Farmers' behavior and the provision of public goods: towards an analytical framework

The new CAP reform aims to stimulate the role of agriculture as provider of public goods. An analytical framework is developed to model farmers’ decision making and to gain insight into farmers’ behavior in response to a number of policy instruments. The framework integrates characteristics of farm, farmer, market, as well as the policy instruments. Theoretical analysis suggests that attitudes, off-farm employment opportunities, non-pecuniary benefits and expectations of future developments can play important roles in farmer’s decision making regarding the provision of public goods. Empirical research is needed to test the hypothesis

Intercultural communication in German-Dutch business contexts (Volume 58)

Germany and the Netherlands maintain close relationships. Over the last few decades their relations have constantly intensified, resulting in today’s close cooperation, consultations and interrelations in a variety of fields. However, despite their close ties and geographic proximity there are cultural differences between the two countries that lead to disturbances in cross-border cooperation. These cultural differences manifest in behavior, perceptions and attitudes and can lead to irritations, problems and even conflicts in German-Dutch interaction. This book provides an analysis of cultural characteristics that play a role in German-Dutch interaction as well as their relevance and conflict potential. With an entanglement of different methods both the rather concrete and visible manifestations and the general, rather superordinate and underlying aspects of culture are analyzed, providing the readers with a comprehensive understanding of their neighboring culture and enabling them to avoid irritations and conflicts when dealing with Dutch or Germans

The Role of Overseas Chinese in Europe in Making China Global: The Case of Portugal

This paper aims at analysing the characteristics and dynamics of the Chinese business community in Portugal in the context of the growing phenomenon of Chinese migration flows to Portugal and to Europe. By means of original research based on primary data obtained through questionnaires and interviews applied to Chinese entrepreneurs and business associations the paper provides an in-depth analysis of the role that this community plays both as a facilitator of China’s integration in the world economy and a potential bridge between the European Union (EU) and China. The study concludes that the Chinese business community in Portugal is rather heterogeneous, dominated by immigrants from Zhejiang province, who operate predominantly in the service sector (retail and wholesale trade), taking advantage of the guanxi network within Europe so as to make use of the advantages of the European single market in order to consolidate competitive advantages. Moreover, this community plays a pro-active role in fostering China’s integration in the global economy by acting as windows for the penetration of Chinese exports on the one hand and by capturing and channelling foreign direct investment to China on the other hand.Chinese business community in Portugal; Overseas Chinese network (guanxi); EU Single Market; EU-China trade and investment relations

Pre- service Unab EFL teachers belief about vocabulary instruction

Tesis (Profesor de Inglés para la Enseñanza Básica y Media y al grado académico de Licenciado en Educación)Este estudio mixto, tomó lugar en la Universidad Andrés Bello ubicada en Santiago de Chile, en el cual 26 estudiantes de tercer año, los cuales cursan su primera práctica en la carrera de Pedagogía en Inglés, participaron en nuestro estudio. El propósito general de nuestro estudio, fue determinar las creencias que los profesores en práctica de la Universidad Andrés Bello tenían sobre cómo el vocabulario debería ser enseñado durante la educación primaria y secundaria en el contexto chileno. Durante el estudio, nos enfocamos en tres objetivos los cuales implican conocer las creencias que los profesores en práctica tenían sobre la instrucción de vocabulario, sus creencias de cómo debería llevarse a cabo, además de conocer cómo sus experiencias pasadas han influenciado sus creencias sobre la instrucción del vocabulario. El método utilizado para recolectar la información necesaria consistió de dos fases. La primera fase, involucró un cuestionario en el cual 26 profesores en práctica participaron, para luego pasar a la fase de entrevistas en la cual 4 de los participantes anteriores fueron seleccionados para ser entrevistados. Lo que este estudio evidencia, es el entusiasmo que los profesores en práctica de la UNAB demuestran respecto a la implementación de métodos y técnicas más atractivas para los estudiantes y, consecuentemente, ellos consideran el vocabulario como algo importante para el aprendizaje de un segundo idioma. Sin embargo, hay cierta confusión e inconsistencia en algunos conceptos y en la forma de cómo debería llevarse a cabo concretamente la instrucción de vocabulario. Sin embargo, pareciera que lo único que hace falta para formar profesores competentes y eficientes en la instrucción de vocabulario es guiar mejor a los profesores en práctica en este aspectoThis mixed-method study took place at Universidad Andres Bello (UNAB), located in Santiago, Chile, in which 26 third year pre-service }teachers enrolled in the English Teaching Program of the university participated in our study. The objective of the present study was to determine the beliefs that EFL pre-service teachers at UNAB held about how vocabulary should be taught in schools in the Chilean context. The study had three main aims which were to firstly determine what participants believed and knew about vocabulary instruction, to determine which methods and strategies they believed more effective to teach vocabulary, and finally to determine how previous experiences have influenced their beliefs about vocabulary instruction. The approach taken to collect the necessary information consisted of two phases. The first phase involved a questionnaire where 26 pre-service teachers participated and then an interview phase where 4 pre-service teachers were interviewed. What the study evidenced is that pre-service teachers from UNAB are very enthusiastic about implementing more appealing methods and strategies for students, and consequently, they consider vocabulary quite important when learning a second language. However, some confusion and inconsistency is shown upon some concepts and the way vocabulary should concretely be carried taught. Nevertheless, only slight guidance may be necessary to form proficient and prepared English teachers

China – Usa Relation within the Context of World Financial Crisis

We ask ourselves whether behind economic and financial globalization there is a crisis of international political relations. The answer is YES! This crisis confirms the existence of two main actors in the global geopolitical: America and China. America came in office after its complete affirmation at the end of the Cold War as the only world leader and China, although a country of opposites, knock at the gates of the world, trying to access the area of important countries, secretly proposing to get the number one power position of the world in the next 50 years.China, USA, geopolitics, geoeconomy, economic-financial crisis, international monetary system, dollar, Cold War, Chinese Communist Party

Enhancing the Public Provision of Education: The Economics of Education Reform in Developing Countries

The paper argues that a comprehensive evaluation of education reform in particular in developing countries needs considering the triangle’ quality-quantity-equity of educational policies in the short, medium and long term in a broader context than the education system itself. There is no simple “recipe” for improving quality and internal and external efficiency in the public education system but some general results are found. Firstly, that the elasticity of the return of the reform is decreasing with the size of increased budget, making anti-economical the reliance on a reform consisting in more resources only to significantly improve the poor performance of the system. Indeed, very modest target set to improve the system performance, would require -without more sophisticated policies- huge increments in budget with a poor return. In this sense the paper investigate the capacity of focused policies to improve the productivity of the education expenditure, in particular toward basic education or the disadvantaged students. Secondly, the timing of the reform matters: most policies with very different return in the long term are almost undistinguishable by their short run merits, and policies that are more productive in the short term may be less convenient than competing alternatives in the longer term, so the actual policy may be influenced by the time horizon chosen by the policy makers. Thirdly, effects of the reform are accumulative, and to evaluate the reform by modest, in general, short run merits is myopic and may put the reform at risk of reversion or to deter future investment in the sector.public education, developing countries, development of human resources

Linear Order in Language:an Error-Driven Learning Account

Learners of German often struggle with learning the grammatical gender of nouns and their correct articles, for example, that it should be “die Gabel” (the fork) and not “der Gabel”. Why is this so hard? And why do gender systems even exist?I taught participants differently structured artificial languages and found that it is especially difficult to learn a gender system, when gender is marked before the noun (e.g., in German: “die Gabel”, the fork, vs. “der Löffel”, the spoon) as compared to when gender is marked after the noun (e.g., in Albanian: “pirun-i”, the fork, vs. “lug-a”, the spoon). With computational simulations I could show that this effect arises because human learning is sensitive to the order of words.However, while gendered articles are hard to learn, they can facilitate communication because they can make following nouns more predictable and therefore easier to process: for example, after the German article “der”, “Löffel” is quite likely, “Gabel”, however, is very unlikely to follow. This is a function that gendered suffixes, as in Albanian, or genderless articles, as in English, cannot fulfill. In a language production study, I observed that speakers produce more articles that can make following nouns predictable, such as German articles, than articles that cannot fulfill this function, such as the English article “the”.I conclude that the order in which gender is marked in languages affects language learning as well as communication. This makes German gender hard to learn but useful for communication

Social Life in Public Space as a Commons: The Case of Public Art

This thesis conceptualises social life in public space as a collective resource, constituted by the bundle of relations among individuals and between individuals and the built environment. The case study of art in public space offers a close up on a stratum of the way social life in public space functions, exploring four experiences of public art: Santa Claus in Rotterdam, I am Queen Mary in Copenhagen; Triumphs and Laments in Rome, and Carmela in Barcelona