'It’s hard to define good writing, but i recognise it when i see it’: can consensus-based assessment evaluate the teaching of writing?

In a Higher Education environment where evidence-based practice and accountability are highly valued, most writing practitioners will be familiar with direct requests or less tangible pressures to demonstrate that their teaching has a positive impact on students’ writing skills. Although such evaluations are not devoid of risk and the need for them is contested, it can be argued that it is better to engage with them, as this can avoid the danger of overly simplistic forms of measurements being imposed. The current paper engages with this question by proposing the conceptual basis for a new measurement tool. Based on Amabile’s Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), developed to assess creativity, the tool develops the idea of consensual assessment of writing as a methodology that can provide robust data through systematic measurement. At the same time, I argue consensual assessment reflects the evaluation of writing in real life situations more closely than many of the methodologies for writing assessment used in other contexts, primarily large scale tests. As such, it would allow writing practitioners to go beyond ethnographic methods, or self- reporting, in order to obtain greater insight into the ways in which their teaching helps change students’ actual writing, without sacrificing the complexity of writing as social interaction, which is fundamental to an academic literacies approach

Particle-unstable light nuclei with a Sturmian approach that preserves the Pauli principle

Sturmian theory for nucleon-nucleus scattering is discussed in the presence of all the phenomenological ingredients necessary for the description of weakly-bound (or particle-unstable) light nuclear systems. Currently, we use a macroscopic potential model of collective nature. The analysis shows that the couplings to low-energy collective-core excitations are fundamental but they are physically meaningful only if the constraints introduced by the Pauli principle are taken into account. The formalism leads one to discuss a new concept, Pauli hindrance, which appears to be important to understand the structure of weakly-bound and unbound systems.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, contribution to proceedings of "18th International IUPAP Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics," Santos, Brazil, August 21-26, 200

Environmental Taxation and International Eco-Industries

Environmental policies are discussed when two countries differ in their ability to abate pollution. Northern eco-industries (the industry supplying abatement activities) are more efficient than Southern ones. Segmented environmental markets and a Northern monopoly yield identical second-best taxes in both countries. When markets are global, Southern countries underestimate the market power of eco-industries. Introducing competition creates positive (resp. negative) rent-shifting distortions in South (resp. North). Cooperation could reduce Northern pollution but has ambiguous consequences in South.Eco-Industry, Strategic Environmental Policy, Asymmetric Oligopolies

Environmentalists' Behaviour and Environmental Policies policies

In this partial equilibrium and static model, the impact of environmentalism on two countries' environmental policies is presented. First, the only (indirect) way environmentalists influence the choice of pollution taxes is through a negative term in the welfare function in Home. It is defined as passive environmentalism (PE). Second, this article is a first attempt to consider domestic environmentalists lobbying a foreign government. It is defined as active environmentalism (AE). Our contribution is threefold. We emphasize first that the way environmentalists act is paramount to study the consequences of their actions. Passive or active environmentalisms have very different impacts on environmental policies. Second, we show that lobbying activities can be counter-productive for environmentalists. Third, we characterize cases in which the presence of environmentalists has a non-ambiguous positive impact on welfare.Environmentalism, Lobby Groups, Positive Environmental Economics, Strategic Environmental Policy

Redealing the Cards: How the Presence of an Eco-Industry Modifies the Political Economy of Environmental Policies

An incumbent government maximizes its chances of being reelected. Its objective function encompasses both social welfare and political contributions. Its only instrument is a pollution tax. In an open-economy context, we introduce an eco-industry in addition to lobbies of polluting firms and environmentalists. Not only does the eco-industry lobby add a new political contribution toward a higher environmental tax, it also modifies the incentives of the usual lobbies. When the foreign environmental policy is constant, environmentalists can be in favor of a decrease in the local tax in order to reduce foreign pollution. It could also be in the interest of a vertical industrial pressure group to lobby toward more stringent environmental policy. In general, the impact of lobbying activities on the politically optimal tax is ambiguous as pressure groups push in different directions.Eco-Industry, Environmental Taxation, Lobbies, Political Economy

Polarized Proton Pionic Capture in Deuterium as a Probe of 3N Dynamics

The proton analyzing power Ay in pion production reaction pd --> pi0 3He has been calculated including one- and two-body meson production mechanisms with a proper treatment of the three-nucleon dynamics and an accurate solution of the 3N bound-state problem for phenomenological two-nucleon potentials. In the region around the Delta resonance, the structure of the analyzing power can be understood once interference effects among amplitudes describing intermediate Delta N formation in different orbital states are considered along with the additional interference with the S-wave pion production amplitudes. Then, the inclusion of three-nucleon dynamics in the initial state produces the structure of the analyzing power that has been observed experimentally.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

The OECD 1951-88 growth experience revisited

This paper presents panel data evidence on an investment driven growth process for 16 OECD countries over the 1951-88 period, as it is predicted by new growth theory. Investments are hypothesized to depend on demand factors, human capital, and trade union power. The two-equation regression model appears to replicate the data in a satisfactorily way. In the search for the ultimate factors behind economic growth, this two-step approach seems more appropriate than a purely eclectic one.Economic Growth;Investment;OECD;economic development