Assessing the Implications of EU Enlargement for CEEC Agri-food Trade Specialisation

The goal of the paper is to analyse agri-food trade specialisation in seven Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) with their trade groupings over the period 2000-2005, prior to and after their accession to the EU. For these CEECs, we found high agri-food trade specialisation in a relatively small number of commodities. The most competitive commodities in trade with all trade groupings other than the EU-15 were marked by a fairly high level of processing. Over the analysed period the CEE countries did not maintain positions of the most competitive commodities, but at the same time they improved positions of a number of previously uncompetitive commodities. The competitiveness of CEEC agrifood trade commodities declined over the period analysed.agri-food trade, specialisation, Lafay index, Markov matrices, new EU Member States, International Relations/Trade,

Agri-food Trade Specialisation Pattern in the New EU Member States

The paper analyses development of agri-food trade specialisation pattern in eight EU Member States of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements (NMS) during the period 2000 – 2005. Over the period analysed, the NMS were not able to hold trade positions in the most competitive commodities, but on the other hand, positions of a number of previously uncompetitive commodities improved. We show convergence of dynamism of agri-food trade specialisation across NMS in trade with the partners/groupings investigated.agri-food trade, specialisation, EU Member States of 2004 and 2007 enlargements, International Relations/Trade,

A conceptual and empirical framework to analyze the economics of consumer food waste

We develop a microeconomic model to understand food waste of consumers. We capture at-home and away-from home food consumption and distinguish between food purchases and food consumption. We allow the consumer to choose the rate of food waste at home optimally to maximize her utility. We show that consumer purchases can decline or increase with a cut in the rate of consumer waste, depending on the elasticity of food demand. Using the UK data for poultry in 2012, we also show a case where for a price elastic demand food consumption increases with a reduction in the food waste rate, but food purchases (retail sales) increase

BIOFUELS AND LEAKAGES IN THE FUEL MARKET

Leakage in the fuel market differs, depending on whether ethanol production is determined by a tax credit or consumption mandate. Two components of market leakage are distinguished: domestic and international. Leakage with both a tax credit and a consumption mandate depends on market elasticities and consumption/production shares, with the former having a bigger impact. Leakage is also more sensitive to changes in market supply and demand elasticities in the country not introducing biofuels. Although positive with a tax credit, market leakage can be negative with a consumption mandate, meaning that one gallon of ethanol can replace more than a gallon of gasoline. We also show that being a small country biofuels producer does not necessarily mean that leakage for this country is 100 percent. Our numerical estimates show that one gallon of ethanol replaces approximately 0.2-0.3 gallons of gasoline in the U.S.Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Trade Creation and Diversion in the Enlarged EU Market: Evidence for Agricultural Trade in Slovakia

In the paper the authors analyze the changes in agricultural trade patterns in Slovakia influenced by the gradual trade liberalization that occurred prior to European Union enlargement in 2004. The results show a significant trade-diversion effect of the enlargement on Slovak agricultural trade. A one-percentage-point reduction in the agricultural tariff rate of Slovakia increases agricultural imports from EU15 and Central and East European countries (CEEC) by around 3 percent. Given that the average reduction in tariff rates was 10.4 percent, the authors can conclude that approximately 31.4 percent of the increase in agricultural imports from the EU15 and CEEC was due to elimination of tariffs as Slovakia (and the other CEECs) joined the EU.agricultural trade; EU enlargement; Slovakia; trade liberalization

International Interlinkages of Biofuel Prices: The Role of Biofuel Policies

Based on their theoretical predictions, Kliauga, de Gorter, and Just (2008) and de Gorter, Drabik, and Just (2010) argue that the United States and the European Union establish the world ethanol and biodiesel prices, respectively. We test these theories using cointegration analysis and the Vector Error Correction (VEC) model. Weekly price series are analyzed for the major global biofuel producers (European Union, United States, and Brazil) for the period 2002 – 2010. Polices in the United States and Brazil appear to play an equal role in determining ethanol prices in other countries, thus only partially confirming the theoretical predictions. For biodiesel, our results demonstrate that the EU mandate impacts the world biodiesel price and thus they confirm the European Union’s price leadership established in theory.biofuels, biofuel polices, price leadership, VEC, International Relations/Trade, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, C32, Q16, Q17, Q47,

An outline of liturgical gestures from a linguistic and anthropological perspective

Prezentowany artykuł jest próbą pokazania, że gesty i postawy liturgiczne, funkcjonujące w obrębie liturgii Kościoła katolickiego, stanowią interesujący przedmiot badawczy nie tylko dla teologów, ale także dla językoznawców. Autorka koncentruje się przede wszystkim na wskazaniu możliwości, jakie badaniom gestów liturgicznych stwarza przyjęcie metodologii językoznawstwa kognitywnego, zwłaszcza koncepcji schematów wyobrażeniowych. Pokazuje także, w jaki sposób poszukiwaniu tkwiących za gestami liturgicznymi schematów wyobrażeniowych przysłużyć może się antropologiczno-kulturowa perspektywa spojrzenia na gesty funkcjonujące w komunikacji międzyludzkiej.The article is an attempt to show that liturgical gestures and behaviors functioning within the liturgy of the Catholic Church are interesting topic for research, not only for theologians but also for linguists. The author concentrates mostly on pointing out the possibilities that have become available in research into liturgical gestures thanks to cognitive linguistics methodology (especially the concept of image schema). The author also shows how the search for image schemas existing behind liturgical gestures could be assisted by adopting the cultural and anthropological perspective of looking at the gestures functioning in human communication

NEUROLINGWISTYCZNE PARAMETRY TŁUMACZENIA KONSEKUTYWNEGO

In spite of a large body of research, it has proved difficult to integrate the existing data concerning interpreters’ professional knowledge, their linguistic competence and their psycholinguistic predispositions into a cohesive theoretical framework. The article highlights a coherent and interrelated set of psychological abilities as well as processes constituting a relevant component of translation competence.According to this framework, consecutive interpreting comprises three conceptually related mental processes involving a variety of psycholinguistic factors. These processes are: (1) reception of an initial message, (2) storing of a message, and (3) production of a target message. The message may be received in three ways: (1) on the basis of a text produced by the speaker, (2) via the senses, and (3) through nonverbal communication. Human perception is determined by their cultural background which comprises rules, principles, norms, beliefs – all the cognitive factors which influence their outlook, and according to which they distinguish particular elements of the world and evaluate modes of behaviour, attitudes, etc.Due to the fact that in the analysis of a message, the interpreter has to identify the main ideas and give them their proper relevance in their interpretation, the received information is converted in the human brain into basic conceptual units forming a semantic net.Tłumaczenie konsekutywne to proces transferencji informacji zawartej w tekście wyjściowym – istotne jest zatem odtworzenie konceptualnej sieci wypowiedzi nadawcy, a nie skupianie się na pojedynczych słowach. Z jednej strony tłumacz odtwarza wyjściowy tekst w języku docelowym, a z drugiej – pełni funkcję edukacyjną, tzn. dostosowuje tłumaczoną informację do potrzeb i kognitywnych możliwości odbiorcy. W razie zakłóceń natury fizycznej tłumacz stosuje szereg strategii „kompensacyjnych” – mniej lub bardziej świadomie odwołuje się do schematów poznawczych dostępnych w jego mózgu, a także stosuje myślenie heurystyczne. Oprócz wiedzy odnoszącej się do elementarnych pojęć z zakresu danej dziedziny oraz wysoko rozwiniętej kompetencji językowej istotną rolę odgrywają również cechy oraz uwarunkowania psychologiczne samego tłumacza, jego uzdolnienia oraz inteligencja. Można przypuszczać, iż deficyty w sferze językowej lub w zakresie wiedzy profesjonalnej są rekompensowane posiadanymi zdolnościami psychologicznymi. Ważną rolę odgrywa wrażliwość na komunikaty niewerbalne i parawerbalne. Ustawiczne poszerzanie i utrwalanie wiedzy o świecie oraz doskonalenie kompetencji językowej pozwala odciążyć pamięć operacyjną. Na osi wiedza-język zachodzi permanentne sprzężenie zwrotne, dlatego poszerzanie wiedzy językowej pociąga za sobą rozwój zdolności kognitywnych, a doskonalenie umiejętności poznawczych niejako „wymusza” stałą aktualizację języka tłumacza. W zawodzie tłumacza konsekutywnego ważne jest dokonywanie auto- i metaanalizy, gdyż w przyszłości pozwala to uniknąć wcześniej popełnianych błędów i zapobiec powstawaniu nowych

THE ECONOMICS OF FARM ORGANIZATION IN CEEC AND FSU

In Western Europe, USA and other developed countries agriculture is dominated by small family farms. In Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) and Former Soviet Union (FSU) dual structure of farms exists. There are large corporate farms (CF) and small family farms (FF) in CEEC and FSU. Our paper shows that both CF and FF specialize in commodities in which they have comparative advantage. CF specialize in capital intensive products and in products with low labor monitoring. FF specialize in products with higher labor monitoring requirements. The implication of this paper is that farm structure determines in which products the country will be competitive on international markets. This is especially important for transition countries where high transaction costs hinder the change of farm organization. For this reason in transition countries suffering from high transaction cost the choice of product structure is more important than the choice of farm organization.farm structure, production specialization, transaction costs, CEEC, FSU, Farm Management,

Modular Verification of Biological Systems

Systems of interest in systems biology (such as metabolic pathways, signalling pathways and gene regulatory networks) often consist of a huge number of components interacting in different ways, thus exhibiting very complex behaviours. In biology, such behaviours are usually explored by means of simulation techniques applied to models defined on the basis of system observation and of hypotheses on its functioning. Model checking has also been recently applied to the analysis of biological systems. This analysis technique typically relies on a state space representation whose size, unfortunately, makes the analysis often intractable for realistic models. A method for trying to avoid the state space explosion problem is to consider a decomposition of the system, and to apply a modular verification technique. In particular, properties to be verified often concern only a small portion of the modelled system rather than the system as a whole. Hence, for each property it would be useful to be able to isolate a minimal fragment of the model that is necessary to verify such a property. In this thesis we introduce a modular verification technique in which the system of interest is described by means of an automata-based formalism, called sync-programs, that supports modular construction. Our modular verification technique is based on results of Grumberg et al.~and on their application to the theory of concurrent systems proposed by Attie and Emerson. In particular, we adapt Attie and Emerson's approach to deal with biological systems by allowing automata to synchronise by performing transitions simultaneously. Modular verification allows qualitative aspects of systems to be analysed with the guarantee that properties proved to hold in a suitable model fragment also hold in the whole model. The correctness of the verification technique is proved. The class of properties preserved is ACTL$^{-}$, the universal fragment of temporal logic CTL. The preservation holds only for positive answers and negative answers are not necessarily preserved. In order to verify properties we use the NuSMV model checker, which is a well-established and efficient instrument. We provide a formal translation of sync-programs to simpler automata, which can be given as input to NuSMV. We prove the correspondence of the verification problems. We show the application of our verification technique in some biological case studies. We compare the time required to verify the property on the whole model with the time needed to verify the same property by only considering those modules which are involved in the behaviour of the system related to the property. In order to handle modelling and verification of more realistic biological scenarios, we propose also a dynamic version of our formalism. It allows entities to be created dynamically, in particular by other already running entities, as it often happens in biological systems. Moreover, multiple copies of the same entities can be present at the same time in a system. We show a correspondence of our model with Petri Nets. This has a consequence that tools developed for Petri Nets could be used also for dynamic sync-programs. Modular verification allows properties expressed as DACTL- formulae (dynamic version of ACTL-) to be verified on a portion of the model. The results of analysis of the case study of the MAP kinase cascade activated by surface and internalised EGF receptors, which consists of 143 species and 80 reactions, suggest applicability and scalability of the approach. The results raise the prospect of rendering tractable problems that are currently intractable in the verification of biological systems. In addition, we expect that the techniques developed in the thesis could be applied with profit not only to models of biological systems, but more generally to models of concurrent systems