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Tech & teens: insights from 15 studies on the impact of digital technology on well-being
No full textThis report explores the short-term and long-term effects of digital technologies—such as smartphones, social media, and online games—on adolescents' psychological, social, and physical well-being. Based on 15 studies conducted over six years by the Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society (IRTIS) in the Czech Republic, the impact of technology is highly context-dependent, influenced by the specific online activity, affected by individual characteristics, and differs according to the various dimensions of well-being. Crucially, the causal effects of digital technology use vary across adolescents, underscoring the importance of their unique traits and behaviors. Our research highlights the fact that generalized conclusions about the influence of digital technologies are not feasible, because outcomes are primarily shaped by how adolescents engage with these technologies. Despite common oversimplifications in media narratives, the question of digital technology’s impact on adolescent well-being remains nuanced and cannot be reduced to a clear-cut answer
Global reproductive justice: a new agenda for feminist economics?
No full textThis special issue focuses on reproductive justice (RJ) as a framework for feminist research and activism. The introduction provides an overview of when and why the RJ framework was developed, outlines the ways it challenged and extended the way reproductive rights were understood and approached by feminist scholars and activists, and articulaties its productive potential. RJ’s relevance for identifying and responding to the breadth of rights violations taking place across the globe today can only be grasped with a firm understanding of its scope and foundational concepts, such as intersectionality. Its expanded scope, conceptual complexity, and epistemological orientation make RJ incompatible with the neoclassical rational-choice paradigm, but points of resonance with other frameworks provide possibilities for its integration and contribution both to knowledge and to the development of a feminist methodology in economics. The contributions to this special issue represent some of the first efforts to take forward this important project
What reproductive justice brings to and requires of the feminist economics project
No full textDespite evidence of a growing interest in reproductive justice (RJ) among feminist economists, this interest is nascent. To avoid RJ becoming a buzzword and losing its political and critical edge, it is important to fully grasp what the RJ framework means and brings to research. This Dialogue aims to create a space where the possibility of an interdisciplinary, transnational exchange of knowledge and ideas could be explored and encouraged. It presents four views about what it means to adopt and commit to the RJ framework in feminist research. One of the contributors was trained as an economist and the remaining contributors trained in other disciplines. The contributions discuss directly or show by example how research guided by the RJ framework can contribute to the development of an ethical and effective transformative response to an increasingly oppressive policy trajectory in the current historical moment
Municipal capacities and institutional responses in the age of climate uncertainties
No full textMunicipal governments in the global South with weak governance capacities and resources must urgently build their capacities to address climate impacts. Building on the concept ‘bringing the state back in’, the paper discusses the influence of ideational evolution within municipal governments on their capacity to pursue contextual climate policies. Ideational evolution within the government was traced by unpacking policymaking processes (learning, puzzling, and powering) and actors (governmental and non-governmental) involved. The framework explains how a global South municipal government improved its capacity to formulate and adopt an integrated, cross-sectoral and contextual climate policy without any domestic or international mandate. Triangulated information –(climate) policy documents, existing literature, interviews with policymakers- forms the basis of the study. In theorising from and for the global South, the study presents a framework, supported by empirics, on the influence of local and contextual ideation on municipal decision-making capacity to institutionally respond against climate change
Regimes, leaders, and lockdowns: who responded more quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic?
No full textDo institutions or individuals shape policy in a crisis? We examine the timing of COVID-19 lockdowns in relation to regime type and leader characteristics. One view emphasizes institutional structure: were autocracies, with fewer constraints, quicker to lock down? Another highlights individual traits: did the speed of response depend on whether those in charge were doctors, scientists, women, or populists? Using a global dataset for 188 countries of political leaders and health ministers in office at the start of the pandemic, we find that democracies implemented lockdowns faster than autocracies. Individual traits of leaders mattered little, though countries with doctors heading health ministries were less likely to lock down—suggesting their presence may have helped hesitant leaders delay action. Our design addresses concerns about reciprocal causation and sample selection bias and proves robust to potential confounders. Political institutions, more than individual attributes, shaped the initial pandemic response
Scaling language model size yields diminishing returns for single-message political persuasion
No full textLarge language models can now generate political messages as persuasive as those written by humans, raising concerns about how far this persuasiveness may continue to increase with model size. Here, we generate 720 persuasive messages on 10 US political issues from 24 language models spanning several orders of magnitude in size. We then deploy these messages in a large-scale randomized survey experiment (N = 25,982) to estimate the persuasive capability of each model. Our findings are twofold. First, we find evidence that model persuasiveness is characterized by sharply diminishing returns, such that current frontier models are only slightly more persuasive than models smaller in size by an order of magnitude or more. Second, we find that the association between language model size and persuasiveness shrinks toward zero and is no longer statistically significant once we adjust for mere task completion (coherence, staying on topic), a pattern that highlights task completion as a potential mediator of larger models’ persuasive advantage. Given that current frontier models are already at ceiling on this task completion metric in our setting, taken together, our results suggest that further scaling model size may not much increase the persuasiveness of static LLM-generated political messages
Understanding the uniqueness of emerging markets and their firms: institutional voids-based dynamic capabilities in the Chinese automotive sector
No full textIB scholars are interested in understanding the uniqueness of emerging markets and their firms and argue that firms operating in environments characterized by institutional voids are likely to face higher costs due to reduced information flows and limited market intermediaries. We argue that institutional voids drive the dynamic capabilities of emerging market multinational enterprises. Taking the Chinese auto industry as an example, this article integrates institutional voids and dynamic capabilities to provide insight into how Chinese EMNEs have moved from technology followers to technology leaders to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competencies and address a rapidly changing environment
How the far right weaponizes victimhood
No full textFrom Nigel Farage’s claims about two-tier policing, to Elon Musk’s weaponization of the grooming gangs scandal, the far right portrays itself as a victim or as on the side of victims as a tool to promote its political ends. In this interview, Joanna Bale asks Lilie Chouliaraki about how her book “Wronged” exposes how this rhetoric of victimhood is used by the powerful to amass even more power
Elon Musk's wealth may become a liability if Donald Trump turns against him
No full textSince Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, billionaire tech-entrepreneur, Elon Musk, has sought closer and closer association with the president-elect. Nikhil Kalyanpur and Abraham Newman argue that acting as a close insider may ultimately put Elon Musk in Donald Trump’s sights if – and when – they disagree. The history of Russian oligarchs who fell out with Vladimir Putin, they write, illustrates how vast wealth may be no protection against a weaponized state
Bail-in's unfulfilled promise
No full textThe adoption of bail-in by the EU and other jurisdictions as the core tool of their bank resolution regimes promised to ensure the effective financial restructuring of failed banks with the resources of their own stakeholders, thereby achieving the financial stability objectives of resolution while making taxpayer-funded bailouts a thing of the past. In retrospect, despite its many positive effects, it is questionable whether bail-in has fully lived up to its promise. The operationalisation of the bail-in tool is still ongoing, with several legal and practical issues yet to be fully resolved. Furthermore, the tool’s actual use in resolution actions has so far been sporadic and uneven, undermining its credibility; in any event, significant doubts remain as to the appropriateness of bail-in in situations of system-wide distress