Policy Bubbles

We develop the concept of a policy bubble to capture the notion of long‐term overinvestment in a policy. In sketching the relation of policy bubbles to economic bubbles, we describe how these two concepts have similar origins but different trajectories because they are filtered by different institutions. We examine in some detail three likely instances of ongoing policy bubbles: crime policy, school reform (charter schools and private education vouchers), and the contracting and privatization of public services. We show how these cases differ from the housing bubble of 1997–2007, how they differ from each other, and the extent to which they can be considered policy bubbles. Last, we suggest this concept can help unify the policy process literature with the practice of policy evaluation and outline testable hypotheses for future research.     

The Importance of Attention Diversity and How to Measure It

Studies of political attention often focus on attention to a single issue, such as front‐page coverage of the economy. However, examining attention to a single issue without accounting for the agenda as a whole can lead to faulty assumptions. One solution is to consider the diversity of attention; that is, how narrowly or widely attention is distributed across items (e.g., issues on an agenda or, at a lower level, frames in an issue debate). Attention diversity is an important variable in its own right, offering insight into how agendas vary in their accessibility to policy problems and perspectives. Yet despite the importance of attention diversity, we lack a standard for how best to measure it. This paper focuses on the four most commonly used measures: the inverse Herfindahl Index, Shannon's H, and their normalized versions. We discuss the purposes of these measures and compare them through simulations and using three real‐world datasets. We conclude that both Shannon's H and its normalized form are better measures, minimizing the danger of spurious findings that could result from the less sensitive Herfindahl measures. The choice between the Shannon's H measures should be made based on whether variance in the total number of possible items (e.g., issues) is meaningful.     

The Central Institute for Brain Research in Amsterdam and its Directors

The Central Institute for Brain Research was founded in Amsterdam in 1908 as part of an international effort to study the nervous system with multiple institutions and various disciplines. The development of research in the past hundred years at the Brain Institute has hardly been documented. We analyze the history of this institute by means of brief portraits of its directors and their main research topics. It appears that each director introduced his own branch of neuroscience into the institute. Initially, mainly comparative neuroanatomical data were collected. Following the Second World War, the multidisciplinary approach slowly developed with research programs on systems neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, and brain disorders. Every new director introduced new approaches to the study of the brain and thus played an important role in keeping brain research in the Netherlands at the international forefront where it has been ever since its foundation in 1908.     

Building G at Makaynūn: a late pre‐Islamic settlement above the ruins of a South Arabian town

This article presents the results of the excavation of a residence dated between the second and fourth centuries AD, constructed over the ruins of the South Arabian town of Makaynūn, in central Hadramawt (Yemen). The building yielded a large quantity of material including objects proving contacts between the central Hadramawt and regions located to the north‐east, such as central Oman, the Gulf area and India.     

Wirtschaftsförderung und Immobilienwirtschaft

Abstrakt Immobilienwirtschaft als Partner der Stadtentwicklung? Zugegeben eine Sichtweise, die oftmals in der Ausbildung von Planern oder Geographen etwas zu kurz kommt. Dabei w?re es oft sinnvoll, bei der Planung auch die Sicht der Immobilienwirtschaft respektive der künftigen Nutzer zu berücksichtigen. Seit jeher haben sich St?dte auch und vor allem durch die Baut?tigkeit von Privaten entwickelt. Investitionen der Kommunen und des Staates beschr?nkten sich in der Regel auf technische und soziale Infrastruktureinrichtungen und das eine oder andere Renommierobjekt, wie beispielsweise Museen, Theater, Opern. In Zeiten knapper ?ffentlicher Kassen werden selbst dafür zunehmend private Investitionen ben?tigt. In dem sich aktuell versch?rfenden Wettbewerb der St?dte und Regionen sind Investoren, die zur baulichen und wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung beitragen, wichtiger denn je. Wie sich das Zusammenspiel von Immobilienwirtschaft und Wirtschaftsf?rderung in der Praxis darstellt, schildern die Autoren beispielhaft anhand ihrer Erfahrungen aus der kommunalen Wirtschaftsf?rderung.