Wide Range Of Policy Measures Research Articles

Development prospects for energy communities in the EU identifying best practice and future opportunities using a morphological approach

The 2018/19 Clean Energy Package of the European Union introduced a wide range of policy measures to further advance the Energy Transition, with one focus being low-carbon, renewable energy (RE) to replace fossil-based sources. RE production is typically disaggregated locally, legally, and in terms of ownership of the production facilities. Moreover, RE production technologies are various, and so are their respective usage, investment schemes, investors, geographic and financial properties, and, as a result, their support measures. With a focus on the new regulatory framework of the Directive on the Internal Energy Market (IEMD) and the recast of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), we analyse best practice business models for Energy Communities (ECs). To capture the multitude of pluri-dimensional design perspectives for ECs we develop and employ a new morphological approach, i.e., a morphological box for ECs (https://kelso-institute-europe.de/projects/energy-communities). This approach enables researchers and policy makers to identify the constellations for participation models that best fit the new EU policy strategy and to show opportunities with regard to combinations underused or not at all exploited yet. Based on this assessment we formulate policy recommendations and suggestions for the further development of Energy Transition participation models in general and ECs in particular.

COVID-19 Vaccination and Public Health Countermeasures on Variants of Concern in Canada: Evidence From a Spatial Hierarchical Cluster Analysis.

BackgroundThere is mounting evidence that the third wave of COVID-19 incidence is declining, yet variants of concern (VOCs) continue to present public health challenges in Canada. The emergence of VOCs has sparked debate on how to effectively control their impacts on the Canadian population.ObjectiveProvincial and territorial governments have implemented a wide range of policy measures to protect residents against community transmission of COVID-19, but research examining the specific impact of policy countermeasures on the VOCs in Canada is needed. Our study objective was to identify provinces with disproportionate prevalence of VOCs relative to COVID-19 mitigation efforts in provinces and territories in Canada.MethodsWe analyzed publicly available provincial- and territorial-level data on the prevalence of VOCs in relation to mitigating factors, summarized in 3 measures: (1) strength of public health countermeasures (stringency index), (2) the extent to which people moved about outside their homes (mobility index), and (3) the proportion of the provincial or territorial population that was fully vaccinated (vaccine uptake). Using spatial agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis (unsupervised machine learning), provinces and territories were grouped into clusters by stringency index, mobility index, and full vaccine uptake. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare the prevalence of VOCs (Alpha, or B.1.1.7; Beta, or B.1.351; Gamma, or P.1; and Delta, or B.1.617.2 variants) across the clusters.ResultsWe identified 3 clusters of vaccine uptake and countermeasures. Cluster 1 consisted of the 3 Canadian territories and was characterized by a higher degree of vaccine deployment and fewer countermeasures. Cluster 2 (located in Central Canada and the Atlantic region) was typified by lower levels of vaccine deployment and moderate countermeasures. The third cluster, which consisted of provinces in the Pacific region, Central Canada, and the Prairies, exhibited moderate vaccine deployment but stronger countermeasures. The overall and variant-specific prevalences were significantly different across the clusters.ConclusionsThis “up to the point” analysis found that implementation of COVID-19 public health measures, including the mass vaccination of populations, is key to controlling VOC prevalence rates in Canada. As of June 15, 2021, the third wave of COVID-19 in Canada is declining, and those provinces and territories that had implemented more comprehensive public health measures showed lower VOC prevalence. Public health authorities and governments need to continue to communicate the importance of sociobehavioural preventive measures, even as populations in Canada continue to receive their primary and booster doses of vaccines.

Economic actions or cultural and social decisions? The role of cultural and social values in shaping fertility intention

Most industrialized societies have come up with a wide range of policy measures to boost their fertility rates, largely by making fertility behavior economically attractive. While previous research provides cultural and social explanations for fertility decisions, this paper highlights the role of cultural and social values as a moderator between family policy and fertility intention. From a multilevel analysis of ISSP, two findings emerged: first, fertility intentions of individuals are less responsive to family policies that provide financial incentives for such behaviors. Second, governmental expenditure on the family has a positive influence on the fertility intentions of individuals only when they already have a conservative attitude toward gender roles and marriage. These findings raise a fundamental question about the assumptions of mainstream family policy and highlight the importance of taking cultural values into account in family policy design, especially when the aim is to influence individuals’ fertility intentions.

Growth versus equity: A CGE analysis for effects of factor-biased technical progress on economic growth and employment

With factor-biased technical progress described as labor-saving and skill-biased technical changes, there are concerns that technological innovation can lead to unemployment and widen inequality in the economy. This study explores impacts of factor-biased technical changes on the economic system in terms of economic growth, employment, and distribution, using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The results show that technological innovation contributes to higher level of economic growth with productivity improvements. However, our analysis suggests that economic growth accompanied by skill- and capital-biased technical progress disproportionately increases demand for capital and high-skilled labor over skilled and unskilled labor. This shift in the value-added composition is found to deepen income inequality, as more people in higher income groups benefit from skill premium and capital earnings. Our results suggest that policymakers should prepare a wide range of policy measures, such as reforms in educational programs and taxation systems, in order to ensure sustainable growth.

Global evidence in local debates: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in Swiss direct-democratic debates on school policy

This article analyses the use of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other evidence in educational policy discourse in the context of direct-democratic votes in Switzerland. The results of a quantitative content analysis show that PISA is used by all actors to support a wide range of policy measures and ideological positions. Other evidence, however, is only used to support single specific policy positions. These findings demonstrate the ubiquity of PISA. The article discusses these results in view of the question of whether the incorporation of evidence into policy debates contributes to informed discourse.

The Italian left and Italy's (evolving) foreign policy of immigration controls

Immigration has become a highly salient international issue over the last two decades with increased socio-economic and political significance. This led to the development of a wide range of policy measures that are aimed at either halting migrants from reaching Europe or deterring them from settling in their preferred countries of destination. Such externalization of border controls have profound effects on relations between countries. Drawing on qualitative data, the paper investigates how and with what effects the foreign policy of immigration controls have been developing in Italy, one of the frontline immigration countries of the EU which has been increasingly engaging with practices of ‘de-territorial cooperation on migration’. In particular, the imprint of left-wing parties on Italy's immigration policy developments is examined in order to gauge left-wing coalitions’ influence on the overall direction of the policies in this realm.

Tackling the undeclared economy in the European construction industry

Despite the widespread recognition that many businesses and employees in the European construction industry engage in off-the-books practices, there has been little attempt so far either to provide evidence of the prevalence and nature of this undeclared economy in the European construction industry or to evaluate what needs to be done to tackle this phenomenon. This article fills these gaps. To evaluate the extent and character of the undeclared economy in the European construction industry, this article reports the findings of a 2007 Eurobarometer survey on the undeclared economy conducted in 27 European Union member states. This will reveal its widespread prevalence across the European construction industry along with its heterogeneous forms and uneven distribution both spatially and across different population groups. Attention then turns to evaluating the potential policy approaches for tackling the undeclared economy in the European construction industry, namely laissez-faire, deterrence and facilitating declaration. The finding is that a laissez-faire approach should be rejected because it leaves intact the existing negative impacts of the undeclared economy on construction businesses, customers and governments, whilst deterring such work is found to be neither effective nor necessarily desirable since most governments wish to move such endeavour into the declared economy rather than simply eradicate it. Only facilitating the declaration of undeclared work practices is found to be a viable possible policy approach. The article then details a wide range of policy measures which could be used in the European construction industry to facilitate the declaration of undeclared work practices.

Port competition modeling including maritime, port, and hinterland characteristics

Container transport has grown very rapidly worldwide and in the coming decades also a substantial, above average, growth is foreseen in this type of freight transport. Container transport is also one of the least captive cargo types, and ports and governments are responding to this with large investments to improve the market share of their port in this competitive market. The purpose of this paper is to present a new port forecasting approach that models port competition explicitly. The model follows a logistic chain approach and is designed to calculate the impacts of a wide range of policy measures (e.g. infrastructure, pricing) in the port itself, its maritime access and its hinterland connections. The functioning of the model is demonstrated for the ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bremen and Hamburg.

Policies to enhance the ‘hidden innovation’ in services: evidence and lessons from the UK

More than 75% of the UK economy is based on services. Knowledge-based services generate more than five times as much value added for the UK economy as advanced manufacturing. Yet, there are persistent gaps in understanding the innovative performance of services. Using Fourth UK Community Innovation Survey (CIS4) data and the results of a detailed case study analysis, this article helps to fill this gap by analysing what innovation in services means and how it can be measured. The traditional indicators of innovation inputs (such as levels of R&D expenditures) and innovation outputs (such as the number of patents) suggest that services are less innovative than other branches of the economy. We take into account a larger spectrum of innovation indicators, both in terms of innovation inputs and outputs, to analyse whether the intensity, nature and economic impact of innovation significantly varies between the manufacturing and service sectors in UK, and between different parts of the services sector such as knowledge-intensive business services and traditional services. The results of the empirical analysis identify the ‘hidden parts’ of innovation in services, that is, the innovative activities and successful innovative outputs that are traditionally underestimated by the use of metrics based on R&D and patents. We suggest a wide range of policy measures specifically targeted at enhancing innovation in services; the UK service economy needs more focus on learning and the training of personnel, and a new balance of policy to support both R&D and non-R&D innovation activities.

Race and Recruitment from a Uniformed Services' Perspective: The Scottish Dimension

In recent times there has been much debate about the publicity surrounding the low level of ethnic minority representation in the uniformed services. Indeed, the issue has become so important that increasing ethnic minority representation across the public services had become an important government policy objective under the direction of the former Home Secretary, Jack Straw. In response to this, representatives from a number of the uniformed services in Scotland took the initiative of forming a committee to investigate the principal forces behind the current low uptake by ethnic minorities of vacancies in the Scottish uniformed sector. They decided to adopt a wide range of policy measures aimed at redressing the current imbalance in the number of minorities recruited. This paper analyses the progress made to date by the services comprising the committee, and their attempts to overcome obstacles. The paper demonstrates that while some services such as the armed forces and the police have made significant advancements in strengthening equality of opportunity in their recruitment process, it is also clear that there remain a number of key barriers, both intrinsic and extrinsic, which threaten to stifle progress on this issue.

Measuring the Impact of Doi Moi on Vietnam’s Gross Domestic Product

In 1986 a wide range of policy measures, known as Doi Moi, was introduced to promote Vietnam's transition to a market economy. This paper represents the first attempt to measure the effect of Doi Moi on Vietnam's GDP. In the paper the level of GDP actually reached is compared with the level that would have been reached had the policy not been implemented, i.e. without the improvements in productivity and the increases in investment ratio that can be directly attributed to Doi Moi. Cross‐time changes in GDP were depicted by a production function of capital stock, economically active labour force and technical progress. It was found that, after a time lag, Doi Moi appeared to have a significant positive effect on productivity, which by 1998 accounted for a 42% increase in GDP.

Policy Review Section

In this Policy Review Section, Ash Amin and Chris Pywell of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne examine the attempts by central and local government to intervene in the process of technical innovation which has been a marked feature of economic policy in the 1980s. Specifically, their article critically reviews the wide range of policy measures which are relevant to technical change in the Tyne and Wear area of the North East of England. Amin and Pywell conclude that these measures are unlikely to remedy perceived technical deficiencies and that policies solely aimed at technical innovation are insufficient to deal with the structural weaknesses of the local economy. In the second article, David Hitchens and Esmond Birnie of the Department of Economics at Queens University, Belfast, continue the discussion of current government thinking on economic development policy in Northern Ireland as expressed in the Pathfinder Report. Hitchens and Birnie review the article by Paul Teague in a previous issue of the Policy Review Section on this topic and add and add further comments and criticisms of their own on the Pathfinder document. In the final article, Paul Teague presents a rejoinder to Hitchens and Birnie and expands on the arguments in his first article about an appropriate ‘economic policy model’ for the Province.