Expansion Policy Research Articles

The Expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance and its Relationship with Russia

Abstract The present study is intended to be an argument answer to a number of questions connected with the structure of the North Atlantic Alliance, about how it has evolved since its formation in 1949 to date, especially on its eastern flank where the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is in full progress. What is the link between the North Atlantic Alliance and this conflict, whether it has implications for the Alliance’s expansion policy, whether there are changes in the rules for addressing new challenges, and especially how it intends to respond to pressures the Russian Federation, are the research directions we have followed.

Explaining Connectedness: An Exploration of the Factors Affecting Internet Access in India

Access to the internet can promote education, upskilling, human capital, and national and international economic outcomes. However, the household internet access rate in India in 2011 was 10.1% (Roser et al., 2015). Using data from the 2011 Indian Census, this study analyses the impact of computer access, area, literacy, and working rates alongside a gender perspective to explain district-wise household internet access. The analysis demonstrates that access to computers, area, male activity, and literacy significantly explain the internet access rates observed in Indian districts. The study concludes that socio-demographic factors influence the internet uptake and digital divide in India. The conclusion of this paper contributes to theoretical discussions of the digital divide in the modern history of India and provides implications for policy and market expansion in India.

Human capital and firms’ markup: evidence from China

ABSTRACT Based on the university enrollment expansion policy implemented by the Chinese government in 1999, I use the difference-in-difference method to explore the effects of human capital expansion on firms’ markup and the influencing mechanism. Findings suggest that human capital expansion significantly promotes the improvement of firms’ markup, which remains true after a series of robustness tests. The analysis of the influencing mechanism shows that on the one hand, human capital expansion promotes the improvement of firms’ production efficiency and improves their markup through the production efficiency channel. On the other hand, human capital expansion improves the market pricing power of firms and exerts a significant positive impact on their markup through the market pricing channel. Further analysis also shows the varying impacts of human capital expansion on the markup of different types of firms. This study enhances the understanding of the microeconomic effects of human capital expansion from the markup perspective.

Fiscal policy preferences, trade-offs, and support for social investment

AbstractA common finding in the literature is that social investment policies are broadly popular among citizens but still politically difficult to implement. This article provides a partial answer to this puzzle by exploring the fiscal trade-offs associated with such a recalibration. Based on survey data from eight Western European countries, it first explores citizens’ fiscal policy preferences with regard to the preferred size of the public sector and the distribution of spending across different subsectors. These preferences are then shown to be significantly associated with attitudes towards fiscal trade-offs regarding the expansion of social investment policies. The results reveal a political dilemma for policy-makers keen on expanding social investment: People who traditionally support a large public sector and more welfare state spending tend to oppose redistributing spending towards social investment, whereas support for such a recalibration is higher among those who have a sceptical view on public spending.

Dynamic Uncertainty Quantification and Risk Prediction Based on the Grey Mathematics and Outcrossing Theory

Embarked from the practical conditions of small samples in time-invariant and time-variant uncertainties, a complete non-probabilistic analysis procedure containing uncertainty quantification, uncertainty propagation, and reliability evaluation is presented in this paper. Firstly, the Grey systematic approach is proposed to determine the boundary laws of static intervals and dynamic interval processes. Through a combination of the policies of the second-order Taylor expansion and the smallest parametric interval set, the structural response histories via quantitative uncertainty results are further confirmed. Additionally, according to the first-passage idea from classical random process theory, the study on the time-dependent reliability measurement on the basis of the interval process model is carried out to achieve a more elaborate estimation for structural safety during its whole life cycle. A numerical example and one experimental application are eventually discussed for demonstration of the usage and reasonability of the methodology developed.

Subsidizing Residential Low Priority Smart Charging: A Power Management Strategy for Electric Vehicle in Thailand

Government policies are crucial factors for supporting the growth of the electric vehicle (EV) industry—a growth that can be encouraged, for example, by subsidization designed to reduce the considerable anxiety stemming from the inconvenience of refueling at public charging stations. Subsidizing low priority charging for residential enables cost-effective load management for example controlling of EV charging power for grid reliability at the off-peak rate for 24 h. This solution provides the convenient recharging of EVs at home and prevents an expensive grid upgradation. To advance our understanding of the EV situation, this research used a regression model to forecast the growth rate of the EV market alongside the EV expansion policies in Thailand. The agreement between a policy and forecasting urges the government to prepare power system adequacy for EV loading. The analysis showed that power demand and voltage reduction in a typical low-voltage distribution system that assumes maximum EV loading constitute voltage violations. To address this limitation, this study proposed a rule-based strategy wherein low priority smart EV charging is regulated. The numerical validation of the strategy indicated that the strategy reduced power demand by 25% and 39% compared with that achieved under uncontrolled and time of use (TOU) charging, respectively. The strategy also limited voltage reduction and prolonged battery life. The study presents implications for policymakers and electricity companies with respect to possible technical approaches to stimulating EV penetration.

Sources of Teacher Efficacy Related Attributes Alongside Bandura’s Perspectives

This article investigates how the secondary education expansion policy shapes the construction of teacher efficacy. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory underlies this article, and qualitative case study was the main approach. Around 12 and 16 teachers, respectively, participated in individual and group interviews. Findings indicate that the inadequate implementation of the policy affected the sources of teacher efficacy. The study identified that social persuasion is one of the most social self-efficacy contributors. It also pointed out factors which support a view of mastery experience as the most powerful source of self-efficacy, and the causes of teachers’ negative emotional states beyond school context.

Strengthening top–down design? Mapping science, technology and innovation policy developments in China in the age of COVID-19

ABSTRACT In the COVID-19 era, science, technology and innovation (STI) dynamics witness fundamental changes as the global expansion of government mission-oriented STI policies emphasises political stability, environmental sustainability and social inclusiveness. How does this global directionality affect China, a country known for its strong leadership in setting strategic STI policy directions? By performing a content analysis of 1,268 STI policies issued by the Chinese government before and after the pandemic started in 2020, we document the country’s latest attempts of top–down design of STI dynamics that use import and export barriers to restrict the flows of STI activities while crack down on the country’s effervescent STI scene to control what Chinese enterprises see and do, at both the national and local government levels. This increasing protectionist and interventionist tendency is a legacy of the U.S.-China trade war era when China was forced to ensure that its domestic technological progress could continue independently of the global market. However, to achieve such independence, we suggest that the country needs to restructure its demand-side, supply-side and environmental-side STI policy instruments to create a more efficient market space for techno-entrepreneurship, as it is hard to shore up political control without damping bottom–up entrepreneurial vigour.

Turner’s Frontier Doctrine and Its Impact on American Politics

Frederick Jackson Turner, a prominent American historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, published The Significance of the Frontier in American History in 1893, which received widespread attention after its publication, creating the Frontier School, which dominated American history for more than four decades. Turner’s “frontier doctrine” was informed by an expansionist ideology that profoundly influenced the governing philosophy of American dignitaries and the expansionist policies pursued by the United States.

Geopolitics of ‘Imaginary Greater Eurasia’ and Russia’s dilemma of Asia-Pacific vs Indo-Pacific strategy: an analysis from India’s strategic perspective

ABSTRACT Russia, because of its location and geopolitical proclivity, through its geopolitical doctrines of ‘Greater Eurasia’ and ‘Asia Pivot’ is interested in playing a major role in the Indo-Pacific. The growing role of the United States along with a marked increase in China’s expansionist policy in the Indo-Pacific region is also generating apprehensions for Russia. India, as a ‘pivotal player’ in the Indo-Pacific region, is also affected by the strategic developments, especially due to China's ‘imperial maneuvering’ in this geopolitical space. Being part of the Quad, and at the same time having a strategic partnership with Russia, provides India with an immense strategic opportunity. India can also strengthen its outreach to the Central Asian geopolitical space, particularly to energy-rich Kazakhstan through Russia’s Siberia and the Far East which connect with the Indo-Pacific. Russia-Ukraine war is also posing additional security challenges to Indo-Pacific.

‘Don’t wake papa bear!’ Understanding media representations of landlord-tenant relations

Landlord–tenant relations are one of the core social relations of daily life yet are surprisingly under-theorized by housing scholars and geographers. This article begins to address this gap by applying for feminist scholarship on hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity to the case of the expansion and subsequent retrenchment of rent-control policy in Ontario, Canada in 2017–2018. Through a discourse analysis of government policy documents and news media coverage, I demonstrate that portrayals of landlords and tenants broadly conformed to characteristics of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity, respectively, with landlords most commonly portrayed as ‘rational’ and tenants most commonly portrayed as ‘vulnerable’. Landlords benefit from traits associated with hegemonic masculinity even if they themselves do not embody them. Similarly, landlords benefit from the portrayal of tenants as passive victims, in need of paternalistic government protection, as opposed to potentially powerful collective actors.

A Block Minimum Residual Norm Subspace Solver with Partial Convergence Management for Sequences of Linear Systems

We are concerned with the iterative solution of linear systems with multiple right-hand sides available one group after another with possibly slowly varying left-hand sides. For such sequences of linear systems, we first develop a new block minimum norm residual approach that combines two main ingredients. The first component exploits ideas from GCRO-DR [Parks et al., SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 28 (2006), pp. 1651--1674], enabling us to recycle information from one solve to the next. The second component is the numerical mechanism for managing the partial convergence of the right-hand sides, referred to as inexact breakdown detection in IB-BGMRES [Robbé and Sadkane, Linear Algebra Appl., 419 (2006), pp. 265--285], that enables the monitoring of the rank deficiency in the residual space basis expanded blockwise. Next, for the class of block minimum norm residual approaches that relies on a block Arnoldi-like equality between the search space and the residual space (e.g., any block GMRES or block GCRO variants), we introduce new search space expansion policies defined on novel criteria to detect the partial convergence. These novel detection criteria are tuned to the selected stopping criterion and targeted convergence threshold to best cope with the selected normwise backward error stopping criterion, enabling us to monitor the computational effort while ensuring the final accuracy of each individual solution. Numerical experiments are reported to illustrate the numerical and computational features of both the new block Krylov solvers and the new search space block expansion polices.

“Further Distance and Silence among Kin”: Social Impact of COVID-19 on Older People in Rural Southeastern Nigeria

ABSTRACT Given the new and unprecedented challenges faced by older people during the COVID-19 pandemic globally, this study explored the social impact of COVID-19 on older people in rural Nigeria. Data was collected from 20 older persons using in-depth interviews and analyzed thematically. Findings revealed that the pandemic has limited the rural older people’s social support and social contact with loved ones, leading to their increased poverty and loneliness due to their dependence on intergenerational support. The study recommends creative ways to safely maintain connectedness with older people, and expansion of the Nigerian pension policy to ensure income security for all older people as the pandemic has exposed the unsustainability of dependence on social networks.

Changes In Catastrophic Health Expenditures For Major Diseases After A 2013 Health Insurance Expansion In South Korea

The South Korean National Health Insurance scheme has lacked sufficient coverage scope (services covered) and depth (costs covered) since it achieved national coverage in 1989. The government implemented two separate welfare plans (2004-08 and 2009-12) to improve the financial protection of National Health Insurance by mainly focusing on costs covered. The third plan (initiated in 2013) was the most comprehensive, addressing both scope and depth. We evaluated the impact of this benefit expansion policy for four categories of major disease (cancer, cardiac disease, cerebrovascular disease, and rare diseases) on catastrophic health expenditures, impoverishment, and unmet need. Using 2012-17 Korean Health Panel Survey data, we performed difference-in-differences analyses and triple-difference analyses to examine the differential impact of policy across income groups. The policy reduced catastrophic health expenditures among beneficiary households across almost all postpolicy years. However, there was no average effect on reducing household impoverishment or unmet need. The policy had mixed effects by income but did not generally favor low-income households. To provide stronger financial protection, the policy must address issues beyond expanding coverage, such as provider payment structure. In addition, special policy measures for low-income households need to be adopted.

Varieties of Economic Vulnerability: Evidence on Social Policy Preferences and Labor Informality from Mexico

ABSTRACTIn many Latin American countries, social policy preferences among economically vulnerable citizens seem largely unpolarized. However, current studies rarely confront citizens with realistic policy options and often lack the required detail to capture the heterogeneity of economic vulnerability. Drawing on the dualization debate, we expect individuals facing different degrees of vulnerability to show distinct social policy preferences. Using original survey data from Mexico and a conjoint experiment, our findings reveal a complex divide, where the most economically vulnerable are least supportive of public solutions. Sharing the home with a formal labor market participant does not seem to mitigate social policy skepticism among the vulnerable. In contrast, magnified vulnerability via household composition reduces support for welfare policy expansion. Social policy preferences become much less distinct when policy design alternatives are introduced, suggesting reduced expectations about the state’s role and a lack of clarity about the tangible benefits of social policy reform.

Regionalization of neonatal care: benefits, barriers, and beyond.

The goal of regionalization of neonatal care is to improve infant outcomes by directing patients to hospitals where risk-appropriate care is available. Although evidence shows that regionalized, risk-appropriate neonatal care decreases mortality, especially for high-risk infants, the approach and success of regionalization efforts in the U.S. and around the world is highly variable. Barriers to regionalization exist on the patient, provider, hospital, state, and national levels, which highlight potential opportunities to improve regionalization efforts. Improving neonatal regionalized care delivery requires a collaborative approach inclusive of all stakeholders from patients to national professional organizations, expansion and adaptation of current policies, changes to financial incentives, cross-state collaboration, support of national policies, and partnership between neonatal and obstetric communities to promote comprehensive, regionalized perinatal care.

From Punitiveness to Authoritarianism: Examining the Sources of Public Support for the Use of State Violence in Latin America

Prior work on the sources of public punitiveness and the expansion of the penal state emphasizes the importance of various anxieties associated with late modernity. Specifically, theorists posit that the expansion of neoliberal policies has been attended by animus against marginalized social groups, anxieties about economic and social conditions, and fear of crime—public sentiments which have legitimized the expansion of a penal apparatus that has undermined democracy. In the present study, we extend the traditional focus on punitiveness to include support for authoritarian forms of state power. Using of cross-national survey data (n = 13,071) from 16 Latin American countries collected during a period of democratization and the region’s “punitive turn,” we find that the social sensibilities from late modernity also drive support for autocratic forms of government. Further, our analyses reveal an indirect association between these attitudes and authoritarianism that operates through punitiveness. Our findings also suggest a “democracy paradox.” Examining country-level moderating factors, we find that these associations are more salient in countries with higher levels of democratization and social inclusion, which are thus particularly vulnerable to the democracy-eroding pressures of “governing through crime.” We discuss the implications of these findings for Latin America as well as democracies in the Global North.

The effects of financial crisis on income inequality

SummaryMotivationDo financial crises affect everyone equally? Despite the growing concern about income inequality recently, mixed empirical findings have resulted in a long‐standing debate about the distribution of income in the aftermath of financial crises.PurposeThe study examines how different types of financial crises affect the distribution of income.Methods and approachIn this study we used a two‐step system Generalized method of moments (GMM) model to explore the effects of financial crisis on income inequality.FindingsAny type of financial crisis results in a larger income gap between the rich and the poor. Although little attention has been given to debt and twin and triple crises, they are associated with higher income inequality than banking and currency crises. We also show that the effects of banking crises on income inequality in low‐income, lower‐middle income and upper‐middle income countries (LICs, LMICs and UMICs respectively) are more pronounced than in high‐income countries (HICs).Policy implicationsLong‐ and medium‐term plans for social assistance programmes in LICS, LMICs and UMICs are needed and should be flexible so that social safety nets can be rapidly adjusted to protect vulnerable groups. Maintaining a high level of fiscal balance during tranquil periods is critical to implementing welfare state expansion policies in times of crisis. Top marginal income and estate taxes should be raised to avoid very high concentrations of income in the aftermath of financial crises. The minimum wage should also be raised to protect low‐income workers.

City Administrative Level and Tertiary Educational Opportunities: Evidence From China’s Higher Education Expansion Policy

In 1999, the Chinese government implemented a higher education enrollment expansion policy to improve education equality. Now, its positive impact on educational equality is contested. This study attempts to identify the link between city administrative level and tertiary attainment in the context of the policy. Our empirical findings indicate that after implementation of the policy, inequality increased. Students from political and economic centers had more opportunities for tertiary education attainment. This policy has a greater impact on disparities in access to undergraduate education for individuals living in different administrative hierarchies than it does on specialist education.

P110. FACIAL FEMINIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES FROM 2015-2017

PURPOSE: Facial feminization surgery (FFS) is an integral aspect of gender affirming surgery (GAS) for individuals seeking to align secondary sex characteristics with their expressed gender identity. Despite robust evidence for its role in helping treat gender dysphoria, trends, and prevalence of FFS remain unknown. We sought to examine trends in FFS and investigate the payer status of facial feminization procedures in the United States. METHODS: Data from the 2015-2017 National Inpatient Sample collected using ICD-10 diagnosis codes for gender identity disorder were analyzed for FFS procedure codes. RESULTS: 110 of 1,490 (9.1%) GAS patients had FFS. 66.7% were non-Hispanic White, 23.8% Black, and 4.8% Asian and Native American, respectively. 50% of FFS occurred in the West, followed by the Northeast (31.8%), South (13.6%), and Midwest (4.8%) (p = 0.015). 36.4% of cases were self-pay, 31.8% by Medicaid, and 27.3% by private insurance (p < 0.0001). 36.4% were in the bottom 25th percentile of income, 13.6% in the 25th-50th percentile, 18.2% in the 51st-75th percentile, and 22.7% in the top 25th percentile (p = 0.440). CONCLUSION: Roughly 18% of transgender women in our sample received FFS despite its high costs. Unlike GAS, FFS is often considered cosmetic and remains uncovered by most insurance providers. Self-pay remains the most common payer status and rates of FFS are highest in the West. With continued expansion of anti-discrimination policies under the Affordable Care Act, it is critical to monitor trends in FFS to ensure equitable access for transgender patients across the nation.