"Language at Work: Analysing Language Use in Work, Education, Medical and Museum Contexts", Edited by Helen de Silva Joyce Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2016, pp. 277

The reviewed volume "Language at Work" explores the language used in a variety of workplace contexts ranging from call centres through secondary schools and hospitals to museums. Written, spoken and/or multimodal texts are analysed, with a view to investigating how professionals communicate with their colleagues, costumers, students, patients or visitors. The majority of the thirteen contributions concern private or public contexts in Australia. Eleven of them draw on the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The book consists of four parts. Part 1 refers to three different workplace contexts, Part 2 to education contexts, Part 3 to medical contexts and Part 4 to museum contexts

On the Distribution of Education and Democracy

This paper empirically analyzes the influence of the distribution of education on democracy by controlling for unobservable heterogeneity and by taking into account the persistency of some of the variables. The most novel finding is that increase in the education attained by the majority of the population is what matters for the implementation and sustainability of democracy, rather than the average years of schooling. We show this result is robust to issues pertaining omitted variables, outliers, sample selection, or a narrow definition of the variables used to measure democracy.Democracy, political economy, education inequality, dynamic panel data model

Multinational Corporations and Endogenous Growth: An Eclectic-Paradigmatic Analysis

Endogenous growth theory recently originated in economics. Building on this theory, this chapter conceptualizes the phenomenon of endogenous growth in terms of some new ideas developed in the field of international business (IB). These ideas have so far been not linked to the notion of endogenous growth. On the other hand, mainstream economics has not made much progress in exploring the MNC-government relationships through which growth-inducing "mechanics" are created, a topic of great importance and research in the IB-related discipline. Both MNCs and governments complement each other in facilitating an efficient matching of ownership-specific assets (notably knowledge) with location-specific advantages, thereby enabling the developing host countries to realize potential growth I an intensified manner, a new mode of endogenous growth that counteracts the law diminishing returns. The phenomenon of MNC-cum-government-driven endogenous growth is thus conceptualized.

Measuring the (Income) Effect of Disability Insurance Generosity on Labour Market Participation

We analyze the employment effect of a law that provides for a 36 percent increase in thegenerosity of disability insurance (DI) for claimants who are, as a result of their lack of skillsand of the labour market conditions they face, deemed unlikely to find a job. The selectionprocess for treatment is therefore conditional on having a low probability of employment, makingevaluation of its effect intrinsically difficult. We exploit the fact that the benefit increase isonly available to individuals aged 55 or older, estimating its impact using a regressiondiscontinuity approach. Our first results indicate a large drop in employment for disabledindividuals who receive the increase in the benefit. Testing for the linearity of covariatesaround the eligibility age threshold reveals that the age at which individuals start claiming DIis not continuous: the benefit increase appears to accelerate the entry rate of individuals aged55 or over. We obtain new estimates excluding this group of claimants, and find that the policydecreases the employment probability by 8 percent. We conclude that the observed DI generosityelasticity of 0.22 on labour market participation is mostly due to income effects since benefitreceipt is not work contingent in the system studied.labour organization;

Human Capital Inequality, Life Expectancy and Economic Growth

This paper provides a theoretical model in which inequality affects per capita income when individuals decide to accumulate human capital depending on their life expectancy. The model assumes that life expectancy depends to a large extent on the environment in which individuals grow up, in particular, on the human capital of their parents. After calibrating the life expectancy function according to the international evidence for cross-section data, our results show the existence of multiple steady states depending on the initial distribution of education. In particular, human capital may converge towards different stable steady states. In accordance with the evidence displayed by many developing countries, the low steady state is a poverty trap in which children are raised in poor families, have a low life expectancy and work as non-educated workers all their lives.life expectancy, iinequality, human capital accumulation

Measuring the (Income) Effect of Disability Insurance Generosity on Labour Market Participation

We analyze the employment effect of a law that provides for a 36 percent increase in the generosity of disability insurance (DI) for claimants who are, as a result of their lack of skills and of the labour market conditions they face, deemed unlikely to find a job. The selection process for treatment is therefore conditional on having a low probability of employment, making evaluation of its effect intrinsically difficult. We exploit the fact that the benefit increase is only available to individuals aged 55 or older, estimating its impact using a regression discontinuity approach. Our first results indicate a large drop in employment for disabled individuals who receive the increase in the benefit. Testing for the linearity of covariates around the eligibility age threshold reveals that the age at which individuals start claiming DI is not continuous: the benefit increase appears to accelerate the entry rate of individuals aged 55 or over. We obtain new estimates excluding this group of claimants, and find that the policy decreases the employment probability by 8 percent. We conclude that the observed DI generosity elasticity of 0.22 on labour market participation is mostly due to income effects since benefit receipt is not work contingent in the system studied.Disability insurance, labour market participation, income effect, regression discontinuity

Microscopic Abrams-Strogatz model of language competition

The differential equations of Abrams and Strogatz for the competition between two languages are compared with agent-based Monte Carlo simulations for fully connected networks as well as for lattices in one, two and three dimensions, with up to 10^9 agents.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure