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on Cultural Economics |
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Issue of 2018‒07‒16
three papers chosen by Roberto Zanola Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Müller, Karsten (University of Warwick); Schwarz, Carlo (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime using Facebook data. We study the case of Germany, where the recently emerged right-wing party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has developed a major social media presence. We show that right-wing anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts violent crimes against refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with higher social media usage. To further establish causality, we exploit exogenous variation in major internet and Facebook outages, which fully undo the correlation between social media and hate crime. We further find that the effect decreases with distracting news events; increases with user network interactions; and does not hold for posts unrelated to refugees. Our results suggest that social media can act as a propagation mechanism between online hate speech and real-life violent crime.Keywords: social media, hate crime, minorities, Germany, AfD JEL Classification: D74, J15, Z10, D72, O35, N32, N34. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:373&r=cul |
| By: | Papaioannou, Sotiris |
| Abstract: | We explore whether education plays a key role in determining economic liberty. Baseline estimates suggest that the educational level of a country, as measured by the average years of total schooling, is a significant contributor to economic freedom. To isolate exogenous variation, we use historical information on primary school enrollment rates and also rely on genetic information. We show that the exogenous component of education is strongly correlated with economic liberty after controlling for the influence of a number of other relevant factors. We identify access to information and media freedom as two channels through which higher education is translated into less interventional government policy. We offer non parametric evidence and demonstrate that the impact of schooling is non linear. At low levels of education its influence is negative implying that economic policies in favor of government intervention are more likely to prevail when the educational level of a country is low. When moving to higher levels of schooling, this effect switches to positive. |
| Keywords: | Economic freedom, Education, Information, Media freedom, Non parametric analysis |
| JEL: | D83 I25 Z18 |
| Date: | 2018–06–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:87417&r=cul |
| By: | Tausch, Arno |
| Abstract: | This article evaluates tendencies and trends of the global academic publishing industry, vital for any reasonable long-term publication strategy planning in research. Such analyses are made possible today by the OCLC Worldcat. Our multivariate attempt, combining Worldcat global library circulation figures of publisher companies with results from earlier publisher ranking studies, is based on factor analysis of 32 variables, and our promax factor analytical model establishes that there are eight factors of global publisher impact, explaining almost 86% of total variance: 1. overall global standing of the company 2. company as a factor on the market 3. company impact on the global political and economic debate 4. successfully distributing best-sellers 5. impact on the scholarly community 6. successfully distributing production to more than 50 global Worldcat libraries 7. output during the last 5 years 8. outstanding academic quality Of the 51 companies with complete data under investigation here, the following companies are classified in the upper half: Oxford University Press; Springer; Cambridge University Press; Routledge; World Bank; Princeton University Press; Elsevier; CRC Press; University of Chicago Press; University of California Press; Palgrave Macmillan; MIT Press; Yale University Press; University of North Carolina Press; De Gruyter; Wiley-Blackwell; Kluwer Academic Publishers; University of Pennsylvania Press; Johns Hopkins University Press; Brill; Nova Science Publishers; University of Illinois Press; Duke University Press; University of Washington Press; and Edward Elgar. Scientists, wanting to get global audiences, are well advised to publish with those companies; and journal editors, wanting to get a global distribution for their journals, are equally well advised to cooperate with them. |
| Keywords: | Role of Economics; Role of Economists; History of Thought: Individuals; Entertainment; Media (Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Broadcasting, Publishing) |
| JEL: | A11 B31 L82 |
| Date: | 2018–06–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:87442&r=cul |