Policy Conclusions Research Articles

What's that garage for? Private parking and on-street parking in a high-density urban residential neighbourhood

High-density inner-city residential neighbourhoods are often characterised by serious parking pressure and illegal parking. We study parking choices in a historical neighbourhood in Dortmund, Germany, using a household survey. Specifically, we look at the availability of and distance to private parking, the use of available private and on-street parking, and search duration. Additionally, we look at simple measures of satisfaction with parking and with the neighbourhood in general. Our results show that available private parking is not necessarily used where there is little control of illegal on-street parking. Furthermore, search durations and distance to cars parked on-street suggest that parking pressure is lower than commonly perceived in the neighbourhood. Private parking is under-utilised to the extent that we estimate that illegal parking can be reduced by 28 to 49% if private parking were consistently used by those who have it available. Even more substantial reductions in illegal parking can be achieved by deviating from standard sizes for public parking spaces. From our results we draw conclusions for urban parking policy. These include introducing parking fees, coupled with paid parking permits for residents and, perhaps, employees; defining short-stay parking zones; providing parking spaces of different sizes; and increasing the level of enforcement.

Steering the Climate System: Using Inertia to Lower the Cost of Policy: Reply

Mattauch et al. (2020) claims that the quantitative conclusions in Lemoine and Rudik (2017)—henceforth, LR17—are not robust to using a climate model consistent with recent scientific results. We observe that LR17 in fact analyzes an extension to a more realistic carbon model that generates an efficient emission tax trajectory very similar to that in Mattauch et al. (2020), and we here show that simplifications in the temperature model of LR17 do not qualitatively affect their policy conclusions. Accounting for inertia reduces the initial emission tax by 42 percent and reduces the present value of abatement cost by 39 percent. (JEL H23, Q54, Q58)

Informal, formal, or both? Assessing the drivers of home care utilization in Austria using a simultaneous decision framework

ABSTRACT Understanding the relationship between different modes of home care for the elderly and the determinants of mode choice is fundamental for an efficient care policy in ageing societies. However, empirical research on this issue has revealed that policy conclusions will depend on both national and methodological factors. Using data for Austria from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, the purpose of the present paper is twofold: First, at least to our knowledge, it is the first comprehensive assessment of this kind for Austria. Second, it adds to the literature explicitly focusing on the combined use of informal and formal care in addition to the exclusive use of these services based on an econometric framework accounting for the simultaneity and interdependence between these modes. Our results provide strong evidence for a task-specific and complementary relation of formal and informal home care in Austria, with the health status and functional limitations as the main determinants of home care choice.

Commentary:Responsibility-Sensitive Healthcare Funding: Three Responses to Clavien and Hurst's Critique.

Christine Clavien and Samia Hurst1 (henceforth C-H) make at least three valuable contributions to the literature on responsibility and healthcare. They offer an admirably clear and workable set of criteria for determining a patient's degree of responsibility for her health condition; they deploy those criteria to cast doubt on the view that patients with lifestyle-related conditions are typically significantly responsible for their conditions; and they outline several practical difficulties that would be raised by any attempt to introduce responsibility-sensitive healthcare funding. I am sympathetic to the general thrust of their argument, share-at least tentatively-their policy conclusions, and was persuaded by much of the detail of their argument. However, I do have three critical comments.

The Conundrum of Common Ownership

The common ownership debate has become one of the most contentious issues in corporate law today. This debate is a by-product of major changes to capital market ownership structure, which have triggered concerns about the rise of institutional investors, the growth of index investing, and the rapid concentration of ownership in major international financial markets. Common ownership theory focuses on concerns about the incentives of large financial institutions holding widely diversified portfolios of shares in competing companies within a particular economic sector. Proponents of the common ownership theory argue that, even where institutional investors have relatively small ownership stakes, their collective holdings in competing companies produce anticompetitive effects. Other scholars, however, have challenged both common ownership theory and its regulatory prescriptions. Although common ownership theory began in the United States, it is now being discussed around the world. This article examines three conflicting narratives that emerge in this literature concerning institutional investors and common ownership theory. The article seeks to position these narratives within the context of the rising influence of institutional investors since the early 1990s and its relation to major international corporate governance developments. It analyzes aspects of common ownership theory in light of these contemporary corporate governance developments, and argues that drawing regulatory and policy conclusions from the current body of conflicting empirical findings on the effects of common ownership is premature.

Global auto industry and product standards

Global auto industry and product standards

Comparing user and community co-production approaches in local ‘welfare’ and ‘law and order’ services: Does the governance mode matter?

This paper analyses the relationship between modes of governance at local level and the adoption of user and community co-production approaches in community safety and social care services, based on a German case study. The findings draw on a series of intensive focus groups with managers and staff of public services in four different regions in Germany, exploring existing levels of co-production and its potential in social care and community safety services, with particular focus on older and young people. The paper provides the first clear research evidence on how approaches to co-production are specific to the modes of governance within which they take place. The paper concludes with policy conclusions, both in the two programme areas concerned and in local public services more generally.

Monetary Policy, Income Inequality, and Inflation — What’s the Link?

This paper studies the link in Canada between monetary policy, income inequality, and inflation. What are the effects of monetary policy on income inequality? and why and how does inflation play a role? Income inequality largely increased from the time the Bank of Canada began targeting inflation, through the late 1990s to the early 2000s, and flattened or decreased after the 2008 financial crisis. On the whole, income inequality today is greater than it was when the Bank of Canada became an inflation-targeting central bank. Against this backdrop, our analysis shows that expansionary monetary policy shocks, triggered by a lower than expected bank rate, lead to increasing income inequality, while contractionary monetary policy shocks reduce income inequality. We then show that these effects are asymmetric with expansionary shocks having a greater impact on income inequality than contractionary shocks. Expansionary monetary policy shocks result in a higher share of national income shifting to higher income households, who consume less as a percentage of their income, dampening the increase in aggregate demand, and, therefore, inflation. Our results lead to one particularly important conclusion for monetary policy: namely, that the Bank of Canada needs to account for the impact of income inequality when modeling how inflation will respond to a change in the overnight rate.

Trends and Characteristics of the Migration From Ukraine to Poland: The Aspect of Rural Areas and Conclusion for State Migration Policy

The authors describe modern global migration trends in Europe and in particular in Poland. The problems and risks for the functioning and development of rural areas of Poland during the strengthening of emigration attitudes and internal mobility of the population are identified. The aspects of the Ukrainian migration as a resource for levelling labour-deficit trends in the Polish labour market are substantiated. The official data of the Office for Foreigners in Poland, the Central Statistical Office, the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, the Department of Statistics of the National Bank of Poland, individual organisations for the study of migration between the Ukraine and Poland are presented and the growing volumes and the scale of external labour migration of Ukrainians to Poland are stated (it is shown that today there are about 1.3 million Ukrainians in Poland, which at about 3.5% of the population is a significant value); key changes in the qualitative and structural characteristics of migration are shown. The main parameters of permanent and labour migration of Ukrainians to rural areas in Poland are characterised. An important conclusion is that, despite still low volumes, there are positive trends and the structural characteristics of Ukrainian emigration to rural areas of Poland are improving. The results of the analysis of the quantitative characteristics of Ukrainian labour migration are presented in the context of their employment in types of Poland’s economic activity such as agriculture,forestry, fishery and hunting. The authors determine features and problematic aspects of this migration. The recommendations regarding the development of joint Ukrainian-Polish practices and regulatory and guidance provisions, as well as the priority tools of migration policy, focused on meeting the socio-economic interests of both countries, are justified.

Changes in travel mode use over the life course with partner interactions in couple households

Abstract The paper links the mobility biography approach with studies on intra-household interactions between partners in travel. It does so by developing a multi-group path model – a structural equation model without latent variables – of changes in car use over time as a function of changes in activity and trip patterns, path dependency (baseline car use), life course changes, and the respective respondent's partner's car use, activity and trip patterns. In terms of life course changes, the paper accounts for (gradual, rather than abrupt) changes in paid and unpaid worktime, and the birth of a first or higher-order (i.e. second or further) child. The model further categorises respondents by gender. It focuses on couples who share one car. A model for multi-car households is estimated for comparison. The results show multiple interactions between two partners at the baseline as well as over time. The effects of the birth of a child are less clear than expected. Generally, they suggest that increases in driving are primarily an outcome of higher-order births, especially in one-car households. Policy conclusions are (1) that it may be overly optimistic to assume that the birth of a child can be utilised as a 'window of opportunity' to reduce driving, and (2) that social interactions between partners should be taken into account in policy concepts.

Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics

How effective is fact checking in countervailing “alternative facts,” i.e., misleading statements by politicians? In a randomized online experiment during the 2017 French presidential election campaign, we subjected subgroups of 2480 French voters to alternative facts by the extreme-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, and/or corresponding facts about the European refugee crisis from official sources. We find that: (i) alternative facts are highly persuasive; (ii) fact checking improves factual knowledge of voters (iii) but it does not affect policy conclusions or support for the candidate; (iv) exposure to facts alone does not decrease support for the candidate, even though voters update their knowledge. We find evidence consistent with the view that at least part of the effect can be explained by raising salience of the immigration issue.

Police Performance Rankings Depend on the Functional Form of the Index: A Comment on Bearfield, Maranto and Wolf

Bearfield, Maranto and Wolf (2020) advise policy-makers to measure policing outcomes using a metric that includes rates of homicide, police-related civilian deaths (PRCD) , and poverty. They present such an index, which they call the Police Performance Index (PPI). But alternative functional forms that are equally plausible can lead to different rankings of police departments, and therefore different policy conclusions.

Tax-Benefit Systems and the Gender Gap in Income

The gender wage gap and the gender work gap are sizable, persistent and well documented for many countries. The result of the gender wage and gender work gap combined is an income gap between men and women. A small literature has begun to examine how the tax-benefit system contributes to closing gender income gaps by redistributing between men and women. In this paper, we study the effect of tax-benefit policy on gender differences in income. We use microsimulation models linked to survey data to estimate gender gaps in market income (before taxes and transfers) and disposable income (after taxes and transfers) for each country. We develop a method to isolate the relative contributions of the gender wage gap and the gender work gap to the overall gap in income between men and women. We then decompose the difference between the gender gap in market income and the gender gap in disposable income into (i) the relative contribution of taxes and benefits in each country and (ii) the relative cushioning of the gender wage gap and gender work gap. Policy conclusions are drawn about redistribution between men and women.

Predicting Financial Crises: The Search for the Most Telling Red Flag in the Economy

Canada is often cited as having worryingly high household debt-to-GDP and debt-to-disposable-income ratios, but the assets and net worth of Canadian households have grown more quickly than their debt. Using a new financial vulnerabilities barometer, we show that the inclusion of household debt servicing considerably improves the barometer’s ability to track financial vulnerability, particularly in advance of recessions. In contrast to the Bank of Canada’s financial vulnerability barometer, our index declines sharply after the Great Recession and indicates that financial risks are currently quite low. By focusing on debt servicing (the debt-service-to-disposable-income ratio) rather than debt, the barometer appears to yield fewer false positives than the Bank of Canada’s barometer. Further empirical analysis indicates that debt servicing is an improvement over traditional credit measures in predicting future economic growth and financial crises. We show that the relationship between debt servicing and both financial crises and economic growth is statistically significant. More specifically, we find that increases in new borrowing lead initially to a mild increase in economic activity and a significant reduction in the probability of financial crises, but they subsequently lead to a gradual increase in households’ debt service burden (the sum of principal and interest payments on their outstanding debts), expressed as a ratio of disposable income, which has a significantly negative impact on economic activity and a significantly positive impact on the probability of financial crises. Focusing on debt servicing provides a potential clue as to why we have not seen the type of market correction that has been repeatedly predicted for the Canadian housing market – namely, the fact that over the last 25 years the debt-service-to-disposable-income ratio has largely been flat, except for a mild recent increase, and (not coincidentally) an increase before the 2008 financial crisis. Our findings have policy implications for both the conduct of monetary policy and financial sector regulators. An immediate policy conclusion is that empirical models of financial system vulnerabilities should put more weight on the evolution of debt-service ratios and other indicators related to debt servicing. Furthermore, if financial stability is taken into consideration in the setting of monetary policy, central banks must be concerned with the trade-off between the short-run positive effects of increased borrowing on output and inflation and the potentially negative long-run effects that work their way through the debt-service channel. Lastly, regulators concerned with the housing market and overall financial stability should look beyond traditional credit-to-GDP measures, which were always going to increase in a low interest rate environment, and closely monitor the behaviour of debt servicing.

The Knowledge Management and Safety Compliance in OECD Economies: Some Experience for Jordan Industrial Sector

The paper investigates the role of knowledge management and safety compliance in OECD economies and applies some recommendations for the Jordan industrial sector. This study reveals the main problems with safety compliance which are resulted in fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries. The main purpose is to determine the innovation and economic factors that influence safety compliance to provide a relevant recommendation for improving the situation. The research object is chosen as countries because they present generalized information on safety compliance and provide an opportunity to develop some policy recommendations. In the frame of the paper investigation of the knowledge management and safety, compliance was carried out in the following logical sequence: first, it provides the relevant literature review, then it discusses methodology and data description, and at last, it presents empirical results with policy recommendation and conclusions. There was collected panel data for 29 OECD economies on such indicators as fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries per 100 000 workers, wealth, energy efficiency indicators, gross fixed capital formation, patent applications, high-technology exports and manufacturing value-added. Methodological tools of the research were the random effect estimations in Stata for the latest available data 2010-2015. The obtained results showed that the increase in GDP per capita in selected OECD economies reduces the fatal occupational injuries per 100 000 workers. Thus, an increase in GDP per capita by 1000 USD leads to a decrease in fatal occupational injuries per 100000 workers by 0,039. Also, an increase in GDP per capita by 1000 USD leads to an increase in non-fatal occupational injuries per 100000 workers by 7,8. The other important innovation variables are high technological export and patent application by residents, which reduce the level of non-fatal occupational injuries. Systematization of literary sources and approaches for solving the problem of safety compliance indicates that both economic and innovation parameters have to be addressed to reduce fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries. The results of this research can be useful for policy-makers who are responsible for knowledge management and safety compliance. Keywords: knowledge management, safety compliance, OECD economies, innovations, occupational injuries.

Calculation Methodology of the Effective Exchange Rate in Slovenia

The paper sets up a calculation of the effective exchange rate for Slovenia, and compares it to the methodologies used by the IMF, BIS, European Commission and ECB. Additionally we construct smaller regional effective exchange rates that help to explain the robustness of the Slovene export sector, especially in the cooling-off period of the global economy in recent years. The results show that some of the calculation methodologies can overshoot less favourable competitiveness dynamics. It is important to consider these results as different methodologies could draw different policy conclusions for the competitiveness stance of the Slovene economy.

Misogyny and the Continuity Crisis: Is Social Science Research Responsible?

Misogyny and the Continuity Crisis:Is Social Science Research Responsible? Leonard Saxe (bio) This response to Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl's indictment of social science and its role in promoting misogyny in the US Jewish community is being written in the midst of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Covid-19 has already resulted in more than 180,000 deaths worldwide, and most of us are self-isolating to mitigate propagation of the virus.1 Members of the Jewish community have not been spared the consequences of the pandemic, as it has disrupted not only our health, but also our personal, professional, and religious lives. For many, Passover was spent separated from loved ones, as the apex of the pandemic upended the family gatherings that normally pass on the formative story of Judaism to the next generation. I situate my comments within the Covid-19 crisis because the underlying theme of the authors' critique is that the demographic study of Jewish continuity—essentially the study of families—is inherently misogynistic. Their thesis is that social scientists created "a continuity crisis paradigm" that acts to subjugate women's agency. By extension, the construct, adopted by Jewish communal leaders, helps to explain why exploitation and sexual harassment has been tolerated in the Jewish community. Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl's provocative argument conflates a number of issues. One is the focus of the scholarship of Jewish life on families and, in particular, marriage. A second is the application of sociodemographic methods to the study of Jewish life. A third concerns the inferences and policy conclusions drawn from that research. The linkage between these elements is complex, far more so than the authors suggest. In particular, their assessment rests on a narrow perspective on the production of social scientific knowledge. As a postpositivist, who nevertheless values empirical research, my comments focus on a set of alternative explanations for the phenomena described by the authors. Although I reject the authors' argument that a particular way of studying Jewish continuity promotes misogyny, I concur with their [End Page 221] contention that individual behavior—in this case, sexual harassment—needs to be understood in a larger context. Attributing responsibility solely to individuals is a "fundamental attribution error"2 and deflects attention from collective responsibility. If we are to redress gender-based harassment, we must understand the underlying attitudes and policies that promote or tolerate such behavior. As social scientists, we have an obligation to explore how and whether our discipline contributes to an inequitable environment, Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl take issue with quantitative sociodemographic studies in particular and their role in promoting the perception of a continuity crisis. To place this work in context, the discussion below considers aspects of the authors' argument separately. In part, I assess the role of research in shaping discourse in the Jewish community. I suggest improvements in research design, analysis, and interpretation so that the diversity of the Jewish experience can be better understood. IS MARRIAGE AND FAMILY RESEARCH INHERENTLY PROBLEMATIC? Given Judaism's focus on childbearing and child-rearing, it is difficult to accept the premise that the social scientific study of marriage and family is not a legitimate focus of research on the Jewish community.3 To note the obvious, family issues frame Judaism's most sacred text. From the origin story of Adam and Eve, to the story of Abraham, Sarah and their progeny, to the journey of the tribes of Israel who fled from Egypt, the Biblical narrative features sibling rivalry, spousal jealousy, deceit, and a host of human failings. Intimate relationships are at the foreground of Jewish history and culture. Demography is also part of the Jewish story. Censuses of the Jewish people occurred even as they wandered in the desert. Described in the kind of detail that would be worthy of a dissertator's methodology section, the census is a kind of stratified sample (by family) of the tribes. A longstanding focus of commentary has concerned who and what might have been missed in the accounting, but notably other debates have focused on the censuses' accuracy.4 Even today, when the Torah portion [End Page 222] (B'midbar) describing the census is recited, we also read...

A Statistical Model to Monitor COVID-19 Contagion Growth

We present a statistical model which can be employed to monitor the time evolution of the COVID-19 contagion curve, and of the associated reproduction rate R0. The model is a Poisson autoregression of the daily new observed cases and can, differently from classical exponential growth models, dynamically adapt its estimates to explain the evolution of contagion in different time periods and locations, allowing for the comparative evaluation of health policy measures. We have applied the model to the first two months of data from the countries most hit by the virus. Our empirical findings show that the proposed model is able to identify where a country lies on the contagion curve, at each point in time: behind a peak, on a peak, and after a peak. Based on this positioning, we draw three main health policy conclusions that can be useful for all countries in the world. First, countries that are still behind the peak (e.g. France and the United Kingdom) should maintain strong containment measures, such as diffuse testing and lockdown. Second, countries that are on the peak and have experienced a steep contagion growth (e.g. Italy, Spain and the United States), could partially relax containment measures but must couple them with continuous monitoring of the growth curve. Third, in countries that have experienced a less steep contagion growth (e.g. Germany) the approach to restrictive measures could be more cautious since there is a risk that social costs outweigh the benefits. Last, countries that have passed the peak (e.g. China) should relax containment measures, but continue statistical monitoring.

Some regulations of International Law on Prevention of Marine Litter

This paper aims to provide an overview of the regulation and management instruments developed at international, regional and national levels to address marine litter problems, put forward the potential gaps in the existing management body and suggest solutions. The article also review the role of international law in managing the problem of marine litte. In addition, regulations of Vietnamese law for Prevention and Management of Marine litter is discussed. The paper concludes with a few policy conclusions in Viet Nam.

Wind Power and Job Creation

The purpose of this paper is to provide a global overview of job effects per MW of wind power installations, which will enable improved decision-making and modeling of future wind-power projects. We found indications that job creation connected to wind-power installations is rather limited. In total, 17 peer-reviewed articles and 10 reports/non-peer-reviewed papers between 2001 and 2019 were assessed. Our three major policy conclusions are as follows: (a) job creation seems to be limited; (b) each new project should consider a unique assessment, since all projects have been undertaken within different institutional frameworks, labor markets, and during separate years, meaning that the technology is not comparable; and (c) the number of jobs depends on the labor intensity of the country.