Charting choices 2008-2011: economic effects of eight election platforms

In the run-up to the Dutch general election on 22 November 2006, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) published an analysis of the economic effects of eight election platforms. The CPB conducted this analysis at the request of the political parties in question. This was the sixth occasion since 1986 that such an evaluation of election platforms has been made, so it is by now somewhat of a tradition. This working document contains an extensive summary of the study's findings. Section 2 provides some background information, considering the contents, merits and limitations of the analysis. Section 3 outlines the scenario for the Dutch economy which serves as the basis for the analysis. Section 4 considers the effects of the election platforms: first the implications for the public finances, macroeconomic developments and purchasing power; then the extent to which the parties' policy packages will succeed in improving the sustainability of the public finances; and finally, proposals in the areas of education, science and innovation. The study aims to chart not only the parties' expenditures on these policy areas, but also the positive effects of the policy proposals. The Dutch version of this publication has been published as CPB Special Publication 65.

Competitive balance between national leagues in European football after the Bosman Case

Introduction – 1. The Bosman Case: No Harmful Side Effects? – 2. Structural Differences and Developments – 3. Empirical Evidence – 4. Future Options – ConclusionsBosman Case, competitive balance, professional team sports, European football

The consequences of an open labour market in a closed product market in the economic environment of European professional football

Ever since the Bosman case opened the labour market for players in European professional football, competitive balance has reduced in favour of the Big 5 leagues (England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France). In this article we show that changing structures towards an open labour market in a closed product market resulted in a migration of player talents towards the major leagues and teams and in a competitive disadvantage for the smaller market leagues and their teams. Next to a theoretical argumentation, we provide empirical evidence and assess future options for the structure of European professional football.Bosman case, competitive balance, international labour mobility, professional team sports, stepping stone league

Monitoring Profile Shifts and Differences among Work Integration Social Enterprises in Flanders

The sector of Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs) has grown considerably all across Europe during the last few decades. While WISEs focusing at sheltered employment for people with disabilities exist for a long time already, many governments embraced WISEs as an active labour market policy tool to address an expanding scope of disadvantaged workers. Measurement of the effectiveness of these policies remains scarce, however. Even worse, many governments do not even have a clear sight on the profile of WISEs they are supporting. In this paper, we utilize data from a newly designed monitoring instrument to capture the profile of WISEs in Flanders (Belgium). We discuss some methodological issues in using administrative data to monitor this sector, and present a profile at the enterprise level and at the worker level. More specifically, we analyse both profile differences between and profile shifts within WISE work forms that have been defined by the government. This allows us to compare the profile of early stage WISEs with that of their mature counterparts. Moreover, it invites us to evaluate whether these profile shifts and differences are in accordance with policy choices made.Work Integration Social Enterprises; Active Labour Market Policy; Monitoring; Early Stage Enterprises; Worker profile

Spontaneous eyeblinks during breaking continuous flash suppression are associated with increased detection times

An eyeblink has a clear effect on low-level information processing because it temporarily occludes all visual information. Recent evidence suggests that eyeblinks can also modulate higher level processes (e.g. attentional resources), and vice versa. Despite these putative effects on different levels of information processing, eyeblinks are typically neglected in vision and in consciousness research. The main aim of this study was to investigate the timing and the effect of eyeblinks in an increasingly popular paradigm in consciousness research, namely breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS). Results show that participants generally refrain from blinking during a trial, that is, when they need to detect a suppressed stimulus. However, when they do blink during a trial, we observed a sharp increase in suppression time. This suggests that one needs to control for blinking when comparing detection times between conditions that could elicit phasic changes in blinking.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Finite element/boundary element coupling for airbag deployment

Fluid–structure interaction of inflatables comprizes a family of applications, of which airbags are one. Challenges in this domain are complex geometries requiring relatively high resolution; large displacements possibly entailing severe mesh distortion; and strong coupling. A promising approach seems to be coupling a classical finite element formulation for the airbag fabric to a boundary element formulation for the enclosed fluid. Together with an appropriate time-integration scheme this method answers aforementioned challenges, as demonstrated by numerical simulation

Model comparison for inflatables using boundary element techniques

This paper focuses on numerical techniques for inflatable structures where, typically, the structure is a light membrane enclosing an incompressible fluid. Large displacements and subdomains with high aspect ratio are often characteristic of this class of problems, to which the finite-element / boundary-element (FE/BE) paradigm is an auspicious approach for numerical approximation. The FE/BE approach constitutes discretizing the structure with the finite-element method and employing a boundary-integral representation for the fluid problem for discretization with the boundary-element method. A marked advantage of this representation with respect to the conventional partial-differential-equation-based view of finite-element methods for fluids is the bypassing of volumetric meshing, rendering the FE/BE approach an enabling method for simulation of inflatables. The present work compares different structure and fluid models and judges their applicability based on numerical results