Questions Of Policy Relevance Research Articles

How Armed Conflict Influences Migration

AbstractThe literature on migration during armed conflict is abundant. Yet, the questions of highest policy relevance—how many people will leave because of a conflict and how many more people will be living outside a country because of a conflict—are not well addressed. This article explores these questions using an agent‐based model, a computational simulation that allows us to connect armed conflict to individual behavioral changes and then to aggregate migration flows and migrant stocks. With detailed data from Nepal during the 1996–2006 conflict, we find that out‐migration rates actually decrease on average, largely due to a prior decrease in return migration. Regardless, the stock of migrants outside the country increases modestly during that period. Broadly, this study demonstrates that population dynamics are inherent to and necessary for understanding conflict‐related migration. We conclude with a discussion of the generalizability and policy implications of this study.

Estimating Causal Effects When the Treatment Affects All Subjects Simultaneously: An Application

Several important questions cannot be answered with the standard toolkit of causal inference since all subjects are treated for a given period and thus there is no control group. One example of this type of questions is the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on global warming. In this paper, we address this question using a machine learning method, which allows estimating causal impacts in settings when a randomized experiment is not feasible. We discuss the conditions under which this method can identify a causal impact, and we find that carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for an increase in average global temperature of about 0.3 degrees Celsius between 1961 and 2011. We offer two main contributions. First, we provide one additional application of Machine Learning to answer causal questions of policy relevance. Second, by applying a methodology that relies on few directly testable assumptions and is easy to replicate, we provide robust evidence of the man-made nature of global warming, which could reduce incentives to turn to biased sources of information that fuels climate change skepticism.

Defining Domestic Violence and Women's Autonomy in Law

This paper explores the complex relationship between Indian feminism and the law and legal systems, as reflected in the recent (2015) Bombay High Court judgment on domestic violence. It is divided into two sections. The first section looks at feminist interventions in marital disputes and domestic violence through grassroots efforts, and outlines the multidimensional and hybrid feminist understandings of domestic violence, discusses change strategies and ethical principles that underpinned their action, and addresses the enactment of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA) as one such strategy against domestic violence. This section also focuses on feminist dilemmas and foregrounds the issue of women’s autonomy in situations of domestic violence. The mainstreaming of feminist legal interventions through the PWDVA has brought new challenges for feminists and the second section discusses this issue by focusing on judicial intervention in deciding the boundary of counselling and mediation practices by protection officers under the PWDVA. We suggest that as seen in the 2015 judgement, while the judiciary has upheld some aspects of feminist practice and disallowed reconciliation in situations of serious physical domestic violence, its over-emphasis on equating physical violence with domestic violence and its protectionist stance has limited women’s autonomy and gone against feminist counselling principles and politics undergirding feminist interventions in situations of domestic violence. We suggest that this judgment can be read as a dialogue within a section of feminist groups in India who endorse feminist political ideals of liberty, individual rights, and equality and seek to institutionalize these within the law. This paper is an analytical and interpretive piece and not an empirical inquiry into legal practice or a survey of case law developments of the PWDVA. It focuses on normative questions of theoretical and policy relevance arising from feminist engagements with law.

Living longer, working longer: the need for a comprehensive approach to labour market reform in response to demographic changes.

Increases in life expectancy over the last decades have been among the most salient reflections of changes in the quality of life in the developed world. In Germany, in 1990, the average life expectancy for men and women was, respectively, 72 and 79, while in Italy men could expect to live 74 years and women 80. By 2012, these numbers changed by about 6 years for men and 4 years for women in Germany and by 6 and 5 years in Italy. Substantial increases in life expectancy have been recorded in all EU countries, from Portugal to Estonia and from Cyprus to Norway. This growth reflects unequivocal success of medicine and health care provision and fundamental changes in the quality of life and lifestyle, and offers new opportunities for the growing groups of older populations. However, when set against very low birth rates and low levels of economic growth, the increases have also called into question the financial sustainability of social security and public health care systems, and the potential generosity of welfare support for large groups of the population. It has long been recognised that increases in life expectancy, and the slower but equally important growth of healthy life expectancy, must be matched by adaptations of eligibility for public retirement pensions and by extended labour market activity. Continued economic development requires that increased proportions of the 50, 60 and 70 year olds be involved in the labour market, and that living longer be accompanied by working longer. There seems to be broad agreement that the process of extending working lives needs to involve all of the key stakeholders, i.e. both workers and their employers with an important supportive role of the government in areas of potential market failures. It also requires a comprehensive approach that combines labour market and retirement policies with tax policy and public health and welfare reforms. The demographic changes that are occurring before our very eyes offer new opportunities for older individuals, insofar as many of them continue to enjoy healthy and active lives. At the same time these changes also present substantial challenges for many individuals who find themselves faced with new requirements at the workplace and difficult choices concerning care duties for older family members or support expectations among younger generations. It seems clear that as the proportion of the 50? in the population grows, it becomes ever more important to understand the mechanisms which affect the quality of life of these groups of the population and which drive individual decisions in different areas of life, including activity in the labour market. Fortunately, as new survey and administrative data on older populations become available at national and international levels, researchers can examine the causes behind observed variation in different outcomes and they can address increasing number of key questions of academic and policy relevance. The labour market activity of older people is the focus of the special section in this issue of the European Journal of Ageing, with each of the four articles in the section making its contribution to the current debate on increasing working lives. As argued by Sonnet et al. (2014), for example, this debate, apart from reforming retirement systems, has to address such areas as rewarding work, changing employer practises and improving employability of workers. The four papers in the special section fit well within this framework. Dal Bianco et al. (2014) and Achdut et al. (2014) examine different factors behind retirement Responsible editor: H. Litwin.

Addressing key ecological questions to support policy-making in Brazil

In Brazil, there is generally a lack of information flow between scientists and policy makers. Here, we address 29 ecological questions of high policy relevance in Brazil, in an attempt to encourage the participation of science in decision-making. Similar addresses have been made by British and American scientists (Fleishman et al., 2011; Sutherland et al., 2006), and it is our goal to bring such matters to the Brazilian reality. We had several meetings during an Ecosystem Ecology seminar held at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora and categorised our questions into five different topics. Brief introductory paragraphs are shown below each topic and the questions are presented subsequently without any order of relevance.

Implications Of Basel III For Capital, Liquidity, Profitability, And Solvency Of Global Systematically Important Banks

The objective of this paper is to study the profitability and solvency implications of the proposed Basel III capital and liquidity requirements in the global banking context. The intent is to improve our understanding on how the Basel III capital and liquidity requirements impact upon the functioning of global systematically important banks (GSIBs), and how this knowledge could prove to be useful in answering questions of policy relevance like financial stability in economics. A longer-term perspective is taken in order to link capital and liquidity requirements with the notion of systemic risk within the evolution of the international financial and monetary system. Of special interest is the interaction between macroeconomic policy - including monetary, exchange rate and combined micro-macro-prudential policy within the setting of present-day Basel III regulatory and supervisory reforms. More specifically, the paper addresses two related issues: first, it studies and presents several financial indicators that GSIBs disclose; second, it examines how these same indicators could be related to GSIBs profitability and solvency.

Cohort Profile: The Themba Lethu Clinical Cohort, Johannesburg, South Africa

The Themba Lethu Clinical Cohort was established in 2004 to allow large patient-level analyses from a single HIV treatment site to evaluate National Treatment Guidelines, answer questions of national and international policy relevance and to combine an economic and epidemiologic focus on HIV research. The current objectives of the Themba Lethu Clinical Cohort analyses are to: (i) provide cohort-level information on the outcomes of HIV treatment; (ii) evaluate aspects of HIV care and treatment that have policy relevance; (iii) evaluate the cost and cost-effectiveness of different approaches to HIV care and treatment; and (iv) provide a platform for studies on improving HIV care and treatment. Since 2004, Themba Lethu Clinic has enrolled approximately 30,000 HIV-positive patients into its HIV care and treatment programme, over 21,000 of whom have received anti-retroviral therapy since being enrolled. Patients on treatment are typically seen at least every 3 months with laboratory monitoring every 6 months to 1 year. The data collected include demographics, clinical visit data, laboratory data, medication history and clinical diagnoses. Requests for collaborations on analyses can be submitted to our data centre.

Building the evidence base for ecological impact assessment and mitigation

Building the evidence base for ecological impact assessment and mitigation

The Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity Research Group: fostering population health research in NSW

The requirements of policy makers for contextually relevant evidence are increasingly documented and understood. In response, there have been significant recent international and Australian initiatives to facilitate closer links between policy makers and researchers to address questions of policy relevance. The gap between researchers and policy makers has been well described by Lomas, who noted that: ‘yefforts by researchers and by decision makers seem to proceed largely independently. Both have their own (often misplaced) ideas about the other’s environment. Opportunities for ongoing exchange and communication are fewy’. One way to bridge this structural and communication gap is to develop formal collaborative mechanisms between researchers and policy makers, such as the establishment of university-based research centres.

Putting applied ecology into practice

In 2005, an editorial was published in the Journal thataddressedthechangingemphasisanddirectionofappliedecol-ogy (Freckleton et al. 2005). This editorial proposed that theJournal should increasingly target papers that would havedirect relevance to ecological management and policy whilemaintainingastronglinktobasicecologicalconceptsandthe-ories. These core aspects are still true 5 years later, but withexpanding areas of research and new management challenges;todaymorethanevertheJournalmustreachoutandofferrealinsightandoptionsformanagement.Theaimsofthisnewedi-torialaretooutlinetoauthorsandreviewersthekeyattributesthat form the basis of the papers published in the Journal ofApplied Ecology and to announce new developments in linewith our strategic vision for the journal at the start of a newdecade.TheJournal’scriticalroleininfluencingpolicyisemphasizedby the looming deadline of the Convention on BiologicalDiversity which set the target of significantly reducing bio-diversity loss by 2010.A number of ecologicalaudits assessingbiodiversity loss have taken place, for example, the MilleniumEcosystem Assessment examined the consequences of ecosys-tem change for human well-being and concluded that, world-wide, 60% of ecosystem services had been degraded. Otherassessmentsareinprogress,forexample,theNationalEcosys-temAssessmentwillprovidethefirstanalysisoftheUK’snatu-ral environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society.Thesetargetsandauditsarenotenvironmentalniceties;ratherasstatedbytheUnitedNationsSecretary-GeneralKofiAnnanin 2005 ‘Failure to conserve and use biological diversity in asustainable manner would result in degrading environments,newandmorerampantillnesses,deepeningpovertyandacon-tinuedpatternofinequitableanduntenablegrowth’.Putprac-tically: biodiversity matters, it matters to the rich and to thepoor, to the developed and to the developing world. Appliedecologists are a crucial part of a multi-disciplinary groupengagedinmanaginghumanuseoftheenvironmenttopreventKofi Annan’s vision from materializing. Working proactivelywithenvironmentalmanagers,collaboratingwithcolleaguesinthe social and physical sciences, and holding two-way conver-sations with policy makers and the public are all in the jobdescriptionofthemodernappliedecologist.The Journal of Applied Ecology is one of the most highlyranked international journals in its field, with a reputation forpublishing papers that combine the highest standards of eco-logicalsciencewithdirectrelevancetoenvironmentalmanage-ment. Our remit is extremely large. Thus, we publish researchon animal, microbial and plant taxa across a broad range ofhabitats and ecosystems, and these papers span observational,experimental and theoretical studies. With the dramaticgrowth of applied ecological research in the last decade, theJournalneedstorefineitsscopetoensureweretainourdistinctidentity among ecology journals. To help potential authorsidentifywhethertheirpaperissuitableforthejournal,wehavedescribed below the types of papers we accept for publication.Ouracceptancerateischallenging(14AE5%in2008)andauthorsneed to be confident that their study fits our remit before sub-mission. As examples of good practice, we use papers thatprovedparticularly influentialorthatwereselectedastheEdi-tor’s choice. Editor’s choice is a new initiative begun in 2008and is used as a means of highlighting papers that are, espe-ciallytimely,particularlyhighqualityandmeetourkeycriteriaofecologicalstudieswithmanagementrelevance.

The identification of 100 ecological questions of high policy relevance in the UK

Summary Evidence‐based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. During a 2‐day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short‐listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy‐led organizations. The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible.

What Triggers Inflation in Emerging Market Economies?

Emerging market economies (EMEs) have experienced a noticeable decline in inflation since the mid-1990s. Whether this stable price environment in EMEs is likely to endure and what kind of policies need to be followed to ensure price stability, however, still continue to be questions of considerable policy relevance. The authors investigate the factors associated with the start of 24 inflation episodes in 15 EMEs between 1980 and 2001. They use pooled probit analysis to estimate the contribution of the key factors to inflation starts. Their empirical results suggest that increases in the output gap, agricultural shocks, and expansionary fiscal policy raise the probability of inflation starts in EMEs. Their findings also indicate that a more democratic environment and an increase in capital flows relative to GDP reduce the probability of inflation starts.

International Collaboration in Armaments Production: A Second-Best Solution

Why do states collaborate in the production of advanced weaponry? Under what conditions do such collaborative arrangements succeed? These are questions of both theoretical importance and policy relevance. From a theoretical perspective, the issue of interstate collaboration is among the most prominent concerns of research in international political economy. 1 In the policy realm, the costs and benefits associated with armaments collaboration have been widely debated, as exemplified by the recent controversy over the FSX, a Japanese jet fighter that will be built using technology and systems integration techniques purchased from the American firm, General Dynamics.2 In this article I argue that collaborative arrangements for the production of complex weapons systems represent a second-best solution to the problem of defense acquisition. Such arrangements reflect the desire of states to maintain domestic military-industrial capacity on the one hand, while incorporating capital and technology from abroad on the other. In short, collaboration represents a