Why don’t employers hire long-term unemployed entitled to a wage subsidy? The employer’s perspective on subsidised employment

Despite a generous system with high wage subsidies for the long-term unemployed and newly arrived immigrants, many Swedish employers do not make use of this opportunity. This study seeks to increase knowledge of why some employers use the opportunity and others do not. Both register and survey data and combined register and survey data are used. One finding is that employers lack information about the subsidy programmes, although employers that had previously employed subsidised workers were much more likely to employ them in the future. Thus, a key policy question is how to present these subsidies to employers to reduce this barrier. The study also found that some employers hired people from these groups from altruistic motives. However, some employers responded that they would not employ a person entitled to a subsidy, regardless of the content of the subsidy scheme.

How can clinicians choose between conflicting and discordant systematic reviews? A replication study of the Jadad algorithm

Introduction: The exponential growth of published SRs (SRs) presents challenges for clinicians seeking to answer clinical questions. In 1997, an algorithm was created by Jadad et al. to choose the best SR across multiple but similar SRs with conflicting results. Our study aims to replicate assessments done by authors using the Jadad algorithm to determine: (i) if we chose the same SR as the authors; and (ii) if we would reach the same results.Methods and Analysis: We searched MEDLINE, Epistemonikos, and Cochrane Database of SRs. We included any study using the Jadad algorithm. We used consensus building strategies to operationalise the algorithm and to ensure a consistent approach to interpretation.Results: We identified 21 studies that used the Jadad algorithm to choose one or more SRs. In 62% (13/21) of cases, we were unable to replicate the Jadad assessment and ultimately chose a different SR than the authors. Overall, 18 out of the 21 (86%) independent Jadad assessments agreed in direction of the findings despite 13 having chosen a different SR.Conclusions: Our results suggest that the Jadad algorithm is not reproducible between users as there are no prescriptive instructions about how to operationalise the algorithm. In the absence of a validated algorithm, we recommend that healthcare providers, policy makers, patients and researchers address conflicts between review findings by choosing the SR(s) with meta-analysis of RCTs that most closely resemble their clinical, public health, or policy question, are the most recent, comprehensive (i.e. in terms of number of included RCTs), and at the lowest risk of bias.

The strategic use of evidence and gap maps to build evidence architecture

Mapping is an evidence synthesis approach that aims to describe what research evidence is available that is relevant to a particular research or policy question. It has emerged as an important way to make evidence available to decision-makers. The CEDIL Methods Working Paper 5, ‘The strategic use of evidence and gap maps to build evidence architecture’, describes this approach.

The Corn Laws and the Casuistry of Free Trade, 1813–1815

This chapter examines the Corn Laws debate from 1813 to 1815, focusing on the contributions of Malthus, Ricardo, and Robert Torrens. This episode has traditionally been studied as a moment of conceptual progress for political economy, above all through the emergence of the concepts of diminishing returns and comparative advantage. The account here produces different results by returning the texts of Malthus, Ricardo, and Torrens to their historical context, which is shown to be one where casuistical argument was deployed to counsel Parliament on how to resolve a policy question. In particular, the issue was whether or not Parliament ought to diverge from the principle of free trade in the pursuit of other principles of statecraft, the stability and security of the food supply preeminently. Once the texts are read as instances of casuistry, Ricardo’s famed theoretical brilliance instead appears as clumsiness and detachment from the needs of Parliament.

Policy Question: When Should Personal Data Cross Borders?

This chapter examines the flow of data across borders, in order to support the digital economy. Governments are increasingly treating data as a national asset, which will give economic advantages to foreign companies, while compromising the privacy of citizens. India and other nations in the developing world are concerned that they will be reduced to providing data as raw material and will be forced to import high-value services from tech companies in the United States and China, rather than developing their own digital economies. Initiatives using World Trade Organization agreements to coordinate global trade in data, supported by China and the United States, are examined, but they have not persuaded sceptics, leading to accusations of neo-colonialism. India is leading the holdouts, which may influence the Internet’s future. The ideologies underlying the Four Internets are compared with respect to their views of flows of data.

Policy Question: How Can Quality Be Ensured in an Open System Like Wikipedia?

This chapter examines the policy question of how to assure quality in an open system, using the crowdsourced online encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a case study. The history of Wikipedia’s development out of another online encyclopaedia, Nupedia, is sketched, with a description of how wiki technology allowed collaborative authoring. Wikipedia compares favourably with expert-written reference books, and has helped populate the Linked Data Web via DBpedia. However, to produce good content, and minimize hoaxes and trolling controversies such as the GamerGate affair, it needs a hierarchical meritocratic management system. This has resulting in tensions, particularly along gender lines, and relatively small numbers of women participate. However, the system has if anything become more hierarchical during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it has worked hard to eliminate misinformation.

Policy Question: Is a Sovereign Internet Feasible?

In 2019, Russia attempted to implement a long-term policy objective, to enable itself to cut the Russian Internet (RuNet) off from the rest, by blocking the flow of data through Internet Exchange Points at national borders. It claimed that a successful experiment had been carried out. This chapter looks at why this should happen and whether it is possible. The role of US interests, for instance in ICANN, is considered as a risk to Russian sovereignty, although American attempts to interfere with the Domain Name System would be counterproductive and unlikely to be successful. Attempts by Iran and Egypt to cut the Internet off are also discussed.

Policy Question: When Is Surveillance Justified?

Surveillance is regarded negatively in the European Union. It is, of course, highly enabled by the Internet, especially by smartphones. Under modernity, and digital modernity in particular, however, surveillance does have its uses: it can facilitate coordination of complex social functions; it is a means to the personalization, recommendation, and negotiation of choice; it can also be used for care and welfare systems, or control of desirable outcomes, such as the reduction of carbon emissions. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is an area where surveillance has played a role, by gathering data, enforcing lockdowns, and particularly enabling the tracking and tracing of contacts by smartphone apps, to suppress the spread of the virus by asymptomatic carriers. The patchy implementation of this function is reviewed, together with some of the technical issues that made it harder than anticipated.

Policy Question: How Can Competition against the Tech Giants Be Fostered?

In the United States, monopoly is often tolerated if the profits are used to create or reward innovation and enhanced customer service. However, where a lack of competition harms the consumer, the government is empowered to step in, and even break companies up, using antitrust law. The tech giants have pushed against these limits, being immensely innovative, but at the cost of creating giant, powerful, and (often) highly profitable closed networks. The chapter considers the difficulties in remedying these problems, as breaking up a large network will lose its network effects and positive externalities. Other possibilities include preventing acquisitions, and forcing divestment of some units. However, if the conditions allowing the network effects to build up are not addressed, new firms may become just as large. The European Union is actively looking at competition law in the tech industry, and by late 2020, so was the Trump administration.

Public Bioethics

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) ecclesiastical policy on health, medical, and moral issues has seldom addressed itself to the healing professions or to questions of public policy, an ethical insularity coherent with the principles of respect for moral agency and trust in the healing vocation of the professions. However, some issues reveal limits to peaceful compromise between ecclesiastical policy with both professional morality and public policy of the secular state and have prompted the LDS Church to forgo ecclesiastical silence and present a public witness of its values and positions on a policy question to a broader civic audience. This chapter focuses on two such examples, elective abortion and medical marijuana. The public square of moral reasoning within LDS teaching is constructed by principles of engaged citizenship, separation, and the moral core.