1,720,966 research outputs found
Ecce Homo-Economicus? The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide syndrome of the economic man in the context of natural resources scarcity and environmental externalities
Full text linkIndeed, the artificial entity ‘Homo-Economicus’ plays a central role in modern neoclassical economic theory. Maybe an illegitimate child of markets’ self-regulation doctrine and the emerging rationalism - professed by the post-modern realms of neoliberalism and the ongoing globalization process - this theoretical abstraction is promoted as a potential prototype of human behavior. It is firmly believed, that this individualistic, self-motivated, and above all, perfectly informed ‘entity’ could, theoretically, lead the economic system into profound balance between supply and demand, consumption and production, utility maximization, and so on. The present paper consists of a criticism to the mainstream prototype of Homo-Economicus, with further extensions to the neoclassical paradigm. Placing this criticism in the context of ecological economics, the paper argues that the notorious rationality of Homo-Economicus seems to be vanished in the deadlock of a futile race towards non-renewable natural resources depletion and increasing environmental externalities. Finally, a brief review of alternative theoretical frameworks and evidence from institutional and behavioral economics, delineates an emerging pressing request for a paradigm change
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
Coupling versus Decoupling? Challenging Evidence over the Link between Economic Growth and Resource Use
No full textWith the UN indicating that climate objectives are well off track, the dependency of the economy on resources remains a crucial issue demanding holistic consideration. As a key global sustainability issue, the linkage between resource use and economic growth has long been under heated debate. The increasing amount of resources used for economic growth has elevated environmentalists’ concerns over resource scarcity and environmental impacts, suggesting the existence of coupling between resources and the economy. In contrast, the declining Material Intensity (MI)—resources needed to produce one unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—has led to optimism for many economists and decision makers with far reaching implications for resources and economic policies. Through novel divergence indicators by using long-term datasets, we find that there has been increasing divergence between total and per capita resources use and MI at both the global and the national level. This increasing divergence is due to the faster growth in the total and per capita amount of resources rather than the reduction in the amount of resources per unit of GDP (MI). These divergences indicate underappreciated challenges and opportunities for sustainable economic growth, resource management and implementation of circular economy policies
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