Dis-embedded Openness: Inequalities in European Economic Integration at the Sectoral Level

The process of European integration resulted in a marked increase in transnational economic flows, yet regional inequalities along many developmental indicators remain. We analyze the unevenness of European economies with respect to the embedding of export sectors in upstream domestic flows, and their dependency on dominant export partners. We use the WIOD data set of sectoral flows for the period of 1995-2011 for 24 European countries. We found that East European economies were significantly more likely to experience increasing unevenness and dependency with increasing openness, while core countries of Europe managed to decrease their unevenness while increasing their openness. Nevertheless, by analyzing the trajectories of changes for each country, we see that East European countries are also experiencing a turning point, either switching to a path similar to the core, or to a retrograde path with decreasing openness. We analyze our data using pooled time series models and case studies of country trajectories

Social Ecography : International trade, network analysis, and an Emmanuelian conceptualization of ecological unequal exchange

This thesis demonstrates how network analysis, ecological economics and the world-system perspective can be combined into an ecographic framework that can yield new insights into the underlying structure of the world-economy as well as its surrounding world-ecology. In particular, the thesis focuses on the structural theory of ecological unequal exchange, a theory suggesting a relationship between positionality within the world-system and unequal exchange of biophysical resources. Using formal tools from social network analysis, the theory is tested on empirical trade data for two commodity types – primary agricultural goods and fuel commodities – for the period 1995-1999. As the selected commodities can be seen as adequate representations of the third Ricardian production factor, i.e. natural resources, ecological unequal exchange as conceptualized in this thesis is more in line with the original Emmanuelian factor-cost theory than previous approaches. Here, similar to Emmanuel’s formulation, it is a theory about factor cost differentials. Whereas the theory mostly holds true in the case of fuel commodities, the analysis of primary agricultural commodities actually points to an inverse relationship between structural positionality and ecological unequal exchange. This could point to a fundamental difference between these two types of commodities, for instance as reflected in an observed ecological Leontief paradox, which underlines the need for more detailed, and less typological, treatments of ecological unequal exchange

Direct blockmodeling of valued and binary networks: a dichotomization-free approach

A long-standing open problem with direct blockmodeling is that it is explicitly intended for binary, not valued, networks. The underlying dilemma is how empirical valued blocks can be compared with ideal binary blocks, an intrinsic problem in the direct approach where partitions are solely determined through such comparisons. Addressing this dilemma, valued networks have either been dichotomized into binary versions, or novel types of ideal valued blocks have been introduced. Both these workarounds are problematic in terms of interpretability, unwanted data reduction, and the often arbitrary setting of model parameters. This paper proposes a direct blockmodeling approach that effectively bypasses the dilemma with blockmodeling of valued networks. By introducing an adaptive weighted correlation-based criteria function, the proposed approach is directly applicable to both binary and valued networks, without any form of dichotomization or transformation of the valued (or binary) data at any point in the analysis, while still using the conventional set of ideal binary blocks from structural, regular and generalized blockmodeling. The approach is demonstrated by structural, regular and generalized blockmodeling applications of six classical binary and valued networks. Finding feasible and intuitive optimal solutions in both the binary and valued examples, the approach is proposed not only as a practical, dichotomization-free heuristic for blockmodeling of valued networks but also, through its additional benefits, as an alternative to the conventional direct approach to blockmodeling

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Social Dialogue Articulation in Europe (EESDA) Project No. VS/2017/0434 Stakeholders’ views on and experiences with the articulation of social dialogue and its effectiveness

This report studies the articulation and effectiveness of social dialogue at the European and national levels. It provides an overview of the existing social dialogue structures describing the main actors involved. The overall approach of the study is actor-centred in the sense that the interactions and perception of actors are in the core of this research. The analysis also takes into account the multilevel governance structure in Europe by considering the interaction and vertical/horizontal articulation of social dialogue between the EU and national levels. The study also benefits from original data collection comprised of several layers including both the EU and national levels and through at least two methods. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with European social partners as well as with national social stakeholders in a selection of six Member States. Second, an EU-wide online survey collected responses from national social partners in 27 Member States. The remainder of the analysis is complemented with desk research

Pre-existing disease: the most important factor for health related quality of life long-term after critical illness: a prospective, longitudinal, multicentre trial

Introduction The aim of the present multicenter study was to assess long term (36 months) health related quality of life in patients after critical illness, compare ICU survivors health related quality of life to that of the general population and examine the impact of pre-existing disease and factors related to ICU care on health related quality of life. Methods Prospective, longitudinal, multicentre trial in three combined medical and surgical intensive care units of one university and two general hospitals in Sweden. By mailed questionnaires, health related quality of life was assessed at 6, 12, 24 and 36 months after the stay in ICU by EQ-5D and SF-36, and information of pre-existing disease was collected at the 6 months measure. ICU related factors were obtained from the local ICU database. Comorbidity and health related quality of life (EQ-5D; SF-36) was examined in the reference group. Among the 5306 patients admitted, 1663 were considered eligible (>24 hrs in the intensive care unit, and age ≥ 18 yrs, and alive 6 months after discharge). At the 6 month measure 980 (59%) patients answered the questionnaire. Of these 739 (75%) also answered at 12 month, 595 (61%) at 24 month, and 478 (47%) answered at the 36 month measure. As reference group, a random sample (n = 6093) of people from the uptake area of the hospitals were used in which concurrent disease was assessed and adjusted for. Results Only small improvements were recorded in health related quality of life up to 36 months after ICU admission. The majority of the reduction in health related quality of life after care in the ICU was related to the health related quality of life effects of pre-existing diseases. No significant effect on the long-term health related quality of life by any of the ICU-related factors was discernible. Conclusions A large proportion of the reduction in the health related quality of life after being in the ICU is attributable to pre-existing disease. The importance of the effect of pre-existing disease is further supported by the small, long term increment in the health related quality of life after treatment in the ICU. The reliability of the conclusions is supported by the size of the study populations and the long follow-up period.

L-Edge Spectroscopy of Dilute, Radiation-Sensitive Systems Using a Transition-Edge-Sensor Array

We present X-ray absorption spectroscopy and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) measurements on the iron L-edge of 0.5 mM aqueous ferricyanide. These measurements demonstrate the ability of high-throughput transition-edge-sensor (TES) spectrometers to access the rich soft X-ray (100-2000eV) spectroscopy regime for dilute and radiation-sensitive samples. Our low-concentration data are in agreement with high-concentration measurements recorded by conventional grating-based spectrometers. These results show that soft X-ray RIXS spectroscopy acquired by high-throughput TES spectrometers can be used to study the local electronic structure of dilute metal-centered complexes relevant to biology, chemistry and catalysis. In particular, TES spectrometers have a unique ability to characterize frozen solutions of radiation- and temperature-sensitive samples.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

A Critical Comment on the Taylor Approach for Measuring World City Interlock Linkages

In the study of economic-geographic structures, the shifting focus from the national state to the city and its region has highlighted the lack of reliable interurban data sets. The abundance of usable data sets on international structures and ?ows has no counterpart when studying interurban relations, which makes it hard to draw any extensive conclusions regarding the structure of world city networks. Instead of relying on available data sets, Peter Taylor has developed a method for generating data sets that, it is argued, can be used in research on the structure of the world city network. In this approach, actors are defined as cities with internal attribute service values, values reflecting the presence of different transnational service- producing corporations in each city. The structural values between each pair of cities are then established by a mathematical formula based on the service value of each firm in each pair of cities. This procedure can be criticized on two accounts. First, although internal attributes on exceptional occasions can be used as a proxy and as a rough estimate for structural values, such studies must have a firm theoretical underpinning in order to be valid from a network-analytical perspective. If not, such generated structural values become nothing more than a function of internal attributes, thus losing the whole basic idea of social network analysis. Second, the Taylor function used for generating structural values can be questioned. Why should a large presence of TNC offices in a pair of cities imply a larger city interlock link than would be the case between a high-ranked city and a low-ranked city, as the city with the larger service value probably serves cities with a lower service value with economic command, control, and support functions

International trade in fuel commodities : A network approach

Much as the contemporary understanding of world trade is often based on simple models where two countries engage in trade, so is world trade in fuel commodities typically conceived as consisting of either net-importing or net-exporting countries. However, by paying attention to the structure of world trade, represented by actually occurring trade flows between the actors in such networks, it becomes evident that the structures of such networks are far more complex than intuitively understood. In this chapter, role-analytical tools from social network analysis are applied to bilateral fuel commodity trade flows between 85 countries. Using a novel heuristic for identifying ties between role-equivalent sets of actors, this chapter maps the structure of fuel commodity trade by looking at both the value of such trade flows as well as the non-monetary energy dimension of such flows. Comparing these structural maps with a typological Galtung-style core-periphery structure shows significant similarities, although at a resolution that reveals the existence of 6-8 different roles, expanding the simple, intuitive distinction between net-importers and net-exporters

Identifying regular blocks in valued networks: A heuristic applied to the St. Marks carbon flow data, and international trade in cereal products

While the concept of regular equivalence is equally applicable to dichotomous as well as valued networks, the identification of regular blocks in regular blockmodels is somewhat problematic when dealing with valued networks. Applying the standard procedure for identifying ties in such blockmodels, a procedure perhaps most suited for dichotomous networks, does tend to generate block images and reduced graphs that differ from intuitive notions of such structures. This paper outlines a formal heuristic procedure for identifying regular ties in valued networks where the “significance” of ties is related to each actor's role sets. Combined with measures for block criteria fulfillment, the procedure yields reduced graphs, which seem more sensitive to patterns, rather than strengths, of ties. Two data sets are used as examples in this paper: the St. Marks carbon flow web dataset, and a new dataset containing international trade flows of cereals and cereal products based on Comtrade data