1,720,962 research outputs found
Austerity and health in Europe: disentangling the causal links
No full textAusterity and health in Europe: Disentangling the causal link
Neoliberalism and health in global context
No full textIntergovernmental organizations (IGOs) were crucial in mitigating the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic on health systems and development. Yet, IGOs have long-shaped country responses to socio-economic crises: exerting a profound influence on global health via policy prescriptions attached to structural adjustment lending programs, and through more subtle processes of policy norm diffusion. This chapter reviews how IGOs promote neoliberalism - that is, market-oriented solutions for a range of policy problems - and to what end. First, we discuss how IGOs foster the adoption of neoliberal policies by drawing on normative and coercive mechanisms. Second, we introduce a conceptual framework that distinguishes between three pathways through which neoliberalism affects health outcomes: (i) direct effects from policies targeting health systems, (ii) indirect effects that stem from macroeconomic and institutional policies that shape health systems, and (iii) indirect effects through the social determinants of health. Subsequently, we provide empirical evidence on these pathways from three especially powerful IGOs in the form of the World Health Organization (WHO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank. We conclude by discussing the implications of this analysis for global health
The politics of the International Monetary Fund
No full textThe International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a key pillar of global economic governance. While its mandate stipulates neutrality with respect to the political, economic, and social objectives of its members, powerful states have repeatedly swayed the IMF to further their own interests, often at the expense of developing countries. This chapter reviews the politics of the IMF. First, we trace the evolution of the Fund's activities through its history, highlighting important interventions by powerful actors. Second, we introduce a framework, based on delegation theories, to explain how states and non-state actors impact the activities of the IMF. Third, we examine the practice of decision-making, including the agenda-setting power of the IMF's Managing Director and the ability of bureaucrats to influence operations. Fourth, we review IMF lending activities in borrowing countries vis-à-vis the Fund's stated goal of economic growth, its wider economic impact, and social consequences. Fifth, we discuss how the IMF, and its relationship with China, shapes the future of international development. We conclude by laying out areas for future research and discussing the implications for international cooperation
How structural adjustment programs affect inequality: a disaggregated analysis of IMF conditionality, 1980–2014
Full text linkThis article highlights an important yet insufficiently understood international-level determinant of inequality in the developing world: structural adjustment programs by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Studying a panel of 135 countries for the period 1980 to 2014, we examine income inequality using multivariate regression analysis corrected for non-random selection into both IMF programs and associated policy reforms (known as ‘conditionality’). We find that, overall, policy reforms mandated by the IMF increase income inequality in borrowing countries. We also test specific pathways linking IMF programs to inequality by disaggregating conditionality by issue area. Our analyses indicate adverse distributional consequences for four policy areas: fiscal policy reforms that restrain government expenditure, external sector reforms stipulating trade and capital account liberalization, financial sector reforms entailing inflation-control measures, and reforms that restrict external debt. These effects occur one year after the incidence of an IMF program, and persist in the medium term. Taken together, our findings suggest that the IMF’s recent attention to inequality neglects the multiple ways through which the organization’s own policy advice has contributed to inequality in the developing world
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
- …
