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Refuge by ‘technical’ means: humanitarianism, bureaucratic asylum, and the politics of refracted mandates in postcolonial India (1947–1981)
No full textThis article argues that India’s post-independence engagement with international refugee governance was shaped less by outright resistance and more by a repertoire of selective accommodations. Drawing on Indian bureaucratic archives, it shows how the state sidestepped legal frameworks by recasting refugee issues as ‘technical’ and within the purview of domestic limits. International involvement was refracted through this lens: acceptable when channelled as ‘technical interventions’, unwelcome when it implied legal oversight. The article conceptualises this ‘technicality’ as a layered mode of governance: procedural, developmental, and diplomatic, through which the state absorbed global norms while avoiding juridical commitments. This logic of ‘technical’ assistance emerged from an intricate terrain of Partition-era exclusions, Cold War alignments, regional geopolitical tensions and domestic planning imperatives. Rather than reject global governance outright, India redirected it, forcing international actors like the UNHCR to recalibrate their methods. The article places India’s approach within a longer history of how humanitarianism travelled as a language of rule, showing how refugee governance in the postcolonial world was negotiated and detached from rights-based norms
Authentic or performative? Social licence to operate in settler colonial contexts - Rio Tinto, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples and the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters
Get PDFIn May 2020, global mining corporation Rio Tinto destroyed the historic Juukan Gorge rock shelters, prompting a public outcry, a government inquiry, and financial and personal sanctions for the company’s senior management, suggesting that the company’s actions were both surprising and shocking. We challenge Rio Tinto’s interpretation and reasoning of the rock destruction by drawing on theories of social licence to operate and settler colonialism to illustrate how their actions were a logical outcome of its operating context. We treat the destruction of Juukan Gorge rock shelters as an explanatory case study, which reveals how Indigenous Australian voices were curtailed in the pursuit of mining wealth, despite Rio Tinto’s public commitment to a highly regarded Reconciliation Action Plan. We conclude that the effectiveness of a social licence to operate is determined by its relationship to both political and legal licences to operate in the same space; that Reconciliation Action Plans, as a mechanism for claiming a social licence to operate, have limited impact on corporate practice; and that Indigenous stakeholder engagement with the Australian extractive industries remains a fragile exercise
Centimanes v. Titans: right-wing populist governments' treatment of foreign multinationals in East Central Europe
Get PDFThe treatment of foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) by populist right-wing governments presents a puzzle: At times, these governments support, at times they take aggressive action against foreign MNEs. Allegorically speaking, rather than using their one hundred hands to slay the Titans like the Centimanes of Greek mythology, right-wing populist governments seem to use fifty hands of the state to support and fifty others to handicap foreign MNEs. How can we explain the ambiguity of populist international business policy adopted by governments that adhere to economically nationalist rhetoric, ideologies, and goals? Our article contributes to these debates by theorising the factors that determine right-wing populist governments’ multi-handed approach to MNEs. We empirically discuss these factors based on a mixed methods design by comparing host country cases (Hungary, Poland), home country cases (China/Russia vs. Western countries), and industry cases (finance, manufacturing). We demonstrate that the common denominator of the multi-handed approach by right-wing populist governments is their desire to decrease the presence of foreign multinationals in politically valuable sectors, but that this desire is tempered by political and economic restrictions, notably including their electoral fragility, the need for technology transfer, and limited alternative sources of foreign direct investment (FDI)
Endogenous distress contagion in a dynamic interbank model: how possible future losses may spell doom today
No full textWe introduce a dynamic and stochastic interbank model with an endogenous notion of distress contagion, arising from rational worries about future defaults and ensuing losses. This entails a mark-to-market valuation adjustment for interbank claims, leading to a forward-backward approach to the equilibrium dynamics whereby future default probabilities are needed to determine today's balance sheets. Distinct from earlier models, the resulting distress contagion acts, endogenously, as a stochastic volatility term that exhibits clustering and down-market spikes. Furthermore, by incorporating multiple maturities, we provide a novel framework for constructing systemic interbank term structures, reflecting the intertemporal risk of contagion. We present the analysis in two parts: first, the simpler single maturity setting that extends the classical interbank network literature and, then, the multiple maturity setting for which we can examine how systemic risk materializes in the shape of the resulting term structures
What past episodes of change did our activism students chose to study? how did they do?
Get PDFWe’re assessing our Masters activism students at the moment. It’s surprisingly interesting, given how much profs usually moan about marking. You get an insight into how next gen activists are thinking and what they care about, plus you learn a lot. Here’s a taster. Like everything else, the way we assess students is being disrupted by AI. For the group projects analysing the past episodes of change (their choice), we’ve moved from 4000 word essays (too AI-able) to a viva format of 25m presentations + 20m Q&A
Organizational capability: the key to unlocking green innovation benefits from the industrial internet
No full textGreen innovation in manufacturing is crucial to achieving global carbon neutrality and sustainable development. The Industrial Internet, a pivotal technology in the global industrial transformation, can enable green transitions and significantly improve corporate green innovation. However, its effectiveness significantly varies, and the general mechanisms determining its success remain unexplored. From an organizational capability perspective, this study examines this globally relevant issue using data from Chinese listed manufacturing companies from 2008 to 2023. A further analysis reveals that the empowering effect critically depends on organizational capability and exhibits a double‐threshold effect. As the organizational capability strengthens, the Industrial Internet's positive impact becomes more significant. Theoretically, this study defines organizational capability as a mechanism and critical boundary condition, advancing the understanding of how digital technologies enable green innovation. It also provides corporate managers with a strategic framework to assess the risks and returns of digital transformation, guiding them to prioritize capability building. It also offers scientific evidence for governments to design precise industrial policies to optimize public resource allocations and accelerate green transitions in global manufacturing
New technologies and the rise of wage inequality
Get PDFTechnological change fuels economic growth, but its impact on wage inequality remains contested. This study presents a unified empirical framework that isolates the effects of new technologies such as automation and AI on the entire wage distribution. We develop a continuous and task-sensitive automation index and propose a distributional counterfactual-based method. Applying the approach to Spanish micro-data for 2000-2019 and instrumenting technology variables, we find automation to be a key driver of inequality: without task displacement the Gini coefficient would be 21.5% lower and significant wage shares would shift from the top 10% towards middle and bottom groups. Automation is found to barely affect the gender gap in the period studied, yet to widen the education premium. Like automation, AI exposure increases inequality, although the mechanisms to impact wages differ: automation tends to negatively impact wages in the middle of the distribution, while AI tends to increase wages at the top. Trade, offshorability, educational attainment, employment rates and mark-ups play secondary, period-specific roles. The results can inform policies on skill formation and inclusive innovation
Asymptomatic testing compared with standard care of the care home staff in shaping care home COVID-19 testing policy: the VIVALDI-CT pragmatic cluster RCT (VIVALDI-CT)
Get PDFRegular severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 testing of care home staff was introduced to reduce transmission following significant morbidity, mortality and disruption for residents early in the pandemic. However, evidence was lacking on benefits relative to disadvantages. The VIVALDI-Clinical Trial aimed to investigate whether regular asymptomatic staff testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, alongside funding for sick pay and agency backfill, was feasible and effective in reducing severe coronavirus disease discovered in 2019-related outcomes in residents. VIVALDI-Clinical Trial comprised five interlinking work packages. A cluster randomised controlled trial was conducted from January to August 2023. The 'Test to Care' intervention was coproduced with the care sector. Eighty-one residential/nursing homes in England providing care to adults aged ≥ 65 years. Forty-one homes were randomised to intervention and 40 to control. Care homes were randomised 1 : 1 to intervention (twice weekly staff testing, staff sick pay and agency backfill) or control arm (national testing guidance at time of trial). Primary outcome was incidence of coronavirus disease discovered in 2019-related hospital admissions in residents. Health data from routine national data sets were used alongside aggregate data from participating homes. Health economic and modelling analyses evaluated costs and cost-effectiveness of staff testing. Interviews with care home managers explored post-pandemic policies on staff testing, sickness pay and absence. A process evaluation was conducted to understand intervention roll-out. A mixed-study design investigated the impact of coronavirus disease discovered in 2019 outbreaks on care home residents' quality of life. Stakeholder engagement was undertaken to enable the sector to coproduce recommendations for policy-makers. The trial stopped early for futility due to site recruitment and primary outcome incidence being lower than expected. There was no significant difference in resident coronavirus disease discovered in 2019-linked hospital admission incidence between intervention and control arms (incidence rate ratio 1.19, 95% confidence interval 0.55 to 2.58; = 0.66). The process evaluation found that changing epidemiology, policy and social norms around coronavirus disease discovered in 2019 shaped the uptake and maintenance of testing. Interviews with care home managers suggested most homes no longer test staff, even when symptomatic, and do not pay for sickness absence outside of statutory sick pay. Modelling concluded that regular staff testing, when combined with non-pharmaceutical interventions preventing transmission among residents, is an effective strategy to reduce cases and deaths among care home residents that could also lead to significant cost savings. There was lower-than-expected quality of life for 43 residents from 9 care homes without outbreak and 1 home with recent coronavirus disease discovered in 2019 outbreak, with older residents experiencing greater benefits from social care support. Intervention acceptability was initially high, but waned because of the changing epidemiological, policy and social context. Contextual changes undermined our ability to evaluate the intervention's impact. However, trial set-up was achieved in < 3 months, and we present findings on the feasibility and economic implications of routine testing and impact of disease control measures on residents' quality of life. Costs associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 testing including support payments for care home staff and for care homes to fund agency staff backfill were funded by the United Kingdom Health Security Agency. Our approach provides a model for agile interventional studies in care homes. Research training and capacity building for care home staff are important to ensure that future trials can be delivered efficiently in this setting. This synopsis presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme as award number NIHR154310
Errors in survey and administrative data on employment earnings: Austria and the United Kingdom compared
No full textWe contribute new cross-national evidence about the nature of measurement errors in employment earnings, fitting the same error components models to harmonised earnings data for Austria and the UK. For both countries, there is evidence that administrative data contain measurement errors in addition to linkage errors, and there is no mean reversion in survey measurement errors
