5 research outputs found

    Rules for Growth: Promoting Innovation and Growth Through Legal Reform

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    The United States economy is struggling to recover from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. After several huge doses of conventional macroeconomic stimulus - deficit-spending and monetary stimulus - policymakers are understandably eager to find innovative no-cost ways of sustaining growth both in the short and long runs. In response to this challenge, the Kauffman Foundation convened a number of America’s leading legal scholars and social scientists during the summer of 2010 to present and discuss their ideas for changing legal rules and policies to promote innovation and accelerate U.S. economic growth. This meeting led to the publication of Rules for Growth: Promoting Innovation and Growth Through Legal Reform, a comprehensive and groundbreaking volume of essays prescribing a new set of growth-promoting policies for policymakers, legal scholars, economists, and business men and women. Some of the top Rules include: • Reforming U.S. immigration laws so that more high-skilled immigrants can launch businesses in the United States. • Improving university technology licensing practices so university-generated innovation is more quickly and efficiently commercialized. • Moving away from taxes on income that penalize risk-taking, innovation, and employment while shifting toward a more consumption-based tax system that encourages saving that funds investment. In addition, the research tax credit should be redesigned and made permanent. • Overhauling local zoning rules to facilitate the formation of innovative companies. • Urging judges to take a more expansive view of flexible business contracts that are increasingly used by innovative firms. • Urging antitrust enforcers and courts to define markets more in global terms to reflect contemporary realities, resist antitrust enforcement from countries with less sound antitrust regimes, and prohibit industry trade protection and subsidies. • Reforming the intellectual property system to allow for a post-grant opposition process and address the large patent application backlog by allowing applicants to pay for more rapid patent reviews. • Authorizing corporate entities to form digitally and use software as a means for setting out agreements and bylaws governing corporate activities. The collective essays in the book propose a new way of thinking about the legal system that should be of interest to policymakers and academic scholars alike. Moreover, the ideas presented here, if embodied in law, would augment a sustained increase in U.S. economic growth, improving living standards for U.S. residents and for many in the rest of the world

    Russia of Power

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    The report A Russia of Power examines the current state of Russia, as well as its future, from the perspective of security. The goal of the report is to increase awareness of security and understanding of Russia. It was also deemed important to develop more research expertise in the field and research cooperation. Students and young researchers contributed, which gave them valuable experience. An additional benefit was that researchers and authorities were able to combine their expertise; this cooperation will be developed more systematically in the future. The report was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of the Interior and Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Defence coordinated its preparation. The report is part of a series of reports commissioned once per governmental term by the Ministry of Defence: Haasteiden Venäjä (“Russia of Challenges”) was published in 2008, and Muutosten Venäjä (“Russia of Transformations”) in 2012. The report focuses on three main themes: Russian foreign policy, its military defence and the resources of the country’s defence industry, and Russia’s internal development. Preparing the report took a year, during which over 40 experts from universities, research institutes and various authorities participated in the work of the three thematic groups. Their task was to evaluate the country’s current status, as well as factors that could contribute to change or continuity. In addition to evaluating impacts on Russia’s stability and relations between Finland and Russia, the report also examined security from the perspectives of Finland, the neighbouring areas and the international community more broadly. The project also involved foresight analysis of the future of Russia. The report collates the work of the experts who participated in the project; each thematic group was given a task and was responsible for producing their own section of the report. Therefore, the views expressed in the report are those of the authors and experts, and they do not represent the views of the Finnish government

    Writing Guide with Handbook

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    Writing Guide with Handbook aligns to the goals, topics, and objectives of many first-year writing and composition courses. It is organized according to relevant genres, and focuses on the writing process, effective writing practices or strategies including graphic organizers, writing frames, and word banks to support visual learning and conventions of usage and style. The text includes an editing and documentation handbook, which provides information on grammar and mechanics, common usage errors, and citation styles. Writing Guide with Handbook breaks down barriers in the field of composition by offering an inviting and inclusive approach to students of all intersectional identities. To meet this goal, the text creates a reciprocal relationship between everyday rhetoric and the evolving world of academia. Writing Guide with Handbook builds on students' life experiences and their participation in rhetorical communities within the familiar contexts of personal interaction and social media. The text seeks to extend these existing skills by showing students how to construct a variety of compelling compositions in a variety of formats, situations, and contexts. The authors conceived and developed Writing Guide with Handbook in 2020; its content and learning experiences reflect the instructional, societal, and individual challenges students have faced. The authors invite students and instructors to practice invitational discussions even as they engage in verbal and written argument. Instructors will be empowered to emphasize meaning and voice and to teach empathy as a rhetorical strategy. Students will be empowered to negotiate their identities and their cultures through language as they join us in writing, discovering, learning, and creating

    Keyboard warriors : messaging, mobilisation and the UK radical right in the social media age

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    This study aims to critique current, dominant conceptualisations of social media through case studies of two UK radical right groups, UKIP and Britain First. The current debate has been dominated by techno-deterministic analysis, which asserts that social media has had monocausal, universalistic effects on politics and society; these can be either positive (for techno-optimists) or negative (for techno-pessimists). Instead, this study advocates a critical approach described by scholars such as Christian Fuchs, which understands social media and technology as existing within a dialectical relationship with society. This study represents an empirical contribution to the critical approach. It compares how each group used social media to achieve various political aims. It takes a chronological approach to map both technological and social dimensions onto studies of both groups. Study into these groups demonstrates the limitations of techno-determinism, as the success they enjoyed refutes the conclusions of both techno-optimist and techno-pessimist literature. From this theoretical foundation, this thesis has undertaken quantitative and qualitative research into both groups. This study found that Britain First consistently made use of multimedia such as images, videos and shared links. This allowed them to ‘game’ Facebook’s algorithms to maximise exposure. They also experimented with new functionality often. In terms of content, BF often presented propaganda as memes to optimise visual messages for a social media audience. This allowed them to generate a mass online following and significant streams of finance, if not much tangible, real-world support. This study also found that UKIP, by contrast, were not as dependent on social media for financial support or media exposure. Indeed, as media exposure increased, their use of social media similarly decreased. Moreover, the group’s political messages were more limited, dominated by several major policy agendas, such as Euroscepticism, critique of the establishment and anti-immigrant culture based prejudice. Finally, in terms of messages, UKIP preferred a professional style of content creation to the memes of Britain First, recycling billboards and using more photographs and data visualisation

    Google's privacy settings – personalized advertising : an exploratory study on Swiss students' advertising setting choices, awareness, and education

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    Purpose – By using improved web data collection tools firms are able to collect a vast amount of personal information to personalize and tailor specific ads to specific individuals, raising privacy concerns. Individuals are often not aware of the extent of personal data collection, especially when using search engines such as Google Search. This thesis aims to understand behavior of personalized advertising settings within Google’s privacy settings drawing on the COM-B model to identify different drivers for influencing the studied behavior as well as suggest possible interventions. Methodology – 13 MSc Business Information Technology university students participated in semi-structured one-on-one interviews where statements, drawing on the COM-B Model, were first coded deductively and then new themes were identified inductively to identify possible drivers influencing the investigated behavior. Findings – Overall, the findings indicate that (1) the majority of respondents had some knowledge and awareness of personalized advertising, privacy issues and data security, (2) knowledge and awareness is not enough to employ self-protective strategies in regards to personalized advertising, (3) physically showing participants their own existing profile within Google privacy settings used as a basis for personalized advertising, however, is. Furthermore, (4) the students’ instincts and convictions have been identified as important factors for the targeted behavior, as well as (5) interactions with other people and (6) privacy fatigue. (7) The value students place on personalized advertising, (8) the complexity of privacy settings and (9) interest in the matter were identified as having a mild effect on the studied behavior. Finally, (10) education, transmitted mostly through practical examples could function as an intervention strategy
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