University–Industry collaboration in the biopharmaceuticals: the Italian case

We investigate the determinants of University–Industry (U–I) interactions in the biopharmaceuticals in Italy over the period 2004–2010, choosing co-publishing as a proxy of U–I partnerships. We construct a novel dataset of co-published articles, that contains measures of proximities, agglomeration, firms’ and universities’ characteristics. Following a consolidated methodology, we integrate our dataset of effective interactions with the set of all potential interactions, to estimate probabilistic models for the occurrence and the intensity of U–I interactions. Our main findings confirm and extend the predictions of the previous literature: (1) geographical proximity and prior partnership increase the probability and the intensity of co-publication; (2) the proximity of a firm to other biopharmaceutical firms and universities attenuates the relevance of geographical proximity; (3) there exists complementarity between prior partnerships and geographical proximity. A novel result is that firms’ and Universities’ size, firms’ R&D and patents expenditure and the composition of the academic staff as well as quality of academic research exert a significant impact on the intensity of co-publishing.     

Privatization and Organized Crime in Macedonia

The privatization in Macedonia is considered to be the finally found form of establishment of the interrupted evolution of the ownership. Of course, this is from the aspect of introduction and functioning of the state ownership in the socialistic system which denied the title of ownership. From the chosen model of paid privatization, it was expected that the privatization will be carried out lawfully, fairly, justly, relatively fast and transparently. This paper analyses the process of privatization from the aspect of its lawful performance and its fairness as consequential effect. The analysis specifically refers to one of the five segments of the privatization process—the privatization of socially-owned enterprises. Subject to this analysis are the views and opinions of employees and managers, as well as those of the government officials on issues whether the privatization is implemented as a political process and whether privatization is realized as a robbery. The results of the analysis can be summarized twofold: the employees and the politicians see the privatization as a political process and robbery, while the managers deny any connection with politicians and do not consider themselves oligarchs. In the analysis, these results are compared with some objective parameters of privatization: (i) the funds raised from the sale of social capital and (ii) proceedings initiated in front of state and judicial authorities based on suspicions of crime in the privatization process.     

National Parliaments and EU Fiscal Integration

This article analyses the impact of the euro crisis on national parliaments and examines their response to the deepening of EU fiscal integration and the correspondent limitation of their budgetary autonomy. It argues that the sovereign debt crisis has provoked the emergence of new channels of parliamentary involvement in EU economic governance. National parliaments have acquired various rights of approval in the European Semester, strengthened the accountability of national governments, reinforced their scrutiny over budgeting, improved their access to information, and created domestic and supranational avenues for deliberation and political contestation of European integration. In these respects, they have undergone further Europeanisation. While these reforms do not outweigh the centralisation of EU powers, they represent an embryonic step in the parliamentary adaptation to the nascent EU fiscal regime. Yet they are unlikely substantially to influence EMU policy‐making processes, because of the democratic disconnect inherent in the EU's multilevel constitution.     

Opiate treatment in the criminal justice system: a review of <Emphasis Type="Italic">crimesolutions.gov</Emphasis> evidence rated programs

As drug control policy reform trends toward marijuana decriminalization, focus will shift to opiate enforcement which, in turn, accentuates substance abuse treatment. While the national offender reentry movement has effected widespread implementation of programming for co-occurring substance abuse and mental health disorders, the practice of Medicated Assisted Treatment (MAT) is nonstandard throughout the criminal justice system despite its evidence based status. This paper observes MAT delivered within and by the criminal justice system as indicated by evidence rated programs and practices listed in the national criminal justice evidence based registry crimesolutions.gov. Observation of these programs’ treatment orientation, client populations, delivery settings, and operational status inform discussion for additional MAT implementation and program registry augmentation.     

If It Walks Like a Duck: a Case of Confirmatory Bias

Confirmatory bias is an unavoidable source of error in human judgment, which is rooted in the adaptive design of the brain for recognizing meaningful patterns. In forensic psychology, the complete elimination of confirmatory bias is worth aspiring to, but even its substantial reduction is fraught with challenges. In this brief article, I present a vignette from an actual jury trial to illustrate how a seemingly small instance of confirmatory bias led to a major blunder in expert testimony. Also, I consider how it might have been prevented.     

Social Connections,Trajectories of Hopelessness,and Serious Violence in Impoverished Urban Youth

Youth living in impoverished urban neighborhoods are at risk for becoming hopeless about their future and engaging in violent behaviors. The current study seeks to examine the longitudinal relationship between social connections, hopelessness trajectories, and subsequent violent behavior across adolescence. Our sample included 723 (49% female) African American youth living in impoverished urban neighborhoods who participated in the Mobile Youth Survey from 1998 through 2006. Using general growth mixture modeling, we found two hopelessness trajectory classes for both boys and girls during middle adolescence: a consistently low hopelessness class and an increasingly hopeless class with quadratic change. In all classes, youth who reported stronger early adolescent connections to their mothers were less hopeless at age 13. The probability of later adolescent violence with a weapon was higher for boys and was associated with the increasingly hopeless class for both boys and girls. Implications for new avenues of research and design of hope-based prevention interventions will be discussed.     

Reconciling Independence and accountability at the European Central Bank: The false promise of Proceduralism

This article revisits the balancing act between independence and accountability at the European Central Bank (ECB). It contrasts procedural and substantive concepts of accountability, and challenges the mainstream idea that independence and accountability can be reconciled through narrow mandates, the indiscriminate increase of transparency, the creation of multiple channels of accountability, and the active use of judicial review. These assumptions form the pillars of a procedural type of accountability that promises to resolve the independence/accountability dilemma but fails to do so in practice. The article brings evidence to show how ECB accountability has become a complex administrative exercise that focuses on the procedural steps leading up to monetary and supervisory decisions while simultaneously limiting substantive accountability. The failure to acknowledge the trade‐off between independence and accountability (said to be ‘two sides of the same coin’) has resulted in a tendency to privilege the former over the latter.