European companies have reacted in different ways to the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), Phase I. While some companies engaged in an active trading behaviour focused on additional revenues, others adopted a strategy orientated to mere compliance with the scheme and aimed for balanced accounts only. This article provides the outcomes of a survey on company behaviour under the EU ETS in Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark from 2005 to 2006, in which cross-national differences in trading behaviour are linked to national patterns of policy implementation and the political economies in which companies operate. Thus, specific country patterns of institutional preparation and institutional learning for the ‘real’ CO2 allowance market in Phase II of the EU ETS (2008–2012) are sketched. Whereas Phase I is distinguished by a net over-allocation of allowances, Phase II is expected to entail some level of scarcity of allowances. We argue that companies are prepared differently to meet the challenges of the future EU ETS. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

The Social Impact Bond (SIB) is a new funding mechanism for welfare programs. It is supposed to create savings for the public sector from which private returns can be deduced. Presented as a purely technical solution, SIBs discard their political morality. The Welfare Convention Approach (WCA) is designed for studying SIBs as disputed and versatile welfare apparatuses.We claim that elements from diverse historical welfare conventions (the philanthropic, communitarian, civic, market, full employment, entrepreneurial, financial, and behavioral) reveal the diverse institutional conflicts and compromises of SIBs at the time they are implemented. In so doing, the WCA informs comparative research on SIBs.

Existing non-verbal ability tests are typically protected by copyright, preventingthem from being freely adapted or computerized. Working towards an openscience framework, we provide 80 novel, open-access abstract reasoning items,an online implementation, and item-level data from 659 participants agedbetween 11 and 33 years: the Matrix Reasoning Item Bank (“MaRs-IB”). EachMaRs-IB item consists of an incomplete matrix containing abstract shapes.Participants complete matrices by identifying relationships between the shapes.Our data demonstrate age differences in non-verbal reasoning accuracy, whichincreased during adolescence and stabilized in early adulthood. There was aslight linear increase in response times with age, resulting in a peak in efficiency(i.e., a measure combining speed and accuracy) in late adolescence. Overall, thedata suggests that the MaRs-IB is sensitive to developmental differences inreasoning accuracy. Further psychometric validation is recommended.

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