Research Approaches to the Assessment of National-Social Resilience during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Time for Critical Examination
In April 2022, the Samuel Neaman Institute held a roundtable focusing on critical examination of research regarding resilience aspects during the Covid-19 pandemic period. The goal of the roundtable was to discuss the challenges, failures and advantages of using data and to develop models based on statistical methods in managing epidemics and making information accessible […]
Benford’s Law: A survey of its varied applications
Benford’s Law, or Newcomb-Benford Law, states that in many data sets, the leading digits (1’s, 2’s, etc.) will be much more frequent – 30% will be 1’s, for instance. This law has been widely used in many applications, including detection of fraud and data manipulation. This paper surveys some of the more interesting papers, and […]
R&D Outputs in Israel / Analysis of Scientific Publications – 2021
This study was conducted in 2021, based on data from bibliometric databases. The report examines the metrics of Israeli scientific publications in comparison with global research output (Chapter 1); Data of Israeli HCP / Highly Cited Papers (Chapter 2); Patterns of Israeli articles included in Nature Index (Chapter 3); Mapping of university rankings indicators (Chapter […]
R&D Outputs in Israel / Analysis of Scientific Publications – 2020
This study was conducted in 2020, based on data from bibliometric databases. The report examines the data of Israeli HCR / Highly Cited Researchers (Chapter 1); Open Access patterns of Israeli scientific output (Chapter 2); Bilateral coauthorship changes in Israeli international collaboration (Chapter 3); Career development among Israeli postdocs (Chapter 4).
Crossing the Valley of Death Between Academic Research and Effective Policy
Why does much valuable academic research fail to impact public policy? I argue that the way forward to relevance and credibility for economics lies through RCT’s – randomized controlled trials, in which the methodology of scientific experimentation joins with the theoretical insights of behavioral economics. By joining the insights of behavioral economics with the rigor […]
Chemistry education: Where are we headed?
In view of the decline in popularity of chemistry in high schools and the decrease in the number of teachers and schools in which chemistry is taught, the current research has examined trends in motivation and reasons for choosing a career in chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering, or chemical education and recommend ways to foster these […]
World University Rankings
The purpose of this work is to present an updated comparative view of world rankings of universities, and in particular – to examine the status of Israeli universities in these rankings. Various issues regarding prominent rating systems are discussed, including reviews, flaws, shortcomings, methodological issues, research impact, opinion-based surveys, geographical preferences and more. Updated results […]
Gross Domestic Problem: Why GDP Misleads & How to Fix It
This research paper surveys academic research done during approximately the past five years, on new approaches to measuring economic growth and well-being, replacing the conventional Gross Domestic Product ‘national accounts’ measure, in use since 1934, that is now understood to be flawed. While it is seen that GDP as a measure of well-being is problematic, […]
R&D Outputs in Israel / Analysis of Scientific Publications – 2019
This study was conducted in 2019, based on data from bibliometric databases. The report describes and examines Israeli scholarly output (Chapter 1); the influence of government funding on research productivity (Chapter 2); Israeli academic performance in world university rankings (Chapter 3); career development among Israeli postdocs (Chapter 4)
Building an Enhancing Mexico’s Entrepreneurial Culture: Powerful Narratives as the “Missing link”
This essay proposes a method for building and enhancing Mexico’s entrepreneurial startup culture, by creating and disseminating powerful narratives or stories, about startups, as a crucial often-missing link in the causal entrepreneurial chain. It reviews and summarizes key research papers published in the last four years or so and draws lessons from Israel’s experience.
