How did the research community respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? A new article shows that countries with academic capabilities formed strong alliances and that the highly developed countries with the highest number of confirmed cases are also the major academic contributors to the COVID-19 literature.
What is the impact of social policy programmes on entrepreneurs in developing countries? A new working paper analyses the effect of participation in social policy programmes on the business performance of enterprises in Cartagena, Colombia.
These are just two questions tackled by our researchers in March 2022 — in two journal articles, five working papers, and two public engagement activities, among many others. Click here for the full list of our most recent publications.
Journal articles
‘How has academia responded to the urgent needs created by COVID-19?: A multi-level global, regional and national analysis‘ presents academic response patterns at a global, regional and national level from an analysis of publication volume versus reported cases of COVID-19, scientific collaboration and research focus. The study results show that the research community has responded quickly to COVID-19. The highly developed countries, which have the highest number of confirmed cases, are also the major academic contributors. National-level analysis reveals diverse response patterns from different countries. Most of the analysed countries show dynamic patterns of research focus that vary over time as the pandemic evolves, except India. As one of the world’s biggest suppliers of vaccines, India makes consistent efforts in vaccine research, especially those related to pharmaceutical preparations. These findings may serve as resources for fostering strategies to respond to future threats of pandemics. By Dr. Lili Wang et al.
‘Improving compliance of the EU Cohesion Policy via prevention measures? The case of the Polish Operational Programme ‘Technical Assistance’ 2014–2020‘ investigates how Poland worked to prevent irregularities during the 2014–2020 programming period. Specifically, the article examines whether prevention measures enhanced Poland’s financial compliance performance. For this purpose, the authors propose a novel model of ‘non-compliance financial rate’ (NCFR) and triangulate it with qualitative findings from semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. By Julia Walczyk et al.
Working papers
‘Some new views on product space and related diversification‘ aims to contribute to the literature on product space and diversification by proposing a number of extensions of the current literature. The paper proposes that the alternative but related idea of a country space also has empirical and theoretical appeal; it argues
that the loss of comparative advantage should be an integral part of (testing the empirical relevance of) the product space idea; (3) it proposes several new indicators for measuring relatedness in product space; and (4) proposes a non-parametric statistical test based on bootstrapping to test the empirical relevance of the product space idea. By Dr. Önder Nomaler and Prof. Bart Verspagen.
‘The productive role of social policy‘ analyses the effect that participating in social policy programmes has on the business performance of enterprises in Cartagena, Colombia. The paper sheds light on the effects and potential mechanisms that participation in social policy schemes has on the entrepreneurial activity of household enterprises. The results show that compiler participating entrepreneurs are more credit-oriented and work more hours per day. By Dr. Omar Rodriguez Torres.
‘Do creative industries enhance employment growth? regional evidence from Colombia‘ studies agglomeration in the largest cities (Bogota, Medellin, and Cartagena) and in a few smaller cities in Colombia. The paper finds a positive relationship between creative industry agglomeration and employment in non-creative services industries. However, after controlling for endogeneity using a shift-share instrumental variable approach, the authors find, contrary to analyses of high-income countries, no significant impact of an increase in creative industries employment on employment growth in other industries. By Dr. Tommaso Ciarli et al.
‘The reckoning of sexual violence and corruption: A gendered study of sextortion in migration to South Africa‘ seeks to understand the experiences of sextortion of African migrants migrating to South Africa and how these are gendered. This research highlights that women are most vulnerable to sextortion and that migrants not only encounter sextortion during their journeys but also after arriving in South Africa. This can be explained by referring to South Africa’s culture where both gender‐based violence and xenophobia are deeply rooted, making up for an “ideal” environment for sextortion to take place. At last, this paper discusses the different consequences that surviving sextortion has, which are, among others, the spread of STIs, unwanted pregnancies, shame, stigmatisation, and normalisation. By Ashleigh Bicker Caarten, Loes van Heugten and Dr. Ortrun Merkle.
‘Measuring Disaster Crop Production Losses Using Survey Microdata: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa‘ exploits plot-level panel data for almost 20,000 plots on 8,000 farms in three Sub-Saharan African countries with information on harvest, input use, and different proxies of losses; household and community-level data; as well data from other sources such as crop cutting and survey experiments, to provide new insights into the reliability of survey-based crop loss estimates and their attribution to disasters. The paper offers concrete recommendations for methodology and survey design and identifies key avenues for further research. By PhD candidate Yannick Valentin Markhof et al.
Public engagement
‘How to facilitate successful management of European Structural and Investment Funds’ provides three policy lessons on how to design and implement the administrative capacity-building roadmaps in Cohesion Policy, based on the author’s research. A blog post by Julia Walczyk
‘Gender and Corruption and the WPS – The role of sextortion and migration‘ gathered national representatives and subject matter experts to exchange views on good practices and best strategies during a NATO BI workshop “Building Integrity and Women, Peace and Security: Nexus and Mutually Reinforcing Impact”. A workshop led by Dr. Ortrun Merkle.
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The opinions expressed here are the authors’ own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of UNU.
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