This chapter is about the communication of monetary policy, and specifically the role of “forward guidance”. This is taken to mean statements by monetary authorities about future policy.

Much ink has been spilled on the issue of how to design central bank mandates since the improvised and hasty birth of the inflation target in the UK in the aftermath of its exit from Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism in the autumn of 1992. This chapter is a brief introduction to the argument for raising the inflation target in the light of the experience since the target was first set, and aims to spill as little further ink as possible

Chapter 3 is a summary of the theoretical concepts that lead to the logic to grant independence to central banks, ways to measure CBI and its empirical effects on price stability. We show that different schools of thought (Chicago, Virginia, Freiburg) come to similar conclusions, although their methodological starting points are very different.

To access refugee protection in Australia and Canada, refugee applicants must speak. They must present their oral testimony in person, repeatedly and at length, unmediated by a legal representative or advocate, and in many cases without the benefit of documents, witnesses or other forms of evidence to verify their claims. This book is about the oral evidence that refugees are compelled to give, the stories they are required to narrate, and the genres of storytelling they are required to master during administrative oral hearings for the assessment of refugee status in Australia and Canada. This introductory chapter establishes the book’s central concerns, namely: what the presentation, interrogation and assessment of testimony during the oral hearing tell us about the refugee subject whom Refugee Convention-signatory states judge as authentic, credible and, ultimately, acceptable. It then carefully connects the demand for narrative within RSD with the intractable problems of credibility assessment. Finally, it interrogates the role of law, lawyers and interpreters in shaping the refugee testimony and analysis presented throughout the book.

The Conclusion returns to the book’s central questions and arguments. It considers the implications of the book’s findings for the conduct of oral hearings within RSD, and the impossibility of a just assessment of refugee applicants’ oral testimony against the current credibility criteria. While the aim of the book was not to advance precise reforms to RSD, in reflecting on what suggestions for reform arise, the Conclusion argues that if oral hearing must be a narrative occasion, it should be a more predictable one. Where applicants’ evidence is expected to fit within cognisable narrative forms, the hearing should provide the opportunity to meet these standards. However, such a reform would do nothing to address the narrative mandate traced and critiqued throughout the book. Finally, the Conclusion explores and holds open the possibility for certain texts and genres to present radical ways of imagining refugee narratives outside the strictures of refugee law, RSD and the extreme demands (and limits) currently placed on the testimony of refugee applicants.

This chapter marks the book’s shift from examining the demand for a particular refugee story during the oral hearing, to considering how decision-makers used narratives to test and contest refugee applicants’ testimony. It presents a key finding from the hearings: that decision-makers often engaged in ‘narrative contests’ with the applicant, presenting their own counter-narratives of how events should have taken place if the story presented were to meet the credibility standard of plausibility. The chapter details how the criterion of ‘plausibility’ forges a direct link between credibility assessment and the narrative form, and also sets out the minimal law or policy that governs the testing of oral evidence during the hearing in Australia and Canada. As a result, decision-makers were relatively free to engage in a form of questioning that went beyond asking refugee applicants for information or explanation. Instead, they presented alternative, hypothetical accounts of how events would have taken place if the story (and by implication, the applicant) were credible. When engaging in these narrative contests, decision-makers’ narrative expectations were often deeply subjective, idiosyncratic and unpredictable. The chapter also reveals that in navigating these exchanges, certain applicants displayed high levels of agency and resistance vis-à-vis decision-makers’ own narrative assumptions and their vast power to direct evidence.

A core impediment to refugee applicants providing a credible narrative account of their claims to protection is the profound fragmentation and unpredictability of the structure, content and conduct of the oral hearing. This chapter argues that the conduct of the oral hearing severely fragmented applicants’ testimony in three key ways: reverse-order questioning; decision-makers’ abrupt subject switching during the hearing; and questions pertaining to time, sequencing and precise dates of events. This leads to the conclusion that applicants were both expected to present their oral evidence in a form that fulfilled the credibility criteria and the demand for narrative, and actively impeded in their efforts to do so. Further, where applicants displayed an ability to present evidence in a narrative form, in all but a minority of hearings this was done despite, rather than because of, the structure and setting of the hearing.

This chapter will examine complex decisions relevant to family law. Decisions shaped by bias can lead to outcomes that place certain people and groups at an unfair disadvantage while placing others at an unjustified advantage. Implicit bias can have significant implications for outcomes in the legal system, including in family court. Although decision-makers might view themselves as free of bias, decades of research indicates that this is simply not the case. Though it is not possible to completely remove bias from decision-making, awareness can partially mitigate the harm of unconscious bias. In particular, the chapter will address family law decisions and decision-making bias in various domains, including bias in (1) credibility determinations, (2) gender, (3) sexual orientation and gender identity, (4) socioeconomic status, (5) intimate partner violence, and (6) substance use. The chapter will consider both psychological research and legal principles and identify areas where additional research needs to be conducted. Future research and/or policy implications will be discussed.

Chapter 4 introduces the main empirical case of the book, The Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, and documents its progression from 2001 to 2022, a key period of autocratization in Russia. This chapter details how participatory technologies can be positioned as a credible form of voice and the strategies used to increase the Direct Line’s credibility while still maintaining control.

When Lyndon Johnson took the United States into large-scale war in Vietnam in 1965, he did so despite deep misgivings on the part of numerous close associates, including his vice president and senior Senate Democrats, as well as key allied governments. Johnson himself frequently expressed doubts about the prospects in the struggle, even with the commitment of major US combat troops and heavy air power. Yet he took the plunge, despite the fact that some part of him suspected – correctly – that the war would ultimately be his undoing. Why he did so is harder to explain than is often suggested, but it’s not inexplicable. At each step, escalation represented the path of least political resistance for him. Thus although Johnson may have been a doubting warrior, he was also a determined one, from his first day in office to his last. He stayed the course even as domestic opposition grew in 1967 and 1968, and even as his principal subordinate on the war, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, grew disillusioned. In January 1969, Johnson left Washington, a man broken by a war he didn’t want but felt compelled to wage.

Chapter 5 examines how an essential element of the Refugee Convention definition, namely the ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted’, is applied and interpreted by judicial authorities when appellants flee contemporary armed conflicts. It sets out that only appellants who had experienced past persecution or singling out had their claim examined under the Refugee Convention. The chapter also discusses the finding that although appellate authorities have some awareness of gender norms, these are considered fixed, such that any departure from them is disbelieved and results in a negative risk assessment. Appellate authorities in the EU thus apply a higher standard of proof than warranted in international refugee law. In effect, this has led to a modification of the standard of proof in international refugee law as it is now equated with the assessment of credibility, which itself can be highly gendered. The chapter claims that the practice acts as barrier to the international protection of persons fleeing contemporary armed conflicts. Further, the failure to examine the general conditions of violence in contemporary armed conflicts is contrary to the obligations of states under international law.

Chapter 8 opens by asking readers to reflect on the attributes of someone who they find trustworthy and believable. It then describes three attributes that Aristotle described for credible people: practical intelligence, virtuous character, and goodwill. Modern research on people’s perceptions of scientific sources finds similar attributes: expertise, integrity, and benevolence. The chapter reviews ways that science communicators can show these attributes. For example, we need to understand the phenomenon we’re sharing; we need to be honest, which can include saying "I don’t know" when applicable; and we need to be respectful. Being clear is a sign of respect for our conversational partners, as is sincere listening. This chapter returns to a comparison of the deficit model and funds of knowledge approaches before discussing ways to handle opinions that contradict the scientific consensus or that are in some way offensive. The Worked Example concerns stereotypes. This chapter’s Closing Worksheet asks readers to identify three things about their demonstrations that they are confident about and three things that they do not know related to their demonstrations.

An environmental strategy is an integrated set of choices about how a company should interact with the environment and its environmental stakeholders. A first step is identifying how a company impacts the environment and the stakeholder demand for improving those impacts. Stakeholders demand depends on the co-benefits they receive from environmental improvements and the resources they are able to deploy in pursuit of those improvements. A second step is identifying the market and nonmarket channels through which stakeholders can transfer value to the company in return for producing an environmental improvement. A third step is ensuring credibility – how can its stakeholders ensure that the environmental improvements are genuine and that each side will follow through on its promises in the exchange? A final step is to identify how the environmental strategy fits with the company’s competitive strategy. An environmental strategy can enhance a company’s market and nonmarket strategies in ways that are difficult for competitors to mimic, thus creating new sources of sustainable competitive advantage.