The behaviour of urban populations is compared with the systems directing behaviour in individuals. This is both a metaphor and a mechanistic parallel. The biological model draws upon recent developments in brain research and psychological and cultural anthropology. The development and operation...

This paper analyzes four instruments that are widely used to measure the quality of centers serving children ages 0 to 36 months - the CLASS, the ITERS-R, the CC-IT-HOME, and the MITRCC - and that were administered to a sample of 404 child care centers in Ecuador. We first assess the...

We show that grading standards for primary school exams in England have triggered an inflation of quality indicators in the national performance tables for almost two decades. The cumulative effects have resulted in significant differences in the quality signaled to parents for otherwise...

In this chapter, we ask (conceptually and methodologically) what exactly is behavioural economics and what are its roots? And further, what may we have missed along the way? We argue that revisiting "classical" behavioural economics concepts and methods will benefit the wider behavioural...

We study how the city system is affected by the possibility for the members of the same cultural diaspora to interact across different cities. In so doing, we propose a simple two- city model with two mobile cultural groups. A localized externality fosters the productivity of individuals when...