In this article, I investigate the extent to which ISI Web of Science indexing contributes to the impact of an academic paper. I do this by analysing the results of a natural experiment consisting in the accidental exclusion from the index of an entire issue of a Political Science journal. The statistical tests indicate a significant effect of ISI indexing on the number of citations received by individual papers. The conclusion is that ISI indexing does not simply provide an objective measure of academic impact, but it also affects academic impact itself. This fact provides evidence that, in spite of the increasing competition from other providers such as Scopus or Google Scholar, ISI indexing still has a considerable amount of market power.
We investigate whether the members of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank take into account the specific economic conditions of their states of origin, to set the interest rates for the euro area. Testing the national-based view against the Europeanist perspective is a challenging issue, because voting inside the Governing Council is secret, and the final outcome depends both on the individual preferences and the procedures followed by the Governing Council to arrive at a decision. Accordingly, we model interest rate setting as a two-stage process: first, each member of the Governing Council sets his/her preferred rate, and next the Governing Council meets and decides the actual figure. Our empirical analysis shows that domestic developments play a major role in determining the preferred interest rate of the each member; and that some members exert agenda setting power, that precludes some interest rate policies to be considered at the meeting.
A B S T R A C TThe role of the European Parliament (EP) under the consultation procedure has been widely neglected by rational choice models of legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU). This paper offers a new understanding of the procedure by means of a computational model in which lobbyists provide legislators with policy options. Transaction costs of assimilating information lead to rationing of access to the agenda-setter (i.e. the Commission). In this context, consultation converts the EP into an indirect channel to the agenda-setter for some lobbyists. I argue that the resulting pool of policy options, together with the right to be heard by the Commission and the latter's degree of rational ignorance, provides the EP with a legislative power that the literature has not so far recognized. The implications of this finding extend to other legislative procedures of the EU and to consultative committees in other political systems.
In this editorial statement we summarise some of the discussions we have had in the last months regarding the risks associated with the use of indicators for the measurement of research outputs, and how these risks should affect the management of the European Journal of Government and Economics. In particular, we focus on the consequences of the so-called Goodhart's law, which states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. We also explain the latest developments in the journal in the light of our previous editorial statements, and present our strategy for the upcoming years.
JEL classificationA12; A30; P27.
In this editorial statement we explain the reasons for the creation of the European Journal of Government and Economics. We argue that there is a general shortage of academic journals. Although the new journal we are starting will not solve or significantly reduce this problem, it will represent a marginal step in the right direction. We also explain our views regarding some important aspects of the journal’s policy, such as indexing and open access.
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