Сборочное программирование. Теория и практика

Викладено методи, засоби й інструменти збірного програмування. Розглянуто фундаментальні основи збірки різномовних об’єктів у мовах четвертого покоління в ряді систем у середовищі ОС ЄС. Показано нові підходи до формального опису і стандартизації типів даних у сучасних мовах, а також практичні аспекти систематизації готових об’єктів для їхнього повторного використання в зборці великих систем у сучасних середовищах. Наведено нові ідеї і підходи до забезпечення взаємодії різномовних об’єктів у середовищі сімейств програмних систем.The methods, means, and tools of compositional programming are outlined. The fundamentals of the composition of multilanguage objects in fourth-generation languages in systems of OS ES environment are considered. New approaches to formal declaration and standardization of data types in modern languages and practical aspects of the systematization of ready objects for their reuse to compose large systems in modern environments are shown. New ideas and approaches to the interaction of multilanguage objects in an environment of a family of application systems are described

‘Force of Nature’ : climate shocks, food crises and conflict in Colonial Africa and Asia, 1880-1960

“Global climate change poses one of the most urgent challenges of our age. The increasing frequency and intensity of weather shocks, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes, are all anticipated to adversely affect conditions of agricultural production, and jeopardize efforts to achieve global food security. In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing body of literature across multiple disciplines aiming to quantify and assess the adverse consequences of climate on relatively poor rural societies. Building entirely on original primary sources, this dissertation provides evidence that weather shocks raised property crime, triggered civil conflict and shaped patterns of human settlement in British colonial Africa and Asia during the first half of the twentieth century (~1880-1960). By merging the theoretical and empirical insights of several strands of literature (e.g. economics, history, geography), this dissertation has both academic and social merit. Its academic merit lies in its promise to disentangle the net effect of climate on societies from the many other contextual factors that may affect them. And its social merit lies in its capacity to reveal key factors that can mitigate the adverse consequences of weather shocks, enabling tailor-made policy interventions. In sum, the present dissertation contributes to a better understanding of long-term agrarian development in tropical Africa and Asia, offering fresh input to academic debates on how to mitigate the effects of weather extremes”</p

Weather shocks and agricultural commercialization in colonial tropical Africa: did cash crops alleviate social distress?

A rapidly growing body of research examines the ways in which climatic variability influence economic and societal outcomes. This study investigates how weather shocks triggered social distress in British colonial Africa. Further, it intervenes in a long-standing and unsettled debate concerning the effects of agricultural commercialization on the abilities of rural communities to cope with exogenous shocks. We collect qualitative evidence from annual administrative records to explore the mechanisms linking weather extremes to harvest failures and social distress. We also conduct econometric testing on a novel panel dataset of 143 administrative districts across west, south-central and east Africa in the Interwar Era (1920-1939). Our findings are twofold. First, we find robust evidence that rainfall anomalies (both drought and excessive precipitation) are associated with spikes in imprisonment (our proxy for social distress). We argue that the key causal pathway is the loss of agricultural income, which results in higher imprisonment for theft, unrest, debt and tax default. Second, we find that the impact of weather shocks on distress is partially mitigated by the cultivation of export crops. Our findings suggest that, even in the British colonial context, smallholder export crop cultivation led to higher private incomes as well as greater public investment. Our findings speak to a topic of considerable urgency today as the process of global climate change accelerates, generating more severe and unpredictable climatic extremes. An increased understanding and identification of adaptive and mitigating factors, would assist in targeting policy interventions and designing adaptive institutions to support vulnerable rural societies

Climate Shocks and Conflict: Evidence from colonial Nigeria

This paper offers a historical micro-level analysis of the impact of climatic shocks on the incidence of conflict in colonial Nigeria (1912–1945). Primary historical sources on court cases, prisoners and homicides are used to construct an index of socio-political conflict using principal component analysis and measure climatic shocks through deviations from long-term rainfall patterns in a nonlinear (U-shaped) relation, capturing both drought and excessive rainfall. We find a robust and significant relationship between rainfall deviations and conflict intensity, which tends to be stronger in agroecological zones that are least resilient to climatic variability (such as Guinean savannah) and where (pre-) colonial political structures were less centralized. We find tentative evidence that the relationship is weaker in areas that specialize in the production of export crops (such as cocoa and palm oil) compared to subsistence farming areas, suggesting that agricultural diversification acts as an insurance mechanism against the whims of nature. Additional historical information on food shortages, crop-price spikes and outbreaks of violence is used to explore the climate–conflict connection in greater detail

Climate shocks and conflict : Evidence from colonial Nigeria

This paper offers a historical micro-level analysis of the impact of climate shocks on the incidence of civil conflict in colonial Nigeria (1912-1945). Primary historical sources on court cases, prisoners and homicides are used to capture conflict. To measure climate shocks we use the deviation from long-term rainfall patterns, capturing both drought and excessive rainfall. We find a robust and significant curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship between rainfall deviations and conflict intensity, which tends to be stronger in agro-ecological zones that are least resilient to climatic variability (such as Guinean Savannah) and where (pre-) colonial political structures were less centralized. We find evidence that the relationship is weaker in areas that specialize in the production of export crops (such as cocoa and palm oil) compared to subsistence farming areas, suggesting that agricultural diversification acts as an insurance mechanism against the whims of nature. Additional historical information on food shortages, crop-price spikes and outbreaks of violence is used to explore the climate-conflict connection in greater detail.</p

Resource endowments and agricultural commercialization in colonial Africa: Did labour seasonality and food security drive Uganda's cotton revolution?

Why did some African smallholders adopt cash crops on a considerable scale, while most others were hesitant to do so? This study sets out to explore the importance of factor endowments in shaping the degrees to which cash crops were adopted in colonial tropical Africa. We conduct an in-depth case study of the 'cotton revolution' in colonial Uganda to put the factor endowments perspective to the test. Our empirical findings, based on an annual panel data analysis at the district-level from 1925 till 1960, underscore the importance of Uganda's equatorial bimodal rainfall distribution as an enabling factor for Uganda's 'cotton revolution'. We also provide evidence at a unique spatial micro-level, by capitalizing on detailed household surveys from the same period. We demonstrate that previous explanations associating variegated responses of African farmers to cash crops either to the role of colonial coercion, or to a distinction between 'forest/banana' and 'savannah/grain' zones cannot explain the widespread adoption of cotton in Uganda. We argue, instead, that the key to the cotton revolution were Uganda's two rainy seasons, which enabled farmers to grow cotton while simultaneously pursuing food security. Our study highlights the importance of food security and labour seasonality as important determinants of agricultural commercialization in colonial tropical Africa

The dictator effect: how long years in office affect economic development

This paper contributes to the growing literature on the links between political regimes and economic development by studying the effects of years in office on economic development. The hypothesis is that dictators who stay in office for a long time period will find it increasingly difficult to carry out sound economic policies. We argue that such economic policies are the result of information asymmetries inherent to dictatorships (known as the ‘dictator dilemma’) and of changes in the personality of dictators (known as the ‘winner effect’). We call the combination of these two terms the ‘dictator effect’. We present evidence to suggest that long years in office impacts on economic growth (which is reduced), inflation (which increases) and the quality of institutions (which deteriorates). The negative effect of long years of tenure (i.e. the ‘dictator effect’) is particularly strong in young states and in Africa and the Near East

The dictator effect: how long years in office affect economic development

This paper contributes to the growing literature on the links between political regimes and economic development by studying the effects of years in office on economic development. The hypothesis is that dictators who stay in office for a long time period will find it increasingly difficult to carry out sound economic policies. We argue that such economic policies are the result of information asymmetries inherent to dictatorships (known as the ‘dictator dilemma’) and of changes in the personality of dictators (known as the ‘winner effect’). We call the combination of these two terms the ‘dictator effect’. We present evidence to suggest that long years in office impacts on economic growth (which is reduced), inflation (which increases) and the quality of institutions (which deteriorates). The negative effect of long years of tenure (i.e. the ‘dictator effect’) is particularly strong in young states and in Africa and the Near East

Climate Shocks and Conflict: Evidence from colonial Nigeria

This paper offers a historical micro-level analysis of the impact of climatic shocks on the incidence of conflict in colonial Nigeria (1912–1945). Primary historical sources on court cases, prisoners and homicides are used to construct an index of socio-political conflict using principal component analysis and measure climatic shocks through deviations from long-term rainfall patterns in a nonlinear (U-shaped) relation, capturing both drought and excessive rainfall. We find a robust and significant relationship between rainfall deviations and conflict intensity, which tends to be stronger in agroecological zones that are least resilient to climatic variability (such as Guinean savannah) and where (pre-) colonial political structures were less centralized. We find tentative evidence that the relationship is weaker in areas that specialize in the production of export crops (such as cocoa and palm oil) compared to subsistence farming areas, suggesting that agricultural diversification acts as an insurance mechanism against the whims of nature. Additional historical information on food shortages, crop-price spikes and outbreaks of violence is used to explore the climate–conflict connection in greater detail