Inter-industry wage differentials in EU countries: what do cross-country time varying data add to the picture?

This paper documents the existence and main patterns of inter-industry wage differentials across a large number of industries for 8 EU countries at two points in time and explores possible explanations for these. The analysis uses the European Structure of Earnings Survey (SES), an internationally harmonised matched employer-employee dataset, to estimate inter-industry wage differentials conditional on a set of employee, employer and job characteristics. After investigating the possibility that unobservable employee characteristics lie behind the conditional wage differentials, a hypothesis which cannot be accepted, the paper investigates the role of institutional, industry structure and performance characteristics in explaining inter-industry wage differentials. The results suggest that inter-industry wage differentials are consistent with rent sharing mechanisms and that rent sharing is more likely in industries with firm-level collective agreements and with higher collective agreement coverage.inter-industry wage differentials;rent sharing;unobserved ability

Lignite As Contributory Factor to Regional Development of Greece

Lignite (brown coal) is Greece's most important energy mineral raw material. Lignite exploitation has made a highly significant contribution to the development of energy sector of Greece on past 50 years, and will, according to estimations, continue to supply energy for another 40 years. Greece is very rich in Lignite resources. The two main basins - from where Lignite is extracted by opencast mining - are a) in Western Macedonia (northen Greece) where is generated the 70% of the whole electricity of Greece and b) in Central Peloponese (Southern Greece) where is generated the 10% of the whole electricity of Greece. In this respect, Public Power Corporation of Greece cooperates with the local administrative authorities and finances or undertakes social "compensation" projects for life improvement, and social and financial support of the residential areas near mines. Also provides technical services and contributes to the carrying out of small projects in municipalities and communities. Finaly provides thermal energy from the power stations for the district teleheating of the towns of Kozani, Ptolemais and Megalopolis and surrounting settlements. In addition to the works of social regeneration and the duty for the development of industrial areas, for the redevelopment works and environmental protection of the new ground at the lignite mines, more than 500.000 Euros are spent on a yearly basis (350.000 Euros at West Macedonia and 150.000 Euros at Central Peloponese). Moreover, according to data taken from the statement of accounts regarding only the operation of the mines (salaries, commossions, contracts assigned etc) the amount of 367.000.000 Euros is spent in the local societies of Kozani and Florina Prefectures. As a result, Lignite contributes to the regional Development of the country. Lignite mining and the generation of electric power take place in less developed areas, ensuring employment for a large number of scientific and labor personel, reducing unemployment and urban attraction and increasing the per capita local income in these areas.

The Egnatia Motorway and The Changes in Interregional Trade in Greece: An Ex Ante Assessment

The Egnatia Motorway, located in the northern part of Greece, constitutes one of the most important, as well as ambitious, projects of the Trans-European Transport Networks programme (TETN) funded by the European Commission. It is expected to greatly influence the spatial economic relationships of several regions across the country. The motorway crosses all administrative regions of Northern Greece, and the expectations currently sustained by the public as regards its contribution to regional development are exceptionally great. As numerous empirical studies have already shown, the most important changes in regional economy induced by interregional transportation infrastructure are associated with trade flows between different regions. This paper analyses the major determinants of interregional trade in Greece and estimates the changes in interregional trade flows which the construction of the Egnatia Motorway is capable of generating

Optical-microphysical Properties of Saharan Dust Aerosols and Composition Relationship Using a Multi-wavelength Raman Lidar, in Situ Sensors and Modelling: a Case Study Analysis

A strong Saharan dust event that occurred over the city of Athens, Greece (37.9° N, 23.6° E) between 27 March and 3 April 2009 was followed by a synergy of three instruments: a 6-wavelength Raman lidar, a CIMEL sun-sky radiometer and the MODIS sensor. The BSC-DREAM model was used to forecast the dust event and to simulate the vertical profiles of the aerosol concentration. Due to mixture of dust particles with low clouds during most of the reported period, the dust event could be followed by the lidar only during the cloud-free day of 2 April 2009. The lidar data obtained were used to retrieve the vertical profile of the optical (extinction and backscatter coefficients) properties of aerosols in the troposphere. The aerosol optical depth (AOD) values derived from the CIMEL ranged from 0.33-0.91 (355 nm) to 0.18-0.60 (532 nm), while the lidar ratio (LR) values retrieved from the Raman lidar ranged within 75-100 sr (355 nm) and 45-75 sr (532 nm). Inside a selected dust layer region, between 1.8 and 3.5 km height, mean LR values were 83 ± 7 and 54 ± 7 sr, at 355 and 532 nm, respectively, while the Ångström-backscatter-related (ABR 355/532) and Ångström-extinction-related (AER 355/532) were found larger than 1 (1.17 ± 0.08 and 1.11 ± 0.02, respectively), indicating mixing of dust with other particles. Additionally, a retrieval technique representing dust as a mixture of spheres and spheroids was used to derive the mean aerosol microphysical properties (mean and effective radius, number, surface and volume density, and mean refractive index) inside the selected atmospheric layers. Thus, the mean value of the retrieved refractive index was found to be 1.49( ± 0.10) + 0.007( ± 0.007)i, and that of the effective radiuses was 0.30 ± 0.18 μm. The final data set of the aerosol optical and microphysical properties along with the water vapor profiles obtained by Raman lidar were incorporated into the ISORROPIA II model to provide a possible aerosol composition consistent with the retrieved refractive index values. Thus, the inferred chemical properties showed 12-40% of dust content, sulfate composition of 16-60%, and organic carbon content of 15-64%, indicating a possible mixing of dust with haze and smoke. PM10 concentrations levels, PM10 composition results and SEM-EDX (Scanning Electron Microscope-Energy Dispersive X-ray) analysis results on sizes and mineralogy of particles from samples during the Saharan dust transport event were used to evaluate the retrieval

Foreign Labor Trends: Greece

Foreign Labor Trendsgreece_2003.pdf: 511 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

A GIS based anthropogenic PM10 emission inventory for Greece

AbstractAn anthropogenic, chemically speciated PM10 emission inventory was compiled for Greece in 10km spatial resolution. The inventory comprises of all anthropogenic particulate matter sources and it was compiled using a Geographical Information System (GIS) integrated with SQL programming language. Input data from the national and international databases were used for the calculation of spatially and temporally resolved emissions for the road transport and all the subsectors of the other mobile sources and machinery sector using top–down or bottom–up methodologies. Annual data from existing emission databases were also used and were temporally and spatially disaggregated using source relevant statistical data and high resolution maps. The sectoral emission totals are compared with other emission databases or studies conducted in the area. Total anthropogenic emissions in Greece were estimated to be 182 219t for the base year 2003. The results indicate the industrial sector as the major PM10 emission source (39.9% contribution) with the major industrial units though to be situated inside the organised industrial areas of the country. The power generation sector (21.4%) is the second largest contributor in national level mostly derived from one specific industrial region at north. International cargo shipping activities (9.6%) is also an important source category for particles. Heat production and road transport are found to play a significant role inside the urban centres of the country

When Things Matter: A Data-Centric View of the Internet of Things

With the recent advances in radio-frequency identification (RFID), low-cost wireless sensor devices, and Web technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) approach has gained momentum in connecting everyday objects to the Internet and facilitating machine-to-human and machine-to-machine communication with the physical world. While IoT offers the capability to connect and integrate both digital and physical entities, enabling a whole new class of applications and services, several significant challenges need to be addressed before these applications and services can be fully realized. A fundamental challenge centers around managing IoT data, typically produced in dynamic and volatile environments, which is not only extremely large in scale and volume, but also noisy, and continuous. This article surveys the main techniques and state-of-the-art research efforts in IoT from data-centric perspectives, including data stream processing, data storage models, complex event processing, and searching in IoT. Open research issues for IoT data management are also discussed

Peripheral Regions in Duress: Counter-Social Capital Impediments of Local Development in Rural Greek Areas

Unlike most enthusiastic narratives of various success stories in recent North European regional economic development led by innovation, localized learning, social capital and institutional embeddedness, this paper deals with a set of major stresses and problems of local economic development in peripheral, less favoured, regions. By drawing upon concrete research experience of regional development projects we try to shed light upon the processes of spatio-economic change and the management of local production in connection with prevailing cultural attitudes/values in less developed Greek rural areas. attidudes/values constituting a kind of localized “counter-social capital†deposit that impedes any likely innovative local development initiatives. The paper argues that the major problems facing these areas are not only or solely associated with the effects of market economy restructuring and the operation of macroeconomic and macropolitical forces at the regional and local level, but, also with inadequate management of human skills, lack of productive mentality and negative cultural values and attitudes. The policy relevance of our analysis calls for the elaboration of alternative development strategies aimed rather at enchancing local social capital potentialities than at improving hard infrastructures and providing financial incentives to local firms.