1,720,957 research outputs found

    Temporary partnership and subcontracting: Pre- vs. post- award outsourcing in public procurement

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    We empirically compare bids (i.e. prices) from temporary partnerships (TPs), that outsource part of the contract before the auction, and firms that outsource afterwards. Using a comprehensive dataset on procurement auctions for public works in Valle d'Aosta (Italy), we find that the timing of outsourcing affects the bids and the probability of winning the auction. Specifically, TPs bid closer to the payoff maximizing offer and are more likely to win. Hence, the price paid by the public buyer is lower. These results are supported by a simple theoretical setting showing that, by pre-committing to a TP, suppliers have a lower risk of being “held up” by subcontractors than firms that outsource part of the work after the bidding phase. Our results show the advantage for TPs of freely choosing partners, size and boundaries before the auction, highlighting their potential in fostering the effective participation in public procurement procedures of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

    Mapping fuel poverty risk at the municipal level. A small-scale analysis of Italian Energy Performance Certificate, census and survey data

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    We use a statistical micro matching procedure to obtain a synthetic dataset to investigate the risk of fuel poverty in small areas. Specifically, we link 19,174 homes with Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) in the Italian province of Treviso with information - from the General Census of Population and Housing and Household Budget Survey - about the socio-economic features of the families that most likely inhabit them. Based on this original dataset, we find that poor housing is as important as low income and the use of natural gas in determining fuel poverty. In particular, the risk of fuel poverty is increased by i) the energy inefficiency of the home; ii) the size of the home in relation to household size; iii) the lower total household expenditure. Conversely, the risk decreases when the main heating is natural gas and/or the home is endowed with renewable energy sources. Our results show that information in EPCs, matched at the micro level with the socio-economic data usually available from administrative sources or surveys, can be used to identify - on the one hand - the individual households and the municipal areas risking fuel poverty, and - on the other - the most effective policy options to tackle the phenomenon

    Variations on the Author

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    “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

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    We 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

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    We 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

    Author Index

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