Globalization and public administration: a complex relationship

The paper examines the relationship between globalization and public administration through economic theory principles and an example. Starting from the consideration of early concerns about globalization, it argues that although the size of government has rarely declined, its power has been eroded, making room on the one hand to the quest for global public goods, while on the other hand urging for more local public goods and decentralization. University education, mainly publicly supplied in Italy as well as in many European countries, exemplifies the awkwardness of introducing best practices in a context of asymmetric information with many idiosyncratic features.globalization,university education,public goods,public administration

Complexity bounds on supermesh construction for quasi-uniform meshes

Projecting fields between different meshes commonly arises in computational physics. This operation requires a supermesh construction and its computational cost is proportional to the number of cells of the supermesh $n$. Given any two quasi-uniform meshes of $n_A$ and $n_B$ cells respectively, we show under standard assumptions that n is proportional to $n_A + n_B$. This result substantially improves on the best currently available upper bound on $n$ and is fundamental for the analysis of algorithms that use supermeshes

The Uses and Abuses of the Euro in the Canadian Currency Debate. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 3 No. 3, August 2003

(From the introduction). In the late 1990s, some prominent Canadian economists – notably Thomas Courchene, Herbert Grubel, Richard Harris, and Robert Mundell – began arguing that a North American common currency would solve the problems underlying the growing gap between U.S. and Canadian real GDP per capita.1 They succeeded in provoking a lively economic policy debate that occurred in parallel with the launch of the euro. The purpose of this paper is to examine the uses – and abuses – of European parallels by both sides in the economic policy debate that peaked in the 1999-2001 period. The body of the paper begins by providing an understanding of the European case. Hence, the second section outlines our interpretation of the major developments in the birth of the euro. The third section, the core of the paper, examines in detail the use of European parallels in the Canadian currency debate. We start by providing a brief overview of the protagonists in the debate. We then continue by arguing that the euro provided a “temporal spur” for the Canadian discussion but that it was only one among several important factors. We argue further that the proponents of a North American common currency relied very little on the European experience to support their case for the need for a common currency. Where they did use the European experience, however, was in their analysis of the institutional form that a common currency in North America might take. We argue that the opponents of a North American common currency were correct in viewing this as an abuse of the European parallel. In the concluding fourth section, we summarize our findings and argue that the most important parallel between the European and North American forces for a common currency is that both were driven primarily by politics

Prospects in MPGDs development for neutron detection

The aim of this document is to summarise the discussion and the contributions from the 2nd Academia-Industry Matching Event on Detecting Neutrons with MPGDs which took place at CERN on the 16th and the 17th of March 2015. These events provide a platform for discussing the prospects of Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detectors (MPGDs) for thermal and fast neutron detection, commercial constraints and possible solutions. The aim is to foster the collaboration between the particle physics community, the neutron detector users, instrument scientists and fabricants

Income distribution, standard of living and capabilities: a cross-sectoral analysis.

The aim of the paper is to investigate how agricultural relative incomes have changed in recent years, since the CAP has switched its emphasis from price support to rural development. The distributional implications of agricultural and rural policies are indirectly evaluated looking at the dynamics of earnings and wages in agriculture, as well as at the rural household incomes described through monetary and non monetary variables, so to proxy their living standards. Our concern is not particularly on the agricultural policy tools, as much as on the evaluation of their end results. A comparison spanning through time and across countries is performed on the basis of the information provided by the ECHP and EU-SILC surveys. The paper seeks to unravel the differences between rural and urban population in the different European areas and offers a description of how successes and failures varied, keeping the CAP in the background.Income distribution, Standard of living Earnings in agriculture., Agricultural and Food Policy, D31, E24, J31, N50,

Wage Inequality in Europe: the Role of Labour Market and Redistributive Institutions

This paper aims at a deeper understanding of the determinants of wage inequality, the most important component of income inequality, in the European countries. We investigate on how wage inequality is affected by government regulation in the labour market and by the redistribution operated by the social protection system, also controlling for the impact of the effect of skillpremium related to technical change. To explain the continuously rising wage inequality in Europe, two regression models of wage inequality are employed each one using a different databases. In the last period, the overall degree of governance of the labour markets does not substantially change, but a different balance between decreasing labour market regulation and increasing redistribution manifest across Europe. While job and wage protection has been eased, income redistribution was strengthened, though its size differs across four clusters of European countries, depending on the majority voting preference for “risk insurance”. Overall, institutional substitution between labour market regulation and income redistribution seems to back the upward trend in wage inequality

Deflation for semismooth equations

Variational inequalities can in general support distinct solutions. In this paper we study an algorithm for computing distinct solutions of a variational inequality, without varying the initial guess supplied to the solver. The central idea is the combination of a semismooth Newton method with a deflation operator that eliminates known solutions from consideration. Given one root of a semismooth residual, deflation constructs a new problem for which a semismooth Newton method will not converge to the known root, even from the same initial guess. This enables the discovery of other roots. We prove the effectiveness of the deflation technique under the same assumptions that guarantee locally superlinear convergence of a semismooth Newton method. We demonstrate its utility on various finite- and infinite-dimensional examples drawn from constrained optimization, game theory, economics and solid mechanics.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figure

Do Preferences in EU Member-States Support Fiscal Federalism?

The aim of this paper is to assess preferences with respect to fiscal federalism in EU member-states. In particular, we address the question of whether each EU country would - if the decision were taken by 'majority voting' - or should – if the decision were takenby a social planner – favour centralisation or decentralisation of mutual risk insurance. Our analysis implicitly assumes that each EU median voter or each EU social planner takes the composition of the fiscal federation as given, leaving aside the issue of how manyand which countries take part in the optimal EU fiscal federation. With majority voting, the median voter 'individual' and the median voter 'region' in each EU country are decisive. In this situation, the national (federal) government level for redistribution is preferredif the national ratio between median income and mean income is lower (higher) than the EU ratio. In contrast, were the decision taken by the social planner, the choice in favour of centralisation(decentralisation) would be derived from the maximisation of a social welfare function. In terms of European regions, the index of 'jurisdictional distance' indicates that social welfare ismaximised by (de)centralised redistribution whenever intra -national income dispersion is greater (smaller) than inter-national income dispersion. The results show that, for the large majority ofEU member-states, when one of the two decision-makers prefers centralisation (decentralisation), the other has the opposite preference; moreover, the chosen government level is in most cases thesame for interpersonal redistribution and inter-jurisdictional redistribution: what is good for the individual is also good for the nation.Income Distribution ; Public Choice ; Fiscal Federalism ; European Economics

L'ami américain. L'image de la « relation particulière » et le processus de prise de décision au Canada pendant la crise monétaire internationale de 1971

Cet article étudie le comportement des décideurs canadiens pendant la crise monétaire internationale de 1971. Nous présenterons en premier lieu une description des problèmes touchant le système monétaire international à la fin des années 60 et les mesures prises par le gouvernement américain pour les résoudre. Les États-Unis en introduisant le 15 août 1971 une surtaxe à l'importation créèrent toute une surprise. Nous verrons les raisons pour lesquelles le gouvernement canadien fut pris par surprise alors que des signes avant-coureurs existaient, et nous démontrerons que les décisions prises par la suite et les choix qu'il fit jurent étroitement liés à l'image dont se faisaient les décideurs canadiens de cette « relation particulière » canado-américaine.This paper examines the behaviour of Canadian decision-makers during the 1971 international monetary crisis. First, it gives a description of the problems affecting the international monetary System in the 1960s and of the measures taken to solve them, focusing in particular on the dynamics that led the American government to impose, on August 15, 1971, a surcharge on imports. Then the paper explores the reasons why Canadian decision-makers were taken by surprise when signs that such a decision was forthcoming existed and analyses the cognitive processes and reasoning that informed their response. The paper argues that both the reason for the surprise and the decisions taken afterwards were closely linked to the image that Canadian-American relations were regulated by a « special relationship ». The papers ends with an analysis of the evolution of this image