1,720,964 research outputs found
Whistleblowing Game. Un approccio sperimentale alla lotta alla corruzione
Full text linkWhen policymakers select strategies aimed at encouraging the blowing of the whistle their approach is often normative. It means that not only the broad political goals but also the strategies to fulfill it are based on the ground of normative justification. For instance, it's often said that whistleblowers should be rewarded because their decisions are ethically right and not because rewarding is more effective than do not reward them. I argue that the normative approach could trigger heterogony of ends and could lead policymakers to failure in achieving the political aim. Instead this approach I advance an alternative one based on the no standard instrumentalism. A worry side effect of the normative strategy is that it denies the possibility to find out the more effective strategy within those capable to realize the broad political aim, namely boost the blowing of the whistle. I show up this inadequacy of the normative approach through the nudge theory and libertarian paternalism. I propose a positive and empirical approach in selecting strategies, rooted in the field of experimental economics,and based on an original economic game (the whistleblower game) in which participants find themselves in a decision environment akin to the decision environment in which whistleblowers take their decision in real life. The structure of the economic game introduced gives the possibility to act on the cognitive mechanisms that I conjecture underlying the choice of the would-be whistleblower. I argue that the whistleblower’s utility function is defined by both monetary payoff and psychological utilities. I propose two fundamental psychological utilities, that is strong reciprocity – that increase the probability of denunciations – and in-group loyalty, that decrease it. Comparing the results of different experimental treatments allow us to predict the effectiveness of available strategies. Through the whistleblowing game I have been able to verify the failure of the neoclassical economics’ prediction on the choice to denounce a wrongdoing or not and proposing an explanation of its failure
Mechanistic explanations and the ethics of nudging
Full text linkAbstract: Nudges have proven to be effective tools for steering citizens toward desirable behaviors and make valuable additions to any policy-maker’s toolbox. Disappointingly, however, there are no mechanistic explanations for how nudges work, leaving policy-makers unable to explain what happens when they are implemented. This paper identifies some neglected ethical implications of the resulting citizens lack of awareness of such mechanisms. We first examine mechanistic explanations in relation to citizens’ understanding on how they work. Then, we look at mechanistic explanations in light of the suggestion advanced by some ethicists that nudges be considered ethically acceptable in modern liberal democracies provided the explicit transparency of the nudges employed.Keywords: Nudge; Ethics of Nudging; Mechanistic Evidence; In-principle Transparency; Explicit TransparencySpiegazioni meccanicistiche e l’etica dei nudges Riassunto: I nudge si sono rivelati strumenti di policy efficaci nello "spingere gentilmente" i cittadini verso comportamenti considerati desiderabili. Per questa ragione i nudge sono considerati validi strumenti della cassetta degli attrezzi di un policymaker. Tuttavia, è in qualche modo deludente la mancanza di spiegazioni meccanicistiche dei nudge, dalla quale risulta l'incapacità dei policymaker di spiegare quello che succede quando i nudge vengono effettivamente implementati. Questo articolo identifica alcune implicazioni etiche finora trascurate connesse alla inconsapevolezza da parte dei cittadini circa i meccanismi che governano i nudge. Da una parte, le nostre considerazioni metteranno in relazione le spiegazioni meccanicistiche con la comprensione dei nudge da parte dei cittadini. Dall'altra parte, metteremo in relazione le spiegazioni meccanicistiche con il concetto di trasparenza esplicita, ossia la richiesta avanzata da alcuni eticisti al fine di considerare i nudge eticamente accettabili nelle moderne democrazie liberali.Parole chiave: Nudge; Etica dei nudge; Spiegazioni meccanicistiche; Trasparenza implicita; Trasparenza esplicit
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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