Diverse information is key for informed and effective policymaking when addressing complex policy issues. Policymakers need to decide what information to process given their limited time and cognitive capacity. This paper presents an online vignette experiment in which 157 civil servants from a Dutch medium-sized municipality participated. We test how civil servants respond to the presence of a social nudge that stimulates more diverse information selection under conditions of low and high complexity. The results show that the effect of a social nudge on information selection is larger in a context characterized by high complexity than by low complexity. This study contributes to understanding how civil servants select information. Moreover, it shows how social nudges can improve the information selection process and provides actionable advice to governmental organizations seeking to improve the information selection process.

Using linked Census Tree records and archival sources, I explore the roles of race and gender in migrant selection and sorting during the exodus of single young women and men from U.S. Southern farms from 1900–1940. Female migration rates, influenced by changes in farm men’s marriageability, rose during the farm crisis of 1920–1940 and exceeded men’s by 1940. On- and off-farm discrimination by race and gender drove differences in migrant characteristics: out-of-South Black female migrants, but not within-South, were positively selected on education and family resources, while White women were positively selected across both destinations.

This study examines the association between air pollution exposure and health using a representative survey sample from Siddharthanagar municipality of Nepal. Our data on household characteristics, spatial locations and individual lung function allow us to understand heterogeneity in exposure and respiratory health. We examine exposure differential through three potential mechanisms – occupation, residence and exposure avoidance. We employ a simultaneous equations model to account for the endogenous choice of avoidance and spatial error models to control for the spatial spillover of health outcomes. We find that outdoor workers and those residing near brick kilns have lower lung function. Exposure avoidance positively correlates with lung function. Exposure avoidance, however, is low among marginalized outdoor workers and individuals residing in polluted areas, further exacerbating the exposure gap among socioeconomic subgroups. The study advances the case of environmental inequity through the ‘triple jeopardy’ of low socioeconomic status, exposure differences and poor health.

The expanding application of financial technologies, as well as growing participation of consumer investors, has multiplied the forms and functions of finance, deepening its entanglement with social, political, and cultural processes. This interview responds to increasing interest within the journal’s community in the evolving intersections of finance, technology, and society. The conversation foregrounds the role of fintech – understood both narrowly as communication infrastructures and broadly as socio-technical environments – in reconfiguring these relationships. Also, by situating finance as an interdisciplinary pivot, the interview further highlights emerging research frontiers, including blockchain, venture capital, and the crypto economy, while also reflecting on the methodological challenges and academic struggles that accompany their study. Taken together, the discussion points toward an evolving research agenda across various relevant fields.

Using a new database of European academics, we build a network of universities that is based on professors’ mobility. We describe how the network was altered following the Protestant Reformation. We focus on fragmentation and on universities’ centrality. Dyadic regressions confirm that geography and vernacular languages were important for mobility, but did not substitute for religion. We compare simulated networks with and without religious identity. Most universities lose centrality in the simulated religious network compared to the non-religious one. As publications per university are correlated with centrality, the loss of connectedness of many universities after the Reformation contributed to their scientific decline.

As organizations expand globally, the spatial distribution of top management teams (TMTs) across regions becomes increasingly prevalent. This paper aims to review the diverse literature on the geographic dimensions of teams (collocation, dispersion, and virtuality), and more specifically, the spatial configuration of upper echelons. Several studies explore the composition of TMTs, the diversity of their members, and their influence on firms’ strategic choices. However, the international location of TMT members remains largely overlooked. We conduct a systematic literature review that draws on spatial theory and the upper echelons approach. The results allow the development of a conceptual framework that integrates research related to the spatial dimensions of TMTs. The purpose is to contribute to a better understanding of how the spatial configuration of TMTs influences strategic leadership processes in geographically dispersed organizational contexts. We discuss the implications of this spatial perspective of upper echelons and propose potential avenues for future research.

Do low-income households systematically face higher inflation than high-income households? Contrary to prevailing narratives based on the consumer price index (CPI), our analysis using personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price indices demonstrates that inflation inequality has been moderating. Using income-stratified PCE price indices consistent with national accounts, we find substantially smaller inflation gaps than CPI-based studies suggest. This convergence is driven by significant inflation in financial services, primarily impacting higher-income households. Recalculating real disposable personal income (DPI) growth using corresponding PCE price indices yields significantly flatter income growth gradients than previously found using the CPI.

While Rawls’s theory has often been used to critique inherited wealth inequalities, this paper explores an underexamined possibility: a Rawlsian justification of inheritance. I argue that the right to bequeath can be justified when regulated by the Difference Principle. According to this principle, bequests can be permissible if they function as an incentive that maximally benefits the least advantaged. To meet this condition, I propose a specific inheritance tax design – sensitive to the disincentive effects of receiving large inheritances and the incentive scope of bequeathing – with progressive rates based both on the amount received and the number of transfers.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) has been increasingly adopted in past years. This study provides empirical analysis using a county-level dataset that supported PV poverty alleviation projects (PPAPs) in rural China over 2008–2019 and finds that the rural per capita income of counties participating in PPAPs on average increased by 5 per cent compared to that of their counterparts. The effect is larger in more economically developed areas, those with abundant sunlight hours and in counties where centralized PV predominates. A cost–benefit analysis suggests that PPAPs can yield a net benefit of 57,690 yuan over their life cycle per rural household, with the ratio of household annual income growth to government fiscal expenditure ranging from 1.2 to 1.6. PPAPs are found to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 22 million tons annually, accounting for 0.4 per cent of China's carbon emissions reduction in 2020. Our results hold important implications for other countries working to alleviate poverty and reduce carbon emissions.

This study examines the determinants of veterinary clinic closures across urban and rural communities in the United States, analyzing a unique longitudinal dataset of over 11,000 veterinary practices. Findings indicate that large-animal clinics are more likely to close than small or mixed-animal practices, especially in rural areas. Larger clinics and those in metropolitan counties have improved survival rates. The presence of local amenities – particularly shopping outlets and higher-quality schools – is associated with lower closure rates. The results highlight the importance of community amenities in supporting veterinary practice sustainability and access to veterinary care.

This forum contribution reads Currency of Nihilism through the lens of John Holloway’s concept of ‘the scream’. It identifies a common thread between Samman’s conception of postmodern nihilism and Marxism’s concern with alienation in capitalism, which poses the question: what space is there for hope? I argue that, in its carefully crafted critique of the nihilistic structures and moods of modern finance, Currency of Nihilism bears no hallmarks of resignation: it is a powerful reminder of our ability to take control of our ‘doing’, of our ‘power-to’, and thus a significant example of ‘negation-and-creation’. Currency of Nihilism is a scream into the void which, perhaps counterintuitively, can be read as an act of hope.

In various organizational settings, a team member is given the authority to make an investment decision that influences the value of the jointly produced surplus. We experimentally investigate the effect of asymmetric status, investment decisions, and the outcome of these decisions on bargaining behavior and outcomes. Agents’ initial contributions to the surplus are determined by their relative performances in a real-effort task. Three treatments vary in how the final surplus value is determined. We observe that when low-contributors take a risk, they are punished (rewarded) for failure (success), whereas high-contributors receive a fixed share independent of the outcome. Analysis of bargaining process variables, subjects’ communication during bargaining, and third parties’ normative judgments provides further insights into the possible mechanism behind this observation.

Viticulture is essential for reducing pesticide use and associated risks. Often the adoption of individual pesticide reduction measures is investigated in isolation, and little is known on broader patterns and the joint adoption of measures. We address this gap by analyzing adoption choices of Swiss grape growers across a large number of pesticide reduction measures, using a contingency analysis and a k-means clustering algorithm. We focus on how measure, farm, and farmer characteristics correlate with this adoption. The analysis uses survey data collected among 436 Swiss grapevine producers. Results indicate that farmers in our sample appear to exploit complementary effects between measures. Moreover, the cluster analysis reveals that Swiss producers can be split into two groups of roughly equal size, with one adopting a greater variety of pesticide reduction measures, and the other relying more on pesticides alone. We further identify significant differences in farm and farmer characteristics that could explain this variation in measure adoption. Our analysis has important implications for research and policy. Firstly, they underline the importance of fostering the adoption of efficient and effective measure bundles. Secondly, they highlight the need for targeted policies to mobilize farmers relying mostly on pesticides to diversify their plant protection practices and thus contribute to overall pesticide reduction.

Protecting biodiversity on the planet through business involvement is a priority for many governments and citizens. To do this requires balancing different social, financial, and ecological objectives with economic output. This editorial questions what is the right way to do this based on considering different forms of capital, such as natural, human, social, manufactured, and financial. This enables renewed interest in the natural environment in terms of business involvement in issues such as climate change and the circular economy.

This essay explores the affinities between Vincenzo Gioberti’s Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843) and the constitutional political economy advanced by Adrian Pabst and Roberto Scazzieri in The Constitution of Political Economy: Polity, Society and the Commonweal (2023). Gioberti argued that Italy’s political regeneration required a prior renewal of its moral and civil order, insisting that institutions cannot be legitimate or enduring unless grounded in dispositions, associations and collective vocation. Pabst and Scazzieri similarly reject contractarian and institutionalist accounts of political economy, proposing instead that polity and economy are constituted by interdependencies, proportionality, systemic interests and dispositions. By placing these works in dialogue, the essay highlights convergences in their conception of politics as constitution rather than contract, their emphasis on civil association, their recognition of structural embeddedness and their understanding of persistence and transformation as mutually dependent. At the same time, important divergences are acknowledged: Gioberti’s teleological nationalism and reliance on providential history contrast with the pluralism and secular structural analysis of Pabst and Scazzieri. The comparison suggests that constitutional political economy is best understood as both structural and civil: grounded in coherence, viability and proportionality, but equally dependent on dispositions and collective imagination. In contemporary Europe, where crises of legitimacy, inequality and ecological sustainability prevail, such a civil-structural vision of political economy offers a timely, critical resource for re-thinking the commonweal.