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COVID-19 and the housing market. Evidence from England and Wales, and France
No full textThis paper examines the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the housing market. The study is based on a vast dataset comprising 10,194,053 residential transactions in England and Wales, and 6,620,284 in France, spanning in both cases the pre-Covid and Covid-19 periods. The analysis centres on how the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent prolonged lockdowns led to significant changes in the geography of housing in these countries. The findings reveal that the pandemic triggered a notable shift in the geographical distribution of transactions. There was an acceleration of the reversal of the long-standing trend of transaction concentration in large urban centres, with a notable increase in transactions occurring in smaller and more remote areas, especially in small cities, towns, and rural regions. These places offered a more desirable living environment during the pandemic. However, the analysis highlights important differences between the countries. In England and Wales, residential transactions were markedly influenced by the availability of amenities, while in France, new transaction patterns were primarily driven by price considerations
Adoption in the shadow of the profession: medical innovation revisited
No full textMedical Humanities aim to complement the efforts of healthcare professionals and here Organisational Studies play a pivotal role. This chapter illustrates that pivotal role by exploring how the internal dynamics of the medical community can contribute to differences in healthcare resource distribution and the consequent health disparities. We treat medicine as a system of profession, a sociological concept that distinguishes medicine from occupations without abstract knowledge. We present the results of a vignette-based survey where oncologists and haematologists recommend drug-based treatments based on six identical patient profiles and then answer questions about their professional networking and information gathering behaviours. Identical patient descriptions allow us to set aside dynamics outside the medical profession. To capture variation in the dynamics of the medical community, we sampled physicians in the UK and Mexico and set patient profiles to rare cancers. We find that, even in our controlled conditions, the recommended treatments are not binary but multiple, and that casual professional discussions are unevenly associated with these multiple treatment choices. Our data suggest that cancer rareness exacerbates physicians’ need for advice from the larger medical community. Lastly, we document similarities and differences in the professional behaviours of physicians in middle- and high-income countries
Environmental protection and human rights: a comparative study of constitutional law in Kuwait and other GCC countries
No full textThis article asserts that living in a healthy environment is a human right. As such, it is incumbent on nations to ensure adequate environmental protection to satisfy this right. This article reviews the legal frameworks currently in place in Kuwait and the gcc to preserve and protect the environment. The focus is on measures taken to reduce pollution. In addition to national constitutions that position the environment as a value, and a healthy environment as a human right, this article examines international declarations and other legal instruments that establish environmental protection as a duty of the state. Specific focus is additionally placed on the Islamic law provisions as represented by the gcc member-states. The article concludes with recommendations to strengthen environmental protection
The two cycles of inequality reproduction in Latin America
No full textDrawing on research from the Latin American and Caribbean Inequality Review (LACIR), Valentina Contreras and Francisco H. G. Ferreira set out four key facts surrounding the unique nature of inequality in Latin America. They then consider two “cycles” that combine to continuously reproduce these disparities over time
Existence of a non-stationary equilibrium in search-and-matching models: tu and ntu
No full textThis paper proves the existence of a non-stationary equilibrium in the canonical search-and-matching model with heterogeneous agents. Non-stationarity entails that the number and characteristics of unmatched agents evolve endogenously over time. An equilibrium exists under minimal regularity conditions and for both paradigms considered in the literature: transferable and non-transferable utility. To address potential discontinuities in match opportunities across types, our analysis introduces a generalized Schauder fixed-point theorem suitable for models with discontinuous value functions
From economic security to legal uncertainty: exploring the impact of the FDI screening regulation and foreign subsidies regulation on mergers and acquisitions in the EU
No full textHow do campaigns to stop bad stuff happening differ from frontfoot activism to make the world a better place?
No full textDuncan Green wants to start a conversation about a big and topical issue for activism – defensive (back-foot) campaigns to protect the status quo or ward off attacks by those in power. He argues that many of hte case studies and theorization of influencing have focussed on front-foot activism to make the world a better place, but the current situation requires us to think more deeply about defensive activism, and identify how it differs in terms of the contexts in which it takes place and the tactics it uses
A taste for variety
No full textA decision maker repeatedly chooses one of a finite set of actions. In each period, the decision maker's payoff depends on a fixed basic payoff of the chosen action and the frequency with which the action has been chosen in the past. We analyze optimal strategies associated with three types of evaluations of infinite payoffs: discounted present value, the limit inferior, and the limit superior of the partial averages. We show that when the first two are the evaluation schemes (and the discount factor is sufficiently high), a stationary strategy can achieve the best possible outcome. However, for the latter evaluation scheme, a stationary strategy can achieve the best outcome only if all actions that are chosen with strictly positive frequency by an optimal stationary strategy have the same basic payoff
Anticolonial antiphonies
No full textThis article narrates anticolonial antiphonies: an ongoing praxis of political reverberation and relay, a shuttling of strategies that carry across time, space, and language, connecting decolonial movements across histories and geographies. Antiphony inserts discord and dissonance into colonial orders, seeking to bring other worlds into being, and the article hears how sound carries movements that defy colonial cartographies and classifications, bringing together places and struggles that are often understood separately. It does so by combining the authors’ work on anticolonial histories, afterlives, and futures in Cairo, Egypt, and in Athens, Greece, in the process hearing the Mediterranean — particularly the Eastern Mediterranean — as a space that holds multiple imaginations of decolonization and futurity. The article tells four stories, moving antiphonally between these two cities, listening to (1) revolutionary and counterrevolutionary soundscapes, (2) “beatmapping” practices that connect migration and mobilization, (3) broadcast voices that affectively disseminated anticolonial resistance, and (4) the insurgent geographies created by sonic uprising. In so doing, it articulates a sonic third worldism that connects these movements and stories and places the sonic expressions foregrounded in the article into a much bigger political history. Anticolonial antiphony and sonic third worldism, though muffled and always under threat, continue to reach out toward decolonial futures — across the Mediterranean and as far as they can carry
Timelines for modernity: rethinking periodization for global international relations
No full textThis groundbreaking book develops a new periodization for understanding contemporary international history. It challenges West-centric approaches by setting up timelines appropriate for a global approach to International Relations. Shifting the focus beyond great power wars, it incorporates economic, societal and environmental changes to redefine what constitutes significant historical moments for both the Global North and South. It uncovers pivotal turning points in the 1840s, 1970s and now, that highlight the formation, dominance, unravelling and replacement of the Western world order. It offers new foundations for understanding both how we arrived at where we stand today and what might lie ahead