国际劳工组织体面劳动衡量指标探要

本文通过考察体面劳动的11类衡量指标与6大基本理念的关系,展示了体面劳动衡量指标及其基本理念的结构与相互关系的特点,检验了国际劳工组织体面劳动理念对于其政策目标的整合性特点。本文的研究对正确理解体面劳动概念及其衡量指标体系,指导体面劳动实践与相关学术研究等,均具有一定的参考价值。     

Introduction

The paper begins with a presentation of the quality of life in Italy as compared to other countries in the European Union. Several of the major socio-demographic and economic and life satisfaction (as revealed by the Eurobarometer survey) indicators are considered. Then, the Italian situation is discussed at greater length in the light of the transformations it has undergone in the past ten years. Thus it is possible to evaluate the following demographic themes: the profound process of aging; transformations in the family; and transformations in urban areas. The following economic themes are considered: the principal characteristics of the marketplace, in particular, the problem of unemployment; and household income and consumption. Finally, the time series of certain objective indicators are placed alongside those of life satisfaction.     

Fostering assessment of student mobility in secondary schools: indicators of intercultural competence

ABSTRACT

The present study explores the internationalisation of secondary schools. It focuses on the assessment of the intercultural competence (IC) of returnees who participated in an annual study-abroad programme offered by the Italian educational association Intercultura (a non-profit organisation). The precise aim of this research is to find possible assessment indicators of IC, specific to the context of student mobility in secondary schools. To reach this goal, a qualitative methodology was adopted; 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the returnees, their parents, friends, teachers and Intercultura volunteers. The findings suggest that the elements to be considered in assessing the IC of returnees should include, among others, curiosity towards people perceived as having different cultural backgrounds, interest in global issues, self-awareness, new understanding of home context, knowledge of host context, ability to make critical comparisons, adaptability and ethnorelative view.     

Using EZproxy and Google Analytics to Evaluate Electronic Serials Usage

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study is to evaluate electronic usage statistics for Belk Library at Elon University. The Electronic Resources Office (ERO) collects usage data for all serials—both print and electronic—, ebooks, and electronic databases. This study used ezPAARSE and Google Analytics to analyze the data from our website, and we will use these data to compare our vendor statistics to get a more complete picture of how the library's electronic resources are being used.     

Discovering associations between players' performance indicators and matches' results in the European Soccer Leagues

The application of data mining techniques and statistical analysis to the sports field has received increasing attention in the last decade. One of the most famous sports in the world is soccer, and the present work deals with it, using data from the 2009/2010 season to the 2015/2016 season from nine European leagues extracted from the Kaggle European Soccer database. Overall performance indicators of the four roles in a soccer team (forward, midfielder, defender and goalkeeper) for home and away teams are used to investigate the relationships between them and the results of matches, and to predict the wins of the home team. The model used to answer both these demands is the Bayesian Network. This study shows that this model can be very useful for mining the relations between players'' performance indicators and for improving knowledge of the game strategies applied by coaches in different leagues. Moreover, it is shown that the ability to predict match results of the proposed Bayesian Network is roughly the same as that of the Naive Bayes model.     

Financial Crisis and Sustainability of US Fiscal Deficit: Indicators or Tests?

Whether or not budgetary policies are sustainable and can be conducted without creating the potential for government bankruptcy is a central question for macroeconomic analysis. In this paper, we show that indicators and tests to assess government solvency should not be used alternatively. We lay out a simple and intuitive procedure to integrate simultaneously the results from the two approaches to fiscal sustainability. Indicators are forward looking, for they are based on published forecasts, thus reacting to a set of current and expected future conditions in fiscal-policy making. Tests, by contrast, are backward looking, for they are based on a sample of past data. In the event of conflicting results, indicators may signal the occurrence of a structural change in policy, which may reverse the predictions of tests. Whether the results from indicators or from tests should be given priority in the assessment of the sustainability of public debt will thus depend on the structural stability of the historical data generating process of the primary surplus. Only in the absence of a structural break in the stance of fiscal policy, the potential warning predictions of fiscal indicators should be interpreted as merely reflecting transitory factors to be eventually reversed. An application to U.S. post-World War II historical data, from 1948 to 2016, and forecasts, from 2017 to 2027, demonstrates the empirical relevance of the proposed comprehensive approach and helps add new insights to the evaluation of the U.S. fiscal position. In particular, our results suggest that the potentially unsustainable course of U.S. fiscal policy from 2008 onwards, advocated by the use of fiscal indicators, reflects systematic—not cyclical—factors. The main policy implication is that deficit increases in the U.S. from 2008 onwards cannot be regarded as a transitory phenomenon and hence do entail an urgent need for a structural change in the future stance of budgetary policy.     

Implicit public debt thresholds: An operational proposal

Gauging the public debt-to-GDP ratio a country can sustain in the medium-run without putting fiscal sustainability at risk is a question of key relevance for policy-makers. Deviations from a safe level of debt should be watched over in order to take corrective measures. In this paper we make a proposal for an operational characterization of the “prudent debt level”. To do so, we use standard methods based on Vector Autoregressions to compute the probability that the public debt ratio exceeds a given threshold, using the Spanish case as an example. The resulting probabilities are highly and positively correlated with market risk assessment, measured by the spread with respect to the German bond. Our estimation of the “prudent debt level” is obtained as the debt-to-GDP ratio that maximizes the correlation between the probability of passing a pre-specified debt threshold and the spread. The so-obtained implicit debt threshold or “prudent debt level”, which is consistent with the medium-term debt-to-GDP ratio anchor of 60% of GDP, presents several advantages as a complement to existing DSA toolkits.     

Socioeconomic Indicators for Analyzing Convergence: The Case of Greece: 1960–2004

The purpose of this paper is to use socioeconomic indicators for analyzing convergence within Greece at regional (NUTS II) and prefecture levels (NUTS III) since 1960. We use two alternative approaches. The first one is based on the coefficient of variation and the second one on quality of life rankings. We confirm the decline of regional inequalities in Greece, with the exclusion of the 1980s. Regions with increased tourist and trade activity are also regions with high quality of life. Border regions are usually the laggards of social and economic development.

Employment status and education/employment relationship of PhD graduates from the University of Ferrara

Two sample surveys of Post-Docs were planned and carried out at the University of Ferrara in 2004 and 2007 aimed at determining the professional status of Post-Docs, the relationship between their PhD education and employment, and their satisfaction with certain aspects of the education and research program. As part of these surveys, two methodological contributions were developed. The first concerns an extension of the non-parametric combination of dependent rankings to construct a synthesis of composite indicators measuring satisfaction with particular aspects of PhD programs [R. Arboretti Giancristofaro and L. Salmaso, Global ranking indicators with application to the evaluation of PhD programs, Atti del Convegno “Valutazione e Customer Satisfaction per la Qualità dei Servizi”, Roma, 8–9 Settembre 2005, pp. 19–22; R. Arboretti Giancristofaro, S. Bonnini, and L. Salmaso, A performance indicator for multivariate data, Quad. Stat. 9 (2007), pp. 1–29; R. Arboretti Giancristofaro, F. Pesarin, and L. Salmaso, Nonparametric approaches for multivariate testing with mixed variables and for ranking on ordered categorical variables with an application to the evaluation of PhD programs, in Real Data Analysis, S. Sawilowsky, ed., a volume in Quantitative Methods in Education and the Behavioral Sciences: Issues, Research and Teaching, Ronald C. Serlin, series ed., Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2007, pp. 355–385]. The procedure was applied to highlight differences in the interviewed Post-Docs’ multivariate satisfaction profiles in relation to two aspects: education/employment relationship; employment expectations; and opportunities. The second consists of an inferential procedure providing a solution to the problem of hypothesis testing, where the objective is to compare the heterogeneity of two populations on the basis of sampling data [G.R. Arboretti, S. Bonnini, and F. Pesarin, A permutation approach for testing heterogeneity in two-sample categorical variables, Stat. Comput. (2009) doi: 10.1007/S11222-008-9085-8.]. The procedure was applied to compare the degrees of heterogeneity of Post-Doc judgments in the two surveys with regard to the adequacy of the PhD education for the work carried out.     

Modes of engagement of immigrants with their home societies: types and measurements of engagement

The objective of this article is to review how transnational engagement has been traditionally measured and then offer a proposal for measurements corresponding to how immigrants perceive their transnational practices. Based on the traditional conceptual model of immigrant transnationalism, a system of indicators was developed in accordance with a broad and integral view of the connection with their home societies. This system of indicators was applied to an Andean sample population residing in the Basque Country, Spain, and analysed using factor analysis to produce an empirical model of engagement from the traditional conceptual one. Results show the importance of the private aspect of the relationships with origin and the existence of a continuum in the immigrant connection with their home countries that ranges from the personal to the community. Moreover, two types of intensity of this connection stand out: the first suggests a mere interest in the place of origin while the second implies an active connection with their home countries, both personal and community based.