Ambitious workers park the office politics when employer is struggling, study suggests

Workers curb competition against competitors to unite against external rivals when employer faces either losing sector status or can improve reputation, research suggests

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CITY UNIVERSITY LONDON

One of the study authors, Professor Hans Frankort, Professor of Strategy at Bayes Business School, City, University of London, said: “Sports – particularly motorsports – can be a good proxy for several other industries as they are extremely competitive: if you don’t perform and progress you may be out. Workers in sectors such as consultancy and financial services face similar pressures.”

The peer reviewed paper, which has been published on the website of the Academy of Management Journal, found that riders systematically adjusted their internal and external overtakes based on their team’s competitive threats and opportunities, as well as the resources available to those competitor teams.

Professor Frankort said: “Earlier research has shown that employees compete to improve their relative standing in the eyes of their employer, in the hope of climbing the career ladder. Such behaviours may include poaching colleagues’ clients or even disrupting or sabotaging their work. This study suggests that ambitious workers tend to modify those behaviours when the standing of their organisation is about to deteriorate or improve. Why? Because they see the standing of their firm as an important factor in deciding who to compete with to advance their career.

“If the company has a chance to out-perform better-resourced rivals, employees’ workplace behaviour is geared towards being seen to be a key contributor to that success. For example, a salesperson might try to poach colleagues’ clients. However, if a firm is facing threats, such as losing market share to smaller rivals, workers may feel that infighting is poor form. Instead, they would focus on competing against rival firms. Inside the firm, individuals may simply want to blend into the background when their company is going through difficult times.”

The findings suggest, Professor Frankort said, that employers can influence the nature of their employees’ competitive actions. For example, employers could highlight threats to the firm from underdog firms or its opportunities against bigger rivals.

The research also found that riders’ overtaking attempts were shaped by their contractual position with the team. For example, replacement riders – the MotoGP equivalent of agency workers – attempt more overtakes against teammates when the team is doing well and against all riders when the team is struggling.

The paper concludes: “It may be that replacement riders are keen to signal their skills relative to incumbents, hoping to secure a permanent contract.”

Riders whose contracts will not be renewed challenge their teammates on the track and are less likely to overtake riders from other teams – suggesting they feel detached from the team and even disgruntled with it.

These findings, Professor Frankort noted, give a rare insight into how employees on various kinds of contracts behave.

The other authors of the paper, Revving up or backing down? Cross-level effects of firm-level tournaments on employees’ competitive actions, are Patrick Hallila from Imperial College London and Professor Paolo Aversa from King’s College London.

Notes to editors

For further information (journalists only) or to request an interview please contact Chris Mahony, Senior Communications Officer, Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), City, University of London

M: +44 (0)7867 232852   E: chris.mahony@city.ac.uk

Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) is a leading global business school driven by world-class knowledge, innovative education, and a vibrant, diverse community. The School has been at the forefront of business education for more than 50 years, developing leaders who help businesses thrive through change and uncertainty.   

Located in the heart of one of the world’s top financial centres, the School has strong links to both the City of London and the thriving entrepreneurial hub of Tech City.   

The faculty members are experts in their fields, producing cutting-edge research with real-world impact. The 2021 Research Excellence Framework results assessed 92 per cent of its research to be world-leading or internationally excellent.  

The School is a signatory of the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME). It is home to the renowned ETHOS Centre for Responsible Enterprise, and the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, one of the UK’s leading non-profit and philanthropy centres.

The School educates nearly 5,000 students each year on globally renowned courses across all levels of study including undergraduate, postgraduate and Executive Education. On graduating, students join a strong alumni community of 50,000 from 160 countries.

The new name replaces Cass Business School. In June 2020, there was increasing awareness of the links between Sir John Cass and the slave trade, which made the School, and its stakeholders, reflect on whether such a link was consistent with the School’s values. The School decided that, in line with its values and principles, it should change its name and increase its focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Read more about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work at Bayes.

The School had carried the Cass name between 2002 and 2020 after a donation from the Sir John Cass Foundation, an educational charity which has now been renamed The Portal Trust.

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JOURNAL

Academy of Management Journal

DOI

10.5465/amj.2022.0946 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Ambitious workers park the office politics when employer is struggling, study suggests

Marxists.org

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc05.htm

Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat by Geor...

The commodity character of the commodity, the abstract, quantitative mode of calculability shows itself here in its purest form: the reified mind necessarily ...

 

California voter poll: Schiff leads, while Porter and Garvey neck-and-neck for second in the U.S. Senate primary

The survey by USC, CSULB and Cal Poly Pomona shows many likely voters remain undecided, and that Garvey’s history with the Dodgers isn’t boosting his chances.

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

 

IMAGE: 

LIKELY CALIFORNIA VOTER SUPPORT FOR CANDIDATES IN THE TOP-TWO U.S. SENATE PRIMARY RACE.

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CREDIT: (USC PRICE GRAPHIC/DENNIS LAN)

U.S. Rep. Katie Porter and former Los Angeles Dodger Steve Garvey are deadlocked in the race for second place in the U.S. Senate primary in California, according to a new poll on California politics and policies from USC; California State University, Long Beach; and Cal Poly Pomona.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, leads all candidates with 25% of likely voters, according to the California Elections and Policy Poll. Porter, a Democrat, and Garvey, a Republican, each received support from 15%. Other candidates are in single digits, with Democratic U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee in fourth place at 7%, the poll found.

California primary voters can choose any candidate, regardless of party, and the top two vote-getters in the March 5 primary advance to the general election. The representative survey of more than 1,400 likely voters shows the second and final spot on the general election ballot is still up for grabs.

With about a week until early voting begins, many voters remain undecided. The poll, sponsored by the Center for Urban Politics and Policy at CSULB in collaboration with USC researchers, found that 29% of likely voters do not yet know who they will vote for, including 42% of independents, 37% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats.

The survey also suggests that Asian American and Latino voters, the two fastest-growing racial/ethnic groups in the state, could swing the outcome.

“This poll shows the California Senate race is a nailbiter for second place,” said Christian Grose, professor of political science and international relations and public policy at the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “Who places second could turn on how Asian American and Latino voters choose to cast votes, as these two groups are more undecided than non-Hispanic white voters and Black voters.”

Schiff placed first among Asian voters (27%), followed by Porter (11%), Lee (10%) and Garvey (5%). Among Latino voters, Porter placed first (19%), trailed by Garvey (16%) and Schiff (14%) — all of which were within the margin of error.

Garvey, a former first baseman and National League MVP, is not winning Dodgers fans’ votes, suggesting his strategy of emphasizing his Dodgers experience is not working. Researchers asked likely voters which California team is their favorite: Schiff led among Dodgers fans with 29%, while Garvey had 16% of the vote from Dodgers fans and Porter 15% — a statistical tie for second. That is effectively the same vote support for these three candidates among all likely voters in the state.

“The battle for first place and second place is not really decided. All candidates have room to grow if they can persuade independent voters,” Grose said. “These results show a Senate race that is in flux. California voters are just now tuning in, and many have yet to make up their minds. Schiff, followed by Porter and Garvey tied, have work to do between now and Election Day.”

Voters’ opinions on presidential candidates, state policies

In addition to the Senate race, the poll surveyed voters’ opinions on the U.S. presidential election and several current and past state ballot measures.

President Joe Biden (52%) leads former President Donald Trump (25%) by a wide margin with the numerous third-party candidates receiving about 20% of the total vote.

The poll also found that most voters blame the decade-old Proposition 47 — which raised the threshold for a theft to be considered a felony — for the rash of “smash and grab” thefts in California. Among likely voters, 52% “definitely” believe Proposition 47 caused an increase in petty thefts, while an additional 19% say the law “somewhat” caused a rise in smash and grabs.

Additional poll results include:

• Incumbent George Gascón leads a crowded field for the March primary election for Los Angeles County district attorney, but his approval ratings show potential weakness: 24% of L.A. County voters approve of the job Gascón is doing as district attorney, while more than half of likely voters (51%) disapprove.
• California voters have strong views on housing. A majority (58%) agree with the state’s decision to sue localities to build more housing. A very large majority of Californians (74%) support the “friend of court” brief filed by the California State Association of Counties to make it easier for states to remove homeless encampments in public spaces, while only 17% oppose. Gov. Gavin Newsom also has supported this position before the U.S. Supreme Court in the yet-to-be-decided Grants Pass case.
• Proposition 1, the Behavioral Health Services Program and Bond Measure that changes how existing funds are allocated for mental health and substance abuse challenges, is supported by 66% of likely voters. Newsom this week rolled out a campaign to support the ballot initiative, which is on the March 5 ballot.
• A large majority (71%) support keeping an existing law that prohibits new oil and gas wells near schools, homes or hospitals; 20% support a ballot initiative to get rid of that restriction on oil and gas well construction.

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More about the California Elections and Policy Poll: The poll of 1,416 likely voters was conducted from Jan. 21 to Jan. 29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. The Center for Urban Politics and Policy at Cal State Long Beach sponsored the poll in collaboration with USC researchers. In addition to Grose, the poll was conducted by CSULB Assistant Professor Matthew Mendez Garcia, Cal Poly Pomona Assistant Professor Jarred Cuellar and Raquel Centeno, a doctoral student at USC Dornsife. Garcia and Cuellar earned their doctorates at USC and were students of Grose.

Voters were randomly sampled from the California voter file, ensuring representativeness of the state’s voters. Voters were screened for those who said they were “extremely likely” or “somewhat likely” to vote. To ensure representativeness of the electorate, researchers recruited an oversample of Asian American, Black and Latino voters. Survey weights that are standard in the field were used to adjust the full sample, including these oversamples, to be representative of the California electorate. The survey was fielded in both English and Spanish.

 

Nemo can count!

Clownfish count stripes to distinguish friend from foe

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE COMPANY OF BIOLOGISTS

Nemo, the small animated fish, is an icon, snuggled up with his father in an anemone. And Pixar would have you believe that anemonefish life is generally peaceful and tranquil. But the myth belies reality. Anemonefish (also known as clownfish) are feisty little creatures, enthusiastically defending their anemone homes from intruders. And while it is sometimes fine to share with anemonefish of other species, it is never cool to cohabit with intruders of their own species: they always receive the frostiest reception. So how do anemonefish tell members of their own species apart from other stripy fish? According to Kina Hayashi from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, anemonefish species that live in the same locations tend to have a wide range of stripy patterns – from three vertical white bars to none. Might anemonefish be able to count the number of white bands on other fish’s bodies to distinguish friend from foe? Kina Hayashi and colleagues publish the amazing discovery that common clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) can count in Journal of Experimental Biology.

To find out, Hayashi, Noah Locke and Vincent Laudet raised a school of young Nemos, common clownfish, from eggs, to ensure that the fish had never set eyes on other species of anemonefish. Once the youngsters were ~6 months old, Hayashi filmed their reactions to other anemonefish species – including Clarke’s anemonefish (A. clarkii), orange skunk clownfish (A. sandaracinos) and saddleback clownfish (A. polymnus) – as well as intruders of their own species, to find out how they responded. Sure enough, the common clownfish gave members of their own species, with three white bands, the hardest time, facing off against 80% of the fish for up to 3 s and even maintaining an 11 s standoff with one fish. In contrast, the intruders of other species had an easier time: the orange skunk clownfish – with no side bars and a white line along its back – got off the lightest and were barely confronted, while the Clarke’s clown fish and saddleback clownfish – with two and three white bars, respectively – were mildly bullied. ‘Common clownfish… attacked their own species most frequently’, says Hayashi. But how were the clownfish distinguishing between members of their own species and others?

This time, the team isolated small shoals (three fish) of young common clownfish in individual tanks and then filmed the fish’s reactions to either a plain orange fish model or models painted with one, two or three white bands, keeping a tally of how often the fish bit and chased the offending intruder. Sure enough, the young clownfish paid little attention to the plain orange model, similar to the lack of interest they had shown in the orange skunk clownfish, whereas they nipped and pursued the model with a single bar from time to time. However, they really turned up the pressure on the three-striped models; they did not like sharing space with the three-barred strangers that look like themselves. And the two-striped models also came in for a bullying. Hayashi suggests that the clownfish’s aversion to fish with two bars could relate to their development. Common clownfish initially form two white stripes at ~11 days of age before gaining the third 3 days later. She suspects that clownfish that grow up with other two-striped youngsters could see fish with two white bars as competitors to be chased away.

So, young common clownfish that make their homes in anemones can distinguish species that pose a threat from those that do not based on the number of white bars on the fish’s sides. This allows them to defend their abode from intruders that might try to evict them, while paying less attention to fish of other species that have little interest in setting up home in their anemone residence.

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IF REPORTING THIS STORY, PLEASE MENTION JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY AS THE SOURCE AND, IF REPORTING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A LINK TO: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.246357

REFERENCE: Hayashi, K., Locke, N. J. M. and Laudet, V. (2024). Counting Nemo: anemonefish Amphiprion ocellaris identify species by number of white bars. J. Exp. Biol. 227, jeb246357 doi:10.1242/jeb.246357

DOI: 10.1242/jeb.246357

This article is posted on this site to give advance access to other authorised media who may wish to report on this story. Full attribution is required and if reporting online a link to https://journals.biologists.com/jeb is also required. The story posted here is COPYRIGHTED. Advance permission is required before any and every reproduction of each article in full from permissions@biologists.com.

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Experimental Biology

DOI

10.1242/jeb.246357 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Counting Nemo: anemonefish Amphiprion ocellaris identify species by number of white bars.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Feb-2024

 

Permafrost alone holds back Arctic rivers — and a lot of carbon

As the Arctic thaws, expanding rivers could unleash carbon equal to millions of cars.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

 

IMAGE: 

DARTMOUTH RESEARCHERS SET OUT TO UNDERSTAND WHY ARCTIC WATERSHEDS TEND TO HAVE LESS RIVER AREA THAN WATERSHEDS IN WARMER CLIMATES. FIRST AUTHOR JOANMARIE DEL VECCHIO (PICTURED) CONCEIVED OF THE STUDY WHILE CONDUCTING FIELDWORK IN ALASKA AFTER SHE HIKED UPHILL FROM HER RIVERSIDE WORKSITE AND BEHELD A VISTA OF SHEER MOUNTAIN SLOPES UNBROKEN BY RIVERS OR STREAMS.

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CREDIT: MULU FRATKIN

New research from Dartmouth provides the first evidence that the Arctic’s frozen soil is the dominant force shaping Earth’s northernmost rivers. Permafrost, the thick layer of soil that stays frozen for two or more years at a time, is the reason that Arctic rivers are uniformly confined to smaller areas and shallower valleys than rivers to the south, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But permafrost also is an increasingly fragile reservoir of vast amounts of carbon. As climate change weakens Artic permafrost, the researchers calculate that every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) of global warming could release as much carbon as 35 million cars emit in a year as polar waterways expand and churn up the thawing soil.

"The whole surface of the Earth is in a tug of a war between processes such as hillslopes that smooth the landscape and forces like rivers that carve them up," said first author Joanmarie Del Vecchio, who led the study as a Neukom Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth with her advisers and study co-authors Marisa Palucis, an assistant professor of earth sciences, and engineering professor Colin Meyer.

"We understand the physics on a fundamental level, but when things start freezing and thawing, it's hard to predict which side is going to win," Del Vecchio said. "If hillslopes win, they're going to bury all that carbon trapped in the soil. But if things get warm and suddenly river channels start to win, we're going to see a large amount of carbon get released into the atmosphere. That will likely create this warming feedback loop that leads to the release of more greenhouse gases."

The researchers set out to understand why Arctic watersheds — the total drainage area of a river and its connected waterways — tend to have less river area than watersheds in warmer climates, which can have extensive tributaries that spread over the landscape. Del Vecchio, now a visiting scholar at Dartmouth and an assistant professor at the College of William and Mary, conceived of the study in 2019 while conducting fieldwork in Alaska. She hiked uphill from her riverside worksite and beheld a vista of sheer mountain slopes unbroken by rivers or streams.

"It seemed like the hillslopes were winning and the channels were losing," Del Vecchio said. "We wanted to test whether it was temperature shaping this landscape. We're very lucky to have had the amount of surface and digital elevation data that's been produced in the past few years. We couldn't have done this study a few years ago."

The researchers examined the depth, topography, and soil conditions for more than 69,000 watersheds across the Northern Hemisphere — from just above the Tropic of Cancer to the North Pole — using satellite and climate data. They measured the percentage of land each river's channel network occupies within its watershed, as well as the steepness of river valleys.

Forty-seven percent of the analyzed watersheds are shaped by permafrost. Compared to temperate watersheds, their river valleys are deeper and steeper and about 20% less of their surrounding landscape is occupied by channels. These similarities are despite any differences in glacial history, background topographic steepness, annual precipitation, and other factors that would otherwise govern the push and pull of water and land, the researchers report. Arctic watersheds are shaped by the one thing they have in common — permafrost.

"Any way we sliced it, regions with larger, more plentiful river channels are warmer with a higher average temperature and less permafrost," Del Vecchio said. "You need a lot more water to carve valleys in areas with permafrost."

Permafrost's power to limit the footprint of Arctic rivers also allows it to store vast amounts of carbon in the frozen earth, according to the study. To estimate the carbon that would be released from these watersheds due to climate change, the researchers combined the amount of carbon stored in permafrost with the soil erosion that would result as the ground thaws and is washed away as Arctic rivers spread.

Research suggests that the Arctic has warmed by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, or roughly since 1850, Del Vecchio said. Scientists estimate that a gradual thawing of Artic permafrost could release between 22 billion and 432 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2100 if current greenhouse gas emissions are reined in — and as much as 550 billion tons if they are not, she said. The International Energy Agency estimates that energy consumption in 2022 spewed more than 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, an all-time high.

The Arctic has been adapted to the cold for so long that scientists have little idea of how much, or how fast, carbon will be released if permafrost thaws on an accelerated timescale, said Palucis, whose research group uses the Arctic as a stand-in for Mars to study the Red Planet's surface processes. "While the Arctic has experienced warming in the past, the scary thing is how rapidly it's occurring now. The landscape must respond quickly and that can be traumatic," she said.

Palucis recalled a research trip to the Arctic when she saw a chunk of bedrock the size of a small building break off from a cliff. The culprit of the cleaving was a small stream of water that had seeped into the rock and weakened it.

"This is a landscape that is adapted to colder conditions, so when you change it, even a small amount of water flowing through rock is sufficient to cause substantial change," Palucis said.

"Our understanding of Arctic landscapes is more or less where we were with temperate landscapes 100 years ago," she said. "This study is an important first step in showing that the models and theories we have for temperate watersheds just can't be applied to polar regions. It's a whole new set of doors to go through in terms of understanding these landscapes."

Sediment cores collected from the Arctic have shown extensive soil runoff and carbon deposits roughly 10,000 years ago, suggesting a much warmer region than exists now, Del Vecchio said. Today, areas such as Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic United States that are just south of the farthest reach of the Ice Age glaciers portend the modern Arctic's future.

"We have some evidence from the past that a lot of sediment was released into the ocean when there was warming," Del Vecchio said. "And now we have a snapshot from our paper showing the Arctic will get more water channels as it gets warmer. But none of that is the same as saying, 'This is what happens when you take a cold landscape and turn up the temperature real fast.' I don't think we know how it will change."

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2307072120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Imaging analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Permafrost extent sets drainage density in the Arctic

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Feb-2024

 

Why are people climate change deniers?

University of Bonn and IZA study reveals unexpected results

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BONN

 

IMAGE: 

MORE DROUGHT, MORE HOT WEATHER, MORE TORRENTIAL RAIN AS IN THE PICTURE DEPICTING THE AHR VALLEY FLOOD IN GERMANY IN 2021: DESPITE THESE SIGNS, MANY PEOPLE QUESTION THE EXISTENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE OR REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT IT IS CAUSED PRIMARILY BY HUMAN ACTIVITY.

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CREDIT: PHOTO: VOLKER LANNERT/UNIVERSITY OF BONN

Do climate change deniers bend the facts to avoid having to modify their environmentally harmful behavior? Researchers from the University of Bonn and the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) ran an online experiment involving 4,000 US adults, and found no evidence to support this idea. The authors of the study were themselves surprised by the results. Whether they are good or bad news for the fight against global heating remains to be seen. The study is being published in the journal Nature Climate Change. STRICTLY EMBARGOED: Do not publish before Friday, February 02, 11 a.m. CET!

A surprisingly large number of people still downplay the impact of climate change or deny that it is primarily a product of human activity. But why? One hypothesis is that these misconceptions are rooted in a specific form of self-deception, namely that people simply find it easier to live with their own climate failings if they do not believe that things will actually get all that bad. “We call this thought process ‘motivated reasoning,’” says Professor Florian Zimmermann, an economist at the University of Bonn and Research Director at IZA.

Motivated reasoning helps us to justify our behavior. For instance, someone who flies off on holiday several times a year can give themselves the excuse that the plane would still be taking off without them, or that just one flight will not make any difference, or—more to the point—that nobody has proven the existence of human-made climate change anyway. All these patterns of argument are examples of motivated reasoning. Bending the facts until it allows us to maintain a positive image of ourselves while maintaining our harmful behavior.

Self-deception to preserve a positive self-image

But what role does this form of self-deception play in how people think about climate change? Previously, there had been little scientific evidence produced to answer the question. The latest study has now closed this knowledge gap—and has thrown up some unexpected results. Zimmermann and his colleague Lasse Stötzer ran a series of online experiments, using a representative sample of 4,000 US adults.

At the center of the experiments was a donation worth $20. Participants were allocated at random to one of two groups. The members of the first group were able to split the $20 between two organizations, both of which were committed to combating climate change. By contrast, those in the second group could decide to keep the $20 for themselves instead of giving it away and would then actually receive the money at the end. “Anyone keeping hold of the donation needs to justify it to themselves,” says Zimmermann, who is also a member of the ECONtribute Cluster of Excellence, the Collaborative Research Center Transregio 224 and the Transdisciplinary Research Area “Individuals & Societies” at the University of Bonn. “One way to do that is to deny the existence of climate change.”

As it happened, nearly half of those in the second group decided to hold on to the money. The researchers now wanted to know whether these individuals would justify their decision retrospectively by repudiating climate change. The two groups had been put together at random. Without “motivated reasoning,” therefore, they should essentially share a similar attitude to human-made global heating. If those who kept the money for themselves justified their actions through self-deception, however, then their group should exhibit greater doubt over climate change. “Yet we didn’t see any sign of that effect,” Zimmermann reveals.

Climate change denial: a hallmark of one’s identity?

This finding was also borne out in two further experiments. “In other words, our study didn’t give us any indications that the widespread misconceptions regarding climate change are due to this kind of self-deception,” says Zimmermann, summing up his work. On the face of it, this is good news for policymakers, because the results could mean that it is indeed possible to correct climate change misconceptions, simply by providing comprehensive information. If people are bending reality, by contrast, then this approach is very much a non-starter.

Zimmermann advises to be cautious, however: “Our data does reveal some indications of a variant of motivated reasoning, specifically that denying the existence of human-made global heating forms part of the political identity of certain groups of people.” Put another way, some people may to an extent define themselves by the very fact that they do not believe in climate change. As far as they are concerned, this way of thinking is an important trait that sets them apart from other political groups, and thus they are likely to simply not care what researchers have to say on the topic.

Institutions involved and funding secured:

The University of Bonn and the Institute on Behaviour and Inequality (briq) were involved in the study. briq is now part of the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). The work was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01910-2 

ARTICLE TITLE

A Representative Survey Experiment of Motivated Climate Change Denial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Feb-2024

 

Regulation makes crypto markets more efficient

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

First-of-its-kind research on cryptocurrency finds that the most regulated coins create the most efficient markets.

That crypto regulation, often provided by cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, can also help protect investors by providing reliable, public information.

“Both small and institutional investors should know, if they invest in coins without any regulation, they may suffer from price manipulation or a severe lack of insider information,” said Liangfei Qiu, a University of Florida professor of business and one of the authors of the new study.

“Instead, they may want to invest in coins listed with platforms that provide some vetted information, which serves as a kind of minimal regulation that protects investors and makes markets more efficient,” he said.

The study is the first to look at how regulation affects the efficiency of cryptocurrency markets. Researchers analyzed a suite of cryptocurrency offerings – from essentially unregulated ICOs, or initial coin offerings, to exchanges setting and enforcing their own rules – and compared the digital currencies to traditional stock exchanges, which are highly regulated by government.

Unregulated ICOs were the least efficient. But initial exchange offerings, another crypto offering known as IEOs, were nearly as efficient as traditional stock initial public offerings, or IPOs. In IEOs, the exchanges set minimum standards and rules and commit to providing investors with trustworthy information about the value of the cryptocurrency.

The exchange-based regulation is entirely voluntary, but could provide guidance to lawmakers who are increasingly interested in providing some crypto regulation to the still-emerging markets.

“If policymakers want to make sure that the market runs well, they need to provide some structure to promote regulation,” Qiu said.

To assess the efficiency of the stocks and cryptocurrencies, Qiu’s team analyzed their variance ratios, a measure of how predictable the future price of an asset is. Economists have long held that future prices of assets are essentially unpredictable – so long as everyone has the same information about the underlying value of those assets. Market inefficiencies, such as insider knowledge, can start to distort the prices, usually at the expense of investors who are out of the loop.

Qiu collaborated with fellow UF Warrington College of Business professors Mahendrarajah Nimalendran and Praveen Pathak and his former doctoral student Mariia Petryk, now a professor of business at George Mason University. Their study is forthcoming in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Informational Efficiency of Cryptocurrency Markets

 

US prescription drug prices are 2.78 times those in other wealthy nations

US pays more for name-brand drugs, less for generics

Reports and Proceedings

RAND CORPORATION

Prescription drug prices in the U.S. are significantly higher than in other nations, with prices in the U.S. averaging 2.78 times those seen in 33 other nations, according to a new RAND report.

 

The gap between prices in the U.S. and other countries is even larger for brand-named drugs, with U.S. prices averaging 4.22 times those in comparison nations. 

 

The RAND study found that prices for unbranded generic drugs -- which account for 90% of prescription volume in the U.S. -- are about 67% of the average cost in the comparison nations.

 

The new report updates findings from earlier RAND analysis about U.S. drug prices. That analysis compared 2018 manufacturer gross drug prices in the U.S. with other nations using a price index approach.

 

The new report uses updated information through 2022. It also includes additional analysis that focuses on price comparisons for biosimilars and changes in price comparison results over time.

 

“These findings provide further evidence that manufacturers’ gross prices for prescription drugs are higher in the U.S. than in comparison countries,” said Andrew Mulcahy, lead author of the study and a senior health economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “We find that the gap is widening for name-brand drugs, while U.S. prices for generic drugs are now proportionally lower than our earlier analysis found.”

 

The RAND analysis provides the most up-to-date estimates of how much higher drug prices are in the U.S. compared to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

 

Researchers calculated price indexes under a wide range of methodological decisions. While some sensitivity analyses lowered the differences between U.S. prices compared to those in other nations, under all the scenarios examined overall prescription drug prices remained substantially higher in the U.S.

 

The analysis used manufacturer gross prices for drugs because net prices -- the amounts ultimately retained by manufacturers after negotiated rebates and other discounts are applied -- are not systematically available. Even after adjusting U.S. prices downward to account for these discounts, U.S. prices for brand name drugs remained more than  three times higher than those in other countries.

 

RAND researchers compiled their estimates by examining industry standard IQVIA MIDAS data on drug sales and volume for 2022, comparing the U.S. to 33 OECD nations. The data include most prescription drugs sold in the U.S. and comparison countries.

 

Across all 33 comparison countries, U.S. drug prices ranged from 1.72 times the prices in Mexico to 10.28 times prices in Turkey.

 

Researchers estimated that across all of the OECD nations studied, total drug spending was $989 billion in 2022. The U.S. accounted for 62% of sales, but just 24% of the volume.

 

Recent estimates are that prescription drug spending in the U.S. accounts for more than 10% of all health care spending. Retail prescription drug spending in the U.S. increased by 91% between 2000 and 2020, and that spending is expected to increase by 5% annually through 2030.

 

The study was sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

 

The report, “International Prescription Drug Price Comparisons Estimates: Using 2022 Data,” is available on the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and on www.rand.org.  

 

Other authors of the report are Daniel Schwam and Susan L. Lovejoy.

 

RAND Health Care promotes healthier societies by improving health care systems in the United States and other countries. 

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DOI

10.7249/RRA788-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

International Prescription Drug Price Comparisons Estimates Using 2022 Data

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Feb-2024

 

Prehistoric mobility among Tibetan farmers, herders shaped highland settlement patterns, cultural interaction, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

 

IMAGE: 

SIMULATED “MOBILITY HIGHWAYS” OF FARMER-HERDER INTERACTIONS OVERLAID WITH THE GEOLOCATED ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES DATED BETWEEN CA. 3600 AND 2200 BEFORE PRESENT (CREDIT: X. CHEN)

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CREDIT: XINZHOU CHEN

The 1 million-square-mile Tibetan Plateau — often called the “roof of the world” — is the highest landmass in the world, averaging 14,000 feet in altitude. Despite the extreme environment, humans have been permanent inhabitants there since prehistoric times.

Farming and herding play major roles in the economy of the Tibetan Plateau today — as they have throughout history. To make the most of a difficult environment, farmers, agropastoralists and mobile herders interact and move in conjunction with one another, which in turn shapes the overall economy and cultural geography of the plateau.  

A new study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Sichuan University in China, published Feb. 2 in Scientific Reports, traces the roots of the longstanding cultural interactions across the Tibetan Plateau to prehistoric times, as early as the Bronze Age.  

The researchers used advanced geospatial modeling to compare environmental and archaeological evidence that connects ancient mobility and subsistence strategies to cultural connections forged among farmers and herders in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Their findings show that these strategies influenced the settlement pattern and the transfer of ceramic styles — such as the materials used, characteristics and decorative features of the pottery — among distant prehistoric communities across the plateau.

The research was an enormous undertaking made possible thanks to advances in geospatial data analysis and high-resolution remote sensing, according to Michael Frachetti, a professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at WashU and corresponding author of the study.

First, the researchers generated simulations of the optimal pathways of mobility used by prehistoric farmers and herders based on land cover and capacity of the environment to support the needs of their crops or herds. For example, highland herders typically move across zones with rich grass resources toward the more limited arable niches on the plateau. Repeated patterns emerging from these simulations were shown to statistically correlate with the geographic location of thousands of prehistoric sites across the Tibetan Plateau.

To test how these routes may have affected social interaction, the team compiled a large database of published archaeological findings from Bronze and Iron Age sites throughout Tibet and generated a social network based on shared technologies and designs of the ceramics found in these sites. The resulting social network suggests that even distant sites were well connected and in communication thousands of years ago across the Tibetan landmass. 

“When we overlay the mobility maps with the social network, we see a strong correlation between routes for subsistence-oriented mobility and strong ties in material culture between regional communities, suggesting the emergence of ‘mobility highways’ over centuries of use,” Frachetti said. “This not only tells us that people were moving according to needs for farming and herding — which was largely influenced by environmental potential — but that mobility was key for building social relationships and the regional character of ancient communities on the Tibetan Plateau.” 

Their findings also revealed an interesting caveat: The western part of Tibet did not match these patterns as well as the east. According to the authors, this suggests an alternative cultural orientation toward Central Asia, where similar mobility patterns connected prehistoric communities to the west. These east/west differences have been observed in other archaeological studies, they said.

“Archaeologists have been seeking to understand how and why ancient human communities build social relationships and cultural identities across the extreme terrain in Tibet for decades,” said lead author Xinzhou Chen, who earned his doctorate from WashU in 2023 and now works at the Center for Archaeological Sciences at Sichuan University. “This research provides a new perspective to explore the formation of human social cohesion in archaeology.”

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Geospatial modelling of farmer-herder interactions maps cultural geography of Bronze and Iron Age Tibet, 3600-2200 BP

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Feb-2024