Ideas and Policy: The European Union considers social policy futures. ACES Cases No. 2010.2

The European Union’s social policy perspectives have changed quite dramatically over the last several decades. Now EU’s social policy discourse often promises to “invest in people,” sometimes “to invest in children,” and always to pay particular attention to youth. This paper argues that the tools of historical institutionalism can lead to understanding the ideational roots of this social investment perspective so distant from the “European social model.” Coming out of social movements, and with collective identities shaped both by those movement roots and national experiences, activists have effectively focused their practices on altering the social representations of European social solidarity through their interest group interventions, their participation in policy forums, and their mobilization within civil society at the European and sub-European levels. They have been able to make common cause with several epistemic communities that themselves revamped their ideas in the face of new institutional constraints, in order to advance their interests in promoting particular directions for social policy. The paper documents that “ideas” are not a variable and discourse “sometimes important” but that the ideas carried by movements and in epistemic communities are integral to the very definition of their interests that they promote within and with institutions.

From a European to a common security and defence policy. IES WORKING PAPER 5/2010

The Lisbon Treaty has introduced significant changes in the field of EU security and defence. On the one hand, important institutional reforms, such as the creation of a renewed High Representative, have of course a great impact on this policy field. On the other hand, the Lisbon Treaty has also introduced specific innovations in the security and defence of the European Union. The mutual defence clause and the new mechanisms for flexible cooperation such as the permanent structured cooperation, are only some of the key innovations. Generally, the European Security and Defence Policy receives its own section in the Treaty on European Union and is rebranded as Common Security and Defence Policy. Thus, the Lisbon Treaty sets the objective for a common policy in this field. However, does this reform really provide for the means for the realization of such a common policy? Furthermore, does the Lisbon Treaty increase the importance of CSDP or is the increasing importance of this policy field just reflected in the Treaty text? These are the main questions that the present paper attempts to address through the analysis of the new institutional setting of the post-Lisbon security and defence policy, as well as through the examination of the specific innovations in this area.

About Hazing In Higher Education

Not a year goes by that we don’t hear of another hazing scandal in a higher education institution. Many researchers took interest in this issue in order to understand its causes and consequences. They provided definitions and lead to prevent it. We found hazing in many social groups around the world, with different names, and under specific forms. This paper aims to better understand hazing and its actors, with a specific focus on hazing in higher education. We presented three definitions to offer several perspectives on hazing, and facilitate its apprehension. Our method was to analyze the relevant scientific literature with the intention of reflecting on its roots and representation among individuals. Results are an exposition of motivations from hazing's actors, recommendations about how to define it and how to prevent derivations. Our main conclusions assume hazing is usually depicted as a deviant behavior, but it would appear to be a norm. Also, its core purpose would be the progression from newcomer to a group member. A lack of structure or meaning could lead to its misuse and facilitate outrageous events. In higher education, hazing seems to be used as a tool to integrate freshmen in their new institutional world. Scandals including violence, sexual and alcohol abuse could be a symptom of something deeper from hazing's environment.

From concept to commercialization; a study of the R & D budget allocation process.

"Conducted by three Sloan fellows, members of the 1960-61 Stanford-Sloan program."

O Trânsito Religioso e a Recomposição das Formas Religiosas na Igreja Evangélica Assembleia de Deus, Ministério São Bernardo do Campo

O campo religioso brasileiro apresenta, em sua configuração atual, uma formatação identitária extremamente diversa daquela observada em décadas anteriores. A partir dessa consideração, emerge uma problemática significativa - como compreender essas mudanças? Por que um cenário, antes extremamente resistente a transformações, agora se abre aos ventos modernizantes permitindo a recomposição de suas formas religiosas? Ora, a construção de novas identidades e a reordenação dos padrões religiosos podem ser compreendidas a partir do fenômeno do trânsito religioso, considerando ser possível iden-tificar na movimentação dos sujeitos uma dinâmica que estabelece alterações, tanto no caráter institucional e litúrgico dos grupos, bem como na vivência prática dos / das fiéis, promovendo inéditos e provisórios sistemas simbólicos. Diante da multiplicidade de oferta, os sujeitos apresentam uma mobilidade incessante num processo de ressignificação permanente, formando efêmeros mosaicos nos quais se distinguem múltiplas cores, formas, espaços, demandas, motivações, comportamentos, interesses, habitus, tradições, símbolos, disposições, estratégias, gostos e combinações. A partir dos postulados das Ciências da Religião, essa pesquisa propõe-se a analisar esse evento tendo como universo de observação a Igreja Evangélica Assembleia de Deus, Ministério São Bernardo do Campo. Objetiva demonstrar, mediante a interpretação do con-junto de dados obtidos em pesquisa de campo correlacionado com os fundamentos teóricos, a recomposição das formas religiosas institucionais e as novas identidades desenvolvidas pelos sujeitos a partir da mobilidade; estabelecer uma conexão entre os elementos indicadores da pesquisa e o fenômeno caracterizado para identificar quais são as motivações de gênero, classe, geracional e de etnia para o trânsito de homens e mulheres que circulam das mais diversas alternativas para esse grupo religioso e, considerando esse referencial, compreender como a instituição religiosa absorve esse fluxo de pessoas.

An exploratory study of management accounting and control systems in a developing country

This thesis reports on the results of case studies in four commercial banks in Nigeria. The study focuses how management accounting and control systems (MCS) operate in the four banks. The study is motivated by the dearth of literature on management accounting practices in the developing world in general and in Nigeria in specific. The case study approach adopted in conducting the research was useful in exploring the dynamics of the MCS in the organisations. Data was gathered from two sources. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers at the head office, regional office and branches of each bank. The participants were selected from different backgrounds and managerial levels to provide broader understanding of the operations of the MCS. Second, various internal and external documents were reviewed to provide supporting evidence for the interview results. New institutional sociology (NIS) provided the theoretical framework to understand the results. NIS provided explanations for how the MCS in the four banks were shaped by diverse external and internal factors. The key factors identified as shaping the operations of the MCS were the need to comply with the regulatory environment (coercive isomorphism), the need to maintain social and cultural support (normative isomorphism) and the need to imitate successful organisations in order to appear legitimate (mimetic isomorphism). The study also examines the interplay between the institutional forces, market forces and infra-organisational power relations. This analysis is necessary to overcome the criticism of NIS that it downplays the role of market forces, agency and intra-organisational relations. The findings of the study have implications for understanding the operations of MCS in the developing world.

Degree of vertical integration and its buffering effects on political uncertainty

The focus of this study is on the governance decisions in a concurrent channels context, in the case of uncertainty. The study examines how a firm chooses to deploy its sales force in times of uncertainty, and the subsequent performance outcome of those deployment choices. The theoretical framework is based on multiple theories of governance, including transaction cost analysis (TCA), agency theory, and institutional economics. Three uncertainty variables are investigated in this study. The first two are demand and competitive uncertainty which are considered to be industry-level market uncertainty forms. The third uncertainty, political uncertainty, is chosen as it is an important dimension of institutional environments, capturing non-economic circumstances such as regulations and political systemic issues. The study employs longitudinal secondary data from a Thai hotel chain, comprising monthly observations from January 2007 – December 2012. This hotel chain has its operations in 4 countries, Thailand, the Philippines, United Arab Emirates – Dubai, and Egypt, all of which experienced substantial demand, competitive, and political uncertainty during the study period. This makes them ideal contexts for this study. Two econometric models, both deploying Newey-West estimations, are employed to test 13 hypotheses. The first model considers the relationship between uncertainty and governance. The second model is a version of Newey-West, using an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimator and a Two-Stage Least Squares model (2SLS), to test the direct effect of uncertainty on performance and the moderating effect of governance on the relationship between uncertainty and performance. The observed relationship between uncertainty and governance observed follows a core prediction of TCA; that vertical integration is the preferred choice of governance when uncertainty rises. As for the subsequent performance outcomes, the results corroborate that uncertainty has a negative effect on performance. Importantly, the findings show that becoming more vertically integrated cannot help moderate the effect of demand and competitive uncertainty, but can significantly moderate the effect of political uncertainty. These findings have significant theoretical and practical implications, and extend our knowledge of the impact on uncertainty significantly, as well as bringing an institutional perspective to TCA. Further, they offer managers novel insight into the nature of different types of uncertainty, their impact on performance, and how channel decisions can mitigate these impacts.

Robert J. Barro és a költségvetési túlköltekezés (Robert J. Barro and fiscal overspending)

Robert J. Barro, a Harvard Egyetem professzora főként a gazdaságpolitika makroökonómiai modellezése területén elért eredményei alapján ismert a közgazdászok körében. Tevékenysége kiterjed mind az elméleti, mind pedig az empirikus kutatások területére. Jelen tanulmány Barro azon kutatásainak feltételezéseit és eredményeit összegzi, amelyek a ricardói ekvivalenciaelvből kiindulva a költségvetési politika elméletét magyarázó újszerű eredmények kibontakozását segítették elő. A 80-as években az Egyesült Államok magas költségvetési hiánya számos közgazdászt ösztönzött hasonló témájú elmélet kidolgozására. Mivel hazánkban szinte mindennapos vita forrása a költségvetési hiány túlzott mértéke, ami veszélyezteti a monetáris közösségben való részvételünket, különösen érdekes és időszerű annak áttekintése, hogy hogyan gondolkodik egy modern közgazdász a költségvetési hiány okairól és következményeiről. ________________ The question of budgetary discipline emerges in relation to the criteria of the Economic and Monetary Union in almost all European special journals today. There is much less attention paid to budgetary overspending, the adjustment of which caused a serious puzzle for the government and the economists of the United States in the 80's. The Lucasian world of new classical economics has questioned the effectiveness of government intervention, it confuted above all the efficiency of fiscal policy. The macroeconomic models of Barro (1979, 1986) introduced in the present study - building upon the theoretical approach of economic policy on similar foundations - examine the effect of budgetary spending principally from a long-run perspective. His empirical analysis, overarching almost seventy years (1916–1982), is based upon the time series of variables affecting the budgetary deficit of the United States, distinguishing the effect of the usual government expenses from the over average items within. On the basis of his investigation on the United States and the United Kingdom he, furthermore, did not reject the economic invigorating role of government spending, he opposed Lucas' conclusions and got a modest step closer to the Keynesian standpoint in this sense. Barro, however, irrefutably argues on classical grounds, he recalls and reevaluates the Ricardian equivalence principle, summarizes the critiques raised against it and unintentionally praises the Classical economists. According to Barro we cannot ignore the one-time theorem of Ricardo if we are endeavoring to model government spending - we have to count with it if not definitely as a positive, but at least as a normative economic relationship.

Can intellectual property rights impact directly on productivity: a case study in manufacturing industries

According to the institutional economics thesis the role of IPRs is one of the relevant determinants of economic growth in long run. Measures of IPRs have been limited and empirical studies have not been able to evaluate their impacts on productivity growth. The major conclusion that the author can be drawn from his estimations is that the extent to which patent rights and trademarks, ceteris paribus, positively correlated with output per capita depends on the intensity of technology.

A beruházási projektek aggregált tőkeigénye = The Aggregate Capital Needs of Investment Projects

A tanulmány abból indul ki, hogy a beruházási projektek értékelése során egyidejűleg szükséges figyelembe venni a projektben lekötött tőkét és a lekötési időt mint jövedelemtermelési lehetőséget. Definiálja a projekt aggregált tőkeigényének fogalmát és megszerkeszti a vonatkozó mérőszámot. Az aggregált tőkeigény új vállalatgazdasági kategória, mely a beruházási projektek értékelésének egy új megközelítését teszi lehetővé. A projekt aggregált tőkeigénye azt a tőkeösszeget jelenti, mely a projekt működtetéséhez annak teljes élettartama alatt szükséges. A három meghatározó tényező: a kezdőtőke, a megtérülési idő (illetőleg az élettartam) és a megtérülés gyorsasága. A számszerűsítéshez minden évre vonatkozóan meg kell határozni az adott évben lekötött tőkét, ami az adott évig még meg nem térült tőkerészt jelenti, majd ezek összegzése révén adódik az aggregált tőkeigény. A mértékegység egységnyi tőke egyévi lekötése. A tanulmány az összefüggések modellszerű levezetése mellett gazdag példaanyagot is tartalmaz. Az elemzés bővíti a nettó jelenérték tartalmára vonatkozó ismereteket, rávilágít az aggregált tőkeigény ismeretének fontosságára mind a nettó jelenérték, mind a belső kamatláb esetében. _____ The starting point of this paper is that in the evaluation process of investment projects necessary to take into account simultaneously the tied-up capital and tiedup time as the income-generating potential. For this, it defines a special content of aggregate capital needs of investment projects, and elaborates an index. The aggregate capital needs is a new business economics category, which provides a new aspect to evaluate investment projects. This means the amount of capital needed for the operation of the project during its full duration. Three factors determine the aggregate capital needs for investments projects. These are the amount of initial investment, the payback period (or the duration) and the rapidity of capital payback. The solution is to sum up the yearly tied-up capital, that is, the notreturned parts of the capital for each year. The measurement unit is one unit tied-up capital for one year. The paper formulates the main relationships as models and by way of explanation presents some examples. The analysis highlights the importance of considering the aggregate capital needs furthermore widens knowledge regarding the net present value and internal rate of return.

Mudanças na relação entre estado e mercado na produção de habitação de interesse social em Parnamirim-RN

The formulation of public policies, particularly those relating to social housing – SH -, follow a dialectical process of construction, which are involved in the figures of the State and tha Market.The combination of the State and Market remains in constant tension and struggle for power, which provides beyond products (policies, programs and projects), periods of crises and disruptions that can give rise to new institutional arrangements. It is possible to verify a change in the relationship between the State and the Market in the formulation of public policies of SH financing, justified by the context of the Brazilian economy growth, especially after 2003, year that began the first Lula Federal Government , and through the international financial crisis (in 2008). Thus, the State and the Real Estate Market has been undergoing a process of redefinition of their interrelations, articulating new arrangements, new scales of action and new logics of financial valorization of urban space. This peculiarity demanded the rapid thinning of speech and the proposals in the reformulation of housing policies, with the primary result within the pre-existing Growth Acceleration Program – PAC -, the release of My House , My Life – PMCMV -, established by Law 1.977 of the year 2009. Given the above, this research has as study object the relationship between financing public policies of SH, promoted by the State, and behavior of Formal Housing Market. It is believed that the established roles for each agent in the new housing finance model introduced with the PMCMV, have been adapted according to the needs of each location to make this a workable policy. It remains to identify the nature of these adaptations, in other words, what has changed in the performance of each agent involved in this process. Knowing that private capital remains where there is more chance of profit, we tend to believe that most of the adjustments were made on scale of State action. The recommendation of easing urban legislation taken by PMCMV points to how the State has been making these changes in activity to implement the production of social housing by this program. We conclude that in the change for PMCMV, the direct relationship for construction and housing projects financing began to be made between the Caixa Econômica Federal bank and the builders. The city was liberated from the direct interlocutor role between all actors involved in the production of SH and could concentrate on negotiating with the parties, focused on the effectiveness of SH public policies proposed by PMCMV. This ability and willingness for dialogue and negotiation of municipal government (represented by their managers), undoubtedly, represents a key factor for rapprochement between State and Real Estate Market in the City of Parnamirim.

Commission on the Loose? Delegated Lawmaking and Comitology after Lisbon

The Treaty of Lisbon has altered the institutional mechanism of the European Union. The introduction of formal hierarchy of legal acts has important implications for the balance of power among the EU institutions. This paper argues that the Commission is likely to enjoy some discretion in delegated lawmaking while remaining in the shadow of the legislators’ activism. The Commission has also successfully positioned itself to diminish the influence of comitology committees on the adoption of implementing acts, though a new layer of complexity was added. The possible outcomes of this new institutional battle are analysed in the context of the new challenges to the Community method. Some important inferences of this institutional shift for the debate on the democratic deficit in the EU are also drawn up.

Bases para la gobernanza del distrito de ciencia, tecnología e innovación en Medellín, Colombia

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar las bases de gobernanza del Distrito de ciencia, tecnología e innovación de Medellín en Colombia, mediante una revisión de literatura e integración de trabajos inéditos de los autores para ilustrar aspectos claves de la administración de este nuevo arreglo institucional. Los resultados muestran que la gobernanza del Distrito se basa en la lectura de las dinámicas y tendencias territoriales, la integración de intereses entre los agentes y la gestión de la ciencia, la tecnología y la innovación. 

Actores y factores del contexto institucional que permiten entender la discusión y aprobación de la Ley 975 de 2005

El trabajo de investigación es un estudio de caso que pretende analizar la forma en que factores del contexto institucional y la capacidad de influencia de ciertos actores se reflejan en la discusión y aprobación de la Ley 975 de 2005. Factores del contexto institucional y la capacidad de influencia sobre las posiciones asumidas por los actores políticos y sociales en las diferentes etapas del proceso legislativo y sobre las decisiones que se tomaron para la aprobación de la Ley, en torno a dos elementos fundamentales de ésta que son el delito político y la rebaja de penas. Para ello, se tiene en cuenta el enfoque neo-institucional y el concepto de agencia.