Does foreign environmental policy influence domestic innovation? Evidence from the wind industry

This paper examines the relative influence of domestic and foreign renewable energy policies on innovation activity in wind power using patent data from OECD countries from 1994 to 2005. We distinguish between the impact of demand-pull policies (e.g., guaranteed tariffs, investment and production tax credits), as reflected by wind power capacities installed annually, and technology-push policies (government support to R&D). We show that inventors respond to both domestic and foreign new capacities by increasing their innovation effort. However, the effect on innovation of the marginal wind turbine installed at home is 28 times stronger than that of the foreign marginal wind turbine. Unlike demand-pull policies, public R&D expenditures only affect domestic inventors. A simple calculation suggests that the marginal million dollars spent on R&D support generates 0.82 new inventions, whereas the same amount spent on the deployment of wind turbines induces, at best, 0.06 new inventions (0.03 locally and 0.03 abroad)

Parental Style, Dating Violence and Gender

The relationship between parenting styles and teen dating violence has become a relevant research topic in recent years, especially related to violence inflicted online. To more fully understand this relationship, the objective of the present study was to examine which parenting style (authoritarian, indulgent, authoritative, or neglectful) best protects against dating violence in adolescent relationships. A total of 1132 adolescents of both sexes participated in this study (46.4% boys and 53.6% girls), with ages between 14 and 18 years old (M = 15.6, SD = 1.3). A multivariate factorial design was applied (MANOVA, 4 2), using the parenting style, the parents’ gender, and the adolescents’ gender as independent variables, and the dating violence dimensions (online and o ine) as dependent variables. As the results show, the lowest scores on all the dating violence dimensions examined were obtained by adolescents from indulgent families. In addition, three interaction e ects were observed between the mother’s parenting style and the adolescent’s gender on online violence (e-violence and control), and the father’s parenting style on o ine violence (verbal-emotional). Thus, adolescents with authoritarian mothers obtained the highest scores on violence and control inflicted online, respectively, and adolescent girls with authoritarian fathers obtained the highest scores on verbal-emotional violence. These findings suggest that the indulgent style is the parenting style that protects against violence in teen dating relationships, and they also highlight the risks of the authoritarian style as a family child-rearing mode

Felony Disenfranchisement Legislation: A Test of the Group Threat Hypothesis

The group threat hypothesis is part of the conflict theoretical perspective, which has been one of the most dominant and useful theories in the fields of criminology and criminal justice for decades. The usefulness of this perspective relates to the understanding it provides of how the law can be used by those in power as a measure of control. The use of law as a method of control has a long history in the US society, and there are many examples from which to pull. This project examines the use of one set of laws, felony disenfranchisement legislation, to determine if these laws can be seen as a method for controlling a subgroup of the population. Historically, felony disenfranchisement legislation has been a part of the American legal system from the founding of this country. While the laws have changed many times, the constant has been an effort to disenfranchise a segment of the population deemed as dangerous and prevent such groups from participating in the political process through their votes. Using data on African American population, arrests, and incarceration, this study tests if the strictness of disenfranchisement legislation is associated with the size of African American population, as well as African American arrest and incarceration rates. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to understand the nature of felony disenfranchisement legislation and to determine if disenfranchisement legislation could be used as a tool to control African Americans. The qualitative analysis indicates that African Americans are more impacted by disenfranchisement laws in two regards: the criteria that leads to disenfranchisement and the requirements for vote restoration. However, the research hypotheses are partially supported by quantitative analysis. That is, while results indicate that the proportion of African Americans in a state is correlated to the strictness of a state’s disenfranchisement law, there is no relationship between the arrest and incarceration rates and either the strictness of disenfranchisement legislation or the difficulty of the vote restoration procedures. These results point to limitations of using the group threat hypothesis to understand the relationship between disenfranchisement law and criminal justice operation

Benchmarking Summarizability Processing in XML Warehouses with Complex Hierarchies

Business Intelligence plays an important role in decision making. Based on data warehouses and Online Analytical Processing, a business intelligence tool can be used to analyze complex data. Still, summarizability issues in data warehouses cause ineffective analyses that may become critical problems to businesses. To settle this issue, many researchers have studied and proposed various solutions, both in relational and XML data warehouses. However, they find difficulty in evaluating the performance of their proposals since the available benchmarks lack complex hierarchies. In order to contribute to summarizability analysis, this paper proposes an extension to the XML warehouse benchmark (XWeB) with complex hierarchies. The benchmark enables us to generate XML data warehouses with scalable complex hierarchies as well as summarizability processing. We experimentally demonstrated that complex hierarchies can definitely be included into a benchmark dataset, and that our benchmark is able to compare two alternative approaches dealing with summarizability issues.Comment: 15th International Workshop on Data Warehousing and OLAP (DOLAP 2012), Maui : United States (2012

Does foreign environmental policy influence domestic innovation ? Evidence from the wind industry

This paper examines the relative influence of domestic and foreign renewable energy policies on innovation activity in wind power using patent data from OECD countries from 1994 to 2005. We distinguish between the impact of demand-pull policies (e.g., guaranteed tariffs, investment and production tax credits), as reflected by wind power capacities installed annually, and technology-push policies (government support to R&D). We show that inventors respond to both domestic and foreign new capacities by increasing their innovation effort. However, the effect on innovation of the marginal wind turbine installed at home is 28 times stronger than that of the foreign marginal wind turbine. Unlike demandpull policies, public R&D expenditures only affect domestic inventors. A simple calculation suggests that the marginal million dollars spent on R&D support generates 0.82 new inventions, whereas the same amount spent on the deployment of wind turbines induces, at best, 0.06 new inventions (0.03 locally and 0.03 abroad).innovation;public R&D;renewable energy policies;wind power

The role of parenting styles on behavior problem profiles of adolescents

Parental behavior is one of the most influential factors on the development of adolescent externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. These behavioral problems are closely related and often co-occur. The objectives of this work were: (i) to identify adolescents profiles according to their behavior problems; (ii) to explore individual, family, and social characteristics associated with these profiles; and (iii) to analyze the potential role of parenting styles in belonging to adolescents’ profiles. A total of 449 Spanish adolescents (223 from families declared at-risk and enrolled in Child Welfare Services and 226 from families from the general population) participated in this study. The analyses revealed three profiles of adolescents based on external and internal behavior problems (adjusted, external maladjustment, and internal maladjustment). Parenting styles explained the adolescents’ belonging to different profiles, in which the indulgent style was the most favorable in general terms. The distinctive role of parenting styles on two types of maladjustment profiles was confirmed. The relationship between parenting styles and adolescent adjustment is a key component that should be included in interventions according to adolescents’ behavior problem profiles. Furthermore, the results shed light on the need that family interventions are complemented with individualized interventions with adolescents that accumulate stressful life events.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad EDU2013-41441-

Norming in Administrative Law

How do regulatory agencies decide how strictly to regulate an industry? They sometimes use cost-benefit analysis or claim to, but more often the standards they invoke are so vague as to be meaningless. This raises the question whether the agencies use an implicit standard or instead regulate in an ad hoc fashion. We argue that agencies frequently use an approach that we call “norming.” They survey the practices of firms in a regulated industry and choose a standard somewhere within the distribution of existing practices, often no higher than the median. Such a standard burdens only the firms whose practices lag the industry. We then evaluate this approach. While a case can be made that norming is appropriate when a regulatory agency operates in an environment of extreme uncertainty, we argue that on balance norming is an unwise form of regulation. Its major attraction for agencies is that it minimizes political opposition to regulation. Norming does not serve the public interest as well as a more robust standard like cost-benefit analysis

Save now, save later? Linkages between saving behaviour in adolescence and adulthood

The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the variety of definitions, concepts, and theories of psychological resilience. To this end, the narrative is divided into three main sections. The first considers how resilience has been defined in the psychology research literature. Despite the construct being operationalized in a variety of ways, most definitions are based around two core concepts: adversity and positive adaptation. A substantial body of evidence suggests that resilience is required in response to different adversities, ranging from ongoing daily hassles to major life events, and that positive adaptation must be conceptually appropriate to the adversity examined in terms of the domains assessed and the stringency of criteria used. The second section examines the conceptualization of resilience as either a trait or a process, and explores how it is distinct from a number of related terms. Resilience is conceptualized as the interactive influence of psychological characteristics within the context of the stress process. The final section reviews the theories of resilience and critically examines one theory in particular that is commonly cited in the resilience literature. Future theories in this area should take into account the multiple demands individuals encounter, the meta-cognitive and -emotive processes that affect the resilience-stress relationship, and the conceptual distinction between resilience and coping. The review concludes with implications for policy, practice, and research including the need to carefully manage individuals’ immediate environment, and to develop the protective and promotive factors that individuals can proactively use to build resilience

Getting Europe to Work: The Role of Flexibility in Tapping the Unused Potential in European Labour Markets. CEPS Working Document, No. 250, 13 September 2006

The Lisbon strategy of 2000 sets the ambitious goal (among others) of achieving an employment rate of 70% overall, 60% for women and 50% for older workers within the EU-15 by 2010. Five years later, labour market participation has increased somewhat (overall from 62.5% in 1999 to 64.3% in 2003), but remains disappointingly low in the EU-15 (and even lower for the EU-25). This study considers the problems related to the flexibility (and thus efficiency) of labour markets in Europe, which leave too many outside the job market and fail to match the unemployed with job opportunities. Key questions that arise are how flexibility can be increased and how private-sector actors can contribute to improving the performance of labour markets. Thus, the study researches the development of labour market participation across the EU according to different types of occupations, along with age, gender and skill groups, giving special attention to the characteristics of the jobs held by ‘marginal groups’ at the edge of mainstream employment. It examines the issues surrounding the mismatch between unemployed persons and unfilled jobs, the different approaches of member states in responding to market fluctuations and the contribution of the private sector to re-integrating long-term unemployed persons on the basis of a case study