Spatial data analysis in economics

Spatial data analysis has become a widely used tool among economists and social scientists. Improved availability of georeferenced social and economic data, a rising interest in data visualisation, spatial pattern recognition, and spatial interactions as well as improved statistical techniques increased the popularity of spatial data analysis techniques. The purpose of this work is to study spatial data analysis techniques and apply those techniques on social and economic issues. This work consists of three articles on applied spatial data analysis in economics. The first article studies the determinants of local supply differences in the market for election gambling machines (EGM). We study, whether a certain social and economic milieu (e.g. high unemployment) is associated with higher EGM supply. The second article studies spillover effects in the EGM market. The article explains why the EGM supply clusters in certain regions which results in hot spots with high gambling supply. Article three evaluates the impact of immigration on the voting behaviour in Germany. As an example, we use the 2015/2016 refugee crisis and study how refugee presence affected the regional election outcomes in the 2016 elections in Germany.Die Räumliche Datenanalyse findet zunehmende Verwendung bei Ökonomen und Sozialwissenschaftlern. Die steigende Beliebtheit lässt sich vor allem auf eine höhere Verfügbarkeit von geographisch kodierten Wirtschafts- und Sozialdaten sowie ein zunehmendes Interesse an Datenvisualisierung, Mustererkennung, räumlichen Interaktionen sowie verbesserten statistischen Methoden zur Analyse dieser Daten zurückführen. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit besteht darin die Räumliche Datenanalyse zur Klärung aktueller Fragen der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften anzuwenden. Die Arbeit setzt sich aus drei Artikeln zusammen. Der erste Artikel erforscht die Determinanten von lokalen Angebotsunterschieden im Markt für elektronische Geldspielgeräten (EGM). Dabei wird untersucht, ob ein Zusammenhang zwischen dem soziökonomischen Milieu (z.B. hohe Arbeitslosigkeit) und höherem Angebot von Geldspielgeräten besteht. Der zweite Artikel untersucht Spillover Effekte im Markt für elektronische Geldspielgeräte. Es wird die Frage untersucht, warum sich in manchen Regionen Hotspots mit hohem Angebot von elektronischen Geldspielgerären bilden. Der dritte Artikel bewertet den Einfluss von Migration auf das Wahlverhalten in Deutschland. Wir betrachten die Flüchtlingskrise von 2015/2016 und untersuchen wie sich die Präsenz von Flüchtlingen auf das lokale Wahlverhalten während der Landtagswahlen 2016 auswirkte

The effects of cancer treatment-induced bone loss on morphological sex assessment

Cancer is currently the second most common cause of death in the U.S. with over 600,000 people expected to die from cancer this year alone. The diagnosis of cancer steadily increased through most of the 20th century due to a rise in tobacco usage, causing a relatively recent growth in cancer research. In the past several decades, treatments for cancer have been rapidly changing and advancing, and it is vital to understand how these medications affect the human skeleton. Presently, little research has been conducted on how medications alter the human skeleton and impact the biological profile. One of the primary side effects of drug and radiation-based treatments for a neoplasm is cancer treatment-induced bone loss (CTIBL), which may impact the expression of sexual dimorphism in morphological traits. It is hypothesized that CTIBL would decrease the robusticity of sexually dimorphic nonmetric traits and skew the ordinal scores towards gracile. A total of 178 individuals with documented cancer and/or treatment and 178 individuals without documented cancer from the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, were assessed following conventional sex assessment standards for the skull and os coxa. These methods presented by Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994), Klales et al. (2012), and Walker (2005) were applied to the os coxa and Walker’s (2008) method for the skull. The individuals ranged in age from 26 to 97 years and included 350 European Americans, two African Americans, one Asian/Polynesian, and three Native Americans. The control group was designed to parallel the experimental group by demographic information including sex, ancestry, and age-at-death. The experimental group was also subdivided into two groups that included individuals that underwent chemotherapy and/or radiation (drug subgroup) and individuals who only underwent surgery as a form of treatment (surgery subgroup). Thirty-six randomly selected individuals were also rescored to test for intraobserver agreement. IBM’s Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to calculate Chi-Square, ANOVA, ANCOVA, and Cohen’s Kappa analyses. The Chi-Square and ANOVA analyses were used to determine if there was any statistically significant relationship between cancer treatment status and the scores of the morphological traits. The results indicated no significant relationship between cancer treatment status and the trait scores (p > 0.05) for all analyses except for the Chi-square analysis of the glabella for females in the pooled sample (p=0.047) and the ANOVA analysis of the ventral arc in the surgery group when sex was not considered (p=0.010). It is possible that these traits are affected by cancer treatment status. However, it is more likely that these results were due to natural variation between the control and experimental groups. Intraobserver agreement was calculated using Cohen’s Kappa analysis. Intraobserver agreement ranged from fair to substantial with most traits indicating moderate intraobserver agreement. Some possible confounders of the study include the unknown duration of cancer treatments, the use of a history of cancer as a proxy for cancer treatment, not knowing when the individual underwent cancer treatment before death, and the assumption that the individuals included in the sample were accurately documented. Cancer Treatment-Induced Bone Loss may only affect bone mineral density as opposed to the expression of sexually dimorphic traits as many of these visually assessed traits are sites of muscle attachments. Though CTIBL does not appear to affect morphological sex assessment, further research should be conducted on the possible effects of CTIBL for other components of the biological profile

Capacity to adapt to environmental change: evidence from a network of organizations concerned with increasing wildfire risk

ArticleThis is the final version of the article. Available from Resilience Alliance via the DOI in this record.Because wildfire size and frequency are expected to increase in many forested areas in the United States, organizations involved in forest and wildfire management could arguably benefit from working together and sharing information to develop strategies for how to adapt to this increasing risk. Social capital theory suggests that actors in cohesive networks are positioned to build trust and mutual understanding of problems and act collectively to address these problems, and that actors engaged with diverse partners are positioned to access new information and resources that are important for innovation and complex problem solving. We investigated the patterns of interaction within a network of organizations involved in forest and wildfire management in Oregon, USA, for evidence of structural conditions that create opportunities for collective action and learning. We used descriptive statistical analysis of social network data gathered through interviews to characterize the structure of the network and exponential random graph modeling to identify key factors in the formation of network ties. We interpreted our findings through the lens of social capital theory to identify implications for the network’s capacity to engage in collective action and complex problem-solving about how to adapt to environmental change. We found that tendencies to associate with others with similar management goals, geographic emphases, and attitudes toward wildfire were strong mechanisms shaping network structure, potentially constraining interactions among organizations with diverse information and resources and limiting opportunities for learning and complex problem-solving needed for adaptation. In particular, we found that organizations with fire protection and forest restoration goals comprised distinct networks despite sharing concern about the problem of increasing wildfire risk.The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Coupled Human and Natural Systems Program (NSF Grant CNH-1013296) and the U.S. Forest Service PNW Research Station provided the funding for this research. Support was also provided by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC; DBI-1052875). The authors would like to acknowledge all the interview informants who generously gave their time to participate in the study. The authors would also like to acknowledge Örjan Bodin for reviewing the study plan for the research; Susan Charnley, Emily Platt, and Kerry Grimm for assisting with data collection; Maribel Vidrio for assisting with data management; and Ken Vance-Borland for assisting with preliminary data analysis

Soviet industrial production, 1928 to 1955 : real growth and hidden inflation

The mechanism of hidden inflation in Soviet industrial growth statistics between 1928 and 1950 is described. Hidden inflation arose when new products were substituted for old ones. Substitution biases in Soviet and Western growth estimates are compared; the extent of hidden inflation in the Soviet figures is estimated. The view that all Soviet growth series were exaggerated is qualified; the presumption that the lower a figure, the more reliable it must be, is overturned. The Moorsteen paradox, hidden inflation in industry as a whole, but none in machinebuilding where product innovation was most rapid, is explained

An empirical examination of echo chambers in US climate policy networks

Diverse methods have been applied to understand why science continues to be debated within the climate policy domain. A number of studies have presented the notion of the ‘echo chamber’ to model and explain information flows across an array of social settings, finding disproportionate connections among ideologically similar political communicators. This paper builds on these findings to provide a more formal operationalization of the components of echo chambers. We then empirically test their utility using survey data collected from the community of political elites engaged in the contentious issue of climate politics in the United States. Our survey period coincides with the most active and contentious period in the history of US climate policy, when legislation regulating carbon dioxide emissions had passed through the House of Representatives and was being considered in the Senate. We use exponential random graph (ERG) modelling to demonstrate that both the homogeneity of information (the echo) and multi-path information transmission (the chamber) play significant roles in policy communication. We demonstrate that the intersection of these components creates echo chambers in the climate policy network. These results lead to some important conclusions about climate politics, as well as the relationship between science communication and policymaking at the elite level more generally.US National Science FoundationNational Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC

Why are we here? Patterns of intersectional motivations across the resistance

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Mobilization via the DOI in this recordCan a crowd of individuals who are motivated by a range of issues related to racial identity, class, gender and sexuality mobilize around a shared issue, and, if so, how does this process work in practice? To date, limited research has explored intersectionality as a mobilization tool for social movements. This paper expands recent work on how intersectional motivations influence the constituencies at protest events by comparing across some of the largest events that have taken place in Washington, DC since the Resistance began. We explore patterns of motivations of participants in marches over the first year of the Trump Presidency. Our analyses demonstrate how individuals’ motivations to participate represented an intersectional set of issues and how patterns of issues emerge. However, when we look across the marches, we find that the patterns are not durable, indicating the limitations of interpretations of the Resistance as a unified intersectional movement

Von Australien lernen – Erfolg durch „konsequente Sprachförderung“ an australischen Grundschulen/NSW

Nach Aussagen des Schulentwicklungsforschers Wilfried Bos gilt Australien als Staat, in dem die Förderung von Migrantenkindern besser gelingt als in Deutschland. Dies, so Bos, liege vor allem auch an einer „konsequenten Sprachförderung“ (Kerstan 2008: 77), von der man lernen könne. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht diesem Gedanken nach. Zunächst wird anhand von australischen Testergebnissen belegt, dass Migrantenkinder in Australien im Leistungsvergleich tatsächlich gut abschneiden. Im Anschluss wird exemplarisch am Beispiel der staatlichen Grundschulen im Bundesstaat New South Wales beschrieben, wie die Sprachförderung dort konkret aussieht und es wird überlegt, worin das Geheimnis des Erfolgs liegen könnte. Als Basis dienen Dokumente der OCED und des New South Wales Department of Education and Training, eine explorativ-exemplarische Langzeitbeobachtung der Praxis vor Ort sowie Ergebnisse aus der Spracherwerbs- und Sprachlernforschung, der Soziologie, der Psychologie sowie der Erziehungs- und Bildungsforschung. Es wird argumentiert, dass der Erfolg im Grundschulbereich nur zum Teil im Sprachförderunterricht liegen kann und auf der Basis eines holistischen Verständnisses von Sprache und Spracherwerb wird die These entwickelt, dass das Geheimnis des australischen Erfolgs im Grundschulbereich eher in den institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen zu suchen ist, in die der Sprachförderunterricht dort eingebettet ist. Diese Rahmenbedingungen müssten den Spracherwerb – institutionell beabsichtigt oder nicht – positiv unterstützen, und zwar indirekt auf sozialer und affektiver Ebene. Diese These wird an Beispielen aus der Praxis näher ausgeführt und durch Ergebnisse aus der Forschungsliteratur begründet

Preparing for esports competitions: gaming communities of practice

Communities of practice are groups of people united by a passion for something, who deepen their knowledge and experience in their field through ongoing interactions. This article focuses on the importance of institutionalized relationship networks and mutual recognition in preparation for esports competitions. The study represents inductive, qualitative analyses. Individual in-depth interviews were conducted with players (n = 12) that have significant achievements in Magic: The Gathering (MTG) competitions. In the social world of MTG enthusiasts, numerous groups reflect the functionality of a community of practice. These groups constitute a fundamental aspect of preparation for top-level MTG tournaments. Examples of the functioning of so-called testing groups among MTG enthusiasts allow the formulation of a new analytical category – the gaming community of practice. Contrary to stereotypes, the presented study supports the thesis about the significant role of video games in the formation of social competencies and the creation of specific communities, which is particularly important in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Toward Successful Esports Team: How Does National Diversity Affect Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Video Games

Today, esports teams in multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games are often composed of players from around the world. The paper asks whether a greater national heterogeneity of professional esports teams means their higher effectiveness. Desk research data of 13 tournaments of Dota 2 game held in 2011-2018 is used to calculate the teams’ win ratio, i.e., the ratio of skirmishes (in all matches) won to the total number of skirmishes (match is a series of skirmishes). Hence, effectiveness is understood not as ranks or matches won, but as the lowest possible number of lost skirmishes. Multinational teams achieved a higher win ratio, compared to nationally homogenous teams and the analysis includes the role of coaches’ nationalities. Working groups, cognitive diversity, and similarity/attraction theories are used to signal potential reasons and consequences of diversity on team performance. This exploratory study indicates future research threads on esports teams’ national diversity