Deaths at the borders database: evidence of deceased migrants’ bodies found along the southern external borders of the European Union

Irregular migrants and asylum seekers have died and continue to die attempting to cross the external borders of the EU without authorisation, seeking to enter the territories of its Member States. Yet, remarkably little is known about these ‘border deaths’. In 2015, the Human Costs of Border Control project published the Deaths at the Borders Database for the Southern EU, an open-source ‘evidence base’ of individualised information about people who have died border deaths between 1990 and 2013, sourced from the death management systems of Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta and Greece. It is the first database on border deaths in the EU to be based on official sources as opposed to the news media. The project involved searching 563 state-run death registry archives and deductively selecting the death certificates of persons who died border deaths. This paper describes, in detail, the making of the Deaths at the Borders Database: from the systematic, multi-sited, quantitative data collection and qualitative case studies, to the construction and final results of the Database itself.     

The homotopy perturbation method for the Black–Scholes equation

The homotopy perturbation method is designed to obtain a quick and accurate solution to the Black–Scholes equation and boundary conditions for a European option pricing problem. The problem of pricing a European option can be cast a partial differential equation. The analytical solution of the equation is calculated in the form of a convergent power series with easily computable components.     

European Scientific Socio-Economic Reporting: State and Possibilities of Development

This paper proposes a European socio-economic reporting system, consisting of different elements and constructed in a modular form. The main idea is to monitor the process of welfare production, conceived in the form of an input-throughput-output model. Actors of welfare production generate inputs, these are mediated and filtered by institutional arrangements and finally determine the outcomes, that is the individual welfare. For all of the three parts of the welfare production model available data sources, social reports, social surveys, databases with institutional information etc. are reviewed and analyzed with respect to their use for the monitoring of welfare production. The paper is divided into five sections: first, the state of socio-economic reporting is outlined; second, the use of the available material is discussed; third, new approaches and instruments in socio-economic reporting are described; fourth, a scenario of European socio-economic reporting is outlined; and fifth, the steps needed for implementation are delineated.     

当前中欧关系中的西藏问题

目前＂西藏问题＂是中国与欧洲国家关系中的一个症结。双方在对西藏问题的看法和对达赖喇嘛的身份定位上都有差异。欧洲国家之所以介入＂西藏问题＂,除了其实用主义原则之外,还有人权和人文主义因素。面对这种情况,中国需要找到合适的措施加以应对。     

Efficiency and stock performance of EU banks: Is there a relationship?

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the stock performance of EU listed banks is related to their efficiency. Our sample consists of 171 banks operating in 15 EU markets over the period 2002–2006. First, we use stochastic frontier analysis to estimate the cost and profit efficiency of banks, while controlling for environmental factors. Then, we investigate if changes in profit and cost efficiency are reflected in changes in stock prices. Our results indicate that the change in profit efficiency has a positive and significant impact on stocks prices; however, there is no relationship between changes in cost efficiency and stock returns.     

Empirical Performance and Asset Pricing in Hidden Markov Models

Abstract

To improve the empirical performance of the Black-Scholes model, many alternative models have been proposed to address leptokurtic feature, volatility smile, and volatility clustering effects of the asset return distributions. However, analytical tractability remains a problem for most alternative models. In this article, we study a class of hidden Markov models including Markov switching models and stochastic volatility models, that can incorporate leptokurtic feature, volatility clustering effects, as well as provide analytical solutions to option pricing. We show that these models can generate long memory phenomena when the transition probabilities depend on the time scale. We also provide an explicit analytic formula for the arbitrage-free price of the European options under these models. The issues of statistical estimation and errors in option pricing are also discussed in the Markov switching models.     

IRELAND: DISTANCE EDUCATION IN AN EXPANDING DEMOCRACY

The recent and explosive development of the Irish economy has earned the Republic the popular accolade, CelticTiger . Enticed by government subsidies and tax incentives, foreign investors favour location in Ireland in order to penetrate the Single European Market (SEM). Commensurate with the demands of foreign investors for a fully developed infrastructure, the deregularization of the Irish Telecoms market (1998) has afforded new opportunities for the transformation of education and training in Ireland. This paper explores the democratizing potential of distance education within the Irish Republic. It focuses on awareness programmes and initiatives for the promotion of information technology (IT) access, and considers particular challenges in ensuring equal access to the benefits of new technologies, for all.     

美国量刑委员会制度探略——兼评我国最高人民法院司法解释制度

美国量刑委员会制度始建于上世纪70年代,该制度从创设之初就遭受质疑。对此,美国联邦最高法院经由一系列判例进行了阐释和廓清,确立其法律地位,在刑事司法领域发挥着重大作用,一定程度上反映了美国在司法解释问题上的态度。美国量刑委员会制定的量刑指南与我国最高人民法院的司法解释制度有相似之处,因此,对美国量刑委员会制度予以探讨,可藉以检视我国司法解释领域的失范现象,并对推进我国司法解释制度改革提供参考。     

14 to 18 Year Olds as “Children” by Law?

SUMMARY

The European Union Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JI of 22.12.2003 “on combating the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography” defines as “child” any person below the age of 18. Under Austrian law there are no children between the ages of 7 and 18. The author criticizes that, up to now, the development of age limits in legal history has taken a clearly different way in the various fields of law of the Austrian legal order. The Austrian legislator's tendency, which has evolved in the course of legal history, to grant rights and permits to young people between 14 and 18 years earlier but, at the same time, to impose on them more and more obligations arising from private and public law, to give them the opportunity to grow into adult life with full powers and responsibilities step by step, totally contradicts the Council Framework Decision.

Today, adolescents live in a cultural environment characterized by globalized pop culture and world-wide communication technology. Access to “extreme ideas” is offered everywhere and anytime. It is highly difficult to grow up without any interference and develop one's own personality and sexual orientation according to one's inherent nature under such circumstances of a world society, and this process may be seriously disturbed or even prevented by inappropriate prohibitions imposed by criminal law. However, the aim of any education is to accompany adolescents while they are growing up so that they become self-assured, self-responsible citizens with an understanding of how to work for peace and common welfare who know “how to walk upright” and do so, and who are informed about their civil rights and are able to exercise the same decidedly. We do not need only consumers but also citizens of the world! Repatriarchalization and criminalization are the wrong answers to the urgent questions of world society. The question how to combat child pornography commerce is certainly one of the most important concerns because it is abused children and adolescents for whom it is most difficult to develop their personalities and become citizens of the world.

Legally useful answers can only be expected by those who address precise questions to the law. In this respect Europe failed. Given the fundamental right to respect for one's private life and the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of age the creation of new offencesinvolving a definition of the child as a person up to the age of 18, which contradicts well established law and is unrealistic-shoots past the mark in the author's opinion. Such provisions miss the target group of potential offenders, and infantilize and criminalize society instead. With the proposed legal means it will not be possible to attain the actual aims, i.e., to finally destroy the market for child pornography, and to punish its organizers, “wire-pullers” and users as offenders, and to eliminate them once and for all. The legal status of adolescents is weakened or at least serious curtailment of their claims arising from the fact that they have fundamental rights depending on personality and age; and the Council Framework Decision contradicts the equality guarantees in primary law of the European Union that they must not be discriminated on the grounds of age.