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COP30's mutirão is an opportunity to bring faith and climate policy closer together
Get PDFKristian Noll, Partnerships and Impact Coordinator at the LSE Religion & Global Society Research Unit, examines COP30 as a key opportunity to bring faith communities and climate policymakers together
High-speed broadband and educational achievements
No full textThis study sheds new light on the short-run effects of access to high-speed internet on educational disparities. By following three million students belonging to six different cohorts over the period 2012–2022, I estimate the effect of the broadband infrastructure on student performance. While most previous contributions use discontinuous jumps in the available broadband connection speed across space at a given moment in time, this study exploits the gradual rollout of a national infrastructural policy associated with an increase in 30 Mbit/s household broadband coverage from 40% to 80% over a 6-year period. The estimation strategy relies on a unique data set, combining panel data on student performance with a rich set of school- and student-level information and broadband data measured at a very fine spatial scale. Results show an average null effect of high-speed broadband on 8th grade student performance in both literacy and maths. However, these results mask substantial heterogeneity: low performers in grade 5 and students with more advantaged backgrounds benefit from access to high-speed broadband, whereas the opposite is true for other students. Overall, the findings suggest that access to broadband widened performance disparities across students with different socioeconomic backgrounds
From zero to hero: the invention of VAT as the world’s consumption tax
No full textThe idea of VAT was proposed around 1920 in Germany by Wilhelm and Carl Friedrich von Siemens to remedy the problems of cascading turnover taxes, and in the US by Thomas S Adams as an alternative to corporate income tax. However, it was not until the late 1940s that full-fledged VAT proposals emerged, this time by American tax academic Carl S Shoup for Japan and in France by French tax admin istrator Maurice Lauré. Since then, of course, VAT has spread around the world to almost all countries, with the notable exception of the US. The gap of the 30 years between 1920 and 1950 in the development of the idea is remarkably curious, as is how new interest in an apparently forgotten idea awoke again almost simultaneously from two different sources. The French official imple mentation of VAT in 1954 attracted little emulation until the late 1960s, since when it has followed a path of ever wider adoption in both developed and developing countries. This chapter discusses the inventive proposals of 1920, and how, despite the initial lack of interest in them at the time, elements of VAT were, nonetheless, introduced in a number of countries in the years leading up to 1950. It turns out that the innovation made by Shoup and Lauré was not, as Lauré claimed, to have invented VAT, but to have described it as an investment-promoting tax using consumption as its formal tax base. This description has driven the attrac tion of VAT internationally since then, but has conveniently sidelined the previous debates, even regarding Shoup’s and Lauré’s proposals, about whether the inci dence of VAT would fall on businesses or on consumers. Given the necessary imperfections of all modern VATs and in the face of proposals for novel variants, such as the destination-based cash flow tax, this debate about the incidence of VAT is well worth revisiting
Investigating the replicability of the social and behavioral sciences
No full textWe attempted replications of 274 claims of positive results from 164 quantitative papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 54 journals in the social and behavioral sciences. Replications were high-powered on average to detect the original effect size (Median = 99.6%), used original materials when relevant and available, and were peer-reviewed in advance through a standardized internal protocol. Replications showed statistically significant results in the original pattern for 151 of 274 claims (55.1% [95% CI 49.2 - 60.9%]) and for 80.8 of 164 papers (49.3% [95% CI 43.8 - 54.7%]) weighed for replicating multiple claims per paper. We observed modest variation in replication rates across disciplines (42.5% to 63.1%) though some estimates had high uncertainty. For claims with Pearson’s r effect sizes, the median was 0.25 [95% CI 0.21 - 0.27] for original studies and 0.10 [95% CI 0.09 - 0.13] for replication studies, a 82.4% [95% CI 67.8 - 88.2%] reduction in shared variance. Thirteen methods for evaluating replication success provided estimates ranging from 28.6% to 74.8% (median = 49.3%). Some decline in effect size and significance is expected based on power to detect original effects and regression to the mean due to replicating only positive results. The conditions that promote or inhibit replicability are worthy of additional investigation
Beneath the curves: central banking in the era of environmental labour market disruption
Get PDFClimate change, environmental degradation, and the accelerating transition to a low-carbon economy are reshaping global labour markets. These forces are altering both the demand for and supply of labour, with far-reaching implications for central banks. As institutions that closely monitor labour market dynamics to guide monetary policy, central banks will increasingly need to account for the disruptions caused by environmental pressures. This report addresses a critical gap in current analysis by exploring how environmental risks intersect with central banks’ mandates through the labour market. It aims to equip central banks with the insights needed to integrate these evolving risks into their policy frameworks and operational decisions
Mapping discursive regimes of transnational dynamics of conspiracy theories as an emergent process: revisiting network approaches and new research avenues
No full textThis paper provides a lens for studying the transnational flow of conspiracy theories by investigating new epistemologies, reviewing methodological challenges, and proposing new avenues for future studies. I argue that it is important to study the emergent and dynamic process whereby conspiracy theories disseminate across different contexts and even lead to their (global) audiences, including state and non-state actors, being rallied to the cause and co-creating them, thus forming ideological coalitions that connect the seemingly distant and irrelevant contexts. The intertwined cases, delineated in Section 3, show how conspiracy theories flow transnationally back and forth between mainstream and fringe, underregulated media spaces, and the interactant mechanisms of responses from different yet networked audience(s), who are potential co-creators of the conspiracy theories. The complexity and dynamics of such a phenomenon raise challenges for researchers in terms of research operationalization, and depth of elucidation and ethics. Therefore, I propose to map discursive regimes and emergent processes of co-curating, crowdsourcing and amplifying conspiracy theories and call for (1) revising the network methods with collaborative contributions to database and reliable queries and (2) supplementing with more in-depth elucidations, which also invite researchers to reflexive engagement in the field
Long-term care partnership effects on Medicaid and private insurance
No full textWe examine the impact of the Long-Term Care Insurance Partnership (LTCIP) program—a collaborative initiative between the state-level Medicaid programs and private health insurance companies designed to promote private long-term care insurance (LTCI)—on insurance ownership and Medicaid utilization. We draw on individual-level longitudinal data and employ a difference-in-differences (DD) design adjusted for the staggered implementation of the program between 2005 and 2018. Our results suggest that the rollout of the LTCIP program led to a 1.54 percentage point (pp) (14.7%) increase in LTCI ownership and a 0.82 pp (13.3%) reduction in Medicaid uptake. Our estimates suggest that these combined effects led to an approximate average cost saving of $74 per 65-year-old participant. These findings are explained by a certain degree of substitution between LTCIP and traditional LTCI contracts, ultimately postponing the use of Medicaid benefits
Code‐related activities and their association with early literacy skills: a scoping review and meta‐analysis
No full textLiteracy skills are acquired during childhood through ‘code‐related activities’, which are interactions and practices that directly engage children with written words. This study presents a scoping review and meta‐analysis of 18 peer‐reviewed articles that explore the relationship between these code‐related activities and early literacy skills. The analysis revealed a diverse range of samples, with participants from 12 countries speaking 10 different languages. However, many studies exhibited significant gaps in demographic information, omitting crucial details such as socioeconomic status, the number of languages spoken by children, the presence of disabilities, and which parent participated in the study. All studies utilised questionnaires to gather data; however, the content of these instruments varied significantly and often focused on limited reading resources. Despite these limitations, a small but significant positive correlation was found between code‐related activities and early literacy skills. The analysis also highlighted high heterogeneity and potential bias, which may be attributed to inconsistencies in measurement across the studies. In conclusion, while there is evidence suggesting a link between code‐related activities and early literacy skills, more thorough and comprehensive research is needed to better understand the influence of the home literacy environment. Future studies should aim to address the existing demographic and methodological gaps to provide a clearer picture of this relationship across diverse populations
