Over the last decade, there has been increased interest in understanding the design (i.e., content) of regulation as a basis for studying regulation formation, implementation, and outcomes. Within ...this line of research, scholars have been particularly interested in investigating regulatory dynamics relating to features and patterns of regulatory text and have engaged a variety of methodological approaches to support their assessments. One approach featured in this research is the Institutional Grammar (IG). The IG supports syntactic and semantic analyses of institutional statements (e.g., regulatory provisions) that embed within regulatory text. A recently revised version—called the IG 2.0—further supports robust analyses of regulatory text by offering an expanded feature set particularly well‐suited to extracting and classifying content relevant for the study of regulation. This paper (i) provides a brief introduction to the IG 2.0 and (ii) discusses theoretical and analytical advantages of using the IG 2.0 to study regulation.
Public affairs scholars have contributed rich insights on the role and outcomes of institutions in policy and administrative settings. They have offered numerous empirical studies of these topics, ...alongside concepts and theories that can be leveraged in their assessment. But there remains a relative dearth in attention to approaches that can be used to support rigorous assessments of institutional design itself—those that support reliable and nuanced representations of institutional structure and meaning. The Institutional Grammar (IG) is one such approach that has gained in prominence over the last decade. Existing applications validate the IG's utility toward rigorous assessments of institutional design, and highlight the IG's value in operationalizing concepts relevant in policy and administration scholarship. We build on existing IG research by presenting a revised specification IG 2.0 for encoding and analyzing institutional design that responds to representational necessities and analytical opportunities within and beyond policy and administrative domains.
Within existing regulatory scholarship, limited attention is given to whether and how meso-level, or group, characteristics shape compliance. We advance understanding of meso-level regulatory ...dynamics by assessing how the composition of regulated groups shapes overall compliance levels within a regulated system, as well as compliance trends among system participants. Specifically, we employ agent-based modeling as a tool suited to understanding emergent behaviors to assess how variation in the social value orientations of farmers participating in the United States’ voluntary organic farming regulatory program may shape aggregate and sub-group compliance. We also assess how variation in sanctioning shapes compliance outcomes, shedding light on the interaction between participant motivation and sanctioning mechanisms. We conclude that, for compliance outcomes, the former is more decisive than the latter. The modeling exercise draws on an institutional grammar coding of regulatory design, survey, and interview data. In addition to reporting findings from the modeling exercise in the context of the organic farming regulatory domain, the paper offers insights about leveraging diverse forms of data to inform agent-based modeling, which is particularly appropriate for studying institutional (e.g., policy) and related behavioral dynamics in any governed setting.
Nonlinear regression plays a significant role as a method of analysis in different fields like statistics and simulations. While many researches focus on improving technical issues in the processes ...of nonlinear fitting, the absence of preprocessing, model selection, and validation is causing technical problems in various fields, i.e., statistical analysis and simulation methods. This work introduces a Python package named Copatrec, which facilitates preprocessing of data (i.e., data cleaning, standardization, and outlier detection), nonlinear model selection (from a group of complex behaviors’ mathematical expressions), and validation (by returning a result object that contains validation metrics and visualization functions), as observed in diverse scientific fields, including human-related sciences (e.g., social, political, economics, psychology, and health), and engineering fields like computer science (e.g., computer vision), electrical engineering, as well as fundamental science like physics and chemistry, where a precise characterization of the nonlinear relationship is central to the analytical outcome.
This Symposium features research that engages an institutional analysis approach, called the Institutional Grammar. Institutional analysis is the study of rules, norms, and strategies (e.g., public ...policies, organizational bylaws, social conventions) that govern social systems and organizations. The Institutional Grammar is an approach for comprehensively capturing the design of institutions; in particular, for describing the language of directives that comprise them. We posit that the engagement of the Institutional Grammar in public administration research can advance understanding of institutional dynamics of administrative settings and behaviors by lending conceptual and methodological clarity on the definition and measurement of institutions. In support of this position, we (i) provide a brief commentary on institutional analysis in public administration research; (ii) offer a brief overview of the Institutional Grammar; and (iii) highlight how methodological innovations presented in the Symposium articles advance the Institutional Grammar, and present opportunities for advancing institutional analysis in administrative settings.
This article introduces the special issue of the International Review of Public Policy devoted to “Exploring Institutional Dynamics with the Institutional Grammar”. In doing so, it: (i) provides a ...brief introduction to the Institutional Grammar as an increasingly prominent tool for the study of institutions that govern social systems, such as public policies and social conventions; (ii) describes evolving trends in Institutional Grammar research reflected in and beyond the papers included in the issue; and (iii) discusses analytical trade-offs associated with these trends, with specific reference to special issue papers. This introduction to the special issue thus contextualizes the research presented in the issue, while also offering insights and guidance regarding the ongoing use and development of the Institutional Grammar.
Single-agent topotecan (TOPO) and combination topotecan and cyclophosphamide (TOPO/CTX) were compared in a phase II randomized trial in relapsed/refractory neuroblastoma. Because responders often ...underwent further therapies, novel statistical methods were required to compare the long-term outcome of the two treatments.
Children with refractory/recurrent neuroblastoma (only one prior aggressive chemotherapy regimen) were randomly assigned to daily 5-day topotecan (2 mg/m(2)) or combination topotecan (0.75 mg/m(2)) and cyclophosphamide (250 mg/m(2)). A randomized two-stage group sequential design enrolled 119 eligible patients. Toxicity and response were estimated. Long-term outcome of protocol therapy was assessed using novel methods-causal inference-which allowed adjustment for the confounding effect of off-study therapies.
Seven more responses were observed for TOPO/CTX (complete response CR plus partial response PR, 18 32% of 57) than TOPO (CR+PR, 11 19% of 59;P = .081); toxicity was similar. At 3 years, progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were 4% +/- 2% and 15% +/- 4%, respectively. PFS was significantly better for TOPO/CTX (P = .029); there was no difference in OS. Older age at diagnosis and lack of MYCN amplification predicted increased OS (P < .05). Adjusting for randomized treatment effect and subsequent autologous stem-cell transplantation, there was no difference between TOPO and TOPO/CTX in terms of the proportion alive at 2 years.
TOPO/CTX was superior to TOPO in terms of PFS, but there was no OS difference. After adjustment for subsequent therapies, no difference was detected in the proportion alive at 2 years. Causal inference methods for assessing long-term outcomes of phase II therapies after subsequent treatment can elucidate effects of initial therapies.
In this paper, we investigate the effects of different characteristics of apprenticeship programmes both in historical and contemporary societies. Apprenticeship is one of the major means to transfer ...skills in a society. We considerfive societies: the old Britain system (AD1300s−1600s), the British East India Company (AD 1600s − 1800s), Armenian merchants of New-Julfa (AD 1600s − 1700s), contemporary German apprenticeship (1990s), and the "Modern Apprenticeship" in Britain (2001). In comparing these systems, using an agent-based simulationmodel, we identified six characteristics which impact the success of an apprenticeship programme in a society, which we measured by considering three parameters, namely the number of skilled agents produced by the apprenticeships, programme completion, and the contribution of programmes to the Gross Domestic Income (GDI) of the society. We investigate different definitions for success of an apprenticeship and some hypothetical societies to test some common beliefs about apprenticeships' performance. The simulations suggest that a) it is better to invest in a public educational system rather than subsidising private contractors to train apprentices, b) having a higher completion ratio for apprenticeship programme does not necessarily result in a higher contribution in the GDI, and c) governors (e.g. mayors or government) that face significant emigration should also consider employing policies that persuade apprentices to complete their programme and stay in the society after completion to improve apprenticeship efficacy.
Comic Strip Narratives in Time Geography Moore, Antoni B.; Nowostawski, Mariusz; Frantz, Christopher ...
ISPRS international journal of geo-information,
07/2018, Letnik:
7, Številka:
7
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
On the basis of a shared emphasis on time as well as space, this paper argues for introducing elements of comic art into cartography, specifically the mapped comic, with an illustrated strip ...literally plotted and placed in a 3D time geographic virtual world. This approach is situated within current initiatives regarding the relationship between cartography and art, given that comics are a type of sequential art. Two examples demonstrate that the approach succeeds as a way of representing the geometry of a story without compromising emotional content. Comic conventions neatly package narrative geography for visual deployment. An example demonstrating the expressiveness of comic art principles when applied to maps (maps as comics) is discussed.
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