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Natural Sentences as Valid Units for Coded Political Texts
No full textAll methods for analyzing text require the identification of a fundamental unit of analysis. In expert-coded content analysis schemes such as the Comparative Manifesto Project, this unit is the ‘quasi-sentence’: a natural sentence or a part of a sentence judged by the coder to have an independent component of meaning. Because they are subjective constructs identified by individual coders, however, quasi-sentences make text analysis fundamentally unreliable. The justification for quasi-sentences is a supposed gain in coding validity. We show that this justification is unfounded: using quasi-sentences does not produce valuable additional information in characterizing substantive political content. Using natural sentences as text units, by contrast, delivers perfectly reliable unitization with no measurable loss in content validity of the resulting estimates
Understanding State Preferences With Text As Data: Introducing the UN General Debate Corpus
No full textEvery year at the United Nations (UN), member states deliver statements during the General Debate (GD) discussing major issues in world politics. These speeches provide invaluable information on governments’ perspectives and preferences on a wide range of issues, but have largely been overlooked in the study of international politics. This paper introduces a new dataset consisting of over 7300 country statements from 1970–2014. We demonstrate how the UN GD corpus (UNGDC) can be used as a resource from which country positions on different policy dimensions can be derived using text analytic methods. The article provides applications of these estimates, demonstrating the contribution the UNGDC can make to the study of international politics
Conclusions and Implications for Research, Policy and Practice
No full textSocial Innovation: Comparative Perspectives investigates socio-economic impact. Since it is hard to establish causality and to measure social properties when investigating impact, especially at the level of society, the book narrows down impact to one priority aspect: social innovation – understood as organizations’ capacity to generate novel ideas, ways and means of doing things, of addressing public and social problems of many kinds.
This volume’s primary assertion is that the Third Sector, specifically through stimulating civic involvement, is best placed to produce social innovation, outperforming business firms and state agencies in this regard. By investigating actor contributions to social innovation across seven fields of activity, Social innovation: Comparative Perspectives develops our understanding of why and how the Third Sector is central to functioning, cohesive and viable societies.
This volume is based on contributions of the project "ITSSOIN – Impact of the Third Sector as Social Innovation" funded by the European Commission under the 7th framework programme. It will be of insight across disciplines, in particular to the growing social innovation community, innovation researchers more generally and to non-profit scholars. The practical relevance of the book will be of interest to European and national policy makers and practitioners across different sectors
Five myths about an EU ETS carbon price floor
No full textThis policy briefbuilds on theworkshop EU ETS Reform: Taking Stock and Examining Carbon Price Floor Options,held at the Centrefor European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels on July 3, 2018. The workshop was cosponsored by CEPS and the AHEAD and Mistra CarbonExit projects. While the brief draws on insights from workshop discussions, its views are solely those of the authors. The brief outlinesdifferent perspectives on thepast performanceof the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS)in terms of its allowance price (Section 1), analyzes how the recent reform respondedto related challenges(Section 2), and considers the case for introducinga carbon pricefloor in the EU ETS(Section 3). The main part of the brief (Section 4) identifies five myths in the debate of an EU ETSpricefloorand criticallyconfrontsthem. Section 5 concludes by discussing potential entry points for introducing a carbon price floor in the context of the upcoming EU climate policy proces
Results: The Comparative Analysis
No full textSocial Innovation: Comparative Perspectives investigates socio-economic impact. Since it is hard to establish causality and to measure social properties when investigating impact, especially at the level of society, the book narrows down impact to one priority aspect: social innovation understood as organizations capacity to generate novel ideas, ways and means of doing things, of addressing public and social problems of many kinds.
This volumes primary assertion is that the Third Sector, specifically through stimulating civic involvement, is best placed to produce social innovation, outperforming business firms and state agencies in this regard. By investigating actor contributions to social innovation across seven fields of activity, Social innovation: Comparative Perspectives develops our understanding of why and how the Third Sector is central to functioning, cohesive and viable societies.
This volume is based on contributions of the project "ITSSOIN Impact of the Third Sector as Social Innovation" funded by the European Commission under the 7th framework programme. It will be of insight across disciplines, in particular to the growing social innovation community, innovation researchers more generally and to non-profit scholars. The practical relevance of the book will be of interest to European and national policy makers and practitioners across different sectors
Reconciling risk sharing with market discipline: A constructive approach to Eurozone reform
No full textRegional productivity convergence in Peru
No full textThis paper examines whether labor productivity converged across Peru’s regions (“departments”) during 2002-12. Given the large differences in labor productivity across the regions of Peru, such convergence has the potential to raise aggregate productivity and incomes, and also reduce regional inequalities. The paper finds that labor productivity in the secondary sector (especially manufacturing) and the mining sector has converged across Peruvian departments. The paper does not find robust evidence for labor productivity convergence in agriculture and services. These patterns are consistent with recent cross-country evidence and with the hypothesis that productivity convergence is more likely in sectors with greater scope for market integration, because of the effects of competition and knowledge flows. The convergence in labor productivity within manufacturing and mining has been sufficient to lead to convergence in aggregate labor productivity across departments. But because services and agriculture continue to employ the majority of workers in Peru, aggregate convergence is slower than that within manufacturing. The paper also finds that poverty rates are not converging across departments. The limited impact of labor productivity convergence on poverty could be tied to the facts that not all sectors are experiencing productivity convergence, poorer people are employed in sectors where convergence has been slower (such as agriculture), and there is very little labor reallocation toward converging sectors (such as manufacturing)
Access to Finance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Is There a Gender Gap?
No full textWe show the existence of an unconditional gender gap in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, when key observable characteristics of the enterprises or individuals are taken into account the gender gap disappears. In the case of enterprises, we explain our finding with differences in key characteristics and a potential selection bias. In the case of individuals, the lower use of formal financial services by women can be explained by gender gaps in other dimensions related to the use of financial services, such as their lower level of income and education, and by their household and employment status
Financing small and medium enterprises in the Republic of South Africa
No full textNumerous studies worldwide have highlighted the important contribution made by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to employment, income and economic growth. In a study of 76 developed and developing economies, Ayyagari and others (2007) found that SMEs account for more than 60 percent of total manufacturing employment and that SMEs contributed significant proportions of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). SME growth requires external financing, but constraints to accessing credit, consistently rated as some of the greatest barriers to the operation and growth of firms, affect SMEs more severely than large firms (Beck and Demirguc-Kunt 2006; Beck and others 2006). The purposes of this report are to: a) analyze the availability of bank finance to SMEs in South Africa and how availability might be enhanced in the context of the economic downturn; and b) offer concrete policy recommendations on how to lessen obstacles to bank SME financing and reduce the negative effects of the economic downturn (or of a similar downturn in future) on access to finance. The report is structured in 5 sections: section two provides a short overview of existing studies and data on SME finance in South Africa. Section three presents the main results of the surveys. Section four provides policy considerations. Section five concludes