Causal Chain (causal + chain)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences28%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting28%

Selected Abstracts

Private-Sector Investment in Infrastructure: Rationale and Causality for Pro-poor Impacts

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 4 2009
Rebecca Shah
This article reviews the arguments for promoting private investment in infrastructure as a basis for poverty reduction in developing countries. It describes the experience leading to the development of international ,facilities' intended to address impediments to private investment. It then explores three ,levels' of literature: that of the facilities themselves, of donor organisations, and of academic authors. At each, it investigates the rationale and causal pathways leading from support for private investment to pro-poor outcomes. It finds there is a possible but not necessary association between private investment, economic growth and poverty reduction, but the causal chain is poorly understood. It proposes the development of such a causal framework. [source]

DOES THE ECONOMY MATTER?

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 2 2005
AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSAL CHAIN CONNECTING THE ECONOMY AND THE VOTE IN GALICIA
In this paper the causal chain connecting the economy and the vote in 2001 Galician regional elections is analyzed. Our findings demonstrate that economic voting is not just a matter of reactions to economic perceptions. It also depends to a great extent on two intermediate mechanisms: whether or not the incumbent is held responsible for economic outcomes and performance and voters' views of the relative economic management capabilities of opposition parties. [source]

Front-line managers as agents in the HRM-performance causal chain: theory, analysis and evidence

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 1 2007
John Purcell
Research on the link between HRM and organisational performance has neglected the role of front-line managers, yet it is these managers who are increasingly charged with the implementation of many HR practices. Using an employee survey in 12 ,excellent' companies we explore the extent to which employee commitment towards their employer and their job are influenced by the quality of leadership behaviour and by satisfaction with HR practices. Both have a strong effect on employee attitudes. The article concludes with a case study of a planned effort to improve front-line managers' skills in people management. [source]

A comparative study of seed number, seed size, seedling size and recruitment in grassland plants

OIKOS, Issue 3 2000
Anna Jakobsson
In this study we analyse relationships between seed number, seed size, seedling size and recruitment success in grassland plants. The often hypothesised trade-off between seed size and seed number was supported by a cross-species analysis and by an analysis of 35 phylogenetically independent contrasts, derived from a data-set of 72 species. Apart from among-species relatedness, we also controlled for possible confounding effect of plant size that may influence both seed size and seed number. A sowing experiment with 50 species was performed in the field. The seeds were sown in a grassland and subjected to two treatments, disturbance and undisturbed sward. Evidence for seed-limited recruitment was obtained for 45 of the species. Disturbance had a significant, or nearly significant, positive effect on recruitment for 16 of the 45 species. The relative recruitment in undisturbed sward increased with increased seed size, and both recruitment success and seedling size were positively related to seed size. We suggest that a trade-off between competitive ability and number of recruitment opportunities follows from the trade-off between seed size and seed number, through a causal chain from seed size via seedling size to recruitment success. The relationships between seed size, seed number and recruitment may be an important underlying mechanism for abundance and dynamics of plant species in grassland vegetation. This is an example of a direct link between evolutionary life-history theory, and theory of plant community structure. [source]

Political History and Disparities in Safe Motherhood Between Guatemala and Honduras

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
Jeremy Shiffman
Each year, worldwide, more than 500,000 women die of complications from childbirth, making this a leading cause of death globally for adult women of reproductive age. Nearly all studies that have sought to explain the persistence of high maternal mortality levels have focused on the supply of and demand for particular health services. We argue that inquiry on health services is useful but insufficient. Robust explanations for safe motherhood outcomes require examination of factors lying deeper in the causal chain. We compare the cases of Guatemala and Honduras to examine historical and structural influences on maternal mortality. Despite being a poorer country than Guatemala, Honduras has a superior safe motherhood record. We argue that four historical and structural factors stand behind this difference: Honduras's relatively stable and Guatemala's turbulent modern political history; the presence of a marginalized indigenous population in Guatemala, but not in Honduras, that the state has had difficulty reaching; a conservative Catholic Church that has played a larger role in Guatemala than Honduras in blocking priority for reproductive health; and more effective advocacy for maternal mortality reduction in Honduras than Guatemala in the face of this opposition. [source]

Selecting explanations from causal chains: Do statistical principles explain preferences for voluntary causes?

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2010
Denis J. Hilton
We investigate whether people prefer voluntary causes to physical causes in unfolding causal chains and whether statistical (covariation, sufficiency) principles can predict how people select explanations. Experiment 1 shows that while people tend to prefer a proximal (more recent) cause in chains of unfolding physical events, causality is traced through the proximal cause to an underlying distal (less recent) cause when that cause is a human action. Experiment 2 shows that causal preference is more strongly correlated with judgements of sufficiency and conditionalised sufficiency than with covariation or conditionalised covariation. In addition, sufficiency judgements are partial mediators of the effect of type of distal cause (voluntary or physical) on causal preference. The preference for voluntary causes to physical causes corroborates findings from social psychology, cognitive neuroscience and jurisprudence that emphasise the primacy of intentions in causal attribution processes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]