The new Lisbon Strategy: An estiamtion of the impact of reaching 5 Lisbon targets

The Lisbon strategy could reinvigorate Europe’s economy and boost employment. In 2000 the European leaders agreed to stimulate economic growth and employment and make Europe’s economy the most competitive in the world. If Europe would really reach the goals they set, Europe’s Gross Domestic Product could increase by 12 to 23% and employment by about 11%. This paper draws this conclusion after having analysed five of the most important Lisbon goals: the internal market for services, the reduction of administrative burdens, goals on improving human capital, the 3% target on research and development expenditures, and the 70% target on the employment rate. Using CPB’s general equilibrium model for the world economy we have simulated the consequences for Europe of reaching the Lisbon targets in these fields.Jobs creation; economic growth; Lisbon agenda: general equilibrium model

Assessing subsidiarity

This paper discusses the assessment of subsidiarity in the European Union from a broad fiscal federalism perspective. It incorporates recent insights from political economy analyses of fiscal federalism to arrive at a list of issues that need to be taken into account when considering whether concrete policies should be centralised in the European Union or not. �

Europe's financial perspectives in perspective

The budget of the European Union raises much commotion. Many member states anxiously guard their net payment positions: don't they pay too much for the EU compared to what they receive from the EU? Read also the accompanying press release .Yet, from an economic perspective the subsidiarity principle is much more important: Should the funds be allocated by the Union or by the individual member states? From that angle, a number of fundamental reforms of European agricultural policy and structural actions (support to lagging regions) suggest themselves. These reform options may roughly halve the EU budget. In addition they happen to bring the net payment positions of member states closer together.

Governance of stakeholder relationships: The German and Dutch experience

Countries' governance institutions to a varying degree support stakeholders to invest in relationship-specific assets. The function of governance institutions is to strengthen the commitment of parties to keep to an initial agreement. Thus, international differences in governance institutions affect relationship-specific investments. Two stylized models of stakeholder relationships can be distinguished, the Anglo-American model and the German model. Market orientation and competition characterize the Anglo-American model. Long-term relationships and cooperation are distinctive features of the German model. Strong elements of the Anglo-American model are fast reallocation of financial, physical and human capital through the market. Short-run flexibility facilitates a shift of resources towards innovative emerging technologies, in particular towards start-up firms. The German model is strong with respect to the development of long-term commitment, investments in relationship-specific physical and human capital, and cooperation between companies. This model promotes technological progress and re-allocation of resources within established enterprises. The position of Dutch corporate governance institutions, which govern the relationships between management and financiers, does not stand out as favourable compared to both the German and the Anglo-American models of corporate governance. In the Netherlands, share ownership is dispersed, so that monitoring by block shareholders is largely absent. In this respect the situation in the Netherlands is comparable to that in the United States and the United Kingdom. However, in contrast to the Anglo-American model the market for corporate control is virtually absent in the Netherlands. Cooption of members of the supervisory board and extensive use of juridical anti-takeover defence mechanisms substantially restrict the influence of shareholders on management. Therefore, Dutch corporate governance institutions neither strongly encourage investments in relationship-specific assets, nor strongly enhance flexible reallocation of capital or risk-sharing finance. Recent policy changes will probably lead to a moderate shift to the German model. Dutch work governance institutions, which concern the governance of relationships between management and employees, more closely resemble those in Germany. This implies that worker influence enhances the performance within large established firms, but that external allocation through the labour market is less efficient compared to the functioning of markets in the Anglo-American model. Future policy changes that strengthen Dutch worker influence will be beneficial for performance in established firms, and are in accordance with the gradual shift towards German governance structures.

Functional motor disorders: mechanism, prognosis and treatment

Functional motor disorders (FMD) consist of tremor, jerky movements, altered posturing or weakness. They are characterized by specific factors in the history and neurological examination, pointing at their functional nature, like the influence of attention and distraction or incongruency with the anatomy. They are highly prevalent and often significantly impairing. This thesis discusses the pathophysiology, prognosis and treatment of FMD. Part 1 describes that we found many similarities between groups of different functional motor symptoms. Many patients report severe fatigue, which correlates with impaired quality of life and subjective health ratings. This calls for more attention in clinical practice. A comparison between cortical myoclonus and functional jerky movements showed comparable percentages of depressive and anxiety symptoms. Pain is more prevalent in functional jerky movements. Two chapters investigating fMRI in FMS, confirm existing theories on the role of altered attentional processes, perception of body scheme and sense of agency. Part 2 contains a review and a case-control study on the prognosis of FMS. It turns out symptoms did not resolve in a large part of the studied patients and misdiagnosis was low. Part 3 summarized the literature on the treatment on FMD and contains a RCT to the effect of education and self-help on the internet compared to usual care. We did not find differences between groups on clinically relevant outcome measures. Patients did report high satisfaction with the intervention

Opinion Change or Differential Turnout: Changing Opinions on the Austin Police Department in a Budget Feedback Process

In 2020 the tragic murder of George Floyd at the hands of law enforcement ignited and intensified nationwide protests, demanding changes in police funding and allocation. This happened during a budgeting feedback exercise where residents of Austin, Texas were invited to share opinions on the budgets of various city service areas, including the Police Department, on an online platform designed by our team. Daily responses increased by a hundredfold and responses registered after the "exogenous shock" overwhelmingly advocated for reducing police funding. This opinion shift far exceeded what we observed in 14 other Participatory Budgeting elections on our Participatory Budgeting Platform, and can't be explained by shifts in the respondent demographics. Analysis of the results from an Austin budgetary feedback exercise in 2021 and a follow-up survey indicates that the opinion shift from 2020 persisted, with the opinion gap on police funding widening. We conclude that there was an actual change of opinion regarding police funding. This study not only sheds light on the enduring impact of the 2020 events and protests on public opinion, but also showcases the value of analysis of clustered opinions as a tool in the evaluation toolkit of survey organizers.Comment: This preprint is an extended version of a previously published conference paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3551624.355529

Functional Jerky Movements

Functional jerky movements (or functional myoclonus) are commonly seen in patients with functional movement disorder. Positive features both from history and clinical examination are important for the diagnosis. However, due to their heterogeneous and paroxysmal nature a home-made video-recording of the jerky movements can be essential to make the diagnose by a movement disorder specialist. Supportive clinical clues include abrupt symptom onset often triggered by a physical event, whereas entrainment and distractibility are supportive signs during physical examination. Localization of the jerky movements, especially proximal localization, is supportive, and can also be helpful in distinguishing functional jerks from tics and myoclonus, which are the most important differential diagnostic considerations. Additional neurophysiological tests include polymyography and electroencephalography-electromyography (EEG-EMG) co-registration in order to demonstrate a readiness potential (RP). Management includes disease education and specialized physical therapy

Who is in Your Top Three? Optimizing Learning in Elections with Many Candidates

Elections and opinion polls often have many candidates, with the aim to either rank the candidates or identify a small set of winners according to voters' preferences. In practice, voters do not provide a full ranking; instead, each voter provides their favorite K candidates, potentially in ranked order. The election organizer must choose K and an aggregation rule. We provide a theoretical framework to make these choices. Each K-Approval or K-partial ranking mechanism (with a corresponding positional scoring rule) induces a learning rate for the speed at which the election correctly recovers the asymptotic outcome. Given the voter choice distribution, the election planner can thus identify the rate optimal mechanism. Earlier work in this area provides coarse order-of-magnitude guaranties which are not sufficient to make such choices. Our framework further resolves questions of when randomizing between multiple mechanisms may improve learning, for arbitrary voter noise models. Finally, we use data from 5 large participatory budgeting elections that we organized across several US cities, along with other ranking data, to demonstrate the utility of our methods. In particular, we find that historically such elections have set K too low and that picking the right mechanism can be the difference between identifying the ultimate winner with only a 80% probability or a 99.9% probability after 400 voters.Comment: To appear in HCOMP 201

The new Lisbon Strategy: An estiamtion of the impact of reaching 5 Lisbon targets

The Lisbon strategy could reinvigorate Europe’s economy and boost employment. In 2000 the European leaders agreed to stimulate economic growth and employment and make Europe’s economy the most competitive in the world. If Europe would really reach the goals they set, Europe’s Gross Domestic Product could increase by 12 to 23% and employment by about 11%. This paper draws this conclusion after having analysed five of the most important Lisbon goals: the internal market for services, the reduction of administrative burdens, goals on improving human capital, the 3% target on research and development expenditures, and the 70% target on the employment rate. Using CPB’s general equilibrium model for the world economy we have simulated the consequences for Europe of reaching the Lisbon targets in these fields

The new Lisbon Strategy: An estiamtion of the impact of reaching 5 Lisbon targets

The Lisbon strategy could reinvigorate Europe’s economy and boost employment. In 2000 the European leaders agreed to stimulate economic growth and employment and make Europe’s economy the most competitive in the world. If Europe would really reach the goals they set, Europe’s Gross Domestic Product could increase by 12 to 23% and employment by about 11%. This paper draws this conclusion after having analysed five of the most important Lisbon goals: the internal market for services, the reduction of administrative burdens, goals on improving human capital, the 3% target on research and development expenditures, and the 70% target on the employment rate. Using CPB’s general equilibrium model for the world economy we have simulated the consequences for Europe of reaching the Lisbon targets in these fields