Do wages reflect labor productivity? The case of Belgian regions

Classic economic theory applied to the labor market assumes that markets are perfectly informed and able to allocate workers in open vacancies in equilibrium. These workers are paid a salary equal to their marginal product of labor, since labor supply and demand are both satisfied. In the real world, however, this condition might not hold, as there exist many market frictions triggered by imperfect information and institutional factors, such as employment protection, unemployment benefits, collective bargaining, minimum wages and taxation. The persistently high unemployment rates plaguing the Western World, and Europe in particular in the aftermath of the Great Recession suggest that wage rigidity combined with falling productivity may be an important channel causing increasing unemployment. Belgium is no exception, with 7.6% national unemployment rate in 2012 averaging over the 17.4% unemployment rate of Brussels, the 4.5% rate of Flanders and the 10.0% rate of Wallonia (source: Eurostat)..

Investing in Innovation and Skills: Thriving through Global Value Chains

This paper investigates empirically the interplay between participation and positioning in global value chains (GVCs), employment demand and supply and workforce’s skills endowment. Results touch upon the way innovation, technology and participation in GVCs shape employment in routine intensive and non-routine jobs; the relationship between participation in GVCs and polarisation of employment; the way the skill composition of a country’s workforce – both the type of skills and their distribution – shapes specialisation and positioning along GVCs; and the complementarities emerging between GVC participation and investment in knowledge-based capital,  especially organisational capital and ICT

Do wages reflect labor productivity? The case of Belgian regions

Classic economic theory applied to the labor market assumes that markets are perfectly informed and able to allocate workers in open vacancies in equilibrium. These workers are paid a salary equal to their marginal product of labor, since labor supply and demand are both satisfied. In the real world, however, this condition might not hold, as there exist many market frictions triggered by imperfect information and institutional factors, such as employment protection, unemployment benefits, collective bargaining, minimum wages and taxation. The persistently high unemployment rates plaguing the Western World, and Europe in particular in the aftermath of the Great Recession suggest that wage rigidity combined with falling productivity may be an important channel causing increasing unemployment. Belgium is no exception, with 7.6% national unemployment rate in 2012 averaging over the 17.4% unemployment rate of Brussels, the 4.5% rate of Flanders and the 10.0% rate of Wallonia (source: Eurostat)..

Service offshoring and export experience

Service inputs are a key component of the costs of exporting, and contribute to explain the process of internationalization of firms. A new dataset on the participation of French firms in global value chains reveals that firms with longer export experience in a market are more likely to source service inputs from there. We rationalize this fact in a model where firms are initially uncertain about how successful they are as exporters, but learn their export profitability as they keep selling abroad. Because offshoring requires larger sunk costs than domestic sourcing, some firms decide to offshore only when they become sufficiently confident about their export prospects, i.e., once they acquire enough export experience. More export experience in a foreign destination also induces firms to offshore within the boundaries of the firm rather than at arm's length. The model further implies that firms are more likely to offshore when frictions in the provision of services between the domestic and the foreign market are greater. In turn, offshoring firms sell greater volumes, display less volatility, and are less likely to exit foreign markets. Exploiting our novel dataset, we provide strong empirical support for each of these predictions

Analysis of RGB-D camera technologies for supporting different facial usage scenarios

AbstractRecently a wide variety of applications has been developed integrating 3D functionalities. Advantages given by the possibility of relying on depth information allows the developers to design new algorithms and to improve the existing ones. In particular, for what concerns face morphology, 3D has led to the possibility to obtain face depth maps highly close to reality and consequently an improvement of the starting point for further analysis such as Face Detection, Face Authentication, Face Identification and Face Expression Recognition. The development of the aforementioned applications would have been impossible without the progress of sensor technologies for obtaining 3D information. Several solutions have been adopted over time. In this paper, emphasis is put on passive stereoscopy, structured light, time-of-flight (ToF) and active stereoscopy, namely the most used technologies for the cameras design and fulfilment according to the literature. The aim of this article is to investigate facial applications and to examine 3D camera technologies to suggest some guidelines for addressing the correct choice of a 3D sensor according to the application that has to be developed

Automatic 3D foetal face model extraction from ultrasonography through histogram processing

Ultrasound is by far the most adopted method for safe screening and diagnosis in the prenatal phase, thanks to its non-harmful nature with respect to radiation-based imaging techniques. The main drawback of ultrasound imaging is its sensitivity to scattering noise, which makes automatic tissues segmentation a tricky task, limiting the possible range of applications. An algorithm for automatically extracting the facial surface is presented here. The method provides a comprehensive segmentation process and does not require any human intervention or training procedures, leading from the output of the scanner directly to the 3D mesh describing the face. The proposed segmentation technique is based on a two-step statistical process that relies on both volumetric histogram processing and 2D segmentation. The completely unattended nature of such a procedure makes it possible to rapidly populate a large database of 3D point clouds describing healthy and unhealthy faces, enhancing the diagnosis of rare syndromes through statistical analyses

Landmarking-based unsupervised clustering of human faces manifesting labio-schisis dysmorphisms

Ultrasound scans, Computed Axial Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging are only few examples of medical imaging tools boosting physicians in diagnosing a wide range of pathologies. Anyway, no standard methodology has been dened yet to extensively exploit them and current diagnoses procedures are still carried out mainly relying on physician's experience. Although the human contribution is always fundamental, it is self-evident that an automatic procedure for image analysis would allow a more rapid and eective identication of dysmorphisms. Moving toward this purpose, in this work we address the problem of feature extraction devoted to the detection of specic dis- eases involving facial dysmorphisms. In particular, a bounded Depth Minimum Steiner Trees (D-MST) clustering algorithm is presented for discriminating groups of individu- als relying on the manifestation/absence of the labio-schisis pathology, commonly called cleft lip. The analysis of three-dimensional facial surfaces via Dierential Geometry is adopted to extract landmarks. The extracted geometrical information is furthermore elaborated to feed the unsupervised clustering algorithm and produce the classication. The clustering returns the probability of being aected by the pathology, allowing physi- cians to focus their attention on risky individuals for further analysis

A motion capture protocol for the in-vivo assessment of running and long jumping biomechanics in transfemoral and transtibial running elite para-athletes

INNOVAZIONI NELL'ANALISI DEL MOVIMENTO: PROGRESSI NELLA PRATICA CLINICA, NELLA RIABILITAZIONE E NELLO SPORT Il congresso annuale della Società Italiana di Analisi del Movimento in Clinica (SIAMOC), giunto quest’anno alla sua ventiquattresima edizione, approda per la prima volta a Stresa, sulle sponde del Lago Maggiore. Il congresso SIAMOC, come ogni anno, è l’occasione per tutti i professionisti che operano nell’ambito dell’analisi del movimento di incontrarsi, presentare i risultati delle proprie ricerche e rimanere aggiornati sulle più recenti innovazioni riguardanti le procedure e le tecnologie per l’analisi del movimento nella pratica clinica. Nell’edizione congressuale di quest’anno, l’obiettivo è quello di proseguire a creare il confronto e il dialogo tra i ricercatori, così che possano arricchirsi vicendevolmente nello scambio della loro attività. Inoltre, grazie agli ospiti internazionali, si vuole continuare a conferire ulteriore respiro ed impatto internazionale ad una società in crescita, in cui spicca anche la buona adesione di giovani ricercatori. Ad affiancare le tematiche cardine della società, quali la ricerca di base e applicata in ambito clinico, nel congresso SIAMOC 2024 vi è spazio per le nuove strumentazioni, per l’utilizzo sempre maggiore dell’intelligenza artificiale come aiuto nell’analisi del movimento e, nell’anno olimpionico, per un risalto particolare all’ambito sportivo, dove si mirano a risultati sempre più elevati grazie alla comprensione di come migliorare il proprio stesso gesto sportivo. SIAMOC continua quindi il suo viaggio nei meandri dell’analisi del movimento, a servizio dei differenti ambiti e con le sempre sfidanti nuove prospettive future

Essays on the labor market and productivity.

status: publishe