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Purpose – This chapter outlines the need for policy packages in urban areas, demonstrates how effective policy packages can be designed by combining appropriate policy instruments and discusses the implications for Chinese cities.

Methodology – The results in the chapter are derived from a predictive model of two UK cities (Edinburgh and Leeds), an objective function to reflect a city's objectives and constraints, and an optimising routine which identifies the most effective level of intervention for each policy instrument.

Findings – Where available, fuel taxes, fare levels, road pricing charges, low-cost capacity improvements and public transport frequencies are the most effective policy instruments. Optimal combinations designed to cost no more than current strategies offer substantial benefits to society. Infrastructure projects typically offer much lower value for money. Strategies designed to meet challenging climate change targets can be designed, but may well substantially reduce other benefits.

Research limitations/implications – Other policy instruments such as awareness campaigns and walking and cycling measures could be tested in a similar way. Similar analyses could be conducted in high growth contexts typical of Chinese cities.

Practical and social implications – Policy packages will be important for Chinese cities. They are likely to differ from European specifications, and include greater use of infrastructure. The methodology presented here could be applied to their design.

Originality – The chapter brings together research reported elsewhere, presents some new results on synergy and discusses the implications for China.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to consider “equality mainstreaming” as an international policy and to explore some of the implications this raises for public management.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The methodology is based on literature review looking at the way gender mainstreaming practices have developed a wider application to equality mainstreaming. Examining the relationship between mainstreaming and evidence-based management, it comments on the challenges this poses for public management.

Findings – Equality mainstreaming and its implications have been largely absent from public management discourse despite the growth of equality mainstreaming in international policy.

Research limitations/Implications – Research in public management should address mainstreaming and its potential for social change.

Practical implications – This chapter brings this issue to the forefront in an effort to engage academics and public managers.

Social implications – This chapter raises theoretical questions about mainstreaming and social change in favor of equality. It is a starting point for further research on public management as a tool for shifting organizational and societal values.

Originality/Value – The chapter provides an overview of previous literature and policy development in this area and then moves on to explore the implications of extending mainstreaming as a concept to other policy areas and examines both challenges and opportunities raised by this approach for the management of values in public services.

Purpose – This chapter examines the need, and possibilities, for social science research that is grounded in the life sciences.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter starts with the observation that the social sciences have been tied far too closely to models and concepts in the physical sciences, which has both limited and distorted research findings. The predominant models used in much of social science cannot meet the challenges we face. Examining issues in political science in particular, the author demonstrates the value of a biopolitical perspective for political science research and policy analysis relevant to the challenges we face.

Findings – Studies about human issues should be based on research that considers humans as part of the evolving biological world. Key biopolicy research areas illustrate the value and flexibility of life science models and data. Political science can and should provide important insights to our understanding of socio-political issues and options, but to succeed the discipline must abandon mechanistic models of human nature and motivation and return to an understanding based in the life sciences.

Practical implications (if applicable) – The discussion analyzes the overall strengths and weaknesses of the proposal to adopt a biopolicy approach, and concludes that obstacles, though real, can be overcome. There are opportunities for substantial contributions to social science.

Social implications (if applicable) – Failure to integrate political science with a life sciences perspective will mean a continuation of disciplinary work that is largely irrelevant or inadequate to emerging issues and problems.

Original/value of chapter – The value of this chapter is to highlight the need for a reexamination of the mechanistic models as well as the disciplinary boundaries that control most social science, and political science in particular. It examines widely recognized issues and challenges facing Western societies (and global communities) to illustrate that a life sciences perspective is essential to both analysis and policy options. It is an important consideration for academics (teachers and students) policy researchers, and policy makers as well.

The paper analyzes the adaptive behavior of farmers in the Yunnan province of China, where drought is occurring more frequently. We focus on the experiences with adaptation to climate change by farmers in the rural areas of China.

The research is based on a survey and a number of in-depth interviews of key stakeholders in a drought-stricken region.

Where the government is not always coming forward, the farmers take initiatives to adapt to the new situation of drought. Different mechanisms are being used, some linked to government policies and subsidies, other initiatives are initiated by the farmers themselves, individually or in small groups.

More research on the livelihood strategies is necessary to better understand what these strategies mean for the household income and hence for the survival chances of poor households.

Climate change encourages local actors to play a role in drought adaptation, developing policies for mitigating the consequences of drought, trying to create water markets and involving local companies and water user associations. The research suggests stimulating the initiatives of the farmers and to create an enabling environment for them.

Without government policies we will see growing inequalities in the rural areas of China.

We studied how in the case of drought farmers react to adapt to the new reality. Different adaptation strategies are distinguished and their relation to different government policies is established. We observed that farmers find their own solutions and create their own governance structures to assure for example supply of additional water to their fields.

The purpose of this chapter is to combine research findings around gender bias and the challenges women face in academia, and to present a unified conceptual framework. Ample research indicates that the issue is far from sufficiently addressed. Even in cases where policies are in place, mediocre outcomes are observed. Fewer women climb the ladder of academic progression all the way up to senior positions, especially in certain institutions and certain disciplines.

After thoroughly reviewing the literature, the authors integrate and organize the different multifaceted causes that appear to obstruct women in academia. They propose a scheme that divides between contextual and non-contextual factors, emphasizing their interplay.

Even when policies are in place, they appear to have limited results, because they mainly address isolated factors rather than taking a multifaceted, integrative approach.

Future research should further examine the interplay of contextual and non-contextual factors by combining multiple variables that contribute to gender bias in academia.

Policy-making should consider both contextual and non-contextual factors, thus providing more integrative solutions and taking a broader perspective on the issue.

Despite the ample and rising amount of research findings, there is no coherent framework to adequately include all the factors that contribute to gender bias in academia. By integrating and organizing the different, multifaceted causes already pointed out by previous findings, the authors hope to contribute to future research with specific variables to test and correlate, as well as to the formulation of more sophisticated policies.

Purpose – There has been a growing interest in the development of a ‘green’ or ‘low carbon’ economy as a means of reconciling economic development and the environment. Research on green entrepreneurs to date has been upon individual entrepreneurs, neglecting wider economic and social contexts within which they operate. By looking at these wider networks of support, we suggest that discourses of the lone entrepreneur innovating and changing business practices are misrepresentative.

Methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews to investigate green entrepreneurship with green building companies and policy makers.

Findings – Combined with new demands from consumers for more environmentally friendly products and services, the changing shape of national and global economies is leading to new forms of entrepreneurship. We identify a number of tensions between policy intentions and businesses’ experiences on the ground.

Research limitations/implications – To date, research has only been undertaken in the UK – we recommend that future research takes other national contexts into account. Other economic sectors also represent promising areas for future research, potentially including social enterprises in the green economy. Sustainability transitions theories offer a potentially valuable means for understanding the role of businesses in engendering a green economy.

Practical implications – Implications for policy frameworks are outlined in the conclusions.

Originality/value of chapter – By incorporating policy and support organisations, and informal networks of support, the chapter challenges the dominant view of the lone entrepreneurial hero and points to the significance of networks for facilitating green entrepreneurship. This will be of importance for policy makers and funders of entrepreneurship programmes.

This chapter explores policy implications of deliberately targeted interventions aimed at closing the gap between nutrition baseline trends and desirable levels of nutrition intake according to World Health Organization/Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations guidelines. Special attention is paid to the implications for those at the bottom of the nutrition achievement range (Bottom Billion).

We conduct a forward looking evaluation with a global multimarket model for agriculture within the context of key drivers of change. We observe the effect of interventions on nutrition intake for the most food-insecure regions as transmitted through food prices, changes in country-level food trade, and other market-driven outcomes. We demonstrate the nutrition-enhancing effects that occur when animal-sourced protein consumption, livestock production, and livestock feed demand decrease in developed countries. We also show the effect of a significant growth in agricultural productivity and household incomes.

Our analysis shows that the most effective intervention boosts household income to facilitate adequate intake of food and key nutrients. Diet changes have notable effects but are harder to implement on a practical level. Enhancing agricultural productivity (especially in regions with historically low yields) is also effective in improving nutrition outcomes.

Short of social protection and direct assistance programs, the ability of policy to effect short-term changes in nutritional status is limited. We highlight the effectiveness of pathways that promote longer-term socioeconomic growth and productivity gains as ways of improving the nutrition and health status of consumers.

In this paper we investigate the relationship between loose monetary policy, low inflation, and easy bank credit and house price booms.

Using a panel of 11 OECD countries from 1920 to 2011 we estimate a panel VAR in order to identify loose monetary policy shocks, low inflation shocks, bank credit shocks, and house price shocks.

We show that during boom periods there is a heightened impact of all three “policy” shocks with the bank credit shock playing an important role. However, when we look at individual house price boom episodes the cause of the price boom is not so clear. The evidence suggests that the house price boom that occurred in the United States during the 1990s and 2000s was not due to easy bank credit.

Shocks from the shadow banking system are not separately identified. These are incorporated into the fourth “catch-all” shock.

Our evidence on housing price booms that expansionary monetary policy is a significant trigger buttresses the case for central banks following stable monetary policies based on well understood and credible rules.

This paper uses historical evidence to evaluate the relative importance of three main causes of house price booms. Our results bring into question the commonly held view that loose bank credit was to blame for the U.S. house price bubble of the later 1990s.

This chapter attempts to untangle the complex arena of private sector engagement in education by discussing the definitional challenges associated with understanding the non-state sector and by introducing some conceptual frameworks employed in research on private education. A thematic review of research from the field of Comparative International Education is provided to give the reader an understanding of the diversity that characterizes private involvement as well as the interconnectedness of private actors, specifically drawing attention to findings that grapple with equity implications. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for developing a framework for research via posing questions that ought to be asked when designing, conducting and analyzing findings from studies into private sector engagement in education.

This chapter argues for the unrealised potential value of methodologies derived from a critical realist research philosophy in the field of entrepreneurship studies. Critical realism offers methodological alternatives that, through the generation of new insights into social relations, social structures and key generative mechanisms, can offer significant value for entrepreneurship researchers. Reflecting on their personal experiences researching from a critical realist perspective in entrepreneurship studies, the authors explore how this research philosophy can extend the field of inquiry and promote new perspectives. The chapter explores this in relation to the specific topic of enterprise policy and demystifies some aspects of critical realism by setting out some of its basic principles to demonstrate their potential to develop new insights. Further, this approach can create significant impact, for example, through the development of effective interventions. The chapter concludes by identifying implications for enterprise policy development, implementation and evaluation.