Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 

About: Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice is an academic journal published by Routledge. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Policy analysis & Public policy. It has an ISSN identifier of 1387-6988. Over the lifetime, 698 publications have been published receiving 17216 citations.

A New Measure of Financial Openness

Abstract: We create a new index that measures the extent of openness in capital account transactions. Despite the abundance of literature and policy analyses regarding the effect of financial liberalization, the debate is far from settled. One of the reasons for that outcome is the lack of proper ways of measuring the extent of the openness in cross-border financial transactions. We seek to remedy this deficiency by creating an index aimed at measuring the extensity of capital controls based on the information from the IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions (AREAER). This paper details how we construct the data and where our index stands in relation to the extant literature. Given the intricacy of capital controls policies and regulations, the exercise of quantifying the extent of financial openness remains a challenging task. Nonetheless, our index makes a substantial contribution in terms of its coverage of countries and time period; the data are available for 181 countrie...

University Patenting and its Effects on Academic Research: the Emerging European Evidence

Abstract: This paper surveys the existing fragmentary data on the growth of university-owned patents and university-invented patents in Europe. We find evidence that university patenting is growing, but this phenomenon remains heterogeneous across countries and disciplines. We found some evidence that university licensing is not profitable for most universities, although some do succeed in attracting substantial additional revenues. This might be due to the fact that patents and publications tend to go hand in hand. In a dynamic setting however, we fear that the increase in university patenting exacerbates differences across universities in terms of financial resources and research outcome.

The Dependent Variable Problem in the Study of Policy Change: Understanding Policy Change as a Methodological Problem

Abstract: The new orthodoxy in studies of policy dynamics is that policy change occurs through a homeostatic process. “Perturbations” occurring outside of an institutionalized policy subsystem, often characterized as some type of societal or political upheaval or learning, are critical for explaining the development of profound and durable policy changes which are otherwise limited by “endogenous” institutional stability. These homeostatic assumptions, while useful for assessing many cases of policy change, do not adequately capture the historical patterns of policy development found in many sectors. The roots of this problem are traced back to the origins of the new orthodoxy in comparative policy research whereby different levels (orders) of policy making have been incorrectly juxtaposed, providing a parsimonious, but sometimes empirically incorrect, view of policy change. Revising existing taxonomies of policy levels provides a superior identification of the processes of change, and uncovers more than o...

Well‐being in the welfare state: Level not higher, distribution not more equitable

Abstract: 'Wellbeing' and 'welfare' are often bracketed together, in particular wellbeing and state-welfare. The level of wellbeing is believed to be higher in welfare states, and its distribution more equitable. This theory is tested in a comparative study of 40 nations 1980-1990. The size of state welfare is measured by social security expenditure. The wellbeing of citizens is measured in terms of the degree to which they lead healthy and happy lives. Contrary to expectation there appears to be no link between the size of the welfare state and the level of wellbeing within it. In countries with generous social security schemes people are not healthier or happier than in equally affluent countries where the state is less open-handed. Increases or reductions in social security expenditure are not related to a rise or fall in the level of health and happiness either. There also appears to be no connection between the size of state welfare and equality in wellbeing between its citizens. In countries where social security expenditure is high, the dispersion of health and happiness is not smaller than in equally prosperous countries with less public sector spending. Again increases and reductions in social security expenditure are not linked with a rise or fall in equality in health and happiness among citizens. This counter intuitive result raises five questions: 1) Is this really true? 2) If so, what could explain this lack of effect? 3) Why is it so difficult to believe this result? 4) How should this information affect social policy? 5) What can we learn from further research?

The Dependent Variable Problem within the Study of Welfare State Retrenchment: Defining the Problem and Looking for Solutions

Abstract: Since the publication of Pierson's seminal work, a scholarly debate about welfare state retrenchment has emerged. One of the debated issues has been the “dependent variable problem”: what is welfare state retrenchment and how can it be measured. In particular the pros and cons of different types of data have been discussed. The argument of this article is that the “dependent variable problem” is a problem of theoretical conceptualization rather than a problem of data. It is crucial to be aware that different theoretical perspectives on retrenchment should lead to different conceptualizations of retrenchment. Furthermore, different conceptualizations lead to different evaluations of the same changes in welfare schemes, just as the question of which data to use depends very much on the theoretical conceptualization of retrenchment.