Full Employment as a Possible Objective for EU Policy II. Review of Some Empirical aspects

A contribution appeared in the previous issue of Panoeconomicus reviewed the theoretical arguments brought by Alain Parguez and Jean Gabriel Bliek in support of their idea of assigning a full employment objective to European economic policies and their coordination (Bliek and Parguez (2007) and Parguez (2007b)). Without pretending at exhaustiveness, this contribution reviews and partly extends the empirical evidence they presented in support of their argument with reference to selected macroeconomic developments in several countries and different historical periods, in particular for the US, Canada, Japan and the EU. It confirms the descriptive power of the circuit and its relevance for the discussion of alternative economic policies, in particular in the field of employment. Together with the previous article, it shows that the circuit can be used to update economic policy thinking, nourishing also the necessary democratic debate amongst policy alternatives.Unemployment, Capacity utilisation, Circuit, Long-term interest rates, Disequilibrium

Supporting group maintenance through prognostics-enhanced dynamic dependability prediction

Condition-based maintenance strategies adapt maintenance planning through the integration of online condition monitoring of assets. The accuracy and cost-effectiveness of these strategies can be improved by integrating prognostics predictions and grouping maintenance actions respectively. In complex industrial systems, however, effective condition-based maintenance is intricate. Such systems are comprised of repairable assets which can fail in different ways, with various effects, and typically governed by dynamics which include time-dependent and conditional events. In this context, system reliability prediction is complex and effective maintenance planning is virtually impossible prior to system deployment and hard even in the case of condition-based maintenance. Addressing these issues, this paper presents an online system maintenance method that takes into account the system dynamics. The method employs an online predictive diagnosis algorithm to distinguish between critical and non-critical assets. A prognostics-updated method for predicting the system health is then employed to yield well-informed, more accurate, condition-based suggestions for the maintenance of critical assets and for the group-based reactive repair of non-critical assets. The cost-effectiveness of the approach is discussed in a case study from the power industry

Full employment as a possible objective for EU policy II: Review of some empirical aspects

A contribution appeared in the previous issue of Panoeconomicus reviewed the theoretical arguments brought by Alain Parguez and Jean Gabriel Bliek in support of their idea of assigning a full employment objective to European economic policies and their coordination (Bliek and Parguez (2007) and Parguez (2007b)). Without pretending at exhaustiveness, this contribution reviews and partly extends the empirical evidence they presented in support of their argument with reference to selected macroeconomic developments in several countries and different historical periods, in particular for the US, Canada, Japan and the EU. It confirms the descriptive power of the circuit and its relevance for the discussion of alternative economic policies, in particular in the field of employment. Together with the previous article, it shows that the circuit can be used to update economic policy thinking, nourishing also the necessary democratic debate amongst police alternatives.

The magical mantle, the drinking horn and the chastity test : A study of a 'tale' in Arthurian Celtic literature.

The field of the study is that of popular versus learned literature and the use of traditional patterns and cliches in medieval works, Arthurian and Celtic in particular. The aim of the study is to examine the definition of a "Tale": its very concept, its form, and its reception through a plurality of methods, from different and cumulative perspectives which seek to blend into a creative synthesis. This leads to a questioning of the usefulness of motif-indexes in tale-definition. An approach is given which takes into account contemporary scholarship on "structural", internal textual analysis as well as pre-structural concepts such as the notion of the Heroic Biographical Pattern. A preliminary approach (part I) gives a survey of the Tale in time and place. The Tale is found from the 12th to the 20th century but was particularly popular between the 12th and 14th centuries. The presence of its early versions in an Arthurian literary context points to a milieu of Tale formation 'which is in-between insular Celtic, Breton and Anglo-Norman French. Networks of version-filiations are drawn which confirm this while they also indicate pivotal versions and point to specific geographical groupings (in particular French, Scottish/Irish Gaelic, Icelandic, English, Welsh, Dutch and German). In an appendix to this section, a statistical method ("Cluster Analysis") is used to add verification. Part II assembles short monographs on the Tale "traits". It thereby establishes their literary status and their strong Arthurian-Celtic link in matters of detail, images, recurrent themes such as: for example the feast setting, the fairy visitant, the magic objects, the test, the names of characters. Having thus created a background of information and critical material, the next level of approach (part III) considers the appeal and durability of the Tale in the medieval period and beyond; and this, in diverse literary genres. It is concluded that the main topics (the Chastity Test of women/cuckoldry of men; the mockery of Arthur, of the chivalric code and of the honour concept) struck a sensitive chord in the minds of medieval audiences. But, as the study goes on to show, the Tale is basically exploited for its farcical, comic potential. Finally, the appeal and durability of the Tale is sought in its relation to traditional tale patterns and in their mythical value. In this sense, the study shares the views of scholars who sought parallels between society (its mentality, world vision) and myth

The inconsistency of French regulation mode faced with the financialization of accumulation pattern.

The absence of specifically dedicated method to represent financialized capitalism constitutes a significant gap in contemporary macroeconomic modelling considering the impact of finance on the rules of wealth production and distribution. From both the lessons of Regulation theory in terms of accumulation pattern and regulation mode declined through the concepts of institutional hierarchy and complementarity, and the neo-Cambridgian modelling framework, one tries to establish the causes which prevail in the divergence of American and French economies in the adoption of finance-led capitalism.modelling and macroeconomic simulation; institutional complementarity and hierarchy; accumulation regime; regulation pattern; financialization.

Supporting group maintenance through prognostics-enhanced dynamic dependability prediction

Condition-based maintenance strategies adapt maintenance planning through the integration of online condition monitoring of assets. The accuracy and cost-effectiveness of these strategies can be improved by integrating prognostics predictions and grouping maintenance actions respectively. In complex industrial systems, however, effective condition-based maintenance is intricate. Such systems are comprised of repairable assets which can fail in different ways, with various effects, and typically governed by dynamics which include time-dependent and conditional events. In this context, system reliability prediction is complex and effective maintenance planning is virtually impossible prior to system deployment and hard even in the case of condition-based maintenance. Addressing these issues, this paper presents an online system maintenance method that takes into account the system dynamics. The method employs an online predictive diagnosis algorithm to distinguish between critical and non-critical assets. A prognostics-updated method for predicting the system health is then employed to yield well-informed, more accurate, condition-based suggestions for the maintenance of critical assets and for the group-based reactive repair of non-critical assets. The cost-effectiveness of the approach is discussed in a case study from the power industry

Social Classes in the Process of Capitalist Landnahme: On the Relevance of Secondary Exploitation

So far, growing social insecurity and inequality have not led to a revival of class-conscious labour movements in the centres of capitalism. This article builds upon Rosa Luxemburg’s concept of Landnahme to attempt to explain this phenomenon. In contemporary Germany, as in other developed countries, a transition from a society pacified by Fordist methods to a more strongly polarized class society is taking place– though characterized by a peculiar 'stabilization of the unstable'. An 'interior' Landnahme set in motion by financial capitalism has also severely aggravated secondary exploitation and the precarization of labour. Trade unions and the segment of the working class represented by unions often react by closing their ranks in exclusive solidarity. Faced with the prospect of downward social mobility, they develop defensive strategies to preserve their remaining social property – even at the expense of precarized groups. Such a disciplinary régime can only be broken if precarized groups and their forms of working and living are integrated into new structures of inclusive solidarity. Jusqu’ici, l’insécurité et l’inégalité croissante n’ont pas abouti à une renaissance des mouvements ouvriers dotés d’une conscience de classe au cœur du capitalisme. Cet article cherche à expliquer ce phénomène à partir du concept de Landnahme de Rosa Luxemburg. Dans l’Allemagne d’aujourd’hui, comme dans d’autres pays développés, une transition d’une société apaisée par des méthodes Fordistes à une société fortement polarisée est en train de se réaliser – bien que caractérisée par une étrange ‘stabilisation de l’instable’. Un Landnahme ‘intérieur’ mu par le capitalisme financier a également gravement renforcé l’exploitation secondaire et la précarisation de la classe ouvrière. Les syndicats et les fragments de la classe ouvrière que les syndicats représentent réagissent souvent en fermant leurs rangs dans une solidarité exclusive. Craignant la mobilité sociale descendante, ils développent des stratégies défensives afin de préserver la propriété sociale qui leur reste – même au dépens des groupes précarisés. Un tel régime disciplinaire peut seulement être brisé si les groupes précarisés et leurs formes de travail et modes de vie sont intégrés dans des nouvelles structures de solidarité inclusive

Biopolitical Masochism in Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is Present

This essay analyzes The Artist Is Present, Marina Abramović’s heavily mediatized 2010 performance at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, through the lenses of Freudian and Deleuzean concepts of masochism, specifically with respect to how the masochistic tendencies of this performance may be read in the current context of biopolitics. The essay seeks answers to questions of political import that many critical analyses of Abramović’s performance, which focus on details of the performer’s personal history, have not adequately addressed. Drawing on the documentary film Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (2012) that follows Abramović through the conceptualization and enactment of the performance, this essay demonstrates how The Artist Is Present re-stages the quotidian practices, bodily movements, and affects fostered by biopower and emphasizes the masochistic logic that structures biopolitics. Reading the masochistic behaviors of both Abramović and the performance’s spectators through Deleuze’s notion of the masochistic contract, this essay argues that the performance ultimately harnesses “living labor” in the service of self-production of subjectivity, and that it does so precisely through an intensification of the masochism upon which biopolitics depends. In addition to engaging Freudian and Deleuzean theories of masochism, this paper also draws on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work on biopower and immaterial labor