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The heat is on: An exploratory investigation of how climate change-related challenges affect SMEs' R&D activities
No full textClimate change can cause major challenges for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Responding and adapting to such challenges is crucial, as SMEs are vital for driving economic growth and employment in most countries. Investing in R&D is a key way in which SMEs can build the capacities required for responding and adapting to climate change-related challenges. However, the extent to which such challenges affect SMEs' R&D activities remains a critical gap in existing knowledge. Using detailed firm-level data on 1,730 SMEs in Ireland, our study is the first to explore this issue. We achieve this, using information on SMEs' climate changerelated challenges, from a new module of the 2018-2020 wave of the Irish part of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS), the Innovation in Irish Enterprises Survey (IIE). By combining a matching approach with probit regression analysis, we find that climate changerelated challenges can increase the probability of SMEs investing in R&D. Such challenges can also increase the probability of SMEs engaging in continuous, as opposed to occasional R&D. Based on our findings, the above impacts are mainly driven by climate change, resulting in higher costs/input prices. Our study highlights the importance of R&D for SMEs to adapt and respond to climate change and provides critical insights for SMEs and policymakers alike
Market entry of digital health providers after the introduction of a new reimbursement pathway
No full textDigital therapeutics are increasingly used to complement traditional health care. In a pioneering move, Germany became the first country to introduce a structured regulatory framework — known as the DiGA scheme — that enables developers of digital therapeutics to be reimbursed in the statutory health insurance system. Our study evaluates the impact of this novel regulation on the development and market entry of patient-centered digital health applications. Using a panel dataset of app availability by language and month from the Apple App Store, covering the period from January 2018 to September 2021, we compare trends in health app availability in German to those in other languages. Applying event study designs and a set of synthetic control methods, we find that the DiGA regulation likely stimulated the development of German-language digital therapeutics in the app market. While the number of apps increased, our results suggest that neither the diversity of health conditions targeted nor the number of high-quality apps expanded significantly. To the contrary, the increase was almost exclusively driven by apps that sell patient data for advertisement. This suggests that the initial enthusiasm surrounding the new reimbursement pathway did not translate into a broad increase in high quality apps with strong data privacy protections. Further research is needed to assess the longer-term effects on innovation and quality, especially as other countries begin to adopt regulatory frameworks inspired by the German model
Better safe than sorry? Toxic waste management after union elections
No full textU.S. manufacturing facilities generate approximately 30 billion pounds of hazardous waste annually, 10% of which is released into the environment. The negative economic and health impacts of such toxic chemicals are significant (Currie et al., 2015; Aguilar-Gomez et al., 2022). It is therefore crucial to understand the factors which influence the production, release, and treatment of toxic waste and its resulting pollution.
Unions are designed to advocate for workers’ health and safety, but their impact on toxic waste management remains unclear. This study investigates how union elections affect the balance between workplace safety and environmental sustainability. Union election wins lead to a significant increase in air pollution and the release of toxic waste and to a significant decrease in waste treatment (e.g. recycling and energy recovery) at facility sites. Even though unionised facilities engage more often in innovative pollution prevention activities, these efforts are insufficient to offset the increased release of toxic waste. Unionised facilities prioritise worker safety by limiting the handling of hazardous waste, but this occurs at the expense of environmental sustainability
Essays in international trade and environmental economics
No full textThis dissertation consists of three self-contained chapters that study questions in the fields of international trade and environmental economics
On the integration of scandinavian loan verbs into medieval english
No full textThis dissertation explores the integration of Norse-derived loan verbs into medieval English, focusing on the influence of genealogical, lexical and structural closeness between the contact languages on their argument structure integration and morphosyntactic accommodation. Employing dictionary-based and corpus-driven approaches using qualitative and quantitative methods, the collected studies examine individual verbs, verb classes, and changes to argument structure patterns and alternations. The findings reveal that the linguistic closeness of the languages in contact, including their mutual intelligibility, enabled the conflict-free integration of Norse-derived verbs, with argument structures assigned by analogy to native equivalents. Both cognate and non-cognate verbs adopted cognate patterns, ensuring the stability of the English argument structure system and preventing major structural changes. The research presents methodological advances in the investigation of historic language contact between closely-related languages and highlights how linguistic closeness and a communicative mode of receptive multilingualism facilitated selective copying, underscoring the importance of interlingual equivalences