1,720,985 research outputs found

    New administrative geospatial data for agricultural policy evaluation: an application to EU crop diversity obligations

    Full text link
    This study showcases a new class of administrative, geo-spatial data sourced from agricultural subsidy registers as a powerful tool for agricultural policy evaluation. Beyond full national coverage and accurate identification of land use, the key novel feature of GeoSpatial Aid Application (GSAA) data consists in the ability to link agricultural parcels managed by the same farm, enabling causal analysis at the holding level. Using Spanish GSAA data, we evaluate an EU-wide environmental regulation, also unveiling the occurrence of strategic behaviour among a subgroup of farm holdings. We concisely discuss implications for future research endeavours in the agricultural policy domain

    The Causal Effect of Crop Diversification Obligations on Crop Diversity: An EU-level Analysis

    Full text link
    The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a cornerstone policy of the European Union, increasingly focused on promoting environmentally sustainable practices. In 2014, the CAP introduced Greening payments and a crop diversification requirement to enhance soil resilience and mitigate ecosystem degradation. Despite its economic significance, the policy's effectiveness across the EU remains largely limited. This study evaluates the impact of the Greening crop diversification requirement on crop diversity itself and on a set of subsequent outcomes, including agricultural land allocation, the economic performance of farms and indirect environmental outcomes. Using farm-level data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (2012-2017), causal relationships are identified, through a design that combines propensity score matching and difference-in-differences, by comparing farms needing to adapt to the new requirements to those who were already compliant. Additionally, a regression discontinuity design estimates local average treatment effects for 2017, thereby exploiting the diversification requirement’s threshold-based design. Both strategies corroborate the conclusion that Greening measures have significantly increased crop diversity across the EU; moreover, results for the remaining farm-level outcomes are consistent with adaptation responses to the new environmental requirements. Overall, the results highlight the policy’s effectiveness in promoting sustainable agriculture throughout the EU

    Lasso-based variable selection methods in text regression: the case of short texts

    Full text link
    Communication through websites is often characterised by short texts, made of few words, such as image captions or tweets. This paper explores the class of supervised learning methods for the analysis of short texts, as an alternative to unsupervised methods, widely employed to infer topics from structured texts. The aim is to assess the effectiveness of text data in social sciences, when they are used as explanatory variables in regression models. To this purpose, we compare different variable selection procedures when text regression models are fitted to real, short, text data. We discuss the results obtained by several variants of lasso, screening-based methods and randomisation-based models, such as sure independence screening and stability selection, in terms of number and importance of selected variables, assessed through goodness-of-fit measures, inclusion frequency and model class reliance. Latent Dirichlet allocation results are also considered as a term of comparison. Our perspective is primarily empirical and our starting point is the analysis of two real case studies, though bootstrap replications of each dataset are considered. The first case study aims at explaining price variations based on the information contained in the description of items on sale on e-commerce platforms. The second regards open questions in surveys on satisfaction ratings. The case studies are different in nature and representative of different kinds of short texts, as, in one case, a concise descriptive text is considered, whereas, in the other case, the text expresses an opinion

    Analysing the Feasibility of Counterfactual Methods for Estimating Environmental Effects of the CAP.

    No full text
    The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been one of the main pillars in the construction of the European project. While its fundamental goals remained the same, the policy over the time adapted to evolving needs: since 2014 specifically with and ever-increasing regard also towards environmental objectives. This Report aims to assess the feasibility of estimating a causal relationship between the CAP and environmental outcomes. It offers an assessment of the present state of both data availability and associated obstacles and deficiencies. Different counterfactual impact assessment scenarios based on the FADN survey at the European level are summarised in a set of concise documents, referred to as fiches, which provide details about the databases and variables to be used, the methods to be applied, and give a judgement on the current feasibility at different geographical levels within the EU territory. Where applicable, references to further complementary data sources containing potentially useful information are outlined

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

    Full text link
    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

    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 link
    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
    corecore