经济学最新文献

{"title":"Blockchain's role in social welfare, financial inclusion, and public sector innovations in India: A multi-sector analysis of government-led initiatives","authors":"Jaskirat Singh ,&nbsp;Gurdip Singh Batra ,&nbsp;Sarvjeet Kaur Chatrath","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.106366","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.106366","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the integrated impact of blockchain technology in enhancing transparency, mitigating corruption, fostering trust, and promoting financial inclusion within India's public sector, focusing on social welfare programs and related services for economically weaker sections (EWS) in urban slums. Using a mixed-methods approach combining surveys (n = 700) and qualitative insights from beneficiaries and public sector experts (n = 30) in Punjab, the research assesses government-led blockchain initiatives like the Vishvasya-Blockchain Technology Stack and NBFLite. Findings reveal significant positive associations between blockchain implementation and improvements in transparency (β = 0.74), trust (β = 0.76), financial inclusion (β = 0.68), and perceived corruption reduction (β = −0.63). Qualitative data contextualizes these findings, highlighting user experiences and critical adoption barriers, particularly digital literacy. The study contributes a novel, synthesized perspective on blockchain's potential to drive synergistic improvements across interconnected public service domains (welfare, financial inclusion, potentially others like health/education), offering a holistic view crucial for urban policy and planning. Results provide actionable recommendations for policymakers regarding scaling adoption, addressing implementation challenges, investing in digital literacy, and establishing robust governance frameworks to leverage blockchain as a tool for inclusive socio-economic development in rapidly digitalizing urban environments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"167 ","pages":"Article 106366"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144902258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Encampments as neighbors: Encampment location and proximity to amenities among Seattle, WA’s unhoused population","authors":"Aja Sutton ,&nbsp;Whitney Walker ,&nbsp;Amy Hagopian ,&nbsp;Zack W. Almquist","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.106348","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.106348","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the United States, no jurisdiction guarantees the basic conditions necessary for health, such as stable housing, even as homelessness continues to intensify. King County, Washington, the twelfth largest U.S. county, hosts the fourth largest population of people experiencing homelessness, many of whom reside in Seattle. Discouraging encampments and providing shelter beds has proven ineffective. We investigate how encampments’ proximity to basic amenities compares to those in emergency shelters and rental units. We analyze rich spatial, administrative, and outreach worker data from Seattle’s Evergreen Treatment Services (ETS) REACH on individuals living in tents and on the street from 2016 to 2022. We discuss the implications of providing effective support for people living unhoused and provide, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive and recent study of neighborhood amenities proximity among the unsheltered population in Seattle, WA. We find that, in most neighborhoods, encampment locations were similarly located in proximity to a range of amenities as were rental units. Additionally, encampments were located closer than shelters to certain amenities, especially food-related ones, excluding food banks, suggesting that they may offer opportunities for meeting basic needs, and accessing WiFi. We conclude that housing options that feel like homes rather than institutions are crucial in supporting the unhoused population. Our findings suggest that emergency shelters should be more integrated into neighborhoods and better reflect the proximity to amenities of tent encampments and rentals.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"168 ","pages":"Article 106348"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144902816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Energy policy-making in the European Union between past and present","authors":"Samuele Lo Piano ,&nbsp;Andrea Saltelli","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2025.104296","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2025.104296","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We use instruments from sociology of quantification to investigate a persistent paradox: the problematic technical quality of modelling studies when these are aimed at policy analysis. We review new and old instances of this paradox, focusing specifically on two energy assessment studies: one performed in the eighties and one recent. We apply sensitivity auditing, an existing checklist for the quality of quantification at the science-policy interface, which appraises the overall model framing process and application. The old energy assessment case is a study that was the subject of a pointed criticism by sociologist of science and technology Brian Wynne in a paper published in 1984. The recent impact analysis is from the European Commission, aimed to inform the selection of greenhouse-gases emission targets for 2040 in the European Union. The similarities in the shortcomings identified by Wynne and those we see in the European Commission one using sensitivity auditing seem to indicate that the lesson from that controversy was not learned, or that at a more fundamental level the purpose of these relevant institutional analyses is not to trace a path to a sustainable energy future but to reassure and confirm present policy agendas and visions, along the lines of a policy-based evidence strategy well known to sociologists of quantification. We investigate how modelling plays a key role in facilitating these analytic distortions, and conclude with some suggestions for progress, anchored to the double nature—technical and normative—of quantification and on the need for more analytic lenses to be systematically deployed when reading a policy assessment that builds on models.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"127 ","pages":"Article 104296"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144895897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Proximity-centred accessibility – A conceptual debate involving planning practitioners worldwide","authors":"Cecília Silva ,&nbsp;Benjamin Büttner ,&nbsp;Sebastian Seisenberger ,&nbsp;João Filipe Teixeira ,&nbsp;María Teresa Baquero-Larriva ,&nbsp;Eda Beyazit ,&nbsp;Maxime Hachette ,&nbsp;Diego Hernandez ,&nbsp;Wambui Kariuki ,&nbsp;Patxi J. Lamíquiz-Daudén ,&nbsp;Jonathan Levine ,&nbsp;Alain L'Hostis ,&nbsp;Chunjiang Li ,&nbsp;Karel Martens ,&nbsp;Juan Carlos Martin ,&nbsp;Lucila Martinazzo ,&nbsp;Beatriz Mella-Lira ,&nbsp;Louis A. Merlin ,&nbsp;Dylan Moinse ,&nbsp;Fabio Palacio ,&nbsp;Dionysis Visvardis","doi":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.106376","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cities.2025.106376","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In recent years, the concept of proximity has garnered increasing attention in both transportation research and practice, albeit under various terms and interpretations. Among these, the concept of the <em>15-minute city</em> has catalysed attention in planning practice, with recent evolution to the <em>x-minute city</em> and <em>city of proximities</em>. In research, proximity-centred accessibility has been offered as an umbrella term to express the ability to reach activities and destinations at short distances. Regardless of the terminology used, the essence of proximity lies in the ease with which one can access desired activities and destinations within reasonable travel times, independent of speed-enhancing transport modes most notably through walking.</div><div>This research investigates the nuanced meanings ascribed to proximity-centred accessibility by planning practitioners globally, spanning diverse regional and local contexts. For this, we used an online survey, disseminated among over 9000 practitioners from 22 countries across 5 continents, which generated over 1300 responses. The survey explored the preferred terms for proximity-centred accessibility and their definitions, specifically emphasizing time and distance thresholds and the identification of relevant activities. By juxtaposing our findings with an earlier survey of accessibility researchers, this study also contributes to the groundwork for a conceptual framework for proximity-centred accessibility.</div><div>Our findings affirm a relatively consistent interpretation of proximity among global planning practitioners, predominantly extending up to 1600 m, in accordance with earlier results for accessibility researchers. Despite some relevant dissimilarities among practitioners from megacities compared to their smaller city counterparts, or in specific countries (most notably the Netherlands), the distance that is considered proximate is the attribute that generates the most consistent results across different contexts. Also consistent was the relevance of short distances (up to 15 min walking) for activities such as primary and pre-primary schools, playgrounds, parks, food shopping, and pharmacies, reinforcing the importance of proximity to basic and caregiving activities. No term was found to be consistently meaningful across different contexts, although terms like local and neighbourhood accessibility and walking/pedestrian, or cycling accessibility, show higher preference in the global sample.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48405,"journal":{"name":"Cities","volume":"167 ","pages":"Article 106376"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144896071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Make it burn? Wildfires, disaster aid and presidential approval","authors":"Michael Berlemann ,&nbsp;Marina Eurich ,&nbsp;Timur Eckmann","doi":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2025.102738","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2025.102738","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>For governments, the occurrence of natural disasters creates the opportunity to demonstrate their willingness and competence in providing prompt and efficient disaster aid. A number of studies has investigated the political consequences of providing disaster aid by analyzing the effects of such aid on subsequent election results. However, the findings of these studies have not yielded a coherent picture. This paper makes a contribution to the existing literature by employing high-frequency (daily) survey data on presidential approval. The combination of this data with wildfire data and information on Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) aid approvals and denials reveals that Barack Obama gained in support among survey respondents for whom FEMA aid was approved by the president, while he was not punished for denials of FEMA assistance. We show that this effect is exclusively driven by respondents without party affiliation and that the effect is temporary.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51439,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Economy","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 102738"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144895914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On regression-adjusted imputation estimators of average treatment effects","authors":"Zhexiao Lin ,&nbsp;Fang Han","doi":"10.1016/j.jeconom.2025.106080","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeconom.2025.106080","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Imputing missing potential outcomes using an estimated regression function is a natural idea for estimating causal effects. In the literature, estimators that combine imputation and regression adjustments are believed to be comparable to augmented inverse probability weighting. Accordingly, people for a long time conjectured that such estimators, while avoiding directly constructing the weights, are also doubly robust (Imbens, 2004; Stuart, 2010). Generalizing an earlier result of the authors (Lin et al., 2023), this paper formalizes this conjecture, showing that a large class of regression-adjusted imputation methods are indeed doubly robust for estimating average treatment effects. In addition, they are provably semiparametrically efficient as long as both the density and regression models are correctly specified. Notable examples of imputation methods covered by our theory include kernel matching, (weighted) nearest neighbor matching, local linear matching, and (honest) random forests.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15629,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Econometrics","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 106080"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144895169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Associations between the built environment and concentrations of outdoor particulate matter in children's everyday places","authors":"Yucel Can Severcan ,&nbsp;Goksun Yildirim ,&nbsp;Nese Aydin ,&nbsp;Eftade O. Gaga ,&nbsp;Ozlem Ozden Uzmez ,&nbsp;Aybuke Balahun Coban ,&nbsp;Gonenc Ozarli","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103563","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103563","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite the growing research on the relationship between the built environment (BE), outdoor air quality, and children's respiratory health, our understanding of how to plan and design children's everyday places with better air quality is limited. This study investigates the associations between BE attributes and concentrations of outdoor particulate matter (PM) in children's everyday places. The results are based on PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ measurements in 154 highly frequented outdoor places of 1687 nine-to fourteen-year-old children living in Ankara, Türkiye, in heating season. To analyze the relationship between variables, Pearson correlation and stepwise regression analysis were used. Findings show that, among the examined BE characteristics of children's places, only neighborhood greenness and proximity to polluting industrial facilities are significantly associated with PM_2.5 concentrations. Two additional factors are significantly associated with PM₁₀ concentrations: building density and land use mix. These results suggest that urban planners and designers should place greater emphasis on creating highly dense, mixed-use and green neighborhoods away from polluting industrial areas to promote children's health.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"165 ","pages":"Article 103563"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144895549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Do hospital mergers reduce waiting times? Theory and evidence from the English NHS","authors":"Vanessa Cirulli ,&nbsp;Giorgia Marini ,&nbsp;Marco A. Marini ,&nbsp;Odd Rune Straume","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107196","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107196","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We analyse — both theoretically and empirically — the effect of hospital mergers on waiting times in healthcare markets where prices are fixed. Using a spatial modelling framework where patients choose provider based on travelling distance and waiting times, we show that the effect is theoretically ambiguous. In the presence of cost synergies, the scope for lower waiting times as a result of the merger is larger if the hospitals are more profit-oriented. This result is arguably confirmed by our empirical analysis, which is based on difference-in-differences estimations using a long panel of data on hospital merger in the English National Health Service (NHS). While we find that hospital mergers lead to higher waiting times on average, we also show that the effects of a merger on waiting times crucially rely on a legal status that can reasonably be linked to the degree of profit-orientation. Whereas hospital mergers involving Foundation Trusts tend to reduce waiting times, the corresponding effect of mergers involving hospitals without this legal status tends to go in the opposite direction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"238 ","pages":"Article 107196"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144895998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"JUE insight: Political geography and the spatial allocation of economic activity: Evidence from China’s anti-corruption campaign","authors":"Filipe Campante ,&nbsp;Rui Du ,&nbsp;Weizeng Sun ,&nbsp;Jianghao Wang ,&nbsp;Siqi Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2025.103797","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2025.103797","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We show evidence of how political geography directly shapes real economic outcomes by studying the spatial impact on Beijing’s restaurant sector of China’s 2012 anti-corruption campaign, which placed strict limits on lavish spending by public officials. Restaurants located closer to government offices experienced a relative decline in consumer demand. The post-campaign distribution of establishments was less spatially concentrated around government offices and had a smaller presence of high-end restaurants than before the campaign. Our results underscore the role of political geography as a potent, spatially concentrated driver of demand and its influence on the configuration of economic activities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"149 ","pages":"Article 103797"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144904506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Do you think that coal will finish?”: The (Im)possibilities of living with and without coal in a central Indian coalfield","authors":"Radhika Krishnan ,&nbsp;Patrik Oskarsson ,&nbsp;Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2025.104304","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2025.104304","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article seeks to understand how experiences of coal extraction and use shape local perspectives on energy transitions. It does this by exploring community struggles over land and labour in India's largest coalfield Korba in Chhattisgarh state. While the Indian government has announced that the country will have net zero emissions by 2070, continuing coal mine expansions built on the dispossession of rural poor and indigenous groups dramatically shape lives, economies and aspirations, and with them expectations around a potential transition away from coal. At the moment coal provides stability and continuity in the context of a depressed agricultural sector and limited non-farm employment opportunities. The coal sector is in this manner a source of hope and aspirations for many, while simultaneously creating enormous social and ecological disruptions. In the article we place specific focus on the interlinked roles of land and labour in the production of fossil-free futures situated within agrarian relations. Long-term resistance to land acquisition for coal mining is in recent years accompanied by the emergence of new relationships that coal communities are forging around land as a transactional asset, to be bartered for mining company jobs, or simply used as a speculative asset which may yield future pay-off as mining continues to expand. Based on a close reading of everyday micro-level negotiations, this paper argues that the possibilities for justice in a post-coal future is rendered complicated by existing coal economy dependencies and narrow conceptions of compensation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"127 ","pages":"Article 104304"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144902248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}