The key aim of the LOSS project is to unravel: How economic hardship affects support for socially conservative political agendas aimed at restricting the rights of marginalised groups (ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, migrants, LGBTQIA+ and women), and how local and national policy contexts affect this relationship. Many European societies have recently experienced growing prejudice towards marginalised groups and the rise in support for far-right parties advocating to restrict the rights of these groups. These developments threaten the cohesion of national and local communities across Europe. While aggregate level evidence suggests that financial crises generally coincide with increased support for far-right parties, we do not understand why this happens. By developing a groundbreaking interdisciplinary theoretical framework that integrates insights about the role of loss from political science, sociology, social psychology and behavioural economics, the LOSS project contends that experiences of economic hardship translate into specific narratives of loss that in turn trigger support for social conservative political agendas. To empirically examine the importance of narratives of loss, the LOSS project employs an innovative multi-method empirical approach combining qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. To uncover the role of context, the project compares five European countries (Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) that vary in the level of compensation provided for economic hardship, and local contexts within these countries.

Urban GreenUP aims at obtaining a tailored methodology (1) to support the co-development of Renaturing Urban Plans focused on climate change mitigation and adaptation and efficient water management, and (2) to assist in the implementation of NBS in an effective way. NBS classification and parametrization will be addressed and some resources to support decision making will be established as part of the project activities. A large scale and fully replicable demonstration action of NBS accompanied by innovative business models will provide evidences about the benefits of NBS contributing to the creation of new market opportunities for European companies, and fostering citizen insight and awareness about environmental problems. Three European cities will assume the demos as front-runners (Valladolid, Liverpool and Izmir), other set of two European cities will act as followers to strengthen the replication potential of the results (Ludwigsburg and Mantova) and finally three non-European cities (Medellín, Chengdu and Quy Nhon) will allow to identify the market opportunities for European companies out of Europe and fostering the European leadership in NBS implementation at global level. URBAN GreenUp also aims to: fostering the creation of a global market and EU international cooperation; deploy a wide Exploitation and Market deployment procedure for NBS solutions & deploy an Impact-based Communication and Dissemination strategy.

Measurable residual disease (MRD) detected by multiparameter flow cytometry (MFC) has strong prognostic value in patients with the most frequent acute and chronic leukemias, acute myeloid (AML) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), but it has not yet been confirmed as a treatment-guiding biomarker. The RESOLVE Consortium will leverage numerous existing expert networks and patient advocacy partnerships to establish the predictive value of MRD in AML/CLL patients, with the expectation that this affordable, minimally-invasive biomarker can be imminently used to guide the intensity of consolidation therapy, improve quality of life (QoL), and reduce costs. This will be achieved through 1) development of a real-world patient registry and data platform; 2) establishment of standardized, decentralized MRD analysis across Europe; and 3) a randomized, controlled multi-national pragmatic trial based on the hypothesis that treatment intensity can be safely reduced in MRD negative AML/CLL patients, to provide evidence for the clinical, personal and societal impact of MRD-guided therapy. These efforts will be supported by RESOLVE’s participatory research pipeline, which will incorporate input from patients, caregivers, and experts in social sciences and health economics. The real-world nature of the study ensures broadly applicable results for all patients regardless of location, socioeconomic status, gender, sex, disability or ethnicity. The findings will then be effectively communicated and disseminated following open science principles through the medical community for uptake in routine clinical practice. The laboratory, clinical, and patient advocacy infrastructures already in place will support rapid adoption of MFC-based MRD assessment to aid in clinical decision-making. The Consortium’s widespread member organizations will work with policymakers and authorities across the EU to provide access to the test in the national health care systems for all AML and CLL patients. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects "Diagnostics and Treatment (diagnostics)".

Nearly all activities in which the public sector is involved, from defense to transportation, from education to healthcare, require the public sector to procure works or goods from private contractors. Thus, it is crucial that the procedures through which procurement occurs be designed to avoid waste and enhance social welfare. Preventing corruption and ensuring contractor compliance with their obligations constitute primary design goals. Nevertheless, very limited evidence exists as to how different awarding methods are susceptible to corruption, and how contractors’ past reputation should be used to award new tenders. This research proposal describes three empirical projects that will advance the frontier of our understanding of the roles of corruption and reputation in procurement. Component 1 focuses on the use of reputation in contract procurement. It analyzes the evidence produced by the introduction of a vendor rating system to: i) determine whether the new system induced contractors to improve their performance, ii) determine whether performance improvements caused higher procurement costs, and iii) evaluate concerns on corruption and entry of new bidders. Component 2 focuses on corruption in public procurement. It analyzes evidence on the presence of networks of firms engaged in criminal activities in public procurement to determine: i) the extent of the phenomenon, (ii) the functioning of different awarding rules against corruption, and iii) the use of tests to detect corruption. Component 3 focuses on healthcare procurement regulations. It analyzes evidence on the public procurement of medical devices to accomplish: i) a descriptive analysis of the procurement practices across the EU, ii) an assessment of whether discretionary awarding rules are used to foster corruption or to reward contractors with better reputation, and iii) an evaluation of these procurement practices in terms of patients’ welfare.

Our project proposes to provide new empirical evidence on wage setting. This evidence will enhance our understanding of industrial relations, and of wage inequality. First, we will open up the collective bargaining process between incumbent employees and their employers in both France and the US. We will conduct textual analysis of collective bargaining agreements. We will design two-sided high-frequency surveys to follow the bargaining process within firms (e.g. offer sequences) and to measure the preferences of workers’ and employers’ representatives over various tradeoffs (e.g. wages vs employment). Using quasi-experimental designs, we will study how the identity of the workers’ and employers’ representatives matter for agreement outcomes and we will study overall bargaining efficiency. We will provide the first experimental evidence in industrial relations study through two randomized control trials. In France, we will evaluate the effects of negotiation training programs on collective bargaining outcomes. In the US, we will test for union threat effects in non-unionized workplaces through information experiments. Second, we will leverage the extraordinary opportunities offered by online job boards to open up the wage setting process for external hires. We will complement matched online-search and employment register data with detail firm and worker high-frequency surveys in both France and Sweden. We will provide a thorough analysis of selection into individual bargaining, and of the determinants of bargaining intensity and offers. We will test for bargaining theories using experimental information shocks. We will propose an empirical classification of recruiters based on their willingness to bargain with external hires that can be used to study strategic interactions among heterogenous bargaining firms. Our empirical evidence will guide policymakers in the design of collective bargaining rules and of online job boards.