TY - JOUR A1 - Béchara, Hannah A1 - Orăsan, Constantin A1 - Parra Escartín, Carla A1 - Zampieri, Marcos A1 - Lowe, William T1 - The Role of Machine Translation Quality Estimation in the Post-Editing Workflow JF - Informatics N2 - As Machine Translation (MT) becomes increasingly ubiquitous, so does its use in professional translation workflows. However, its proliferation in the translation industry has brought about new challenges in the field of Post-Editing (PE). We are now faced with a need to find effective tools to assess the quality of MT systems to avoid underpayments and mistrust by professional translators. In this scenario, one promising field of study is MT Quality Estimation (MTQE), as this aims to determine the quality of an automatic translation and, indirectly, its degree of post-editing difficulty. However, its impact on the translation workflows and the translators’ cognitive load is still to be fully explored. We report on the results of an impact study engaging professional translators in PE tasks using MTQE. To assess the translators’ cognitive load we measure their productivity both in terms of time and effort (keystrokes) in three different scenarios: translating from scratch, post-editing without using MTQE, and post-editing using MTQE. Our results show that good MTQE information can improve post-editing efficiency and decrease the cognitive load on translators. This is especially true for cases with low MT quality. KW - machine translation quality estimation; post-editing Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics8030061 VL - 8 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wehner, Joachim A1 - Hallerberg, Mark T1 - Regimes, Leaders, and Lockdowns: Who Responded More Quickly to the COVID-19 Pandemic? N2 - Explanations of the speed of policy responses to COVID-19 highlight two sets of arguments. One focuses on regime type. Did autocracies, with fewer institutional constraints and high coercive power, lock down more quickly than democracies? The second concerns the “type” of health policymaker. Did governments led by doctors or natural scientists respond more quickly, and did men and populists delay lockdown? We examine these relationships with a global dataset of political regimes and relevant traits of 188 political leaders and health ministers in office at the start of the pandemic. Our setup addresses concerns about reciprocal causation and sample selection bias and proves robust to potential confounders. We find autocracies locked down more slowly than democracies, while leader traits appear not to matter. However, medical doctors in the health portfolio are associated with lower likelihood of lockdown, suggesting they may have provided cover for leaders hesitant to do so. KW - COVID-19, Democracy, Education, Gender, Leaders, Lockdown, Pandemic, Populism, Public health, Science Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/9pazw ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schumacher, Julian A1 - Trebesch, Christoph A1 - Enderlein, Henrik T1 - Sovereign defaults in court JF - Journal of International Economics N2 - For centuries, defaulting governments were immune from legal action by foreign creditors. This paper shows that this is no longer the case. Building a dataset covering four decades, we find that creditor lawsuits have become an increasingly common feature of sovereign debt markets. The legal developments have strengthened the hands of creditors and raised the cost of default for debtors. We show that legal disputes in the US and the UK disrupt government access to international capital markets, as foreign courts can impose a financial embargo on sovereigns. The findings are consistent with theoretical models with creditor sanctions and suggest that sovereign debt is becoming more enforceable. We discuss how the threat of litigation affects debt management, government willingness to pay, and the resolution of debt crises. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2020.103388 SN - 0022-1996 VL - 131 PB - Elsevier BV ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chelotti, Nicola A1 - Dasandi, Niheer A1 - Jankin Mikhaylov, Slava T1 - Do Intergovernmental Organizations Have a Socialization Effect on Member State Preferences? Evidence from the UN General Debate JF - International Studies Quarterly N2 - The question of whether intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have a socialization effect on member state preferences is central to international relations. However, empirical studies have struggled to separate the socializing effects of IGOs on preferences from the coercion and incentives associated with IGOs that may lead to foreign policy alignment without altering preferences. This article addresses this issue. We adopt a novel approach to measuring state preferences by applying text analytic methods to country statements in the annual United Nations General Debate (UNGD). The absence of interstate coordination with UNGD statements makes them particularly well suited for testing socialization effects on state preferences. We focus on the European Union (EU), enabling us to incorporate the pre-accession period—when states have the strongest incentives for foreign policy alignment—into our analysis. The results of our analysis show that EU membership has a socialization effect that produces preference convergence, controlling for coercion and incentive effects. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqab069 SN - 0020-8833 VL - 66 IS - 1 PB - Oxford University Press (OUP) ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kreyenfeld, Michaela T1 - Causal Modelling in Fertility Research: A Review of the Literature and an Application to a Parental Leave Policy Reform JF - Comparative Population Studies N2 - This paper reviews empirical studies that have examined the causal determinants of fertility behaviour. In particular, we compare the approaches adopted in the different disciplines to improve our understanding of how birth dynamics are influenced by changes in female employment and changes in family policies. The wide array of panel data that have become available in recent years provide great potential for advanced causal modelling in this field. Event history modelling has been a dominant approach in sociology and demography. However, researchers are increasingly turning to other methods to unravel causal effects, such as fixed-effects modelling, the regression discontinuity approach, and statistical matching. We summarise selected studies, and discuss the advantages and the shortcomings of the different approaches. In an empirical section, we analyse the impact of the German 2007 policy reform on birth behaviour to illustrate the difficulties involved in isolating policy effects. The final chapter concludes by underscoring that even simple modelling strategies may be beneficial for improving our understanding of how policy effects shape demographic behaviour, and for laying the groundwork for more fine-grained causal investigations. * This article belongs to a special issue on “Identification of causal mechanisms in demographic research: The contribution of panel data”. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-10 SN - 1869-8999 VL - 46 PB - German Federal Institute for Population Research ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Göbel, Sascha A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - The Comparative Legislators Database JF - British Journal of Political Science N2 - Knowledge about political representatives' behavior is crucial for a deeper understanding of politics and policy-making processes. Yet resources on legislative elites are scattered, often specialized, limited in scope or not always accessible. This article introduces the Comparative Legislators Database (CLD), which joins micro-data collection efforts on open-collaboration platforms and other sources, and integrates with renowned political science datasets. The CLD includes political, sociodemographic, career, online presence, public attention, and visual information for over 45,000 contemporary and historical politicians from ten countries. The authors provide a straightforward and open-source interface to the database through an R package, offering targeted, fast and analysis-ready access in formats familiar to social scientists and standardized across time and space. The data is verified against human-coded datasets, and its use for investigating legislator prominence and turnover is illustrated. The CLD contributes to a central hub for versatile information about legislators and their behavior, supporting individual-level comparative research over long periods. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123420000897 SN - 0007-1234 N1 - Published online 23 February 2021 Göbel, S., & Munzert, S. (2022). The Comparative Legislators Database. British Journal of Political Science, 52(3), 1398–1408. doi:10.1017/S0007123420000897 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Miraldo, Marisa A1 - Sassi, Franco A1 - Shaikh, Mujaheed A1 - Simmons, Bryony A1 - Vrinten, Charlotte T1 - The development and market launch of orphan drugs from 1980 – 2019: a quantitative analysis Y1 - 2021 UR - https://download2.eurordis.org/rare2030/deliverables/D5.3%20R%26D%20and%20market%20launch%20of%20orphan%20drugs.pdf PB - Rare2030 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bunde, Tobias T1 - Defending European integration by (symbolically) integrating European defence? Germany and its ambivalent role in European security and defence policy JF - Journal of European Integration N2 - For many German policymakers, a commitment to European integration in defence is a necessary means to further the end of European integration in general – in stark contrast to French leaders who see European integration as the means to reach the end of a stronger European defence. Although there is general support for European defence cooperation and even integration among the German public and state elites, other ideational factors, most notably wide-spread anti-militarist attitudes, military planners’ traditional embeddedness in NATO planning procedures, and a deep commitment to parliamentary control of the armed forces, present manifest hurdles for real capacity-building on the supranational level. As a result, German efforts to integrate defence policy within the EU have been largely symbolic, while real progress takes place in other (bilateral or minilateral and often German-led) frameworks. Berlin has thus contributed considerably to the increasing institutional fragmentation and territorial differentiation in European defence. KW - Germany KW - European Union KW - defence KW - integration KW - military Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2021.1877693 VL - 43 IS - 2 SP - 243 EP - 259 ER - TY - JFULL ED - Freudlsperger, Christian ED - Jachtenfuchs, Markus T1 - A member state like any other? Germany and the European integration of core state powers T2 - Journal of European Integration Y1 - 2021 UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/geui20/43/2 SN - Print ISSN: 0703-6337, Online ISSN: 1477-2280 VL - 43 IS - 2 PB - Taylor & Francis CY - London ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina T1 - Corruption risk in Albanian public procurement (2017 – 2019) Y1 - 2021 UR - http://ais.al/new/en/corruption-risk-in-albania-public-procurement-2017-2019-a-document-prepared-by-heritie-school-of-governance-and-the-albanian-institute-of-sciences-ais-may-2021/ ER -