bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conceptual and Ethical Issues in the Prodromal Phase of Psychosis
Authors: Broome Matthew , Fusar-Poli Paolo , Wuyts Philippe
Published: January 2014

Our focus in this chapter is to address some of the philosophical issues that arise in the scientific and clinical study of the prodromal phase of psychosis. We discuss issues from both metaphysics and philosophy of science as we all as those related to phenomenological approaches and clinical ethics. A clear challenge arises in considering how models of a continuum of psychosis and of schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmental disorder can be reconciled with a scientific understanding of the prodrome as a discrete constellation of signs and symptoms. Clinical and research work on the prodromal stage of psychosis also highlights ethical concerns. Demarcating a mental disorder and applying therapeutic interventions, based solely on risk estimation, should not be carried out lightly.
Understanding Mania and Depression
Authors: Ghaemi S. Nassir
Published: January 2014

Mania is a mental state centrally characterized by psychomotor activation, creativity, and lack of insight. It is biologically based, and primarily characterized by psychomotor activation, with mood changes being secondary and epiphenomenal. Mania may be diagnostically central to all mood illnesses, including depressive conditions. Mania enhances creativity, and in its milder forms, such as cyclothymic or hyperthymic temperaments, has many positive aspects, reflected in social benefits and historical achievements. Lack of insight impairs the self-understanding of the person with manic symptoms, and is an important clinical problem. Psychoanalytic and postmodernist approaches fail to appreciate these important features of mania.
What is Addiction?
Authors: Sinnott-Armstrong Walter , Pickard Hanna
Published: January 2014

Variation in addiction suggests that a good definition will be précising: it should serve a purpose. The authors canvass the various purposes served by a definition of addiction in psychiatric, social, legal, economic, interpersonal and scientific contexts. They argue that addiction is a strong and habitual want that significantly reduces control and leads to significant harm. What counts as significant varies relative to purpose and context. The authors offer a basic account of the nature of control and how and why it can be reduced. The chapter explores the nature of harm and why it is part of the definition. And it concludes by suggesting that progress in understanding addiction depends on bearing in mind the various purposes and contexts of enquiry, together with the common-sense but often neglected point that both control and harm come in degrees.
Identity and Addiction
Authors: Flanagan Owen
Published: January 2014

Chapter 51 focuses on the subjective side of alcoholism, specifically about what memoirs of alcoholism teach about alcoholism, and argue that a common theme in many memoirs is that drinking, sometimes heavy drinking, a prerequisite of addiction, was modelled, endorsed, and eventually achieved in a way that involves deep identification, and also argues that alcoholic memoirs, even assuming that they suffer from objectivity problems such as the latter, nonetheless serve an important function, and not just whatever cathartic function they serve for the author.
Personal Identity and Identity Disorders
Authors: Clark Stephen R. L.
Published: January 2014

There are people where two or more personalities seem to have independent-and sometimes mutually forgetful-control of the same bodily individual. This chapter gives a brief account of the history of the diagnosis of "Multiple Personality Disorder" or (the more recent label) "Dissociative Identity Disorder", and the conflicting judgment of therapists, lawyers, and philosophers as to whether this is a real syndrome. It is suggested that the diagnosis may be therapeutically helpful for some other disturbances, including anorexia, even if it does not carry the strong metaphysical moral that some have supposed. The cases are of interest to philosophers as they purport to represent "real -life" difficulties for standard theories of "personal identity." The chapter argues that the diagnosis (and its rejection) depend on prior assumptions about such identity, and so don't easily confirm or rebut any available theory, including more ancient theories about demonic possession.
Introduction
Authors: Fulford K.W.M. , Davies Martin , Gipps Richard G.T. , Graham George , Sadler John Z. , Stanghellini Giovanni , Thornton Tim
Published: January 2014

This section concerns the question of how best to understand the scientific status of mental health care in general and psychiatry in particular. On the assumption that psychiatry is based, in part at least, on natural science, what is the nature or the general shape of that science? Some of the chapters aim at shedding light on component parts of a scientific world view: causation, explanation, natural kinds, models of medicine, etc. Others concern potentially fruitful scientific approaches to mental health care, drawing on brain imaging results, phenomenology, enactivism and what can be learnt from debate of the status of psychoanalysis. One overall lesson is that twenty-first-century psychiatry needs twenty-first-century philosophy of science.
The Medical Model and the Philosophy of Science
Authors: Murphy Dominic
Published: January 2014

This chapter sketches an account of psychiatric explanation with roots in contemporary philosophy of science and suggests that it is a natural fit with what it will call the strong interpretation of the medical model in psychiatry. The chapter starts by distinguishing between strong and minimal ways to understand the medical model before it moves on to talk about explanation. The basic idea of the chapter is that the logic of the medical model, together with recent developments in the sciences of the brain, suggests that psychiatry should be seen as a kind of cognitive neuroscience. The second part of the chapter discusses some issues in applying mechanistic explanatory models to mental disorders. Recent philosophical work on explanation in the cognitive neurosciences has seen it asmechanisticexplanation. A mechanistic explanation shows how components of a system interact to give rise to the phenomenon to be explained.
Reliability, Validity, and the Mixed Blessings of Operationalism
Authors: Haslam Nick
Published: January 2014

The concepts of reliability and validity are fundamental for evaluating psychiatric diagnosis, including the "operationalist" approach pioneered in DSM-III. This chapter explores the complexity of these psychometric concepts and their interrelations. Although reliability constrains validity it does not guarantee it, and pursuing reliability in diagnosis can reduce validity. It is widely believed that the operationalist emphasis on diagnostic reliability has compromised the validity of recent psychiatric classifications. In particular, writers have argued that the drive for atheoretical diagnostic criteria has come at the cost of phenomenological richness and psychodynamic complexity. This chapter argues that although the operationalist turn may have impaired the validity of psychiatric diagnosis in some respects, these criticisms must be balanced by an appreciation of its benefits. In addition, it is suggested that some criticisms rest on a misunderstanding of the goals of operational descriptions. They should be evaluated primarily on pragmatic grounds as identification procedures and judged on their success in serving epistemic and communicative functions. Operational descriptions should not be viewed as comprehensive definitions of clinical phenomena or judged on their failure to encompass the richness and complexity of mental disorders. A diagnostic system is best understood as an intentionally delimited instrument for enabling clinical inference and communication. In essence, it is a simplified pidgin with which clinicians who speak different first languages (theoretical orientations) can conduct their shared business.
Reduction and Reductionism in Psychiatry
Authors: Schaffner Kenneth F.
Published: January 2014

This chapter notes that reduction and reductionism in the sciences and in medicine mean a number of different things, and provides a typology of those different senses, including those of the most relevance to psychiatry. Alternatives to reductionism are discussed, including antireductionism (e.g., irreducibility of the mind to biology) and different forms of emergence. Specific examples of reductionist and emergentist programs tied to a range of psychiatric disorders are presented, including autism, depression, and schizophrenia. These programs are also related to ongoing attempts of psychiatry to secure the validity of disorders by appealing to genetics and neuroscience.
Diagnostic Prediction and Prognosis
Authors: Bishop Michael A. , Trout J. D.
Published: January 2014

Psychiatric diagnosis and prognosis is fraught with important philosophical and conceptual problems. This chapter focuses on some epistemological issues (What evidence justifies the belief that a course of treatment is effective?) and moral issues (What is a just distribution of scarce psychiatric resources given the many people with psychiatric conditions whose suffering could be alleviated with treatment?) that arise in contemporary psychiatric practice. It examines various clinical and actuarial techniques for psychiatric diagnosis, ordered very loosely in terms of how "structured" or "automated" they are (or, put another way, ordered according to how much freedom the individual clinician has in carrying out the diagnostic method). The chapter makes the case for assessing psychiatric treatments with controlled experiments, raises several epistemological dangers that arise from relying on uncontrolled investigations, and considers some of the unique methodological and ethical issues that arise when trying to assess talk therapy.
Understanding and Healing
Authors: Hopkins Jim
Published: January 2014

There is a tension in psychiatry between clinical and neurobiological approaches to mental disorder. The accounts provided by Freud and his successors, however, should not be taken as alternatives to a fuller neurobiological understanding, but rather as indicating paths we might take towards attaining one. The main mental disorders are rooted in emotional conflict, and these are conflicts to which the basic emotional regulatory systems that produce both behavior and consciousness are liable. These emotional conflicts, in turn, are rooted in evolution, together with the "moral" emotions that go awry in mental disorder as well. Although these claims are speculative they are increasingly sustained by evidence. Insofar as they are correct we should expect psychoanalysis and our future claims about the neurobiology of mental disorder to converge, at least within the limits set by their categories. Understanding mental disorder in this way is of a piece with understanding the irrationalities that are part of human nature, and we may hope to progress in both together.
Vernaculars and the Idea of a Standard Language
Authors: Linn Andrew
Published: January 2014

This chapter deals with the processes by which the European vernaculars gained prestige vis-à-vis Latin from the late Middle Ages onwards. It addresses the “idea” of a standard language and how this has been advanced by particular actors and institutions across Europe, focusing primarily on the period from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. It also considers whether standard languages are now outmoded concepts and suggests that we are now in a period characterized by destandardization.
Classical Influences
Authors: Burrow Colin
Published: January 2014

This chapter provides a narrative account of Shakespeare’s schooling in classical literature and the range of classical texts that influenced his poetry. It traces not just the evolution of Shakespeare’s relationship to classical writing, but the differing ways in which both the poems and the plays alert their readers to their classical sources. ‘Classical’ moments can be tagged as distinct from the surrounding works by the use of archaisms or neologisms (as in the speech on the death of Priam in Hamlet) or by a range of other lexical and theatrical framing devices. It is argued that Shakespeare’s use of these effects, which could be regarded as virtual quotation marks around many of his allusions to classical works, contributed in the longer term to his undeserved reputation as a playwright who lacked classical knowledge.
‘Grammar Rules’ in the Sonnets
Authors: Kolentsis Alysia
Published: January 2014

This chapter considers how the unique linguistic terrain of late 16th-century England—characterized by the changing status and structure of English, and new attention to the rules governing its use—informed the literary culture of the period. Focusing on the broad category of ‘grammar’, the chapter explores how Sidney and Shakespeare engage with the changing language in their sonnets. It suggests that Sidney’s witty appeals to the rules of grammar, and his experimentation on the border between classical and vernacular language, highlight the transitional linguistic resources available to late-century writers. Similarly, Shakespeare’s engagement with the shifting structure of the language points to a recognition of the rhetorical possibilities opened up by the distinctive linguistic climate of the age.
Philomela’s Marks
Authors: Wells Marion
Published: January 2014

This essay explores the significance of the mutual imbrication of ekphrasis and sexual violence in Shakespeare’s poetry. Beginning with a discussion of Philomela’s substitution of a woven picture (the teasingly opaque ‘purpureas notas’) for an oral account of violence in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I analyse Shakespeare’s revision of this foundational story in Titus Andronicus. Arguing that in Shakespeare’s work ekphrasis functions as a gendered site of contestation between image and word in which the feminine image is organized and contained by the masculine ‘noting’ of an artist figure, I consider how Shakespeare’s other extensive use of the Philomela story in Cymbeline clarifies this pattern. My final texts, The Rape of Lucrece and The Winter’s Tale, allow me to unpack more fully the function of ekphasis in drawing attention to the predication of poetic representation on the abjection of the female body.
‘Pretty Rooms’
Authors: McDonald Russ
Published: January 2014

I first propose a new context for examining the sonnets and then scrutinize some verbal features of the poems with that context in mind. The context is visual design in the second half of the 16th century: the cultural commitment to arrangement in Tudor England is visible in furniture, textiles, gardening, and to a certain degree in painting, but especially in architecture, particularly Elizabethan domestic architecture. The feature I analyse is a species of poetic ornament: literal and lexical forms of repetition. My aim is to identify the increasing devotion to order in Elizabethan visual culture with the manifest delight in patterning exhibited in Shakespeare’s sonnets and shared by all the imaginative writers of the period.
Shakespeare, Elegy, and Epitaph 1557–1640
Authors: Kerrigan John
Published: January 2014

Shakespeare is usually thought about—too compartmentally—as a dramatist, a sonneteer, and the author of two short long poems. As his career developed, however, he was also called upon to write elegies and epitaphs. This chapter locates and revisits a number of such poems, that hover at the edge of the canon, including the Stanley epitaphs at Tong, the lines on Shakespeare’s gravestone in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, and ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’. That extraordinary elegy-epitaph is returned to its place in Robert Chester’s Loves Martyr (1601), a volume with a Welsh context that highlights the role of memorial poetry in constituting Shakespeare’s authorial identity not just during his lifetime (as in certain of his sonnets) but posthumously, when elegies celebrating his achievement were published by such writers as Ben Jonson and Leonard Digges.
Shakespeare’s Dramatic Verse Line
Authors: Rokison Abigail
Published: January 2014

Using examples from Shakespeare’s early, middle, and late plays and from his Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories, this chapter charts developments and explores patterns in Shakespeare’s dramatic verse line across the genres and time span of his writing career. It examines incidences of end-stopping and enjambment, mid-line breaks, shared, short, and long verse lines, considering the ways in which these relate to the subject matter of scenes and may function as a means of reflecting a character’s emotional or mental state. The chapter draws on evidence from Renaissance prosodic accounts, printed texts, theatrical papers, and evidence relating to early modern theatre practice and considers the ways in which the features of the dramatic line are interpreted by modern theatre practitioners.
Shakespeare’s Late Style
Authors: Braunmuller A. R.
Published: January 2014

‘Shakespeare’s Late Style’ explores stylistic aspects of Shakespeare’s dramatic verse (and a little of the prose) in plays composed after Hamlet. It suggests that Dryden was among the first to recognize that Shakespeare’s style changed over time and seems to have thought that the style became less ‘pestered’ with ‘figurative expressions’ as the career advanced. Like most early commentators, however, Dryden left little detailed analysis to support his larger, often metaphorical, claims. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the features of Shakespeare’s style in the second half of his professional career, to explore the imaginative effect of those features, and to speculate on why these changes from his earlier plays might have occurred. One principal claim made in this chapter concerns the degree to which the dramatic verse is rooted in dramatic events and characters’ motivations and designs. Increasing abstraction in both thought and expression combine to create the distinctive quasi-allegorical qualities especially visible in the four or five plays last written by Shakespeare alone or in collaboration.
Shakespeare’s Loose Ends and the Contemporary Poet
Authors: Robinson Peter
Published: January 2014

‘Shakespeare’s Loose Ends and the Contemporary Poet’ contains detailed readings of individual poems with a Shakespearean theme by John Ashbery (‘Friar Laurence’s Cell’), Elizabeth Bishop (‘Twelfth Morning; or What You Will’), Roy Fisher (‘Barnardine’s Reply’), alongside passages from Geoffrey Hill’s ‘Funeral Music’ and The Triumph of Love, as well as observations about a number of other Shakespeare-inspired poems. It deploys them to sustain and illustrate an argument that contrasts with the noted attempts by earlier modernist poets such as Yeats, Eliot, Auden, and Ted Hughes to incorporate theories of Shakespeare’s organic creative unity into their oeuvres. Rather, this chapter proposes that it is the heterogeneity, the loose ends and frayed edges of the Shakespearean corpus that have inspired contemporary poets, prompting them to come at their own materials by means of the oblique angles provided by minor characters, such as Barnardine in Measure for Measure or the poet Cinna in Julius Ceasar, and less highly regarded plays, such as the early Henry VI cycle, finding thematic suggestions in implications that remain to be spelt-out in Shakespearean scenes, dialogues, and plot trajectories.
Shakespeare’s Style in the 1590s
Authors: Stanivukovic Goran
Published: January 2014

Shakespeare’s early style is explored from the angles of theory and dramatic practice, and in relation to the social and political contexts of the 1590s. Arguing that ornament and symmetry are the two distinct properties of Shakespeare’s early style, the essay discusses hyperbole, repetition, and parallelism as the most prominent features of that style. Claiming that Shakespeare’s use of bombast in the Henry VI trilogy and in Titus Andronicus is more sophisticated than Robert Greene and William Scott deemed it to be, the essay also explores the complex employment of symmetry, repetition and parallelism in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Richard III, and in the embedded sonnets in Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing. In conclusion, hyperbole is linked with the period’s colonial aspirations, demonstrated in a comparative analysis of Much Ado and Richard Hakluyt’s Principal nauigations.
The Conceptual Investigations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Authors: Schalkwyk David
Published: January 2014

This chapter begins with the question ‘Who is speaking in Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ in order to trace the ways in which the poems map the relationship between love and desire. It examines the use of personal pronouns to negotiate positions that lie between the historical situation of the sonnets’ composition and dissemination and the reader who appropriates their voice. ‘Love’ is the outcome of engagements among the voices that speak through the poems, to which they respond, that are embedded within them, and which they make available to the reader. The sonnets offer a conceptual account of love and its relation to desire through the specificities of their address, in which three defining characteristics stand out: love’s projective capacity (‘love sees not with the eyes but with the mind’); its essential debt to time as a constitutive medium (‘To giue full growth to that which still doth grow’); and its concern with the singularity or uniqueness of its object, which is itself a product of its projective imagination (‘you alone are you’).
Introduction
Authors: Roberson Quinetta M.
Published: January 2014

Diversity refers to differences among people. While such differences are characteristic of the human race, socio-cultural and economic trends have given rise to such variation in organizational workforces as well. To keep pace with society and the changing business environment, researchers across a number of disciplines have studied the phenomenon in an effort to understand its meaning, import, operation and consequences in organizations. The purpose of this chapter is to consider the environmental trends that have changed the composition of workforces and brought diversity to the forefront as an important management and research concern. In addition, it provides a tour of the structure of the volume and topics covered, which illustrate the diversity of this science and its application to work and organizations.
Moving Beyond a Categorical Approach to Diversity: The Role of Demographic Faultlines
Authors: Thatcher Sherry M. B.
Published: January 2014

Recent research has suggested a conciliation of the different approaches to conceptualizing diversity through a theory of group faultlines, which are dividing lines that may split a group into subgroups based on the alignment of demographic attributes. This chapter will discuss the theory underlying faultlines and the findings of research in this area. Further, it will argue for how multi-attribute conceptualizations of diversity may be used to more accurately represent complex interactions between people and allow for more appropriate tests of the effects of heterogeneity in groups. This chapter concludes with a number of questions that faultline researchers may consider in the future.
Ideology: An Invisible yet Potent Dimension of Diversity
Authors: O’Brien Laurie T. , Gilbert Patricia N.
Published: January 2014

Recently, ideology has emerged as an important topic of inquiry among social, personality, and political psychologists as research has shown a link between people’s ideological belief systems and their attitudes toward, and evaluations of, others. This chapter will examine theory and research concerning the structure, content, and functions of ideological beliefs. In addition, the effects of such beliefs on diversity attitudes and intergroup relations will be considered. Directions for future research on ideology or worldview as an attribute of diversity will be offered.
Diversity as Disagreement: The Role of Group Conflict
Authors: Jehn Karen A. , Greer Lindred L.
Published: January 2014

Conflict is critical for determining diversity’s influence on group effectiveness. A considerable amount of work has amassed on the relationships between team diversity, conflict, and team outcomes. This chapter will briefly review recent findings and developments in this area. Three specific complexities needing future research will then be highlighted, with special attention to how diversity may promote not only conflict but also asymmetric experiences of conflict in teams. The three areas for future research are (1) the role of different conceptualizations and operationalizations of diversity in predicting the emergence and asymmetric experience of conflict in teams; (2) the impact of new and understudied forms of diversity, such as lifestyle diversity or power diversity, on conflict and conflict asymmetries; and (3) the role of the perception of diversity in activating the relationship between diversity and conflict asymmetries.
Career Development
Authors: Dawson Bryan L. , Thomas Kecia M. , Goren Matthew J.
Published: January 2014

The benefits of career development may accrue throughout one’s work life, from early career and vocational choice through to retirement. Yet are those benefits, and even career development itself, equally available to workers across various dimensions of demographic diversity—especially as we consider the informal and insidious nature of many career development options? This chapter explores the intersection of career development and workplace diversity. Specifically, we look at this intersection by asking (1) How can career development be an opportunity to promote diversity in organizations? and (2) How do career development disparities have a negative impact on the careers of marginalized workers and subsequently their employers? Special attention is paid to the subtle biases, ambient cues, and distancing behavior that may derail career development strategies, such as mentoring and networks for marginalized groups. We examine science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers as an important and timely career path and case study in which to consider these issues.
Law and Diversity: The Legal–Behavioral Science Divide in How to Define, Assess, and Counteract Bias
Authors: Apfelbaum Evan P. , Sommers Samuel R.
Published: January 2014

Behavioral sciences and the law tend to approach issues of diversity from markedly different perspectives. The present chapter focuses on this divergence as it relates to the controversial issues of defining, assessing, and remedying racial bias. Our objective is not to offer a value judgment regarding the relative utility of either the legal or behavioral science perspective on bias, but rather to illuminate in balanced fashion the landscape of this institutional divide. For each of the three critical areas of divergence identified—how bias is defined, how bias is assessed, and how bias is remedied—we review seminal cases and standard legal practices alongside contemporary behavioral science research that offers a counterpoint to this perspective. We conclude with considerations for future work to bridge the legal–behavioral science divide.
Conclusion: Future Directions for Diversity Theory and Research
Authors: Roberson Quinetta M.
Published: January 2014

The chapters in this handbook provide a comprehensive overview of the different approaches, perspectives and levels of analysis in diversity research. In doing so, they highlight the evolution of diversity as a science and practice, emphasizing existing conceptual and actionable knowledge on managing diverse workforces and capitalizing on the benefits of diversity in organizations. Each chapter offers suggestions for future research within specific topic areas that could help generate a broader and deeper understanding of diversity in organizations. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight points of intersection among the various topic areas and put forward meaningful areas of integration within the field. Specifically, I propose and discuss directions for a future research agenda including the conceptualization of diversity, mechanisms underlying diversity effects, contextual influences, diversity management and a more universal approach to the study of diversity.
Intersectionality
Authors: Collins Patricia Hill , Chepp Valerie
Published: January 2014

This article focuses on the idea of intersectionality, which has been accepted in a variety of disciplines such as psychology and political science. However, the definition of intersectionality has also been a source of inconsistency and ambiguity. The discussion presents a working definition of intersectionality and references Bonnie Thornton Dill’s insight on the multidimensionality of human experience. It presents several themes that can help in understanding intersectionality, its core ideas, and some of its contributions within a sociology of knowledge framework. Finally, the article discusses the two areas that have been affected by the path of intersectionality: the American political arena and women’s studies and gender scholarship.
Power, Politics, Domination, and Oppression
Authors: Lloyd Moya
Published: January 2014

Since the late 1960s, the second-wave feminists have looked for ways to understand women’s oppression, finally focusing on the topic of power. This article identifies four currents that help present an understanding of power. These currents serve as an alternative to a theory of power, since there is no single, unified, feminist, or gendered version of this theory. The first current treats power as an unequal resource distributed throughout society, where men are considered as its primary beneficiaries. The second current centers on the power of men over women and is responsible for introducing the concept of patriarchy. The third current introduces the notion of a specifically female—if not feminist—understanding of power as “capacity.” The fourth and final current discussed in the article views power as “productive.”
The Body and Politics
Authors: Coole Diana
Published: January 2014

This article focuses on the concept of the body in political thought, which has been widely ignored. In gender studies, however, the body serves as a relevant dimension of politics. Some of the main approaches to the body in the field of gender studies were created by feminists, and emphasis has been placed on women’s embodiment. The article addresses the theoretical questions that arise when the (gendered–sexed) body is brought into political life and discourse and then summarizes several lasting questions and lists some distinctive approaches. Finally, using a study of representative authors and texts, it presents a detailed analysis of these approaches.
Reproductive Rights
Authors: Mottier Véronique
Published: January 2014

This article discusses feminist scholarship on three specific areas of the politics of reproduction. It first defines the concept of reproduction as the production of offspring; reproduction is also considered as a key theme of feminist theory and political practice before and after Simone de Beauvoir. The article then studies state control over the procreative choices of the citizens, specifically the eugenic population policies introduced during the first few decades of the twentieth century. The next section focuses on feminist mobilization around abortion and contraceptive rights and outlines the ways reproductive rights have been included in the political arena due to women’s movements. The article concludes with a study of the impact of the latest reproductive technologies on modern politics of gender along with the feminist responses to the challenges posed by recent improvements in this area.
Gender and (International) Political Economy
Authors: Rai Shirin
Published: January 2014

This article introduces gender and (international) political economy, which is the study of gendered social relations in the context of (international) political economy. It explores three areas of gender and political economy scholarship: namely, the regimes of accumulation, production and consumption, the regimes of governance, and the struggles for reform and transformation. The article also tries to show the tense relationship between gender and (international) political economy and (international) political economy, along with the key contribution of gender and (international) political economy to a more distinctive and gender sensitive understanding of modern politics.
Political Systems and Gender
Authors: Tripp Aili Mari
Published: January 2014

This article explores the debates on political systems and gender equality. It begins with a section on general cross-national studies and a close study of the patterns located in socialist states, authoritarian regimes, democracies, and hybrid regimes. The article also examines the impact of transitions to democracy on gender equality. A comparison of different political formations within regime types is also included.
Party Politics
Authors: Kittilson Miki Caul
Published: January 2014

This article focuses on political parties that are considered to be relevant to women’s political representation and participation, addresses the issue of the gender gap in party support, and identifies the external factors that influence the partisan preferences of men and women. Other topics it discusses are gendered party organizational structures, the effectiveness of inclusion into mainstream party channels, and party change in favor of women.
Policy Making
Authors: Lombardo Emanuela , Meier Petra , Verloo Mieke
Published: January 2014

This article is concerned with policy making, which can help (re)produce gender and gender inequality, beginning with a wider overview of feminist policy studies and then connecting the available knowledge from different subdisciplines. It then examines the early studies on the analysis of the lack of women in the policy-making process. The next section explains the broader context and process of policy making and how political goals or interests that come from different feminist movements manage in the policy-making process. The article also discusses the genderedness of policy making, gendered bias, and recent developments in research on gender and gender equality.
Equality and Universalism
Authors: Squires Judith
Published: January 2014

This article examines the normative and theoretical contents of the concept of equality. It considers some of the feminist debates on equality as cultural “recognition,” political “representation,” sameness and difference, and socioeconomic “redistribution.” The article also identifies the risks of the arrival of the concept of multiple equality strands and intersectionality. Finally, it takes a look at the shift toward diverse groups and multiple equality considerations, along with the implications of the “feminism versus multiculturalism” debate for equality.
Gender, Nations, and Nationalisms
Authors: Thapar-Björkert Suruchi
Published: January 2014

This article summarizes the development of the scholarship on nation and nationalism. It explains the gender blindness of the literature and then presents the relevant contributions of feminists on women and the nation and women’s integration in modern nationhood. The article discusses the interrelatedness of national and gendered identities at the symbolic level and the politicization of the lives of women in both the public and private spheres. It ends with a study of the connection between religion, violence, and nationalism and introduces the recent “new Arab Nationalism.”
Market Power
Authors: White Lawrence J.
Published: January 2014

Market power – how it arises, and how it is measured – is an important topic for the economics field of “industrial organization” (IO). It is also an important topic for managers and for managerial economics, since it can be related to sustainable advantage for a company and it is usually at the center of antitrust cases in which a company may be involved. This chapter defines market power, discusses how it arises, and describes the various methods that have been used for empirically detecting and measuring it. Attention is also given to the role and measurement of market power in important antitrust contexts.
Combinatorial Auctions
Authors: Porter David , Rassenti Stephen , Munro David
Published: January 2014

Traditional auctions struggle to achieve efficient allocations in multi-resource environments where individual resources are complements (the value of obtaining a package of items is worth more than the sum of the unbundled individual values) or they are substitutes. For this reason, Combinatorial Auctions are valuable resource allocation mechanisms in a host of environments. These environments include, but are not limited to, spectrum auctions, procurement of transportation services, exchange of pollution credits, and the allocation of space shuttle resources. This chapter provides a summary of several important combinatorial auction mechanisms. For each mechanism examined we highlight the strengths, weaknesses, and the environments for which they are well suited. In addition, the chapter provides examples of how these mechanisms have been used by business and government to gain efficiency and revenue in these complex resource allocation environments.
Game and Information Theory in Modern Managerial Economics
Authors: Gal-Or Esther
Published: January 2014

This chapter describes how methodologies developed in the field of game and information theory can assist in understanding the interaction of competitors in markets, and the study of managerial economics, in general. The chapter highlights, in particular, the role of incomplete information in generating market failures, and provides examples of mechanisms that can alleviate such failures. Some examples of topics addressed are: first- and second-mover advantages, long term strategic commitments versus short term tactical choices made by competitors, erection of entry barriers to secure market power, choices of product-mix, special pricing mechanisms to enhance profitability, and issues related to vertical control and the internal organization of the firm.
Issues in the Analysis of Time, Risk, and Uncertainty
Authors: Neilson William S.
Published: January 2014

Research in managerial economics has long relied on the discounted subjective expected utility model as its workhorse decision framework, and this article identifies some challenges to that model. Experimental evidence suggests that subjects have preferences biased more toward the present than the standard model predicts, and these biases can lead to time inconsistent behavior. Risk attitudes tend to be very context specific, and capturing them requires not just nonlinear transformations of the payoffs, as in the standard model, but also nonlinear transformations of the probabilities. Individuals tend to be more averse to uncertainty or ambiguity, situations in which the probabilities are unknown, than to risk, situations in which the probabilities are known, and the standard framework cannot distinguish between the two. The article identifies implications for all of these departures from the workhorse model.
Advances in Pricing Strategies and Tactics
Authors: Kopalle Praveen K. , Hansen Robert
Published: January 2014

There has been much interest in pricing strategies and tactics both in the research and practice domains. This chapter examines the recent literature on pricing with a focus on blending an economics approach with that of marketing. It begins with a brief discussion of the fundamental principles of optimal pricing, which serves as the foundation for the more advanced pricing methods. The chapter provides an in-depth discussion in the areas of second degree price discrimination, bundling strategies, revenue management, pricing using conjoint analysis, dynamic pricing, price psychology, personalized pricing, competitive considerations in pricing (Nash and Stackelberg games), dynamic structural models in pricing, and pricing in two-sided markets. The end of the chapter provides brief concluding remarks.
Market Imperfections and Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Authors: Oberholzer-Gee Felix , Yao Dennis
Published: January 2014

This chapter reviews the main theories in strategic management that seek to explain persistent differences in profitability across companies. We argue that these differences are ultimately explained by market imperfections. Studying differences in financial performance through the lens of market imperfections provides several advantages. The framework allows executives to better understand the circumstances under which common strategic advice will in fact create a sustainable competitive advantage for their company. From a scholarly perspective, market imperfections help link seemingly disparate theories of strategic management to industrial organization and economics.
Competitive Strategy in the Nonprofit Sector
Authors: Oster Sharon
Published: January 2014

This paper explores the uses of the field of competitive strategy in the nonprofit sector. It begins with a discussion of the central differences between nonprofit and for profit organizations. Most fundamentally, nonprofits emphasize mission fulfillment rather than strict profit maximization. Nonprofits are also distinguished from for-profits by their reliance on donations as well as earned income. Both the difference in objective function and the use of multiple revenue sources affect the dynamic strategies of nonprofits. This paper explores exit and entry patterns we expect to see in the nonprofit sector, pricing strategies, levels of differentiation, and the usual sources of competitive advantage in the sector. It also illustrates the ways in which the classic tools from strategy like Hotelling and the Bresnahan-Reiss entry models are informative in the nonprofit sector.
Financing the Business Firm
Authors: Bargeron Leonce , Lehn Kenneth
Published: January 2014

This chapter reviews the literature on the determinants of firms’ financing decisions and suggests fruitful areas for future research. We describe the tradeoff, pecking order, and market timing theories of capital structure and assess the extent to which these theories are supported by empirical evidence. Although parts of the three theories are supported by empirical evidence, the totality of the evidence does not provide compelling support for any of the three theories. Hence, to a large extent, the determinants of firms’ financing policies remain a major puzzle in financial economics.
An Overview of Italy’s Economic Growth
Authors: Toniolo Gianni
Published: January 2014

Between 1861 and 2011, Italy's GDP per person multiplied by about twelve times. An initially backward country, Italy converged to the productivity leaders in 1898-1992, whereas between 1861 and 1896, and again between 1992 and 2011, Italy's economic growth was weaker than that of the main advanced countries. Drawing also on the main results of the research presented in the rest of the book, Chapter 1 outlines Italy's initial backwardness, the causes of poor economic performance in the thirty-odd years after unification, and the features and reasons for Italy's secular convergence to the productivity leaders. The final part is devoted to a discussion, in a comparative perspective, of the causes of the country's slow growth in the early twenty-first century, arguing that, while some of the previous growth factors lost momentum from the 1990s onward, Italy's problems are mostly to be found in the inability by firms and institutions to adapt to the conditions of the international economy during the so-called "second globalization".
The Golden Age and the Second Globalization in Italy
Authors: Crafts Nicholas , Magnani Marco
Published: January 2014

After the Golden Age, Italy experienced increasing difficulties in adjusting its economy to the changing external context and to the requirements for sustaining catch-up growth at a higher level of economic development. The adjustment issue is common to advanced countries, but the difficulties experienced in Italy look particularly severe. Cushioned by inflation and devaluation, growth remained relatively high in the 1970s. In the subsequent decade, in spite of improved conditions for addressing macroeconomic disequilibria, structural adjustments were neglected. Major supply-side reforms were eventually implemented in the aftermath of the 1992 crisis. Nevertheless, in the second half of the decade, growth fell below the EU average. These necessary reforms fell short of what was required. Participation in EMU did not help as far as the improvement of growth prospects was concerned. In the last section, some of the economic and meta-economic factors explaining the ineffectiveness of the reform process are briefly explored.
Public Debt and Economic Growth
Authors: Balassone Fabrizio , Francese Maura , Pace Angelo
Published: January 2014

This chapter investigates the link between the government debt-to-GDP ratio and real per capita income growth in Italy over 1861-2007. By estimation of a standard production function, we find support for the hypotheses of a negative relation between the two variables which appears to work mainly through reduced investment. A descriptive analysis of fiscal policy in 1880-1914 (when the negative correlation between the two variables is particularly strong) and 1985-2007 (when the correlation appears to break down when debt starts declining) suggests that differences in the timing of fiscal consolidation, as well as in the size and composition of the budget, are additional significant explanatory factors.
Strategy and Sample Selection: A Strategic Selection Estimator
Authors: Leemann Lucas
Published: January 2014

The development and proliferation of strategic estimators has narrowed the gap between theoretical models and empirical testing. But despite recent contributions that extend the basic strategic estimator, researchers have continued to neglect a classic social science phenomenon: selection. Compared to nonstrategic estimators, strategic models are even more prone to selection effects. First, external shocks or omitted variables can lead to correlated errors. Second, because the systematic parts of actors' utilities usually overlap on certain key variables, the two sets of explanatory variables are correlated. As a result, both the systematic and the stochastic components can be correlated. However, given that the estimates for the first mover are computed based on the potentially biased predicted probabilities of the second actor, we also generate biased estimates for the first actor. In applied work, researchers neglect the potential shortcomings due to selection bias. This article presents an alternative strategic estimator that takes selection into account and allows scholars to obtain consistent, unbiased, and efficient estimates in the presence of both selection and strategic action. I present a Monte Carlo analysis as well as a real-world application to illustrate the superior performance of this estimator relative to the standard practice.