1,720,961 research outputs found
Social Costs of Gambling Harm in Italy
Full text linkThe aim of this study is to provide an estimate of the social costs of gambling in Italy. In line with other research on social costs, the present study estimates the consequences of gambling harm on public finances, focusing on the estimated costs to treat high-risk gamblers, costs associated with productivity losses, costs of unemployment, personal and family costs, crime and legal costs. We used two different approaches to calculate these costs. The first approach, used for health care costs, consists of using the lump sum spent to prevent the harm caused to high-risk gamblers. The second approach involves estimating the number of high-risk gamblers causing the cost, which is then multiplied with the average unit cost per person. Our estimates of the annual social costs of gambling in Italy – more than EUR 2.3 billion – demonstrate a substantial economic burden to society. However, the costs are a substantial underestimate, as they are limited to those of a public nature and do not take into consideration those costs borne by moderate and low-risk gamblers, as well as affected others
Is it the way they use it? Teachers, ICT and student achievement
No full textWe provide evidence on whether ICT-related teaching practices affect student achievement. We use a unique student-teacher dataset containing variables on a wide set of very specific uses of computer and ICT by teachers matched with data on national standardized tests for 10th grade students. Our identification strategy relies on a within-student between-subject estimator and on a rich set of teacher's controls. We find that computer-based teaching methods increase student performance when they increase students’ awareness in ICT use and when they enhance communication. Instead, we find a negative impact of practices requiring an active role of the students in classes using ICT. Our findings suggest that the effectiveness of ICT at school depends on the actual practice that teachers make of it and on their ability to integrate ICT into their teaching process
The effect of retirement on social relationships
No full textWe analyze the causal effect of retirement on individual social relationships using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We find that retirement changes the composition of the individual's social network, inducing a substitution between weak (friends or colleagues) and strong ties (family), along with an increase in the intensity of the surviving ties, and there is no effect on the network's size. These changes in the social network's composition are associated with a higher satisfaction and stronger relationships. Interestingly, females reduce the share of friends while males that of colleagues
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
Sometimes it works: the effect of a reform of the short vocational track on school-to-work transition
Full text linkPurpose The purpose of this paper is to use the two-way fixed effect (TWFE) methodology to estimate the impact of the reform, exploiting its staggered implementation across regions. The analysis is restricted to graduates from the short vocational track before and after the reform. Design/methodology/approach This paper studies the impact on the length of school-to-work transition of a reform that extended from two to three years the short vocational track in Italy in the early 2000s. Findings The study finds that the reform had a positive impact and reduced school-to-work transition by around five months (a 24% reduction). Moreover, the new short vocational track proved to be extremely effective for migrants and females, whose school-to-work transition was reduced by 1.4 years and 0.9 years, respectively. In implementing the new short vocational track, some regions adopted a quasi-market organization in which private training institutions competed with public schools. This model proved to be more effective in shortening school-to-work transitions, in particular for migrants. Originality/value This study makes an important contribution to the literature on the labor-market effect of vocational education by showing that lengthening the short vocational track, and changing the overall content of curricula, can speed up school-to-work transition
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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