论拜占廷帝国科穆宁制度的历史作用

科穆宁制度是1081年阿莱克修斯上台后建立的以皇帝为中心、以皇帝的家族为统治基础的政治制度。这一制度确立了皇帝家族和军事贵族的统治地位,建立起庞大的皇帝家族对非皇帝家族的绝对优势,为科穆宁王朝前三位皇帝提供了坚实的统治支柱,使他们加强了中央集权,恢复并保持了对贵族、官僚政治、军队和君士坦丁堡民众的控制,最终遏制了11世纪以来十分严重的贵族叛乱和阴谋活动,为拜占廷帝国在1081—1180年出现的百年繁荣局面奠定了基础。     

彼得一世海洋扩张在其争霸世界中的地位

沙皇彼得一世上台执政之后,根据变化了的国际国内形势,推行争霸世界的全球战略。这个全球战略是一套系统完整的侵略扩张计划。它包含多方面的内容,其中以夺取出海口和制海权为主要内容的海洋扩张始终居于核心位置。它不仅是彼得一世争霸世界的必要前提,而且是其全球战略的核心。从彼得一世的争霸实践活动来说,不论是改革还是战争,都将海洋扩张放在了核心的位置。     

‘You Are Germany’– ‘I Am Australian’: The construction of national unity through diversity in select examples from Australia and Germany

This article explores the construction of national unity through diversity by analysing two case studies from Germany and Australia: the television campaign ‘You Are Germany’ and the song ‘I Am Australian’. It places both examples in a broader context of forging national unity through diversity and argues that diversity has occasionally been hijacked as a nationalist argument to advance national identity and unity. This study explores the different aspects of diversity appearing in both cases under study, identifies those parts of diversity being excluded and asks how national unity is being forged through recourse to diversity.     

Does bullying reduce educational achievement? An evaluation using matching estimators

Using data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (2006-PIRLS) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (2007-TIMSS), we investigate the determinants and the effect of being a victim of school bullying on educational achievement for Italian students enrolled at the fourth and eighth grade levels. Firstly, we apply an OLS estimator controlling for a number of individual characteristics and school fixed effects. Secondly, in order to attenuate the impact of confounding factors, we use propensity score matching techniques. Our empirical findings based on average treatment effects suggest that being a victim of school bullying has a considerable negative effect on student performance at both the fourth and the eighth grade level. Importantly, the adverse effect of bullying on educational achievement is larger at age 13 than at age 9. Hence, school violence seems to constitute a relevant factor in explaining student performance. Our findings suggest some possible interventions that Italian policy makers should adopt to prevent or reduce bullying behaviors.     

The Access of the Young Graduates in Sciences into R&D Profession: A Switching Model Treatment for the French Case

We address the question concerning the choice of graduates in sciences and engineering to look for employment in research and development. We use an endogenous switching regression to avoid the existence of self‐selection biases. The study shows that human capital is decisive where both employment opportunities and remuneration are concerned within, but not without, this sector. The results also suggest that in the early stages of a career, the R&D sector is less rewarding than other types of employment only for doctors and not for graduates from engineering schools.     

IMMIGRATION,WAGES, AND COMPOSITIONAL AMENITIES

There is strong public opposition to increased immigration throughout Europe. Given the modest economic impacts of immigration estimated in most studies, the depth of anti‐immigrant sentiment is puzzling. Immigration, however, does not just affect wages and taxes. It also changes the composition of the local population, threatening the compositional amenities that natives derive from their neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. In this paper we use a simple latent‐factor model, combined with data for 21 countries from the 2002 European Social Survey (ESS), to measure the relative importance of economic and compositional concerns in driving opinions about immigration policy. The ESS included a unique battery of questions on the labor market and social impacts of immigration, as well as on the desirability of increasing or reducing immigrant inflows. We find that compositional concerns are 2–5 times more important in explaining variation in individual attitudes toward immigration policy than concerns over wages and taxes. Likewise, most of the difference in opinion between more‐ and less‐educated respondents is attributable to heightened compositional concerns among people with lower education.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILD HEALTH,DEVELOPMENTAL GAPS,AND PARENTAL EDUCATION: EVIDENCE FROM ADMINISTRATIVE DATA

We use administrative German data to examine the role of physical and mental health conditions in explaining developmental gaps between children whose parents have different educational levels. Specifically, we employ sibling fixed effect models to estimate the effect of a comprehensive list of childhood health conditions—diagnosed by government physicians—on the cognitive and verbal ability of pre‐school children. We also apply decomposition methods to examine the extent to which gaps in child development can be attributed to child health conditions. While most physical health conditions have small and insignificant effects, mental health conditions, in particular hyperactivity, have a large and significant effect on development. Mental health conditions account for 14%–36% of the gap in cognitive ability and for 23%–24% of that in verbal ability. Thus, policies aimed at reducing disparities in child development and socioeconomic inequalities later in life should focus more on the early diagnosis and effective treatment of mental health conditions.     

ROUTES OF INFECTION: EXPORTS AND HIV INCIDENCE IN SUB‐SAHARAN AFRICA

This paper estimates whether exports affect the incidence of HIV in Africa. This relationship has implications for HIV prevention policy as well as for the consequences of trade increases in Africa. I estimate this impact using two sources of data on HIV incidence, one generated based on UNAIDS estimates and the other based on observed HIV mortality. These data are combined with data on export value and volume. I find a fairly consistent positive relationship between exports and new HIV infections: doubling exports leads to a 10%–70% increase in new HIV infections. Consistent with theory, this relationship is larger in areas with higher baseline HIV prevalence. I interpret the result as suggesting that increased exports increase the movement of people (trucking), which increases sexual contacts. Consistent with this interpretation, the effect is larger for export growth than for income growth per se and is larger in areas with more extensive road networks.     

Intergenerational reliance on social assistance: Evidence from Canada

This paper provides the first analysis of the intergenerational transmission of participation in a Canadian social assistance program. Two sources of intergenerational transmission are taken into account: one that is due to a possible causal link between parents' and children's participation, and one that is due to a correlation between individual and environment specific characteristics across generations. The basic data come from the Québec government's administrative records and cover 17,203 young people who were 18 years old in 1990 and whose parents were recipients of social assistance during at least one month between 1979 and 1990. The results reveal that, on average, a one-percentage unit increase in parental participation during the youth's pre-adult years (age 7–17) raises the youth's participation rate by 0.29 percentage unit during early adulthood (age 18–21). This impact is stronger during the early stages of childhood (age 7–9) and during late adolescence (age 16–17).     

Cohort effects in the educational attainment of second generation immigrants in Germany: An analysis of census data

Even though second generation immigrants make up ever increasing population shares in industrialized countries we know little about their social integration and wellbeing. This study focuses on the educational attainment of German born children of immigrants. Their schooling success still lags behind that of natives. This paper investigates school attendance and completed degrees of second generation immigrants and finds that even after controlling for characteristics the educational gap remains large and significant. The available evidence suggests that this group as a whole does not assimilate to native educational standards and instead increasingly falls behind.This research was completed while the author was guest at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. I am grateful for IZAs hospitality and particularly for the help of Thomas K. Bauer. I thank the anonymous referees and the editors for very helpful comments. Responsible editors: David Card and Christoph M. Schmidt.