New frontiers of migration research - making migration information infrastructures visible

The nature and production of migration statistics are in flux. Where there used to be ‘migration data’ produced by states and collated by (supra)national agencies with the aim of understanding and recording migration flows, now there are a myriad unofficial data sources and processing collaborations which produce migration and mobility data as a by-product of both commercial and governmental processes. This paper brings together the migration studies with the Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature to take stock of the theoretical and empirical implications of these new data sources for both migrants and for the links between migration and broader social processes. We identify migration information infrastructures: configurations of data assemblages which involve private and public sector actors, where data originally collected for one purpose (billing customers, sharing social information, sensing environmental change) become repurposed as migration statistics. We explore the implications of such migration information infrastructures for migration researchers: what are the entanglements that such infrastructures bring with them, and what do they mean for the ethics and practicalities of doing migration research?

Courts and Diversity: Normative Justifications and Their Empirical Implications

The study distinguishes between three normative approaches that view diversity in the judiciary as a desirable ideal, outlines their expected empirical implications for judicial decision-making, and tests the implications against data from the Israeli Supreme Court. The “reflecting” approach suggests that diversifying the courts is important mainly as a means of strengthening the public’s confidence in them and does not impact judicial decisions. The “representing” approach asserts that judges serve as representatives of their social sectors. Thus, they tend to rule in favor of their group’s interest only in cases that are relevant to their in-group. The “social background theory” is based on the premise that people of different backgrounds develop distinct worldviews. Hence, social attributes are expected to influence judicial decisions across a wide range of socio-legal issues. The empirical investigation centers on the role of gender and religiosity in judging on five carefully selected socio-legal issues: petitions against the Great Rabbinical Court’s rulings, constitutional disputes in all legal procedures, social welfare cases, and criminal appeals in sex offenses and in drug offenses. The results lend support to social background theory with regard to gender and are consistent with the representing approach with respect to religiosity. I further discuss the limitations and policy implications of the findings.

See No Evil, Speak No Evil? Morality, Evolutionary Psychology, and the Nature of International Relations

A central theme in the study of international relations is that anarchy requires states to set aside moral concerns to attain security, rendering IR an autonomous sphere devoid of ethical considerations. Evolutionary and moral psychology, however, suggest that morality emerged to promote human success under such conditions. It is not despite anarchy but because of anarchy that humans have an ethical sense. Our argument has three empirical implications. First, it is almost impossible to talk about threat and harm without invoking morality. Second, state leaders and the public will use moral judgments as a basis, indeed the most important factor, for assessing international threat, just as research shows they do at the interpersonal level. Third, foreign policy driven by a conception of international relations as an amoral sphere will be quite rare. Word embeddings applied to large political and nonpolitical corpora, a survey experiment in Russia, and an in-depth analysis of Hitler's foreign policy thought suggest that individuals both condemn aggressive behavior by others and screen for threats on the basis of morality. The findings erode notions of IR as an autonomous sphere and upset traditional materialist–ideational dichotomies.

SUSTAINABILITY, RESILIENCE AND WELLBEING CONVERGENCES FOR PLACE-BASED APPROACHES

The present article is a conceptual and bibliometric radiography of ‘the new trinity of governance’ (Joseph & McGregor, 2020) that includes sustainability, resilience, and wellbeing from the viewpoint of territorial approaches. First, the paper makes theoretical consideration s of the three concepts by analysing their definition and characteristics. Second, the study proposes a bibliometric analysis of the three well-established concepts, taking into account the papers that include the relations between all three in a single framework. Third, we developed a content analysis considering only the most relevant papers in the proposed study area as we try to highlight the main theoretical and empirical implications of overlapping sustainability, resilience, and wellbeing from the viewpoint of place-based strategies and planning as reflected by current scientific research. The results show the prevalence of four major directions of research which include the three concepts as pillars for the theoretical and empirical approaches: 1) nature-centred assessments, 2) safe and sustainable human activities and critical services, 3) participative governance for planning human settlements, 4) individuals’ and communities’ culture and identities. Finally, the missing link that can transform all these convergent, but still diverse, perspectives is identified as being the capabilities theory of Amartya Sen. To accomplish this role, the classic theory was reinterpreted in a broader sustainability-related approach that takes into consideration the equity and wellbeing of individuals and communities, but also the equilibrium between nature and human development. Conclusively, if managed wisely, the new integrative approach could mark a paradigm shift that might push forward new ways of planning and governing sustainable, safe and liveable territories.

Too many cooks spoil the broth: on the impact of external advisors on mergers and acquisitions

Almost 60% of mergers and acquisitions are concluded with the aid of multiple third-party advisors. While there has been work on the impact of advisors, the theoretical and empirical implications of using multiple advisors remain unclear. Using insights from the "cheap talk" literature, we derive hypotheses on the impact of multiple advisors. Expanding upon this, we then consider the moderating impact of advisor reputation/quality and deal timing (in terms of merger wave periods vs. non-merger wave periods), as factors that both the cheap talk and the literature on single advisors highlight as relevant. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 10,544 large US acquisitions, and evaluate the impact of advisors using an event study and abnormal returns. Our results support a value-creating role for single advisors—we find that deals with single advisors create a higher expectation of value-creation—but find little support for the use of multiple advisors. Furthermore, we show that the moderating effect of advisor reputation, and deal timing, are contingent on the number of advisors. In doing so, we make a number of academic and practical contributions to the discussion of advisors in mergers and acquisitions.

When anger and happiness generate concessions: investigating counterpart’s culture and negotiation intentions

Purpose Drawing from the emotions as social information theory, this paper aims to investigate the differential effects of emotions in inter vs intracultural negotiations. Design/methodology/approach The authors used one face-to-face negotiation and two experimental scenario studies to investigate the influence of emotions (anger vs happiness) and negotiation type (intercultural vs intracultural) on concession behavior. Findings Across the three studies, the results consistently show that angry opponents from a different national culture obtain larger concessions from negotiators. A face-to-face negotiation shows that happy opponents from the same culture are able to obtain larger concessions from negotiators. Additionally, the negotiator’s intentions to compromise and yield mediate the relationship between the interaction of emotions and counterpart’s culture on concessions. Research limitations/implications Two limitations are that the studies were conducted in a single country and that they use different types of role-playing designs. The empirical implications provide evidence of the moderating effect of the counterpart’s culture on the effect of anger on concessions. Then, providing two different mechanisms for concessions. Practical implications The research helps global negotiators who face counterparts from different nationalities. It suggests that these negotiators should be mindful of their counterpart’s emotions in intercultural negotiation as anger seems to generate more concessions in this setting. Originality/value The article is among the first studies to show that the combination of the counterpart’s culture and emotions has an effect on concessions in negotiation. Compromising and yielding are mediating mechanisms for this moderated effect. As opposed to previous studies that use one type of research design, the research combines face-to-face and scenario methodologies to test the predictions.

A Recast Framework for Welfare Deservingness Perceptions

Many important societal debates revolve around questions of deservingness, especially when it comes to debates related to inequality and social protection. It is therefore unsurprising that a growing body of research spanning the social and political sciences is concerned with the determinants of deservingness perceptions. In this contribution, we engage with the currently central theoretical framework used in deservingness research and point out an important weakness: Partly ambiguous definitions of the framework’s central concepts, the criteria for perceived deservingness. We also highlight the negative consequences this has for empirical research, including notably varying and overlapping operationalizations and thereby a lacking comparability of results across studies. Our main contribution is a redefinition of the criteria for perceived deservingness and a demonstration of the empirical implications of using this new set of criteria via original vignette survey experiments conducted in Germany and the United States in 2019. Our results provide a clearer image of which criteria drive deservingness perceptions.

A Bargaining-Based Model of Security Design

This paper studies how security design affects project outcomes. Consider a firm that raises capital for multiple projects by offering investors a share of the revenues. The revenue of each project is determined ex post through bargaining with a buyer of the output. Thus, the choice of security affects the feasible payoffs of the bargaining game. We characterize the securities that achieve the firm’s maximal equilibrium payoff in bilateral and multilateral negotiations. In a large class of securities, the optimal contract is remarkably simple. The firm finances each project separately with defaultable debt. Welfare and empirical implications are discussed. (JEL C78, D21, D86, G12, G32)

Parliament, People or Technocrats? Explaining Mass Public Preferences on Delegation of Policymaking Authority

While delegation of policymaking authority from citizens to parliament is the most defining characteristic of representative democracy, public demand for delegating such authority away from legislature/government to technocrats or back to citizens appears to have increased. Drawing on spatial models of voting, we argue that the distance between individuals’ ideal policy points, the status quo, experts’ policy positions and aggregated societal policy preferences can help explain whether individuals prefer to delegate decision-making power away from parliament and, if so, to whom. The effects of individual’s preference distance from these ideal points are likely to be stronger the more salient the policy issue is for the respective individual. We test this argument using survey experiments in Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The analysis provides evidence for the empirical implications of our theoretical arguments. The research presented here contributes to better understanding variation in citizens’ support for representative democracy and preferences for delegating policymaking authority away from parliament.

Group Interests, Individual Attitudes

What drives support for or opposition to redistributive taxation and spending? Why is ethnic diversity associated with inequality and a lack of redistribution? This book argues that many individuals, recognizing that they live in a world of uncertainty, use the groups of which they are a member as a heuristic to understand how welfare states are likely to impact them. This leads to reduced support for redistribution among the wealthy, whose disproportionate influence over policy in turn leads to less redistribution. I develop the argument with a series of empirical implications, which I then test using data from a variety of sources. I examine regional and ethnic politics in the United Kingdom, Germany, Slovakia, Canada, and Italy, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence, existing and new surveys, and observational and experimental methods. The evidence is largely consistent with a heuristic theory, allowing us to see group politics in a new light.