European Union’s key figures

With the objective to draw some conclusions about macroeconomic stability and economic structure, this article examines for the 28 Member States of the European Union, the following aspects: GDP and AIC per capita, General Government Gross Debt, Labour Productivity (monetary units and percentages), Average Annual Wages, Annual Hours Worked, Jobless and Average Hourly labour Costs. To develop this analysis, Member States have been divided into three blocks by the number of inhabitants: less than 6 million, between 6 and 17 million and more than 17 million

The costs and consequences of not reaching an Education Pact in Spain

En el contexto de un debate por un Pacto de Estado por la Educación en España, el objetivo de este artículo es describir y cuantificar los costes y consecuencias de no alcanzar dicho acuerdo en torno a las políticas y decisiones fundamentales asociadas al éxito escolar de cada alumno. Para ello, se lleva a cabo un breve análisis del sistema educativo español y se discute el impacto que las rigideces e inercias del mismo están teniendo sobre el alumnado, con especial incidencia a aquellos provenientes de entornos socioeconómicos más vulnerables. A partir de diversos estudios empíricos y nuevas aportaciones, se cuantifica el impacto, en términos de aprendizaje, cohesión social, empleo y crecimiento, de no establecer objetivos de país que pudieran surgir de un amplio acuerdo en materia de Educación. Los resultados son relevantes y justifican una urgente llamada a la acción a los partidos políticos y los agentes educativosIn the context of the ongoing debate to reach a National Pact on Education in Spain, this article identifies and attempts to quantify the costs and consequences of failing to reach such Pact, i.e. of not building political consensus around the key policies and fundamental decisions associated to quality learning for all students. We carry out a brief analysis of the Spanish education system and discuss the negative impact that its rigidity and inertia have had on students, particularly on those from low socioeconomic background. With some existing empirical studies and adding new estimations, we quantify the impact of failing to agree on long-term goals in terms of learning, social cohesion, employment and economic growth. The conclusions are relevant and compelling, and warrant an urgent call for action to political parties and education stakeholder

Crony capitalism and neoliberal paradigm (Part II)

This is the second and final part of Crony Capitalism and Neoliberal Paradigm, the first part was posted earlier on this very blog

Greece: any better times or more pitfalls ahead?

In 2015, Greece, an EU state member since 1981 with a population of 10,846,979 people, recorded the highest level of GGD (General Government Gross Debt to GDP ratio) in the EU-28, at 176.9%. Concerning the volume index of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita in PPS (Purchasing Parity Standards) we find Greece’s GDP per capita dropped from 4% lower than the EU-28 average in 2004 to 29% lower in 2015. However, GDP is a measure of a country’s economic activity, and therefore it should not be considered a measure of a country’s well-being. If we take the AIC (Actual Individual Consumption) per capita in PPS (Purchasing Power Standard) as a better indicator to describe the material welfare of households, Greece showed an AIC index per capitalower by some 19% than the EU-28 average in 2015. Labour productivity per hour worked expressed in US $(which means GDP per hour worked expressed in US$) was estimated among the lowest in the EU-28, at $32 in 2015. Curiously, Greece has the highest average hours worked per year in the EU-28, at 2,042 hours, its average hourly labour cost is among the lowest in the EU-28, at €14.5, its average annual wages at US$25,211 and unemployment rate of 24.90%. 43% of pensioners live on €660/month on average, and many Greek pensioners are also supporting unemployed children and grandchildren

Rerouting Globalisation: from economic to human development

When the different stages of a production process are carried out in different countries, a form of global integration is being developed. The global integration of the production process is usually understood as economic globalisation. This internationalisation process is a result of strategies, such as specialisation, cost-cutting, innovation in manufacturing processes and marketing, outsourcing, sub-contracting, in which only the economic aspects are considered, putting aside human development

Crony capitalism and Neoliberal paradigm (Part I)

It is easy to see how almost all the European Union’s Member States, as well as other western advanced economies, are facing greater social inequalities, the spread of precarious/poorly-paid job conditions, greater tax burdens on households/SMEs, stagnation or slow economic growth together with high unemployment rates and cuts in core government functions. All these factors are leading to an impoverishment of the middle classes. From this picture arises, at least, one question: Is this situation a harsh consequence of a global economic crisis, or, on the contrary, the crisis is a response to a particular type of socio-economic paradigm—commonly known as “the system”? This article, divided in two parts, aims to answer that question: part 1, concentrates on negative socio-economic effects of crony capitalism, and part 2, deals with the relationship between crony capitalism and the global neoliberalism paradigm now reigning in most countries

Socio-economic reflections on the Euro Zone

Six months is a long time in politics and this includes humanitarian politics in Europe. ‘Refugees welcome here’ (#Refugeeswelcomehere) was a catchphrase reflecting widespread sentiments and political will in Europe last summer and early autumn – a warm welcome to the first waves of arrivals from war-torn zones

Applying feature reduction analysis to a PPRLM-multiple Gaussian language identification system

This paper presents the application of a feature selection technique such as LDA to a language identification (LID) system. The baseline system consists of a PPRLM module followed by a multiple-Gaussian classifier. This classifier makes use of acoustic scores and duration features of each input utterance. We applied a dimension reduction of the feature space in order to achieve a faster and easier-trainable system. We imputed missing values of our vectors before projecting them on the new space. Our experiments show a very low performance reduction due to the dimension reduction approach. Using a single dimension projection the error rates we have obtained are about 8.73% taking into account the 22 most significant features

Manuel GONZÁLEZ DE ÁVILA, "Semiótica: la experiencia del sentido a través del Arte y la Literatura". Madrid, Abada, 2021, 296 pp.

Review of the work Semiotics: the experience of meaning through art and Literature published by Professor Manuel González de Ávila of University of Salamanca.Reseña sobre la obra Semiótica: La experiencia del sentido a través del Arte y la Literatura, publicado por el profesor Manuel González de Ávila de la Universidad de Salamanca

Iconografía ricotera mínima : un atlas Mnemosyne para Oktubre

Nos proponemos destacar la constelación visual con la que el artista argentino Ricardo Cohen diseñó e ilustró Oktubre (1986), desde un conjunto de inquietudes semióticas y sociológicas a propósito de sus significaciones estéticas y políticas. El texto documenta el proceso deelaboración de un atlas mnemosyne en que las escenografías imaginarias de Oktubre han sido interrogadas en clave interartística. El itinerario propuesto tensa las relaciones entre las imágenes de Oktubre y algunas referencias clavesde la cultura visual y cinematográfica del siglo pasado. La figura del zombi es utilizada como clave hermeneútica para interrogar a Oktubre en relación a la historia argentina reciente. La hipótesis general del trabajo considera a las figuras convocadas por Rocambole como referencias imaginarias de la figura histórica del "detenido-desaparecido".Fil: Lucas, Juan Manuel. Universidad de Salamanca (España