EU regional convergence and policy: Does the concept of region matter?

Regional convergence has become a heated topic in the last decades. To address it, most papers define regions on the base of normative/administrative criteria, although some consider that it could lead to misleading conclusions. In view of that, this article explores, over the period 1995–2006, the per capita income distribution of two sets of European regions: administrative (NUTS2) and functional (Metropolitan) regions. From a methodological point of view, a distribution dynamics approach – examining the external shape and movements within these distributions – is applied to analyse the issue of convergence. The study does reveal the presence of a process of convergence across both types of regions; however, this seems to be more rapid with Metropolitan than NUTS2 regions, which prompt us to proposing some relative major changes in the EU regional policy.     

论五四社团繁荣对中国共产党诞生的影响

五四时期,中国思想文化领域出现了繁荣的景象,其表现之一就是社团的繁荣。五四社团繁荣对中国共产党的诞生产生了积极影响。因为,每一个社团都有自己的思想信仰,其中,既有马克思的科学社会主义,也有伪社会主义学说。由此而带来的是各种思想的争鸣。争鸣的结果是伪社会主义思想的没落,马克思主义的脱颖而出,成为中国共产党的指导思想。同时,五四社团也是各种人才成长的摇篮,其中就培育了早期的共产党领袖和党员。可以说,五四社团繁荣对中国共产党的诞生提供了思想基础和人才基础。     

网上小额批发商言语性评价的维度分析

随着网上小额批发平台的快速发展及其对信誉评价体系不断完善的要求,以文字内容为主的言语性评价受到广泛关注。基于内容分析法对阿里巴巴速卖通平台的言语性评价的编译,细化出九大类、29项维度,分别涉及交易过程、质量、定价、服务、物流、卖家信用、主观感受、未来行为倾向等内容。网上批发商混合采用主客观评价相结合、整体和细节评价相结合的方式,且在商品质量、交易经历、整体服务水平、整体物流水平及对商品的喜好程度等维度上表现出明显的正负向情感。通过进一步的潜在类别分析,发现网上小额批发商分为＂关注质量的主客观评价型＂和＂整体综合评价型＂,进而提出解释和建议。     

材料力学计算机分析系统软件及其在教学中的应用

介绍了基于Visual C 的材料力学计算机辅助分析软件的编制思想、软件结构及特点,举例说明了在多媒体教学条件下和网络环境中,如何使计算机分析内容更好地与材料力学理论教学相结合,从而化解学时不断减少和教学内容的矛盾,提高了材料力学的教学效果.     

Navigating terrains of violence: how South African male youngsters negotiate social change

Two concepts of separatism, embodied in the doctrines of Black Nationalism and Apartheid, have been advocated by sections of the Black minority in the United States and the White minority in South Africa. Although these ideologies have developed on diametrically opposed political foundations, situations of subordination in contrast to situations of dominance, they contain certain common themes. This paper explores a number of basic problems in the sociology of separatism: (i) what is distinctive about separatism as an ideology? (ii) what causes the emergence of specific separatist ideologies? (iii) what structural factors are common to both ‘dominant’ and ‘subordinate’ separatism? (iv) what are the manifest and latent functions of separatist ideologies? (v) what general sociological hypotheses can be drawn from these two case studies concerning the origin and persistence of separatist ideologies?     

Response to Ross’s Comment to Miccio-Fonseca and DeFeo

ABSTRACT

Response to Ross on his comments regarding my purported misunderstanding of Ross’s article and the DSM-V (Ross, 2015). Although Ross claims he offered no personal opinions of any kind in his commentary, undeniably there were two separate and independent comments in (Miccio-Fonseca (2015) and DeFeo (2015) addressing similar issues. Is this coincidental? This author maintains the stance expressed in the cited commentary.     

Macroeconomic imbalances in Europe: How to overcome the fallacy of unit labour costs

Policy recommendations based on unit labour costs (ULC) indices can lead to undesirable and counterproductive policies, because they do not reveal possible distortions in the base year. In this paper, we discuss the problems with the ULC-current account relation and provide an alternative measure for relative wage costs called Wage Competitive index (WCI) based on the assumption of convergence of the returns on capital. We show how to calculate it and that it is more efficient than traditional ULC and REER indicators. The implication is that policymakers should not focus on nominal wage setting only, but also more broadly on all factors which affect the return on capital. This implies that the well-known Rehn–Meidner rule, which underlies the Macroeconomic Dialogue should be modified.     

中共十八大以来群众路线研究综述

中共十八大以来,国内学术界对群众路线的内涵、重大意义、历史进程、经验教训、制约因素以及贯彻群众路线的途径和方法等方面进行了多层次、多视角的研究和探讨,取得了丰硕成果。通过对这些成果进行系统梳理,勾勒出既有研究成果的总体脉络,以资后续研究参考。     

THE TRADEOFF BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND QUITTING IN HIGH POWER TOURNAMENTS

Tournaments may be characterized by the performance they induce as well as by the rate of quitting and dropouts of participants. Although most of the attention in the literature is on the performance induced by high power incentives, there are many daily situations in which dropouts and quitting are a major concern. Using a field experiment in schools and a model of dynamic tournament we examine the effect of different levels of rewards on the rate of quitting. Our experiment indicates that there is a possible tradeoff between performance and quitting. Strong incentives tournaments induced participants to exert more effort and exhibit a better performance but, at the same time, it induces a higher rate of quitting. We present a multi‐stage tournament model that gives rise to a similar characterization.     

COUNTRY PORTFOLIOS IN OPEN ECONOMY MACRO‐MODELS

This paper develops a simple approximation method for computing equilibrium portfolios in dynamic general equilibrium open economy macro‐models. The method is widely applicable, simple to implement, and gives analytical solutions for equilibrium portfolio positions in any combination or types of asset. It can be used in models with any number of assets, whether markets are complete or incomplete, and can be applied to stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models of any dimension, so long as the model is amenable to a solution using standard approximation methods. We first illustrate the approach using a simple two‐asset endowment economy model, and then show how the results extend to the case of any number of assets and general economic structure.