derive policy recommendations and identify further research needs.

Extreme Events, Entrepreneurial Start-Ups, and Innovation: Theoretical Conjectures

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we scrutinize what has been established in the literature on whether entrepreneurship can cause and resolve extreme events, the immediate and long-run impacts of extreme events on entrepreneurship, and whether extreme events can positively impact (some) entrepreneurship and innovation. Based on this, we utilize a partial equilibrium model to provide several conjectures on the impact of COVID-19 on entrepreneurship, and to derive policy recommendations for recovery. We illustrate that while entrepreneurship recovery will benefit from measures such as direct subsidies for start-ups, firms’ revenue losses, and loan liabilities, it will also benefit from aggregate demand-side support and income redistribution measures, as well as from measures that facilitate the innovation-response to the Keynesian supply-shock caused by the pandemic, such as access to online retail and well-functioning global transportation and logistics.

Predicting polytomous career choices in healthcare using probabilistic expectations data.

This paper compares career expectations and career outcomes of Swiss healthcare assistants (HCA), an occupation created to increase the supply of nurses. We investigate whether HCAs can predict their own professional careers two years ahead by eliciting their expectations for a range of career alternatives, including nursing and other studies. Polytomous choice situations have rarely been analyzed using numerical probabilities in the expectations literature. Our results show that almost all respondents give informative answers to the probabilistic online survey question. Individuals express considerable uncertainty about their future careers, with over 60% attaching positive probabilities to more than one career alternative. The analyses reveal that individuals' numerical expectations have substantial predictive value for their future careers, even after controlling for many variables. This finding confirms that individuals have private information not directly available to researchers, and that eliciting choice probabilities for polytomous choice situations is a viable approach in surveys. However, the mean shares for career alternatives implied by individual probabilities do not fully coincide with actual shares and are more accurate over 4 than over 2 years. The information conveyed in expectations and their deviations from outcomes enables us to derive policy recommendations to increase transitions to nursing.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the dairy industry: Lessons from China and the United States and policy implications

The purposes of this study are to assess the COVID-19 pandemic's impacts on the dairy industries in China and the United States and to derive policy recommendations for enhancing the diary industries' resilience to pandemics and other market shocks. Specifically, data from the two nations are used to analyze and compare the mechanisms through which the pandemic has affected their dairy industries and to discuss potential lessons from their experiences. The findings suggest that this pandemic has heavily affected the dairy industries in both China and the United States through similar mechanisms, such as decreased farmgate milk prices, disruption and difficulties of moving milk within the supply chains, worker shortages, increased production costs, and lack of operating capital. There were also significant differences in the affecting mechanisms between the two nations, including transportation difficulties from widespread road closures and significant reduction in holiday sales of dairy products in China, and the shutdown of many dairy processors in the United States due to the closing of schools, restaurants, and hotels. While government financial reliefs are highly needed to help many dairy farms and processors survive this pandemic in the short term, the dairy industries and governments need to work together to develop long-term strategies and policies to balance the industries' efficiency and flexibility, product specialization and diversification, supply chain integration and local food systems, and market mechanisms and policy regulations and interventions.

Potentials and obstacles for community anaerobic digesters in the United States: Evidence from a case study in Vermont

The two purposes of this study are to identify factors for the failure of 31% of community anaerobic digesters (CADs) in the United States through a case study of the development, operation, and shutdown of a $4.5 million CAD in Vermont, and to derive policy recommendations for sustainable development of CADs. While many studies have used aggregated data to assess the potentials, obstacles, and policy implications of on-farm biogas production, this paper contributes to the literature with a case study of a large CAD's investment and funding sources, feedstock utilization, energy output, and operating costs and revenues over multiple years. Empirical findings suggest that it is technically feasible to use cow manure and organic wastes from multiple sources to generate electricity, but the economic feasibility and returns depend highly on grants and subsidies for initial investments and on such factors as electricity price, feedstock availability and quality, and market price of renewable energy credits (RECs). Major reasons for the shutdown of this CAD, and likely a large proportion of other CADs in the country, include underestimation of technical problems and operating costs, overestimation of financial returns, and low REC price in the past several years. Future CADs should be invested in and operated by commercial enterprises and government subsidies, and public supports should be based on CADs' outputs such as electricity and utilization of their byproducts like waste heat and recycled nutrients. Also, the educational and research needs of nonprofit organizations could be met via collaboration with privately operated CADs.

Rethinking Liability Rules for Online Hosting Platforms

With the growing economic and societal importance of online platforms, the question of their liability for illegal content or products they host becomes more important. Based on an analysis of platforms’ incentives, we address the appropriate liability rule for hosting service providers and derive policy recommendations for an efficient liability regime in the European Union. Online hosting platforms may take monitoring efforts on their own initiative that are suboptimal due to the presence of externalities and asymmetric information problems, warranting some form of liability rules. However, for more fundamental reasons of free speech and preventing censorship, policy makers may want to be cautious in entrusting – and burdening – private parties which such an extensive ‘policing’ role. Additionally, higher monitoring requirements may disproportionally burden small entrants. As we argue, since several actors participate to the diffusion of illegal material online, the responsibility of a safe Internet should be shared among all these actors. Concrete regulatory improvements may encourage online hosting platforms to do their part in monitoring proactively and diligently, such as affirming a good Samaritan clause.

Rethinking liability rules for online hosting platforms

Abstract With the growing economic and societal importance of online platforms, the question of their liability for illegal content or products they host becomes more important. Based on an analysis of platforms’ incentives, we address the appropriate liability rule for hosting service providers and derive policy recommendations for an efficient liability regime in the European Union. Online hosting platforms may take monitoring efforts on their own initiative that are suboptimal due to the presence of externalities and asymmetric information problems, warranting some form of liability rules. However, for more fundamental reasons of free speech and preventing censorship, policy makers may want to be cautious in entrusting—and burdening—private parties which such an extensive ‘policing’ role. Additionally, higher monitoring requirements may disproportionally burden small entrants. As we argue, since several actors participate to the diffusion of illegal material online, the responsibility of a safe Internet should be shared among all these actors. Concrete regulatory improvements may encourage online hosting platforms to do their part in monitoring proactively and diligently.

Strategic-Agent Equilibria in the Operation of Natural Gas and Power Markets

We consider strategic gas/power producers and strategic gas/power consumers operating in both gas and power markets. We build a flexible multi-period complementarity model to characterize day-ahead equilibria in those markets. This model is an equilibrium program with equilibrium constraints that characterizes the market behavior of all market agents. Using a realistic case study, we analyze equilibria under perfect and oligopolistic competition. We also analyze equilibria under different levels of information disclosure regarding market outcomes. We study as well equilibria under different ownership schemes: no hybrid agent, some hybrid agents, and only hybrid agents. Finally, we derive policy recommendations for the regulators of both the gas and the power markets.

Extreme Events, Entrepreneurial Start-Ups, and Innovation: Theoretical Conjectures

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we scrutinize what has been established in the literature on whether entrepreneurship can cause and resolve extreme events, the immediate and long-run impacts of extreme events on entrepreneurship, and whether extreme events can positively impact (some) entrepreneurship and innovation. Based on this, we propose a partial equilibrium model to provide several conjectures on the impact of COVID-19 on entrepreneurship and derive policy recommendations for recovery. Our model's comparative statics shows that entrepreneurship recovery will benefit from aggregate demand-side support measures, combined with direct subsidies for start-ups, firms' revenue losses, and loan liabilities, as well as from actions that promote income redistribution.

Multiple perspectives in conflict settings: An introduction

In this introduction to the special thematic section, we discuss the pre-eminent research orientation in the social and political psychology of peace and conflict, its current critiques, and what more multiple perspectives can add to the field. First, we outline key characteristics of the ‘simple road’ to conflict settings: a simple, often binary, definition of the sides involved, a focus on one conflict-induced negative outcome and on one causal pathway leading to it, and a motivation to derive policy recommendations from empirical findings. Second, we discuss constructivist, normative, ecological, and pragmatic critiques of the ‘simple road’, as four distinct strands grounded in different epistemological assumptions, but converging on the account that research priorities need to be revised and methodologies be expanded. Third, engaging with the fundamental questions raised by the critiques, we make a plea for more multiple perspectives: for multiple voices among research participants (more diversified samples), for multiple positions from where to listen to these voices (more time-points and multi-factorial approaches), and for multiple sensors with which to capture them (more mixed methods). We highlight how the different contributions to the section provide creative developments along one or several of the three axes. On the basis of the concrete inspiring examples they provide, we argue that a field growing along these axes would increase its capacity to bridge its most important critical developments and to expand its scope in relevant directions.

Sømilitær vurdering af Ruslands Østersøflåde og de militære implikationer for Danmark

This article provides an evaluation of the capabilities of the Russian Baltic Fleet. It is shown that the Baltic Fleet is the smallest of Russia’s fleets, but that it also has the most modern ships. Even so, the Baltic Fleet still has a large heritage of old equipment from the Soviet era. The assessment is that the Russian Baltic Fleet would be unable to stand up to NATO in a war. Rather, it is a fleet designed for peacetime and operations in the grey zone below armed conflict. This knowledge is used to derive policy recommendations for the development of the Danish military. Scenarios for peacetime, war, and grey zone conflicts are discussed. It is argued that in case of a war, peer-level maritime threats will come from the Russian Northern Fleet, and that maritime operations in the Baltic Sea will focus on different kinds of challenges. It is suggested that Denmark needs to improve its capabilities for deterrence and maritime security operations in the Baltic Sea region. Currently, Denmark relies on just five large warships to solve many tasks, which leaves the Navy at risk of being overstretched.

Analyzing drivers of renewable energy development in Southeast Asia countries with correlation and decomposition methods

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a diverse region characterized by rapid economic growth, demographic change and urbanization. The dominance of energy supply from non-renewable resources in the region means that the increasing energy demand has implications for energy security, as well as adverse local and global environmental effects. Climatic conditions in the region are favorable for renewable energy (RE) resources, especially but not only wind and solar technologies. ASEAN countries differ strongly in terms of their national policy frameworks and progress in renewable energy development; the overall target of 23% renewables by 2025 is very ambitious under current policy frameworks.This paper identifies a gap between these national policies and local governance, especially in urban areas, which requires attention to ensure future target fulfilment. By employing a new combined correlation and decomposition approach at country and city levels, we investigate the determinants of RE expansion and explore the trend drivers in ASEAN countries from 1995 to 2013. An Impact Matrix is developed to position and interpret the relative push (e.g. policy) and pull (e.g. market) impacts on RE development, and to derive policy recommendations for countries and sectors. The results highlight that urban areas should be the focus of RE policy and governance in addition to rural areas. The tremendous impact of economic growth creates a great impetus for renewable energy development, but urbanization is the second pull for renewable energy extensions.Since the two effects are located in the first quadrant of the Impact Matrix, if strategists affect these factors, they will create the most powerful incentive for renewable energy growth. This confirms that if the strategic aim is to promote renewable energy market development, through policy and governance measures, the focus should be on urban areas, non-electricity sectors and the demand side.

Ecosystem restoration in Europe: Can analogies to Traditional Chinese Medicine facilitate the cross-policy harmonization on managing socio-ecological systems?

EU's Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 sets a 15% restoration target. However, the understanding of restoration as a management tool remains ambiguous at EU and Member State levels.As a country with rich biodiversity but low GDP, a well-defined priority setting approach is key for Bulgaria. The “Methodological framework for assessment and mapping of ecosystem condition and ecosystem services in Bulgaria” proposes a transition towards ecosystem management and monitoring of the Socio-Ecological System (SES), to be embedded in the environmental policy framework.We extend the analogy between SES and the human body's system in the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as a way to inform restoration priority setting and development of restoration and monitoring tools at several levels:1.Overall objective: the sustainability goals correspond to the TCM's objective of a healthy, balanced body2.Restoration objectives and functioning: the desired ecosystem state can be better understood in analogy between the ecosystem structure and functioning framework for multiparametric optimization, and the TCM framework of Ying-Yang, Eight principles, Five elements and organs3.Ecosystem monitoring: Integrated monitoring may benefit from comparison to TCM diagnostics4.Ecosystem management approaches can benefit from the analogy to the TCM system of meridiansWe apply the analogy and find that spatially explicit decision making on restoration, streamlined ecosystem monitoring and a number of other issues (green infrastructure, designation of protected areas, defragmentation and connectivity, cumulative impact assessment, etc.), are easier to understand, communicate, account for and manage. Ecosystem restoration is priority for China and the country has accumulated research and practical experience, including study of links between ecosystem management and the historical principles of Chinese philosophy.The Bulgarian and European approach to ecosystem based management can benefit from analogies to TCM. We derive policy recommendations by analogy, and illustrate them on the example of Natural Capital Accounting.

Building on the HIV chronic care platform to address noncommunicable diseases in sub-Saharan Africa: a research agenda.

The remarkable progress made in confronting the global HIV epidemic offers a unique opportunity to address the increasing threat of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). However, questions remain about how to enhance the HIV platforms to deliver integrated HIV and NCD care to people living with HIV (PLHIV) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We aimed to develop a priority research agenda to advance this effort. Researchers, policymakers, and implementers from the United States and SSA conducted three scoping reviews on HIV/NCD prevention and care focused on clinical, health system, and community levels. Based on the review findings and expert inputs, we conducted iterative consensus-development activities to generate a prioritized research agenda. Population-level data on NCD prevalence among PLHIV in SSA are sparse. The review identified NCD screening and management approaches that could be integrated into HIV programs in SSA. However, few studies focused on the effectiveness, cost, and best practices for integrated chronic care platforms, making it difficult to derive policy recommendations. To address these gaps, we propose a prioritized research agenda focused on developing evidence-based service delivery models, increasing human capacity through workforce education, generating data through informatics platforms and research, managing the medication supply chain, developing new financing and sustainability models, advancing research-informed policy, and addressing other crosscutting health system issues. Based on collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts, a research agenda was developed to provide guidance that advances efforts to adapt the current health system to deliver integrated chronic care for PLHIV and the population at large.

Policy recommendations for a transition to sustainable mobility based on historical diffusion dynamics of transport systems

Emerging transportation technologies have the potential to surmount carbon lock-in and enable a transition to environmentally sustainable mobility. Promising options include biofuels; hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric vehicles; hydrogen fuel cell vehicles; maglev trains; and the Hyperloop. To varying degrees, widespread adoption of these technologies is complicated by the chicken-and-egg problem of infrastructure provision. Consumers are unlikely to adopt a technology in the absence of supporting infrastructure, but infrastructure provision is unprofitable without a critical mass of adopters. To derive policy recommendations for overcoming this problem, this study analyzes historical data on the diffusion dynamics of transport systems in the United States. The methodology systematically compares the relative timing of diffusion processes for infrastructure, vehicles, and travel. A striking regularity observed across transport systems is that the diffusion of infrastructure precedes the adoption of vehicles, which precedes the expansion of travel. On the chicken-and-egg conundrum, findings thus support the view that infrastructure comes first. The analysis leads to three salient policy recommendations: support adequate infrastructure provision early in the technology life cycle, target suitable niche markets to maximize the impact of infrastructure investment, and leverage distributed technologies to reduce overall infrastructure requirements.