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In this revised and updated edition, An Economic History of Europe re-establishes itself as the leading textbook on European economic history. With an expanded scope, from prehistory to the present, it will be invaluable source for students, educators and researchers seeking to better understand Europe's long-run economic development. The authors cover key themes including the rise of institutions, technological advancements, globalization, and the Industrial Revolution, with a fresh emphasis on the wider impact of economic policies on welfare reflecting a broader understanding of societal well-being. The chronological structure, clear explanations, case studies, and minimal use of complex mathematics make this an accessible approach that allows students to apply economic theories in historical practice. The new edition also connects historical development to urgent contemporary issues such as modern-day sustainability goals. This comprehensive guide provides students with both a historical narrative of Europe's economic transformation, and the essential tools for analysing it.
Civil wars and intrastate armed conflict are the predominant form of organized violence in the contemporary era. Beyond their direct devastating impact, they fundamentally change societies and are linked to broader global issues and challenges. Taking a thematic approach with a focus on conflict management and peacebuilding, this accessible textbook, written for post-graduate and senior undergraduate courses, engages with recent research and comprehensive data to explore the nature of civil war and violent intrastate conflict. With analysis of current and historical conflicts integrated into the chapter coverage, helpful features include boxes highlighting key cases and topics, discussion points opening each chapter, graphs that illustrate important trends, photographs of significant conflicts, suggested readings for each chapter, and a timeline signposting major conflict and security events since 1945. Online resources are provided as an accessible entry point to topics for instructors, students and researchers from different backgrounds, including those less familiar with data.
In Part I of this series on D.T. Suzuki's relationship with the Nazis, (Brian Daizen Victoria, D.T. Suzuki, Zen and the Nazis readers were promised a second part focusing primarily on Suzuki's relationship with one of wartime Japan's most influential Nazis, Count Karlfried Dūrckheim (1896-1988).
However, in the course of writing Part II, I quickly realized that the reader would benefit greatly were it possible to present more than simply Dürckheim's story in wartime Japan. That is to say, I recognized the importance, actually the necessity, of introducing Dürckheim's earlier history in Germany and the events that led to his arrival in Japan, not once but twice.
Welfare state research is at a theoretical impasse insofar as it does not systematically speak to the types of social policy effort that may have not only redistributive but also productive consequences. Cautioning against imprudent use of the social investment label this paper argues for a better understanding of how traditional social policies have enabled society’s adaptation to socioeconomic changes and prevented costly experiences of poverty. Synthesizing ideas drawn from development studies in the Global South and welfare state studies in the Global North, and elaborating on the inclusive strand of welfare developmentalism, the paper conceptualizes what allows existing social policies to be simultaneously protective and productive. It reviews current welfare state research and argues that developmentalist ideas help re-centre the (re)productive role of social policy. It proposes principles for thinking coherently about what makes existing welfare state policies developmental, challenging their characterization as exclusively passive or activating. Recognizing the productive impact of existing social policies requires that we explicitly rethink how welfare state policy effort is understood.
A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the prevalence and antecedents/outcomes of loneliness and social isolation among individuals with severe mental disorders (SMD), such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder.
Methods
Five well-known electronic databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science and Scopus) were searched (plus a hand search). Observational studies that report the prevalence and, if available, antecedents and consequences of loneliness/isolation among individuals with SMD were included. Key characteristics were extracted, and a meta-analysis was performed. Our systematic review was preregistered on PROSPERO (ID: CRD42024559043). The PRISMA guidelines were followed. The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) standardized critical appraisal tool developed for prevalence studies was applied to assess the quality of the included studies.
Results
The initial search yielded 4506 records, and after duplicate removal and screening, a total of 10 studies were finally included. The studies included used data from Europe, Asia, North America, and Oceania. Two studies employed a longitudinal design, while all other studies had a cross-sectional design. Most of the studies included between 100 and 500 individuals with SMD. All studies involved both male and female participants, with women typically comprising about 40% of the sample. The average age of participants often ranged from approximately 30 to 40 years. The estimated prevalence of loneliness was 59.1% (95% CI: 39.6% to 78.6%, I2 = 99.3, P < .001) among individuals with any diagnosis of SMD. Furthermore, the estimated prevalence of objective social isolation was 63.0% (95% CI: 58.6% to 67.4%) among individuals with schizophrenia or schizophrenia spectrum disorder. The quality of the studies was moderate to good. Subjective well-being and depressive symptoms in particular were found to contribute to loneliness in the included studies.
Conclusions
The present systematic review with meta-analysis identified high levels of loneliness and objective social isolation among those with SMD. These findings stress the importance of monitoring and addressing social needs in this vulnerable group, which may have a positive effect on the life quality of individuals with SMD. Future research in neglected regions (e.g. South America and Africa) is recommended. Different diagnoses within severe mental disorders should be distinguished in future studies. Furthermore, additional longitudinal studies are required to explore the antecedents and consequences of loneliness and social isolation among individuals with SMD.
Chan and Seceleanu have shown that if a weighted shift operator on $\ell^p(\mathbb{Z})$, $1\leq p \lt \infty$, admits an orbit with a non-zero limit point then it is hypercyclic. We present a new proof of this result that allows to extend it to very general sequence spaces. In a similar vein, we show that, in many sequence spaces, a weighted shift with a non-zero weakly sequentially recurrent vector has a dense set of such vectors, but an example on $c_0(\mathbb{Z})$ shows that such an operator is not necessarily hypercyclic. On the other hand, we obtain that weakly sequentially hypercyclic weighted shifts are hypercyclic. Chan and Seceleanu have, moreover, shown that if an adjoint multiplication operator on a Bergman space admits an orbit with a non-zero limit point then it is hypercyclic. We extend this result to very general spaces of analytic functions, including the Hardy spaces.
Autism spectrum disorder is defined by the presence of sustained problems in areas of social cognition and social understanding alongside repetitive and/or restricted patterns of behaviour. Behavioural presentations and developmental trajectories in autism are highly heterogeneous. For most, characteristics variably continue across the lifespan, and, for many, they overlap with numerous overrepresented comorbid combinations spanning behavioural, psychiatric and somatic domains. The current autism diagnostic systems (DSM-5, ICD-11) reflect this heterogeneity, focusing on discerning different assistance needs and symptom severity combinations. An emerging view on the pluralisation of autism – ‘the autisms’ – based on different severity levels and different developmental trajectories is gaining popularity, bolstered by the introduction of the grouping ‘profound autism’ and observations of non-persistence of autism for some. We advance the case for expanding the definition of the plural autisms based also on the numerous different aetiological routes that can lead to autism. Various genetic conditions, susceptibility to infectious agents, non-infectious environmental exposures and immune-mediated occurrences have all been observed to culminate in a diagnosis of autism. As a triad, aetiology, presentation intensity and developmental trajectory offer new ways to classify the autisms, with potentially important implications for research and practice.
A vast amount of empirical and theoretical research on public good games indicates that the threat of punishment can curb free-riding in human groups engaged in joint enterprises. Since punishment is often costly, however, this raises an issue of second-order free-riding: indeed, the sanctioning system itself is a common good which can be exploited. Most investigations, so far, considered peer punishment: players could impose fines on those who exploited them, at a cost to themselves. Only a minority considered so-called pool punishment. In this scenario, players contribute to a punishment pool before engaging in the joint enterprise, and without knowing who the free-riders will be. Theoretical investigations (Sigmund et al., Nature 466:861–863, 2010) have shown that peer punishment is more efficient, but pool punishment more stable. Social learning, i.e., the preferential imitation of successful strategies, should lead to pool punishment if sanctions are also imposed on second-order free-riders, but to peer punishment if they are not. Here we describe an economic experiment (the Mutual Aid game) which tests this prediction. We find that pool punishment only emerges if second-order free riders are punished, but that peer punishment is more stable than expected. Basically, our experiment shows that social learning can lead to a spontaneously emerging social contract, based on a sanctioning institution to overcome the free rider problem.
The anthology Japan's household registration system and citizenship: Koseki, identification and documentation, David Chapman and Karl Jakob Krogness, eds. (Routledge 2014) provides a first, extensive, and critical overview of Japan's koseki system. Situated from the seventh century Taika Reforms until today at the center of Japanese governance and society, the koseki opens up for comprehensive and deep exploration the Japanese state, family, and individual, as well as questions relating to citizenship, nationality, and identity. The scope of potential koseki-related research is extensive and is relevant for many disciplines including history, sociology, law, ethnography, anthropology, cultural studies, literature and media studies, gender and queer studies. Given the koseki's origins in the household registration regimes of China and its subsequent influence on the household registration systems of Korea and Taiwan during the colonial period, the koseki also opens the way for comparative studies within and beyond East Asia.
We run an experiment in which students of different European nationalities are matched in groups of five and repeatedly choose with whom within their group they want to play a trust game. Participants observe of each other age, gender, nationality and number of siblings. The region of origin, “North” or “South” is a major determinant of success in the experiment. Participants tend to trust those they trusted before and who trusted them. We do not find evidence of regional discrimination per se. It is only the underlying and significant differences in behavior that translate through repeated interactions into differences in payoffs between the two regions.
Incentivized methods for eliciting subjective probabilities in economic experiments present the subject with risky choices that encourage truthful reporting. We discuss the most prominent elicitation methods and their underlying assumptions, provide theoretical comparisons and give a new justification for the quadratic scoring rule. On the empirical side, we survey the performance of these elicitation methods in actual experiments, considering also practical issues of implementation such as order effects, hedging, and different ways of presenting probabilities and payment schemes to experimental subjects. We end with a discussion of the trade-offs involved in using incentives for belief elicitation and some guidelines for implementation.
In recent work on non-cooperative network formation star-shaped networks play an important role. In a particular theoretical model of Bala and Goyal (2000) center-sponsored stars are the only strict Nash networks. In testing this theoretical model, Falk and Kosfeld (2003) do not find experimental evidence that players select the center-sponsored star. Based on a slight modification of Bala and Goyal's model, we design a network formation experiment in which, depending on link costs, periphery-sponsored stars and the empty network are the only strict Nash networks. We observe that almost all groups not only reach a strict Nash network once but also switch the center player in periphery-sponsored stars several times. The main innovation in our experiment is to use a continuous time framework which we believe to be a more realistic setting to study behavior in network formation situations and which makes coordination on stars much easier than simultaneous strategy adaptation in discrete time.
In an experimental evolutionary game framework we investigate whether subjects end up in a socially efficient state. We examine two games, a game where the socially efficient state is also an equilibrium and a game which has no equilibrium in pure strategies at all. Furthermore, we distinguish between a situation in which the subjects are completely informed about the payoff function and a situation in which they are incompletely informed. We observe that subjects spend the greater part of the time at or near the efficient state. If the efficient state is an equilibrium, they spend more time there than otherwise. Furthermore, incomplete information increases the time spent at the efficient state.
Chronic headache after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) remains an ongoing area of investigation, with uncertainty regarding its prevalence and long-term outcomes.
Methods:
A systematic review was conducted across five databases – Medline (Ovid), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Ovid), PsychInfo (Ovid), Embase (Ovid) and Scopus (Elsevier) – to identify all studies investigating the prevalence of chronic headaches after aSAH. A total of five studies were identified and included in our review.
Results:
There were five observational studies (three cohort and two cross-sectional). The overall prevalence of chronic headaches after aSAH ranged from 16.1% to 41%, albeit across a follow-up time frame of 12 months to 7.5 years. Outcome measurements included quantitative pain scores and opioid usage; however, these were inconsistent across studies, and the studies did not address the long-term impacts of chronic headaches on quality of life or their psychosocial implications.
Conclusion:
The prevalence of chronic headache after aSAH is not well-characterized, and long-term outcomes are seldom studied, highlighting a critical gap in the current literature. Longitudinal cohort studies with standardized approaches to ascertain the psychosocial and physiological burden associated with post-aSAH chronic headaches are urgently needed.
Preliminary evidence suggests that a ketogenic diet may be effective for bipolar disorder.
Aims
To assess the impact of a ketogenic diet in bipolar disorder on clinical, metabolic and magnetic resonance spectroscopy outcomes.
Method
Euthymic individuals with bipolar disorder (N = 27) were recruited to a 6- to 8-week single-arm open pilot study of a modified ketogenic diet. Clinical, metabolic and MRS measures were assessed before and after the intervention.
Results
Of 27 recruited participants, 26 began and 20 completed the ketogenic diet. For participants completing the intervention, mean body weight fell by 4.2 kg (P < 0.001), mean body mass index fell by 1.5 kg/m2 (P < 0.001) and mean systolic blood pressure fell by 7.4 mmHg (P < 0.041). The euthymic participants had average baseline and follow-up assessments consistent with them being in the euthymic range with no statistically significant changes in Affective Lability Scale-18, Beck Depression Inventory and Young Mania Rating Scale. In participants providing reliable daily ecological momentary assessment data (n = 14), there was a positive correlation between daily ketone levels and self-rated mood (r = 0.21, P < 0.001) and energy (r = 0.19 P < 0.001), and an inverse correlation between ketone levels and both impulsivity (r = −0.30, P < 0.001) and anxiety (r = −0.19, P < 0.001). From the MRS measurements, brain glutamate plus glutamine concentration decreased by 11.6% in the anterior cingulate cortex (P = 0.025) and fell by 13.6% in the posterior cingulate cortex (P = <0.001).
Conclusions
These findings suggest that a ketogenic diet may be clinically useful in bipolar disorder, for both mental health and metabolic outcomes. Replication and randomised controlled trials are now warranted.
Achieving sustainability on the ground poses a challenge in decoding globally defined goals, such as sustainable development goals, and aligning them with local perspectives and realities. This decoding necessitates the understanding of the multifaceted dimensions of the sustainability challenges in a given context, including their underlying causes. In case studies from Brazilian drylands, we illustrate how an enhanced multiscale participatory method, combined with systems thinking tools, can shed light on systemic structures that currently entrench unsustainable development trajectories. This method offers insights into co-designing potential pathways toward sustainable futures and unlocking transformative capacities of the local population.
Technical summary
Translating United Nations global sustainable development goals (SDGs) into actions that address local realities and aspirations is an urgent challenge. It requires new thinking and approaches that foster the discussion about the main challenges to implementing the SDGs at multiple levels. This paper presents a novel multiscale participatory approach that combines the popular Three Horizons diagram with the formalism of causal loop diagrams in systems thinking. We present results from six multi-stakeholder dialogues held across drylands in Brazil with a focus on desired futures aligned with SDGs. Focusing on identifying the root causes and systemic structures of unsustainability, participants identified lock-ins, leverage points, and interventions for how these could be changed. The core lock-ins are the discontinuity of public policies, and the historical land and power concentration reinforced by the current expansion of large-scale agricultural, mining, and energy projects. The proposed interventions are structural and – if implemented – would contribute to achieving SDGs in an integrated manner. The unique approach developed in this study can provide leverage as it bridges the inclusivity of participatory visioning with the change potential of systems thinking tools to tackle root causes and unleash societal transformations.
Social media summary
We are not achieving SDGs. Understanding root causes of unsustainability is critical to move toward sustainable and just futures.
We present results from a pre-registered, well-powered $(N \gt 3,000,000)$ text message get-out-the-vote (GOTV) experiment, conducted during the 2019 European Parliament election in Sweden. Our findings suggest that a simple text message increases the likelihood of voting by 0.3 percentage points. Half of this effect spills over to untreated household members while workplace spillovers are near zero. Subsequent analysis reveals that the direct treatment effect is noticeably stronger among individuals with below-average voting propensities. Interestingly, within this same group, the household spillovers are significantly negative. We speculate and provide some indirect evidence, that these negative spillover effects may stem from the text message reminder influencing the behaviour of voters already motivated to vote. Above all, we propose that an increase in early voting, as opposed to voting on Election Day, among treated individuals may weaken the mechanisms thought to explain spillover effects since voters are less likely to bring their family members with them when voting early.
The Roman Capitol was a place of memory. Several conceptual traits of a Roman lieu de mémoire are identified: an ever-present signposting to other stories, notions of humble origins, portents of a prosperous future, and great men who tie it all together. The concrete places related to these stories are not only visible but, in fact, vital to the story they tell; without them, the symbiotic interlinking between narrative and numinous place evaporates. Discussion of the Roman triumph demonstrates how space is created by ritual. From this emerged an implicit hierarchy of space that lent additional quality to place. The Republic’s greatest imperatores wished to see their fame immortalized on the Capitol. But the Capitol was also somewhat removed from everyday politics, for instance, in the Comitium or in the Forum. Here, aristocrats had to confront the people, directly and in person. In turn, the encounter was critical to the way in which the people awarded public offices in the voting assemblies on the Campus Martius. Between these various locations there developed a distinctive hierarchy of place that was defined by proximity to the present of politics, prestige, and war.
In a new essay, Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp reflects on almost a century’s worth of research on the Roman Republic in Germany and its reception in the Anglosphere. The history of scholarship on the Republic is traced, from Gelzer and Münzer to Syme to Brunt to Millar, with special attention given to the influence of Christian Meier. Key themes of more recent work include political culture, the contio, memory studies, the early Republic, and imperialism.