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Reassessing ASEAN's five‐point consensus: on shifting boundaries of legitimate involvement and a contested consensus
No full textThe Five-Point Consensus (5PC) of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) adopted after the 2021 military takeover in Myanmar is generally understood as a failure given its objectives have not been achieved. Meanwhile, existing debate about the 5PC's origins, the reasons for its lack of effectiveness, and controversies surrounding its implementation have produced competing arguments. The article engages these arguments by reassessing the 5PC with reference to the literature on ASEAN's evolving principles and practices, the grouping's substantial implementation efforts, and responses to the 5PC by Myanmar's key stakeholders. This analytical and empirical contextualisation allows for a more balanced evaluation of ASEAN's 5PC. Significantly, the 5PC has involved an important shift in how far ASEAN's legitimate diplomatic involvement in Myanmar affairs now extends and represents unprecedented conflict management. At the same time, intramural contestation arising from 5PC implementation has focused on ASEAN's recent practice of the consensus principle
On testing Kronecker product structure in tensor factor models
No full textWe propose a test for the Kronecker product structure of a factor loading matrix implied by a tensor factor model with Tucker decomposition in the common component. By defining a Kronecker product structure set, we determine whether a tensor time series has a Kronecker product structure, equivalent to its ability to decompose the series according to a tensor factor model. Our test is built on analysing and comparing the residuals from fitting a full tensor factor model, and the residuals from fitting a factor model on a reshaped version of the data. In the most extreme case, the reshaping is the vectorization of the tensor data, and the factor loading matrix in such a case can be general if there is no Kronecker product structure present. Our test is also generalized to the Khatri–Rao product structure in a tensor factor model with canonical polyadic decomposition. Theoretical results are developed through asymptotic normality results on estimated residuals. Numerical experiments suggest that the size of the tests approaches the pre-set nominal value as the sample size or the order of the tensor increases, while the power increases with mode dimensions and the number of combined modes. We demonstrate our tests through extensive real data examples
Loss of Global Britain in global health
No full textLack of political engagement is increasing health risks in the UK and abroad
Waiting for a home: the price of public housing delays in Kuwait
No full textResidential real estate prices in Kuwait have risen well beyond the reach of the average Kuwaiti household, with homes trading at more than 22 times the typical annual income, placing Kuwait among the most unaffordable markets globally. This study examines the relationship between housing prices and the waitlist for government-provided homes administered by the Public Authority for Housing and Welfare (PAHW). We find that growth in the PAHW waitlist is positively associated with nationwide price increases, even after accounting for changes in wages, credit availability, and interest rates. Specifically, an increase of 6,134 applicants to the waitlist – the same seen in 2024 – is associated with a 2.7% rise in residential real estate prices, holding other factors constant. The association varies by city and appears to be asymmetric: prices tend to rise more sharply during periods of weak reductions in PAHW waitlist and tend to stabilise or decline in periods when PAHW actively reduces its applicant waitlist, especially in mid-priced areas. These findings highlight the potential for housing policy performance to shape affordability outcomes across different segments of the market
Defining 'social' + 'affordable' housing in London today
No full textLondon was an early laboratory for the development of social housing, and the city features a wide variety of architectures and financial models. The first social homes were built in the 19th century by philanthropists and the city's first public or 'council housing' was the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch, East London, created in 1890 by the LCC. The project began a movement towards public delivery and management and, over the course of the 20th century, local authorities all over the UK eclipsed housing associations and other charities to become the main providers
Generalized fitted Q-iteration with clustered data
No full textThis paper focuses on reinforcement learning (RL) with clustered data, which is commonly encountered in healthcare applications. We propose a generalized fitted Q‐iteration (FQI) algorithm that incorporates generalized estimating equations into policy learning to handle the intra‐cluster correlations. Theoretically, we demonstrate (i) the optimalities of our Q‐function and policy estimators when the correlation structure is correctly specified and (ii) their consistencies when the structure is mis‐specified. Empirically, through simulations and analyses of a mobile health dataset, we find the proposed generalized FQI achieves, on average, a half reduction in regret compared to the standard FQI
Donald Trump's "Department of War" name change is mostly political theatre
No full textIn early September, President Trump issued an executive order directing that the US Department of Defense would again be known as the “Department of War”. Jonny Hall writes that the move aligns with the Trump administration’s campaign against perceived ‘wokeness’ in the US military and is an attempt to reaffirm the US as a “winner”. He argues that while the implications of the policy remain to be seen, the renaming is symbolic of the continued reduction of America’s soft power capabilities
A global landscape of patenting activity in COVID-19 vaccines
No full textThis paper analyses global patent filings for COVID-19 vaccines to identify where vaccine candidates were developed and where patent protection was being sought, as well as to investigate the patterns of collaboration among applicants. The paper builds on a 2023 report from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), selecting 1178 relevant patent families across eight categories of vaccine platforms, and using WIPO's data on applicants' countries and three types of applicants: corporate applicants, individual inventors, and universities and research organisations (UROs). We searched for applications in 126 jurisdictions, combined into three groups: the G7, G20 nations not in the G7, and non-G20 nations. G20 nations not in the G7 were the most common destination of filings, and applications originating in these countries constitute the greatest number of families, including those covering novel vaccine platforms. Corporate applicants dominated the G7 and the non-G20 but were as relevant as UROs for the non-G7 in G20. Applications from UROs were relatively more focused on conventional platforms, while corporate applicants were more focused on novel platforms. We repeated the analysis for pharmaceutical and biotechnological patent families more broadly in order to provide a reference point for interpreting the results for COVID-19 vaccine patents. Comparison of the two samples reveals unique patterns of patenting activity for COVID-19 vaccines, including more frequent collaboration, especially between corporate applicants and UROs
Taming of the shrews? The (non-)enforcement of informal norms in the European Council
No full textThe European Council is arguably one of the European Union’s (EU) most dynamic decision-making bodies. Both scholars and practitioners attribute its effectiveness to an informal norm of diffuse reciprocity. The norm encourages members to extend goodwill to others, expecting the same in return when needed. This article investigates whether, and under what conditions, governments in the European Council uphold this norm, despite frequent temptations—rooted in domestic politics—to violate it or exploit its inherent ambiguity. It finds that governments maintain this norm by presenting a unified front against the violator, particularly when the breach is politically costly at home and gains salience in national media. In the absence of such politicization, the norm is more likely to be violated or exploited, putting it at risk of erosion. Through two empirical case studies—focusing on British Prime Minister David Cameron and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—the article examines perceived attempts either to exploit or to withhold goodwill in the European Council. The analysis traces how their peers sought to assess whether a violation had occurred, to coordinate a unified response, and to agree on appropriate punishment. Empirically, the article sheds new light on how the European Council manages norm violations; theoretically, it advances research on informal governance by identifying domestic political salience as a key condition for norm enforcement