Trust,regulation, and redistribution why some governments overregulate and under-redistribute

For many social scientists, government intervention is linked to low levels of social trust and corruption, while others associate it with high trust and low corruption. We aim to reconcile these contrasting views by distinguishing the opposing effects of trust on two alternative types of government intervention: regulation and redistribution. We argue that distrusting individuals demand more governmental regulation (H1) but less government redistribution (H2), and this could be one of the mechanisms explaining why countries with low levels of trust tend to both overregulate and under-redistribute. And the effects of trust on policy preferences are conditional on the quality of institutions. The higher the level of quality of government in a particular region, the more high-trusting individuals will like government redistribution and dislike government regulation that restricts the operations of free markets (H3). We test these hypotheses with data from the latest round of the European Quality of Government Index (EQI) survey, which covers 77,000 individuals from 185 regions of 21 EU member states.     

Social networks in R&D program evaluation

This paper introduces the social network methodology as a tool for evaluating important aspects of research and development (R&D) programs. It uses two detailed examples to illustrate the application of network concepts in program appraisal. By studying relationships, exchanges, network location and status, network structure and evolution, and participant characteristics and roles in the network, this approach provides a lens to important aspects of the longer-lasting, more sustainable contributions of public policy in affecting organisational capabilities to innovate. A key challenge currently is the integration of social network analysis with causal empirical models and more traditional economic approaches geared to assessing the outputs and impacts of R&D.     

Egocentric Ethics

Ethical judgments are often egocentrically biased, such that moral reasoners tend to conclude that self-interested outcomes are not only desirable but morally justifiable. Although such egocentric ethics can arise from deliberate self-interested reasoning, we suggest that they may also arise through unconscious and automatic psychological mechanisms. People automatically interpret their perceptions egocentrically, automatically evaluate stimuli on a semantic differential as positive or negative, and base their moral judgments on affective reactions to stimuli. These three automatic and unconscious features of human judgment can help to explain not only why ethical judgments are egocentrically biased, but also why such subjective perceptions can appear objective and unbiased to moral reasoners themselves.     

Are hypnotically induced pseudomemories resistant to cross-examination?

Two experiments examined the effects of hypnotic procedures in response to interrogation and crossexamination in subjects who viewed a simulated robbery. Experiment 1 found that hypnotic and nonhypnotic leading interrogations were equally likely to produce misattributions and misidentification of mug shots. Moreover, under cross-examination subjects who had been given an hypnotic interrogation and those given nonhypnotic interrogations were equally likely to disavow their earlier misattributions and misidentifications. In both hypnotic and nonhypnotic treatments high hypnotizables were more likely than low hypnotizables to misattribute characteristics during interrogation and to disavow earlier misattributions during cross-examination. In Experiment 2 high hypnotizables given a cross-examination that legitimated their earlier errors as honest mistakes and that enabled them to disavow earlier testimony without discrediting themselves (hidden observer treatment) showed the highest and most consistent rates of disavowel. A stringent cross-examination that implied that subjects had been careless or dishonest during interrogation produced the lowest rates of disavowel.     

Local management of aid-funded projects

Local management means giving responsibility for the implementation and management of development projects to people and institutions in the recipient country. The main arguments for local management are that it offers the potential to increase the responsibility and accountability of national institutions and should help to build a cadre of experienced local project managers. These are all important contributions to sustainable development. There are, however, some constraints on the effectiveness of local management, including the limited supply of good managers and the difficulty of ensuring adherence by those implementing projects to donors' procedures and regulations. The role of donor agencies under local management is yet to be clearly defined. Donor agencies will face difficult professional judgments on whether, when and how to intervene where projects are not being competently managed by national institutions.