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Why being "European enough" matters for cooperation
Get PDFWhat makes a country European? Drawing on new research, Sandra Obradović shows that when states are recognised as being European, their citizens are more likely to support European cooperation
The best bookshops in Toronto, Canada
Get PDFIn this bookshop guide, Greg Taylor takes us on a tour of Toronto‘s most charming purveyors of books. If you know a city with great spots for book lovers, you can find information about how to contribute to our global bookshop guide series at the end of this article
Housing insecurity and precarity in London
Get PDFThe homelessness we see on the streets is only the most visible side of housing insecurity and precarity. In London alone, more than 167,000 people rely on sofa-surfing, sleeping in cars, vans, sheds and garages. Laura Lane and Eleanor Benton detail the personal and social cost of insecure housing in London, and argue that building more houses is only part of the solution
Public investment multipliers revisited: the role of production complementarities
Get PDFThis paper revisits the issue of the public investment multiplier through the lens of complementarity or substitutability between private inputs and public infrastructure capital. Our main result is that public investment multipliers are much larger than in the literature when private inputs and public capital are good complements relative to the canonical Cobb–Douglas case where the degree of complementarity is unity, and, at the same time, public capital is in relative shortage, meaning that it acts as a ‘weak link’ in production. Within this framework, the stronger the degree of complementarity (respectively substitutability), the larger (respectively smaller) the size of the multiplier. The model is solved numerically by choosing its parameters according to UK data. The model's positive and normative implications are then compared to current values of policy variables in the UK economy
Regulating sexual content online has always been a challenge: how we got here
Get PDFFinding ways to regulate sexual content online has been a challenge since the dawn of the internet. But as Helen Margetts and Cosmina Dorobantu argue, the struggles that policymakers have faced for decades have been supercharged by the dawn of Artificial Intelligence platforms like Grok, and the pushback against regulation on the basis of “free speech”
TRIPS, pharmaceutical patents, and generic competition in India
Get PDFIntroduction: India introduced pharmaceutical patents in response to the 1995 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. Previous studies that focused on older drugs showed limited effects of patents on India's generic market. We examine how a transitional TRIPS provision, which made patents with first global filing (priority) before 1995 ineligible, affected the likelihood of drugs obtaining strong “primary” patents in India, and the subsequent effects on generic competition. Methods: We determined the primary patent priority year (PPPYear) for drugs approved in the United States 1995-2017. For each drug, we gathered Indian patent information and recorded the level of generic competition five years from launch. Results: Primary patents are much more common after PPPYear 1995. Indian generic competition falls approximately 40% after this cutoff, especially for drugs with Indian primary patents. Conclusion: Post-1995 PPPYear drugs are more likely to have primary patents and face less generic competition in India. These drugs now constitute most approvals in India and better reflect the long-run impact of TRIPS than drugs previously examined. The prevalence of drugs in India with primary patents and less competition has important implications for global access to medicines
Selection and evolutionary growth in pre-industrial Germany
Get PDFEvolutionary growth theory (i.e., Galor and Moav (2002) and Clark (2007)) posits that natural selection set the stage for modern growth. I leverage micro-data from historical Germany to assess the viability of the selection mechanisms. I estimate fertility differentials and the inter-generational transmission of SES. High status couples, proxied by occupation, had 1-2 additional children, and SES was strongly heritable. To explore whether these parameters induce selection, I simulate an overlapping generation model of fertility choice and status transmission. The German parameters do not enable Clark’s survival of the richest, whereas Galor and Moav’s selection on quality can arise if the returns to investing in child quality are sufficiently large. Monte Carlo simulations extend the analysis beyond Germany. Survival of the richest requires exceptionally high coefficients of transmission (≈0.87), and selection on quality emerges whenever returns to quality investments translate into higher fertility. Both depend on the strong heritability of the growth-complementary traits
Testing independence and conditional independence in high dimensions via coordinatewise Gaussianization
No full textWe propose new statistical tests, in high-dimensional settings, for testing the independence of two random vectors and their conditional independence given a third random vector. The key idea is simple, i.e., we first transform each component variable to the standard normal via its marginal empirical distribution, and we then test for independence and conditional independence of the transformed random vectors using appropriate L∞-type test statistics. While we are testing some necessary conditions of the independence or the conditional independence, the new tests outperform the 13 frequently used testing methods in a large scale simulation comparison. The advantage of the new tests can be summarized as follows: (i) they do not require any moment conditions, (ii) they allow arbitrary dependence structures of the components among the random vectors, and (iii) they allow the dimensions of random vectors to diverge at the exponential rates of the sample size. The critical values of the proposed tests are determined by a computationally efficient multiplier bootstrap procedure. Theoretical analysis shows that the sizes of the proposed tests can be well controlled by the nominal significance level, and the proposed tests are also consistent under certain local alternatives. The finite sample performance of the new tests is illustrated via extensive simulation studies and a real data application
Benchmarking quality of life and urban growth: Fukuoka among globally competitive regional cities
No full textWorld-city theories leave significant gaps in explaining how regional, moderate-sized cities fit into the global urban system and how they balance quality of life (QoL) with urban growth (UG). This study simultaneously evaluates QoL and UG in Fukuoka City, Japan, using a dual-axis benchmarking framework. Building on a model first developed in 2014, the study compares Fukuoka with five peer cities—Barcelona, Munich, Melbourne, Vancouver, and Seattle—using 64 indicators grouped into four categories: (1) Livability and Community, (2) Security and Sustainability, (3) Resources and Productivity, and (4) Innovation and Interaction. Findings show that Fukuoka has sustained a relatively high QoL while making gradual gains in UG, although challenges remain in global connectivity and innovation. These findings provide context for recent urban policy initiatives, including the “Tenjin Big Bang,” “Hakata Connected,” and universal design policies. These policy initiatives have supported improvements in livability and business functions, although they have not yet fully closed the gap with peer cities. Methodologically, the study offers a transparent, policy-relevant benchmarking framework, while also acknowledging limitations arising from heterogeneous data boundaries and partial inconsistency between the 2014 and 2024 indicator sets. Conceptually and empirically, the findings position Fukuoka within emerging post-growth urban debates, illustrating how moderate-sized cities can pursue co-prosperity between QoL and UG under demographic and environmental constraints
