Short- and long-term impact of remarkable economic events on the growth causes of China-Germany trade in agri-food products

This paper focuses on a systematic quantitative discussion of the short- and long-term impact of remarkable economic events on international trade in a two-stage framework. Firstly, procedures based on dummy variables are proposed to detect structural breaks, types and sizes of jumps caused by such events. Then we propose to apply a hierarchical CMS (Constant Market Share) model to all sub-periods defined by the detected change points to study the short- and long-term impact of those events on growth causes. Application to China-Germany trade in agri-food products shows that China’s accession to WTO had a negative short-term impact on corresponding series. But its long-term impact on China’s export competitiveness was definitely positive. The short-term impact of the EU’s CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) reform on Germany’s exports to China was also negative. Its long-term impact on export competitiveness was sometimes positive and sometimes negative. The financial crisis of 2008 caused a significant reduction of China’s agri-food exports to Germany. But Germany’s exports to China in 2009 were not affected by the financial crisis as much.Growth causes of agri-food trade; the CMS model; the EU’s CAP reform; China’s accession to WTO; financial crisis

Large-scale diversity estimation through surname origin inference

The study of surnames as both linguistic and geographical markers of the past has proven valuable in several research fields spanning from biology and genetics to demography and social mobility. This article builds upon the existing literature to conceive and develop a surname origin classifier based on a data-driven typology. This enables us to explore a methodology to describe large-scale estimates of the relative diversity of social groups, especially when such data is scarcely available. We subsequently analyze the representativeness of surname origins for 15 socio-professional groups in France

The necessity for innovation in undergraduate course design

Major changes are taking place in the general "marketplace" for universities' undergraduate courses. There are unfavourable demographic trends; perhaps even more importantly, substantial innovations are occuring in the structure and style of school examinations; there are general moves towards widening access to university education; the requirements of employers of the graduates are being seen as of increased importance; and there are political pressures for change . It is argued that all these changes provide both an opportunity and the necessity for major innovation in undergraduate course design. Attention is particularly focussed on mathematics, where the highly sequential nature of the subject causes the problems to be more acute - but the opportunities to be that much greater . This paper is an adaptation of the author's MBA dissertation (Goodall, 1988), which considered also issues of the general management of innovation and the management of universities. Most of this discussion has been removed from the present paper. The work was completed in the autumn of 1988, and has already been overtaken by events in some areas. The concluding chapter provides a brief discussion of these further changes