The non-use and influence of UK energy sector indicators

This paper presents the results from a case study on the role in policymaking of UK Energy Sector Indicators (ESIs), introduced by the government in 2003. The findings show that the ESIs constituted a very minor element within the broader evidence-base used by policymakers, and that this indicator set and its objectives were poorly known even to central players in the sector. The findings of this research provide further evidence for the observation that scientific knowledge (including evaluations, assessments and indicators) seldom play an instrumental role in policymaking, and are more likely to produce indirect, conceptual and political impacts. The analysis provides a number of tentative conclusions concerning such potential indirect impacts that accrue mainly through processes of dialogue and argumentation both during the preparation of the indicators and after their publication as part of the annual reporting by the UK energy department. The ESIs have played various conceptual and political roles, yet the concrete outcomes in terms of policy change remain to be explored. The conclusions highlight the limitations of rationalist notions of direct, instrumental use in the efforts to understand the role of indicators in policymaking. The paper concludes by three tentative propositions concerning the explanations to the absence of instrumental role of the ESIs, which could be usefully explored in future research: the characteristics of the energy sector; the characteristics of the UK policy culture; and the exceptionality of the ESIs in the general evidence-base of UK energy sector

Tropes, Causal Processes, and Functional Laws

My earlier attempt to develop a trope nominalist account of the relation between tropes and causal processes. In accordance with weak dispositional essentialism (Hendry & Rowbottom 2009), I remain uncommitted to full-blown necessity of causal functional laws. Instead, the existence of tropes falling under a determinable and certain kind of causal processes guarantee that corresponding functional laws do not have falsifying instances

Indicators: tools for informing, monitoring or controlling?

Today, indicators are produced and used worldwide; across all levels and sectors of society; by public, private and civil society actors; for a variety of purposes, ranging from knowledge-provision to administrative control. While the use of quantitative data as policy support, including policy formulation, has a long history, recent decades have seen the rise of what some have called an ‘indicator industry’ (for example, Hezri and Hasan 2004), focused especially on the production of environmental and sustainability indicators, within a framework variously called ‘governance by numbers' (Miller 2001; Lascoumes and Le Galès 2005; Jackson 2011), ‘management by numbers’ in public service (for example, Hood 2007) or ‘numbers discourse’ (Jackson 2011, p. 23). Indicators are generally expected to enhance the rationality of policymaking and public debate by providing a supposedly more objective, robust, and reliable information base. Indicators can operate as ‘boundary objects’ (for example, Turnhout 2009; Star 2010), catering to both technocratic and deliberative ideals, by combining ‘hard facts’ and modelling with collective reasoning and ‘speculation’. Research and development work in the area has hitherto overwhelmingly concentrated on improving the technical quality of indicators, while the fate of indicators in policymaking and the associated sociopolitical aspects have attracted little attention. This chapter focuses on this neglected area of indicator research, by providing an overview of the multiple types of existing indicators, as well as their use and influence in various venues of policymaking. Empirical examples are drawn mainly from the fields of environmental and sustainability indicators

A Trope Theoretical Analysis of Relational Inherence

The trope bundle theories of objects are capable of analyzing monadic inherence (objects having tropes), which is one of their main advantage. However, the best current trope theoretical account of relational tropes, namely, the relata specific view leaves relational inherence (a relational trope relating two or more entities) primitive. This article presents the first trope theoretical analysis of relational inherence by generalizing the trope theoretical analysis of inherence to relational tropes. The analysis reduces the holding of relational inherence to the obtaining of certain other facts about entities of the trope theoretical category system. Moreover, I show that the analysis can deal with asymmetric and non-symmetric relations by assuming that all relation-like tropes are quantities. Finally, I provide an account of the spatial location of tropes in the difficult case in which tropes contribute to determining of the location of other entities

Instantiation and Characterization: Problems in Lowe's Four-Category Ontology

According to Lowe’s Four-Category Ontology, the general nature of the entities belonging to the four fundamental categories is determined by the basic formal ontological relations (instantiation and characterization) that they bear to other entities. I argue that, in closer analysis, instead of one formal relation of characterization, this category system introduces two, one connecting particulars and another universals. With regard to the characterization relation connecting particulars, it remains an open issue whether it would need further analysis. By contrast, the status of instantiation as an internal relation is comparatively clear. Nevertheless, because of holding by virtue of the essences of particulars, the holding of instantiation between universals and particulars rules out the possibility of kind change and entails that particulars are essentially rigidly dependent on universals. Finally, Lowe’s analysis of necessary exemplification gives us some reasons to suspect that some property universals need not have any instances in order to exist

Dynamic Capacities in Promotion of Economic Development of City-regions

Traditionally policy-making in urban economic development (UED) is based on a fairly well established belief in the capabilities of policy-makers to find the correct strategies for the future by rational planning. I argue, based on series of studies focusing on UED-policies, that in a knowledge economy the nature of UED-policies are changing, the new forms of power are emerging and consequently the significance of leadership is rising. It also seems that UED-policies are often too administrative in nature and true leadership is easily lost in the jungle of old thinking, development plans, rules, etc. In Finland, in the era of building the welfare state, ?leadership? in public organisation required good administrative skills, knowledge of various statutes, and the ability to follow instructions correctly and efficiently, or could it rather be said that the System as a whole had leadership. The knowledge economy is so clearly more complex, more blurred, more dynamic and more penetrating that policy-makers are forced to learn new skills and become more skilled in leading transition and interactive processes, not only in administrating resources and formulating development programmes. I argue that there should be more emphasis on leadership both in research and in the communities of practice. In order to be able to influence events, leaders have to act in the riptide of different interests and aims, and find a totally new range of means that can be applied in different events. It should also be noted that leadership may be seen as the effect of actors on one another and it may be that the promotion of regional development has several leaders having different qualities in leading. In order to be a leader, individual or an organisation engaged in promotion of urban economic development need, in most simple terms, a) to go before or to show the way, b) to influence or to induce, c) to go head of or in advance of, d) to have the advantage over, e) to act as leader, f) to go through or pass and g) to act as guide (source: the Webster?s dictionary). But what is to lead in a complex, ambiguous and muddled process of urban economic development? How to go before or to induce or to act as guide if one does not have formal power to do it? How to go ahead of, if one has formal position but is not respected? This paper answers these questions, among others, by analysing leadership in two Finnish city-regions; Tampere and Jyväskylä. First, theoretical framework that places leadership in a wider conceptual context is scrutinised. Secondly, the development policies of Jyväskylä and Tampere focusing on knowledge economy are described, thirdly, the cases are analysed from the leadership point of view, and fourthly the modes of leadership are elaborated and the new forms of power deliberated.

Report on Organic Food and Farming in Finland

The interest in research on organic farming grew in the beginning of the 1980s. In 1980, an extensive seven-year-project started in cooperation between several institutions investigating the possibility to improve the efficiency of nitrogen fixation and utilisation of nitrogen fertilisers and cow manure. Two extensive comparative projects began in 1982: (1) conventional and organic cropping systems at Suitia, University of Helsinki and (2) self-sufficient crop rotation and cropping system by the Agricultural Research Centre of Finland at its regional research stations. In September 1985, the Partala Centre for Rural Development for research on organic farming was founded in Juva. The University of Helsinki, Juva municipality and some other organisations belonged to this Partala association, as it is called nowadays. Partala experimental farm was integrated into the MTT Agricultural Research Centre of Finland in 1990. MTT Partala and Karila in nearby town Mikkeli were joined together in 1996 to the MTT Research Station of Ecological Production. Partala research station and later MTT/Ecological Production has coordinated research on Organic Food and Farming in Finland since 1990. It has launched three research programmes, which have covered the whole organic sector from soil issues to food processing and markets, as well as social issues. Professor Artur Granstedt from Sweden was nominated as professor for organic farming research in Partala for 5 years in 1993, and he influenced strongly the research programmes of Organic Food and Farming at that time. MTT Ecological Production established ‘The Finnish Research Network on Organic Agri-Food Systems’ (ReNOAF), together with other stakeholders in 2000 and has coordinated this network ever since. Funding directed especially for research programmes on Organic Food and Farming (OF&F) was addressed for the first time in Finland in 2003, when the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry launched its first research programme on Organic Food and Farming, based on the priorities prepared in the ReNOAF. National research seminars were also organised by MTT Ecological Production. The Partala Research Station will be closed down in September 2006. The lands of the Partala Research Station will remain under organic farming research, but all personnel will move to the Mikkeli Research Station to work in close connection with the Ruralia Institute of the University of Helsinki. The reason for this decision was to improve efficiency by having a better critical mass of researchers by putting more people to work together and by concentrating the resources. At the University of Helsinki, the Mikkeli Institute for Rural Research and Training (Ruralia Institute Mikkeli Unit), a neighbour of MTT Ecological Production, got started in 1988. Organic production has been one of its priorities from the very beginning. It has concentrated on further training and development activities. It has, for example, educated all advisors and teachers for organic farming since 1991. Developing activities have covered the processing and marketing of food, plant protection and animal welfare. In 2000, the only academic educational programme for Organic Food and Farming was started there. This Eco Studies – project has been under way at the Ruralia Institute Mikkeli Unit of the University of Helsinki since 2001. The project consists of scientific research and university level study entities. Studies in the organic agri-food systems study programme are available for university students and through the Open University for all who are interested in the field. It provides opportunities to join the European and Nordic study programmes, too. Organic production, marketing and consumption of organic products are also studied in Finland at the other departments of the MTT Agrifood Research and University of Helsinki, the University of Joensuu, the National Consumer Research Centre, the VTT Technical Research Centre, the National Veterinary and Food Research Institute and the Work Efficiency Institute

Asymmetric News Effects on Volatility : Good vs. Bad News in Good vs. Bad Times

We study the impact of positive and negative macroeconomic US and European news announcements in different phases of the business cycle on the highfrequency volatility of the EUR/USD exchange rate. The results suggest that in general bad news increases volatility more than good news. The news effects also depend on the state of the economy: bad news increases volatility more in good times than in bad times, while there is no difference between the volatility effects of good news in bad and good times

The Properties of Market-Based and Survey Forecasts for Different Data Releases

We compare the accuracy of the survey forecasts and forecasts implied by economic binary options on the U.S. nonfarm payroll change. These options are available for a number of ranges of the announced figure, and each pays $1 if the released nonfarm payroll change falls in the given range. For the first-release data both the market-based and survey forecasts are biased, while they are rational and approximately equally accurate for later releases. Both forecasts are more accurate for later releases. Because of predictability in the revision process, this indicates that the investors in the economic derivatives market are incapable of taking the measurement error in the preliminary estimates efficiently into account. This suggests that economic stability could be enhanced by more accurate first-release figures.Expectations; economic derivatives; data vintage; real-time data