Transition and the Fiscal Crisis in Central Europe

This paper argues that traditional explanations of the fiscal crisis in transition economies overlook the crucial interconnection between the reduction in subsidies expenditure and the decrease in profit tax revenues. It thus contends that the impact on the fiscal budget of the crisis of state-owned enterprises profitability has been largely overestimated in the literature. The net contribution to the government budget from the enterprise sector - defined as profit taxes net of cross-subsidization - has increased during the transition in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and has remained constant in Hungary. After reexamining the data, it is argued that - while it is undoubtable that the prospects for fiscal revenues are worrisome - the main determinant of the fiscal crisis is to the explosion of social security expenditures. The paper also assesses the applicability of these results to other former socialist economies.Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe, Socialist economies, economic transition, fiscal crisis, revenue crisis, social expenditures, pensions

La storia dell’arte nell’epoca post-storica

Il saggio esamina la tesi di Danto della “fine della storia dell’arte”, concentrandosi in particolare su: (1) l’intreccio tra storia dell’arte “immanente” e storia dell’arte come “narrazione”; (2) la differenza tra “storia” e “storicità”; (3) la possibilità di una storia dell’arte nell’epoca post-storica. La principale preoccupazione è che, nel mondo dell’arte descritto da Danto, non solo l’arte perde la sua forza critica, ma scompare anche la possibilità del possibileThis paper aims at examining Danto’s thesis of “the end of art history”, focusing in particular on: (1) the intertwine between “immanent” art history and “narrative” history of art; (2) the dif-ference between “history” and “historicity”; (3) the possibility of an art history in the post-historical era. The main concern is that, in Danto’s artworld, not only art loses its critical power, but also disappears the possibility of possibl

L'anticipazione cognitiva delle emozioni. Reazioni primitive e grammatica nella riflessione di Ludwig Wittgenstein

Il saggio analizza il pensiero di Wittgenstein sulla natura cognitiva delle emozioni. In primo luogo, Wittgenstein distingue la grammatica delle emozioni da quella delle sensazioni, al fine di dimostrare che non possiamo spiegare in termini causali la natura espressiva delle emozioni. In secondo luogo, vuole mostrare che il valore cognitivo delle emozioni non è quello di produrre conoscenze specifiche, ma di produrre modelli attenzionali in vista di una conoscenza possibileThis essay analyses Wittgenstein’s thought on the cognitive nature of emotions. In the first place, Wittgenstein distinguishes the grammar of emotions from that of sensations, in order to show that we cannot causally explain the expressive nature of emotions. Secondly, it wants to show that the cognitive value of emotions is not to produce specific knowledge, but to produce attentional patterns for a possible knowledg

Il non-luogo dell’arte contemporanea

Secondo Peter Osborne l’arte contemporanea è un concetto normativo in grado di garantire l’autonomia dell’arte. Da questo punto di vista l’arte contemporanea è arte “postconcettuale”, perché al giorno d’oggi la distinzione tra arte/non-arte deve essere pensata come una pratica teorica riflessiva (concettuale). La forma dell’opera d’arte contemporanea è una paradossale unità distributiva dello spazio-tempo. Inoltre, la natura immateriale e digitale delle pratiche artistiche richiede che la dimensione autonoma dell’arte sia pensata in termini di “non-luoghi”. Da questo punto di vista, il carattere radicalmente distributivo dell’unità dell’opera e il carattere globalmente transnazionale dello spazio artistico sono i segni primari dell’arte contemporaneaAccording to Peter Osborne contemporary art is a normative concept capable to secure the autonomy of art. From this point of view contemporary art is “postconceptual” art, because nowadays the art/non-art distinction has to be thought as a theoretical reflexive (conceptual) practice. The form of contemporary artwork is a paradoxical distributive unity of space-time. Furthermore, the immaterial, digital nature of the artistic practices needs that the autonomous dimension of art has to be thought in terms of “non-places”. From this point of view, the radically distributive character of the unity of the work, and the globally transnational character of the art space are the primary markers of contemporary ar

Economic transformation and the fiscal crisis : a critical look at the Central European experience of the 1990s

The authors argue that traditional explanations of the fiscal crisis in reforming ex-socialist economies overlook crucial connections between key components of the deficit - particularly between reductions in spending and declines in revenues. Almost all studies of the fiscal aspects of the transition stress the impact on the fiscal budget of the performance crisis in state-owned enterprises. The authors contend that this aspect of the fiscal crisis has been overstated. The enterprise sector's net contribution to the government budget - that is, net income from profit taxes after subtracting subsidies - has increased during the transition in Czechoslovakia and Poland and has not changed substantially in Hungary. After reexamining the data, the authors argue that although the fiscal crisis is certainly structural, the main blame should be attributed to the explosion in spending (especially social spending) rather than to the crisis in revenues. Many of the social costs of adjustment were previously hidden within the state-owned enterprises system. These social costs include unemployment benefits and the cost of supporting - through pensions or social assistance - the people displaced from the work force by the transformation. It is important to continue reforming the tax system and tax administration - to deal with the widespread hiding of profits and cheating on taxes - but all three countries already have relatively high levels of taxation. Society in the three countries may not be willing to provide the resources required to support or extend current spending levels.National Governance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research

Complex Spontaneous Flows and Concentration Banding in Active Polar Films

We study the dynamical properties of active polar liquid crystalline films. Like active nematic films, active polar films undergo a dynamical transitions to spontaneously flowing steady-states. Spontaneous flow in polar fluids is, however, always accompanied by strong concentration inhomogeneities or "banding" not seen in nematics. In addition, a spectacular property unique to polar active films is their ability to generate spontaneously oscillating and banded flows even at low activity. The oscillatory flows become increasingly complicated for strong polarity.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Distributed power control over interference channels using ACK/NACK feedback

In this work, we consider a network composed of several single-antenna transmitter-receiver pairs in which each pair aims at selfishly minimizing the power required to achieve a given signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio. This is obtained modeling the transmitter-receiver pairs as rational agents that engage in a non-cooperative game. Capitalizing on the well-known results on the existence and structure of the generalized Nash equilibrium (GNE) point of the underlying game, a low complexity, iterative and distributed algorithm is derived to let each terminal reach the GNE using only a limited feedback in the form of link-layer acknowledgement (ACK) or negative acknowledgement (NACK). Numerical results are used to prove that the proposed solution is able to achieve convergence in a scalable and adaptive manner under different operating conditions.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Austin, Texas, Dec. 201

Structural adjustment, ownership transformation, and size in Polish industry

The authors argue that significant adjustment took place in Polish industry after Poland's 1990 reforms. They analyze data on two- and three-digit manufacturing industries, disaggregated by firm ownership and size. By applying a statistical model to labor productivity growth, they try to disentangle structural determinants of the recovery from cyclical determinants. They contend that structural determinants outweigh cyclical ones. They find that the productive response of state enterprises was markedly different from that of private firms--private firms outperformed state enterprises (just as anecdotal evidence suggested). Size also matters, at least among private firms. Generally, there seem to be increasing returns to scale for private firms, except for very large enterprises (many of which were previously state-owned and may need further restructuring). The fact that size does not appear to matter among public enterprises suggests that several of them have not yet adopted optimal technologies and production processes.Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Economic Theory&Research,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Inverse Dynamical Problems: An Algebraic Formulation Via MP Grammars

Metabolic P grammars are a particular class of multiset rewriting grammars introduced in the MP systems' theory for modelling metabolic processes. In this paper, a new algebraic formulation of inverse dynamical problems, based on MP grammars and Kronecker product, is given, for further motivating the correctness of the LGSS (Log-gain Stoichiometric Stepwise) algorithm, introduced in 2010s for solving dynamical inverse problems in the MP framework. At the end of the paper, a section is included that introduces the problem of multicollinearity, which could arise during the execution of LGSS, and that de nes an algorithm, based on a hierarchical clustering technique, that solves it in a suitable way