The Financialisation of Rental Housing 2.0: Releasing Housing into the Privatised Mainstream of Capital Accumulation

This article presents two cases of listed real estate companies that operate in the Ruhr metropolitan region of Germany. The first is Immeo Wohnen, a subsidiary of the French real estate investment trust (REIT) Foncière des Régions that was previously owned by a US hedge fund. The second is Vonovia, Germany's largest real estate company, originally a subsidiary of a British private equity firm. Both examples embody what we call the shift from financialisation 1.0 to financialisation 2.0, i.e. the transition from pure speculation to long‐term investment. We show that long‐term investment strategies are used by REITs and listed funds in order to release housing into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation. With the advent of the financialisation of rental housing 2.0, the long‐term investment focus of these funds paradoxically enables a short‐term investment focus by buying and selling shares in these funds on the stock exchange.     

Preferences for Water Policy in the Ogallala Region of New Mexico

In the late-1970s, Congress formed the High Plains Study Project to assess and study various management and water supply strategies for the Ogallala basin. In the early-1980s, the High Plains Study Council released its findings and recommendations, which in turn stimulated numerous interpretive critiques. A decade has passed since the High Plains Study Council report, yet water management problems persist. Using data from a survey of water experts in New Mexico, we identify the determinants of support and opposition to three water management options: voluntary conservation, mandatory regulation, and water importation. Preference for water management strategies is a function of how policy is perceived (regulatory vs. distributive). Water users in the Ogallala East region of New Mexico tended to oppose mandatory regulatory policies that provide the best option for conserving ground water resources for future generations; voluntary conservation-the least effective option—enjoyed the strongest support from respondents. The findings of this research should be of interest to persons concerned with the future of the Ogallala aquifer and to students of public policy.     

Design paths of federal intergovernmental cooperation

Actors rarely approach institutional design choices with a blank slate but are influenced by design choices made at earlier stages. How does institutional design evolve over time and are there specific paths to deepening cooperation? We investigate the institutional design paths of subnational cooperation that are chosen to address increasingly complex and interconnected policy problems. We theorize that besides the substantive problem, earlier choices matter to explain what institutional design mechanism is chosen; that is, the design of existing institutions between two subnational governance units, called substates, influences the design of subsequent institutions. Using a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model, we show that the design paths of subnational cooperation in the Swiss water governance sector correlate with earlier design choices. Our results indicate that not all cooperation is self-reinforcing and path-dependent, but they show which specific design choices are more likely to follow each other in repeated formal federal intergovernmental cooperation.     

Cajal's brief experimentation with hypnotic suggestion

Spanish histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, one of the most notable figures in Neuroscience, and winner, along with Camillo Golgi, of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries on the structure of the nervous system, did not escape experimenting with some of the psychiatric techniques available at the time, mainly hypnotic suggestion, albeit briefly. While a physician in his thirties, Cajal published a short article under the title, "Pains of labour considerably attenuated by hypnotic suggestion" in Gaceta Médica Catalana. That study may be Cajal's only documented case in the field of experimental psychology. We here provide an English translation of the original Spanish text, placing it historically within Cajal's involvement with some of the key scientific and philosophical issues at the time.     

Regional planning of R&D and science–technology interactions in Andalucia: a bibliometric analysis of patent documents

Andalucia is a southern European LFR (less‐favoured region) with a high degree of self‐government that has allowed it to design its own R&D policies that complement those implemented throughout Spain and the European Union (EU). Recently the Regional Government passed the Third Andalucian Research Plan 2000–2003, an R&D planning instrument that, as has become customary in previous Plans, attributes considerable budgetary weight to the scientific aspects of the science–technology–industry system (Andalucia allocates more of its own resources to promoting research than any other region in Spain). This paper provides deeper insight into the role played by science in driving the technological development of Andalucia, one of the LFRs of the EU. The aim was to answer five fundamental questions: How is basic science utilized by industry in Andalucia? Which sectors are the most dynamic in the employment of scientific know‐how? Which scientific fields are most in demand by industry? Which types of institution utilize scientific knowledge most profusely? What delay is there in incorporating science into technology? The methodology that has been applied for investigating the links between science and technology is based on scientific citations in patent documents (NPC). The results in this article provide relevant information about the interconnection of scientific and technological systems and thus constitute a good point of reference for the development of future R&D plans.     

Regional Efficiency in the European Union

This paper examines existing disparities in technical efficiency levels across the European regions over the period 1986–2002. The results reveal that technical efficiency is not randomly distributed across space in the European setting. On the contrary, the different tests performed highlight the presence of positive spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity in the distribution under consideration. In fact, we have detected several regional clusters characterized by similar efficiency levels distinguishing them from the rest of the sample. Nevertheless, the estimates carried out show the existence of a process of regional convergence in terms of technical efficiency during the study period. Our findings also reveal that factors such as the regional stock of capital per worker or the patterns of productive specialization are relevant in explaining the changes in technical efficiency experienced by the European regions between 1986 and 2002.     

Of mice and sparrows: Commensal faunas from the Iberian iron age in the duero valley (central spain)

This paper aims to emphasize the importance of imported commensal faunas in archaeological contexts by reporting on the earliest known house sparrows and house mice from the Iberian peninsula. The finds, which date to the Iron Age of a hinterland area of the peninsula, have been identified on the basis of osteomorphological and osteometrical criteria, which are specified in the text in order to demonstrate the reliability of the identification. The temporal and geographical coincidence of these remains in the two sites analysed with those of donkey and, secondarily, chicken remains and faunal remains of littoral origin, lends support to the hypothesis that these animals arrived with the earliest trans-Mediterranean colonizers to the southern shores of the Iberian peninsula and spread involuntarily thereafter as ‘side-products’ of the Phoenician commercial routes throughout the Iberian hinterland.     

Splitting Urban Waters: The Politicisation of Water in Barcelona between Populism and Anti-Populism

The current literature on remunicipalisation is focused either on theoretical concepts (e.g. right to the city, commons, return of the political) or on the “insurgent” actors involved in this process, overlooking the counter-politicisation of the economic agents and the resulting struggles for power and legitimation. This paper examines, by means of an interpretative qualitative methodology and by critically engaging with Ernesto Laclau’s approach to populism, the complexities of the ongoing dialectic of populist and anti-populist antagonism between socio-political actors and private companies, with a focus on the discourse on remunicipalisation of water in Barcelona.