Public intellectuals,political satire and the birth of activist public relations: The case of Attic Comedy

The purpose of this article is to explore the origins of dissent public relations and to establish its emergence in the context of the ancient Greek comedy represented by Aristophanes. Indeed, Attic Comedy (also known as Old Comedy) was the first great example of today’s mass communication, in which political satire was used to dissent and protest against political and social circumstances in fifth-century BC Athens. This situation was conditioned by the Peloponnesian War and its political, economic and social consequences. From this perspective, this article also constitutes an investigation into the intellectual history of public relations, of which Aristophanes can be considered to be one of the first practitioners.     

Introduction

Public Organization Review -     

Riemann manifold Langevin methods on stochastic volatility estimation

In this article, we perform Bayesian estimation of stochastic volatility models with heavy tail distributions using Metropolis adjusted Langevin (MALA) and Riemman manifold Langevin (MMALA) methods. We provide analytical expressions for the application of these methods, assess the performance of these methodologies in simulated data, and illustrate their use on two financial time series datasets.     

100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.     

Emergence and Communication in Computational Sociology

Computational sociology models social phenomena using the concepts of emergence and downward causation. However, the theoretical status of these concepts is ambiguous; they suppose too much ontology and are invoked by two opposed sociological interpretations of social reality: the individualistic and the holistic. This paper aims to clarify those concepts and argue in favour of their heuristic value for social simulation. It does so by proposing a link between the concept of emergence and Luhmann's theory of communication. For Luhmann, society emerges from the bottom‐up as communication and he describes the process by which society limits the possible selections of individuals as downward causation. It is argued that this theory is well positioned to overcome some epistemological drawbacks in computational sociology.     

Transformed Logit Confidence Intervals for Small Populations in Single Capture–Recapture Estimation

The good performance of logit confidence intervals for the odds ratio with small samples is well known. This is true unless the actual odds ratio is very large. In single capture–recapture estimation the odds ratio is equal to 1 because of the assumption of independence of the samples. Consequently, a transformation of the logit confidence intervals for the odds ratio is proposed in order to estimate the size of a closed population under single capture–recapture estimation. It is found that the transformed logit interval, after adding .5 to each observed count before computation, has actual coverage probabilities near to the nominal level even for small populations and even for capture probabilities near to 0 or 1, which is not guaranteed for the other capture–recapture confidence intervals proposed in statistical literature. Thus, given that the .5 transformed logit interval is very simple to compute and has a good performance, it is appropriate to be implemented by most users of the single capture–recapture method.     

Estimating Traffic Emissions Using Demographic and Socio-Economic Variables in 18 Chilean Urban Areas

A macro-scale methodology for vehicle emissions estimation is described. The methodology is based on both correlations between activity level and PM, CO, THC and NO _x vehicle emissions and relationships between demographic and socio-economic variables and transportation activity level. First, pollutant emissions were correlated with transportation activity, expressed as vehicle-km/year, using existing data collected from mobile sources emission inventories in nine urban cities of Chile. Second, demographic and socio-economic variables were pre-selected from those that could intuitively be correlated with vehicle activity level and considering the data availability. Using the individual R ² correlation coefficient as variable selection criterion, population, the number of vehicles, fuel consumption, gross domestic product, average family incomes and road kilometers were finally chosen. A different set of explicative variables was considered for different vehicle categories, based on the selection criterion above mentioned. Then, correlation functions between these variables and transport activity were obtained by non-linear Gauss–Newton least square method. This methodology was applied to eighteen provinces of the country obtaining total annual emission for mobile sources, divided into six main vehicles categories.     

An Inter-Temporal Comparison About the Effect of Institutional Changes on the Policy-Making Process in Chile’s Health Sector

Public Organization Review - Do institutional changes lead to changes in the policy formulation process (PFP)? The paper analyses the health sector PFP of the old Chilean democracy (in place until...