The EU in the World 2013: A Statistical Portrait

This publication The EU in the world 2013 provides you with a selection of important and interesting statistics on the EU – considered as a single entity – in comparison with the 15 non-EU countries from the Group of Twenty (G20). Drawing from the huge amount of data available at Eurostat and from other international and national sources, we aim to give an insight into the European economy, society and environment in comparison with the major economies in the rest of the world

Wages determinants in the European Union Evidence from structure of earnings survey (SES 2014) data : 2020 edition

El ISSN y el ISBN corresponden a la versión electrónica del documentoSince the turn of the millennium, the European Commission (Eurostat) has published detailed and harmonized information on the nominal wages paid by the employers to their employees. This information, collected with the support of the European Statistical System, provides important insights into the labour market situation of the different Member States of the European Union. For employers, wages represent an important part of the production costs and determine to some extent their cost competitiveness. For most employees, wages make the main part of their income thereby contributing to their economic welfare. The importance of ensuring fair and transparent wages was highlighted in the European pillar of social rights (Commission, 2017) that was fully endorsed by the new Commission (van der Leyen, 2019). It is therefore important to monitor the levels and developments of wages and total labour costs at a macroeconomic level, as done by Eurostat through a complete set of annual and quarterly releases. It is equally useful to analyse how the individual job profiles and characteristics of the employer determine wage patterns in the different EU countries. This provides information on how labour markets reward the different characteristics of the job tenant and how the different types of businesses compete in terms of wages offered to their employees. By crossing job characteristics with sex, such analyses also shed light on possible gaps between the financial returns on education, part-time work etc. offered to men versus women. The study presented in this document uses the detailed information collected through the latest Structure of Earnings Survey (SES 2014) that records the gross wages received and the individual characteristics of about 240 000 enterprises and 11 million employees throughout the EU. This statistical working paper should help users to better understand the determinants of wages in the different EU countries thus contributing to the public debate and policy actions in the labour market domain

Quality report of the European Union labour force survey 2018: 2020 edition

El ISSN y el ISBN corresponden a la versión electrónica del documentoThe purpose of this quality report is to provide the users of the European Union Labour Market Statistics with a tool for assessing the quality of these statistics which are based on the European Union Labour Force Survey. It provides a brief description of the survey and a summary of the main quality indicators which are: relevance, accuracy, accessibility and clarity, timeliness and punctuality, comparability, and coherence. The quality report is updated annually

Tourism satellite accounts in Europe: 2019 edition

El ISSN y el ISBN corresponden a la versión electrónica del documentoTourism plays an important role in many countries’ economies and labour markets. Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA) is a framework developed to quantify the importance of tourism. This publication disseminates national results for a set of key TSA indicators for EU and EFTA countries who have compiled TSA for recent reference years and is a follow-up of the publication Tourism Satellite Accounts in Europe of 2016

The portuguese natural gas market in the european context

The Portuguese natural gas market is recent and small – being an emergent market according to Directive 98/30/EC. It is still protected and monopolistic while most other European countries have already liberalized, at least partially, their natural gas markets. This paper focuses on the process of restructuring the energy market in the European Union, and the present situation in Portugal, and emphasizes the regional dimension of the Portuguese market. The natural gas price strategies followed by Portuguese companies are analyzed, and a comparison with those of liberalized Europe is attempted. Special attention is given to the United Kingdom, as an example of a completely liberalized market, and also to Spain due to its close links to the Portuguese energy sector. From the results obtained, possible future scenarios for Portugal in a liberalization context are presented

Integration in European Retail Banking : Evidence from savings and lending rates to non-financial corporations

The aim of this paper is to investigate the integration process in the European Union retail banking sector during the period 1995-2008, by analysing deposit and lending rates to nonfinancial corporations which represent one of the main constituents of retail banking. An important contribution of the paper is the application of the recently developed Phillips and Sul (2007a) panel convergence methodology which has not hitherto been employed in this area. This method analyses the degree as well as the speed of convergence, identifies the presence of club formation, and measures the behaviour of each country’s transition path relative to the panel average. The results obtained point to the presence of close convergence in all deposit rates and in the short-term lending rates to non-financial corporations. However, we also detect the presence of heterogeneity in the European retail banking sector with notably some diverse convergence patterns observed for the transition paths for the deposit and lending rates with longer maturities.Submitted Versio

BIM data model requirements for asset monitoring and the circular economy

© 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review and provide recommendations to extend the current open standard data models for describing monitoring systems and circular economy precepts for built assets. Open standard data models enable robust and efficient data exchange which underpins the successful implementation of a circular economy. One of the largest opportunities to reduce the total life cycle cost of a built asset is to use the building information modelling (BIM) approach during the operational phase because it represents the largest share of the entire cost. BIM models that represent the actual conditions and performance of the constructed assets can boost the benefits of the installed monitoring systems and reduce maintenance and operational costs. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents a horizontal investigation of current BIM data models and their use for describing circular economy principles and performance monitoring of built assets. Based on the investigation, an extension to the industry foundation classes (IFC) specification, recommendations and guidelines are presented which enable to describe circular economy principles and asset monitoring using IFC. Findings: Current open BIM data models are not sufficiently mature yet. This limits the interoperability of the BIM approach and the implementation of circular economy principles. An overarching approach to extend the current standards is necessary, which considers aspects related to not only modelling the monitoring system but also data management and analysis. Originality/value: To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study that identifies requirements for data model standards in the context current linear economic model of making, using and disposing is growing unsustainably far beyond the finite limits of planet of a circular economy. The results of this study set the basis for the extension of current standards required to apply the circular economy precepts

‘I understood the words but I didn’t know what they meant’: Japanese online MBA students’ experiences of British assessment practices

We report on a case study of high Japanese student failure rates in an online MBA programme. Drawing on interviews, and reviews of exam and assignment scripts we frame the problems faced by these students in terms of a ‘language as social practice’ approach and highlight the students’ failure to understand the specific language games that underpin the course assessment approach. We note the way in which the distance learning and online context can make the challenges faced by international students less immediately visible to both students and institution

A population density grid for Spain

This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published in "International Journal of Geographical Information Science"; Volume 27, Issue 12, 2013; copyright Taylor & Francis; available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13658816.2013.799283This article describes a high-resolution land cover data set for Spain and its application to dasymetric population mapping (at census tract level). Eventually, this vector layer is transformed into a grid format. The work parallels the effort of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, in collaboration with Eurostat and the European Environment Agency (EEA), in building a population density grid for the whole of Europe, combining CORINE Land Cover with population data per commune. We solve many of the problems due to the low resolution of CORINE Land Cover, which are especially visible with Spanish data. An accuracy assessment is carried out from a simple aggregation of georeferenced point population data for the region of Madrid. The bottom-up grid constructed in this way is compared to our top-down grid. We show a great improvement over what has been reported from commune data and CORINE Land Cover, but the improvements seem to come entirely from the higher resolution data sets and not from the statistical modeling in the downscaling exercise. This highlights the importance of providing the research community with more detailed land cover data sets, as well as more detailed population data. The dasymetric grid is available free of charge from the authors upon request.The authors acknowledge financial support from the BBVA Foundation-Ivie research programme and the first author also acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, ECO2011-23248 project. Results mentioned, but not shown, are available from the authors upon request. The grid numbers are also available from the authors.Goerlich Sanchis, FJ.; Cantarino Martí, I. (2013). A population density grid for Spain. International Journal of Geographical Information Science. 27(12):1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13658816.2013.799283S117271