Property Rights and Economic Growth

My main purpose is to connect the issue of property rights to the set of questions concerning economic growth and the long-term determinants of the improvements in material well-being. To anticipate what will be my main conclusion, it is that property rights and economic growth are not separable. But that statement, by itself, is not very interesting. What is important is not my eventual conclusion but how I come to arrive at that conclusion. And I should warn you in advance that I will arrive at that conclusion via an unconventional pathway, and that our guide along that pathway - at least our initial guide - will be Karl Marx.economic growth; property rights; entrepreneurship; institutions

'Real men don't diet': an analysis of contemporary newspaper representations of men, food and health

Little research to date has focused on the meanings men attach to food and the relationship between diet and health. This is an important topic in light of the current ‘crisis’ in men's health and the role of lifestyle factors such as diet in illness prevention. Since the mass media is a powerful source of information about health matters generally, media representations bear critical examination. The present paper reports on an in-depth qualitative analysis of contemporary UK newspaper articles on the topic of men and diet (N=44). The findings indicate a persistent adherence to hegemonic masculinities predicated on health-defeating diets, special occasion cooking of hearty meals, and a general distancing from the feminised realm of dieting. At the same time, men are constructed as naïve and vulnerable when it comes to diet and health, while women are viewed as experts. The implications for health promotion with men are discussed

Chapter 3 How is production changing?

The unprecedented Covid-19 crisis revealed the scale and scope of a new type of economy taking shape in front of our very eyes: the digital economy. This book presents a concise theoretical and conceptual framework for a more nuanced analysis of the economic and sociological impacts of the technological disruption that is taking place in the markets of goods and services, labour markets, and the global economy more generally. This interdisciplinary work is a must for researchers and students from economics, business, and other social science majors who seek an overview of the main digital economy concepts and research. Its down-to-earth approach and communicative style will also speak to businesses practitioners who want to understand the ongoing digital disruption of the market rules and emergence of the new digital business models. The book refers to academic insights from economics and sociology while giving numerous empirical examples drawn from basic and applied research and business. It addresses several burning issues: how are digital processes transforming traditional business models? Does intelligent automation threaten our jobs? Are we reaching the end of globalisation as we know it? How can we best prepare ourselves and our children for the digitally transformed world? The book will help the reader gain a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the digital transformation, something that is essential in order to not only reap the plentiful opportunities being created by the digital economy but also to avoid its many pitfalls

Digital news report: Australia 2015

This report gives a clear picture of how the Australian news consumer compares to eleven other countries surveyed in 2015: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK, USA and urban Brazil. The Digital News Report: Australia is part of a global survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Further in-depth analysis of Australian digital news consumption has been conducted and published by the News & Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra

Revolutionising the existing regulatory and supervisory framework through blockchain technology

Internship Report presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Law and Financial MarketsThe following analysis of the traditional functioning of our regulatory and supervisory practices currently performed on our financial markets, sets out to identify shortcomings as well as to question the use case for regulatory technology and more precisely the adoption or use of blockchain technology. The evolution from an ex-post regulatory and supervisory framework to a ex-ante type of supervision and regulation has been impossible to apply to the financial markets due to its phenomenal growth and size. Identifying the many shortcomings that taint our current regulatory and supervisory landscape will be key in our analysis. The creation of bitcoin and the thereafter following emergence of the whole cryptocurrency sector has spurred on a wave of exponential increasing innovation and attracted a lot of talent to work on blockchain technology. The phenomenal success of bitcoin and ethereum created something very similar yet to a smaller extend like the gold rush of 1848. While the sector has known an impressive growth rate, the mainstream adoption encounters many hardships among other things due to the somewhat advanced technical barrier. The blockchain technology, while being an impressive innovative technology that is not hard to use and even very easily accessible, does require a minimum of research and learning in the beginning. Understanding how the cryptographic wallets work, what your public key represents and why you should keep your private key absolutely safe are key to being able to safely use the technology. The lack of understanding these fundamentals leads to reckless behaviour that gets abused by bad faith actors. Nevertheless blockchain technology is primed to revolutionise and disrupt the current traditional regulatory and supervisory landscape, changing the regulators reality as well as their abilities to efficiently regulate the financial markets. The success of the blockchain adoption has the potential to allow for the transition towards a ex-ante regulation and supervision

A matter of entrepreneurial decisions: Dairibord Holdings Limited (DHL) in Zimbabwe

Synopsis: The case study focussed on the dairy sector in the southern African country of Zimbabwe. It offered an analysis of the management and business development approaches DHL employed in the country's dairy sector. The narrative detailed how DHL's commercial performance progressively declined overtime. Several factors including; operational inefficiencies, intensive competition, political, socio-economic issues, and natural disasters were attributable to its decline. To mitigate DHL's business development challenges, Antony and his top management's reprised "restructure, expand and diversify" strategy only achieved inconsistent commercial results. The scale and size of these results unequivocally necessitated radical entrepreneurial methods to turnaround its fortunes. It was indeed a matter of entrepreneurial decisions! Methodology: The case study utilized secondary analysis as its main strategy for generating relevant data. The rationale for adopting the principles of secondary analysis was to take advantage of quality archived data, public and readily available information concerning DHL's commercial performance. Setting up to undertake secondary analysis for the purpose of DHL's narrative was less-expensive, and it was less time consuming when compared to structured interviews and self-administered questionnaires. Hence, it was deemed appropriate for producing a narrative on a company whose archived financial reports and publicly available research information were accessible. Relevant course levels: DHL's narrative is relevant for students studying entrepreneurship, business management and international business at postgraduate and undergraduate levels. Theoretical basis: The multi-dimensional constructs of entrepreneurship and strategic management provided the theoretical basis for constructing a narrative about DHL's business activities in Zimbabwe's dairy sector. Particularly, the entrepreneurial decision-making paradigm offered some insight, direction and guidance in analysing the strategies Antony and his top management team applied in their planning and management at DHL. Equally, strategic management theories provided useful instructions for exploring business development issues in a rapidly changing business terrain that was presented by the dairy sector in Zimbabwe

Coverage and Framing of Emerging STI and STEM by Four Major Nigerian Newspapers and Implications for National Development

In Nigeria, there is a gross deficit of empirical research on emerging STI content in the media. This study investigated four prominent newspapers in Nigeria to ascertain the extent to which STEM and emerging STI are covered and framed. We posed the following research questions covering reportage, sourcing, framing, and implications. The methodology involved a content/framing analyses of Daily Trust, Leadership, The Guardian and The Punch. A census sampling of 728 newspaper issues was conducted covering a period of six months spanning between December 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021. The results indicate a near zero coverage of emerging STI in the four dailies. Other results show that of the eight areas of STEM examined, medical/health sciences (48%), agricultural sciences (24%) and ICTs/engineering (19%) received more coverage. Earth/environmental sciences, physical and chemical sciences, marine, space, and mathematical sciences were accorded near zero coverage. On sourcing of STEM stories in the four dailies, 54% was sourced in-house by the journalists, 33% came from national STI institutions, while 13% was obtained from foreign and internet sources. On framing, 42% of STEM stories were framed in terms of health, risk, and safety; 39% in economic and political frame, while academic, environmental, ethical and “other frames scored between 7% and below. The conclusion of the study is that newspaper coverage of emerging STI was near zero reflecting and projecting the dismal status of emerging STI in Nigeria while the coverage and framing of STEM depicted the media agenda of concentration on medical, agricultural, and ICT endeavours to the neglect of others

Report on the Finnish Language

Language-centric AI is already ubiquitous and language technology is in its intrinsic core. As was stated in the report The Finnish Language in the Digital Age (Koskenniemi et al., 2012): “If there is adequate language technology available, it will be able to ensure the survival of languages with small populations of speakers.” During the last ten years, digitalisation has changed the way we communicate and interact in the world creating an increasing demand for language-based AI services. New skills are needed to be able to cope in the digital world, so digital education and media awareness are now taught in elementary schools. Digital skills are considered new citizen skills. To provide language-based services to an increasing number of users, we need applications that are built on AI, as well as to provide routine services to special groups and to meet accessibility requirements. The still small number of existing applications and services is partly due to the lack of language resources. Also, the small size of the Finnish market area has affected this when large corporations have primarily focused on English with only some support for Finnish in high-demand products in the Finnish market. In the field of language technology, the Finnish language is still only moderately equipped with products, technologies and resources. There are applications and tools for speech synthesis, speech recognition, information retrieval, spelling correction and grammar checking. There are also a few applications for automatically translating language. The situation has improved during the last 10 years, but still support for automated translation leaves room for ample improvement and the general support for spoken language is modest in industry applications although some recent research results are encouraging

Coverage and Framing of Emerging STI and STEM by Four Major Nigerian Newspapers and Implications for National Development

In Nigeria, there is a gross deficit of empirical research on emerging STI content in the media. This study investigated four prominent newspapers in Nigeria to ascertain the extent to which STEM and emerging STI are covered and framed. We posed the following research questions covering reportage, sourcing, framing, and implications. The methodology involved a content/framing analyses of Daily Trust, Leadership, The Guardian and The Punch. A census sampling of 728 newspaper issues was conducted covering a period of six months spanning between December 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021. The results indicate a near zero coverage of emerging STI in the four dailies. Other results show that of the eight areas of STEM examined, medical/health sciences (48%), agricultural sciences (24%) and ICTs/engineering (19%) received more coverage. Earth/environmental sciences, physical and chemical sciences, marine, space, and mathematical sciences were accorded near zero coverage. On sourcing of STEM stories in the four dailies, 54% was sourced in-house by the journalists, 33% came from national STI institutions, while 13% was obtained from foreign and internet sources. On framing, 42% of STEM stories were framed in terms of health, risk, and safety; 39% in economic and political frame, while academic, environmental, ethical and “other frames scored between 7% and below. The conclusion of the study is that newspaper coverage of emerging STI was near zero reflecting and projecting the dismal status of emerging STI in Nigeria while the coverage and framing of STEM depicted the media agenda of concentration on medical, agricultural, and ICT endeavours to the neglect of others