Optimizing Handover of As-Built Data Using BIM for Highways

An efficient maintenance of the UK’s transportation network is of critical importance to the country’s economy and among the top priorities of the government and public agencies (e.g. Network Rail, Highways England). The public transportation agencies have huge data sets related to asset management and maintenance. However, those data sets are usually held in disparate platforms and have been historically developed using multiple standards and formats. As a result, full value of such data is often not fully realized. Effective management of asset data and availability of reliable information as and when needed, could bring in key benefits for effective management of the transportation network. This paper aims to present the initial findings of a research effort understanding the potential of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in handover processes for a more efficient maintenance of highways assets, and discuss the way forward. The research methodology applied is systematic literature review and two recent best practice cases in the Highways Sector. The research findings suggest that efficient data management through BIM could provide a structured framework to improve asset handover and maintenance. However, it is important to capture the current handover practices between the construction and maintenance phase, and maintenance processes in the UK’s highways sector, both of which seem to be absent in the literature at the moment

The European trust crisis and the rise of populism

We study the implications of the Great Recession for voting for antiestablishment parties, as well as for general trust and political attitudes, using regional data across Europe. We find a strong relationship between increases in unemployment and voting for nonmainstream parties, especially populist ones. Moreover, unemployment increases in tandem with declining trust toward national and European political institutions, though we find only weak or no effects of unemployment on interpersonal trust. The correlation between unemployment and attitudes toward immigrants is muted, especially for their cultural impact. To explore causality, we extract the component of increases in unemployment explained by the precrisis structure of the economy, in particular the share of construction in regional value added, which is strongly related both to the buildup preceding and the bursting of the crisis. Our results imply that crisis- driven economic insecurity is a substantial determinant of populism and political distrust

Exchange networks, markets and trust

Network-based transactions are attractive as a system for economic exchange because they give network members greater protection against opportunism and exchange hazards compared to more anonymous market transactions. At the same time, net- works restrict the possibilities to exploit economies of scale and other efficiency enhancing properties of markets. When the problem-solving capacity of networks do not make up for the losses generated by not trading with outsiders, trust is important to promote transactions among strangers in the anonymously market. This paper offers an economic analysis of this idea. With the help of a social evolutionary model, it is also demonstrated that mutual trust relations can survive in the anonymous market, even when there is a clear danger of opportunism, and the conventional mechanisms like repetitions and contracts are ruled out

Unemployment of Non-Western Immigrants in the Great Recession

Abstract: This paper examines whether unemployment of non-western immigrant workers in the Netherlands was disproportionally affected by the Great Recession. We analyze unemployment data covering the period November 2007 to February 2013 finding that the Great Recession affected unemployment rates of non-western immigrant workers in absolute terms more than unemployment rates of native workers. However, in relative terms there is not much of a difference. We also find that the sensitivity of individual job finding rates to the aggregate state of the labor market does not differ between natives and non-western immigrants. In combination our findings suggest that the Great Recession did not have a different impact on the unemployment of non-westerns immigrants and native Dutch.

Law and Social Capital: Evidence from the Code Napoleon in Germany

Do legal institutions affect norms of cooperation? Using the introduction of the Code Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars in Germany as a historical experiment, I show that a positive shock to the quality of legal institutions can increase social-capital long-lastingly. I find that individuals living in regions where the Code Napoleon was used display higher levels of interpersonal trust in the data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). This result holds true conditional on past development levels, as well as in a less heterogeneous border sample, separating regions that applied the Code Napoleon from those that did not. Artificially moving the border and comparing regional pre-treatment characteristics support the interpretation of a causal treatment effect. In addition, I show immediate effects of the Code Civil on novel measures of 19th century social capital. The analysis of historical employment data furthermore suggests economic cooperation to be a potential mechanism for the relationship between legal institutions and social capital

Ethnic diversity and labor market success

The economic potential of ethnic and cultural diversity is often underestimated. This paper summarizes a number of recent studies which show that 'soft' factors such as attitudes, perceptions and identities - and in particular ethnic identities - significantly affect economic outcomes. More specifically, the studies analyze the process of cultural integration over migrant generations as well as the process of job search and labor market reintegration of the unemployed. The economy can thus gain productivity and efficiency by recognizing and incorporating such multi-ethnic factors. Cultural assimilation that goes along with a loss of migrants' own cultural heritage does not appear to be the sole or dominant strategy of an economically successful integration. To tap the full potential of ethnic and cultural diversity, an increased cultural and ethnic open-mindedness of the native population is desirable