4,977 research outputs found
Large-scale transformation of socio-economic institutions - comparative case studies on CEECs: background paper 2: comparative country study - Hungary
The general idea is to follow the Varieties-of-Capitalism literature on generating indicators on the economic systems actually implemented. However, this literature mostly concentrates on the enterprise (or micro) level in traditional OECD countries, categorizing countries between the extremes: liberal market economies and controlled market economies. It largely neglects the role of the government spending, the transition of former socialist countries and developing countries, and the political process behind the choice of an economic system.
We broaden the perspective by combining the Varieties-of-Capitalism with the Worlds-of-Welfare-States literature in order to provide a comprehensive view on government activities in transition. With the perspective of our contribution to WWWforEurope, we concentrate especially on social welfare, innovation systems, macro stability, and, of course, how these aspects work together (or not) and are explained by the political background.
We will a cluster analysis for OECD and European transition countries and comparative country studies on Slovakia and Hungary. These countries are of special relevance because they represent extreme cases (Slovakia: significant switch in transition path towards star performer, Hungary: muddling towards problem case). One part of the comparative work concentrates on the comparison of Slovakia with other new EU members that also face to challenge of state building after dissolution of one or the other sort (Czech Rep. and the Baltics). The other part of the comparative work concentrates on Hungary in comparison with the other EU-CEECs. A broad based comparison will most likely be possible on available data only. The possibility for deeper qualitative comparisons will have to be determined during the project. The comparative components will focus on the macroeconomic background (Slovakia) and the welfare state (Hungary) respectively.
Cluster analysis (initially forseen for MS25) and comparative country studies allows us to draw conclusions for the EU by providing a first comparison of the position of CEECs with respect to the âoldâ EU members, most interestingly the southern crisis countries that are often categorized into a form called mixed market economies with sometimes contradicting institutional set ups. Do CEECs converge towards prototype models or do they (still) constitute own models
Decomposing the dynamics of heterogeneous delayed networks with applications to connected vehicle systems
Delay-coupled networks are investigated with nonidentical delay times and the
effects of such heterogeneity on the emergent dynamics of complex systems are
characterized. A simple decomposition method is presented that decouples the
dynamics of the network into node-size modal equations in the vicinity of
equilibria. The resulting independent components contain distributed delays
that map the spatiotemporal complexity of the system to the time domain. We
demonstrate that this new approach can be used to reveal new physical phenomena
in heterogenous vehicular traffic when vehicles are linked via
vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication.Comment: The paper has been updated in response to referee comments. 5 pages,
2 figure
The Optical Light Curves of Cygnus X-2 (V1341 Cyg) and the Mass of its Neutron Star
We present U, B and V light curves (taken from the literature) of the low
mass X-ray binary Cygnus X-2. The ``lower envelope'' of the light curves folded
on the orbital period are ellipsoidal. We fit an ellipsoidal model to the lower
envelopes of the B and V light curves to derive inclination constraints. If we
assume the accretion disc is steady-state where its radial temperature profile
goes as T(r) \propto r^{-3/4}, we find an inclination of i = 62.5 +/- 4 deg.
However, the predicted ratio of the disc flux to the total flux in B (the
``disc fraction'') is larger than what is observed (about 0.55 compared to <
0.3). If we use a flatter radial temperature profile of the disc expected for
strongly irradiated discs (T(r) \propto r^{-3/7}), then we find an inclination
of i = 54.6 deg and a disc fraction in B of approximately 0.30. However, in
this case the value of chi^2 is much larger (48.4 with 36 degrees of freedom
compared to 40.9 for the steady-state case). Adopting i = 62.5 +/- 4 deg and
using a previous determination of the mass ratio (q = M_c/M_x = 0.34 +/- 0.04)
and the optical mass function (f(M) = 0.69 +/- 0.03 solar masses), we find that
the mass of the neutron star is M_x = 1.78 +/- 0.23 solar masses and the mass
of the secondary star is M_c = 0.60 +/- 0.13 solar masses. We derive a distance
of d = 7.2 +/- 1.1 kpc, which is significantly smaller than a recent distance
measurement of d = 11.6 +/- 0.3 kpc derived from an observation of a type I
radius-expansion X-ray burst, but consistent with earlier distance estimates.
(abridged)Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, to appear in MNRAS, LaTeX, uses mn.st
Social representation of competition and fraud
Good citizenship includes fair competitive strategies. Dishonest competitive behaviour â such as fraud â can reflect the absence of one main characteristic of good citizenship as mindfulness of laws and social rules. This article investigates the social representation of competition and fraud with two samples of students from business schools in France and in Hungary. Two complementary studies were carried out with P. VergĂšsâ associative method and C. Flament and M. L. Rouquetteâs tools. The purpose of the first study (NFrench=104, NHungarian=107) is to characterize the central core of the respondentsâ representation of both competition and fraud. On the basis of different cultural, historical and economic backgrounds, it was expected that the concepts of fraud and competition would overlap more extensively among Hungarian students than among French students. Results from the first study suggest only slight differences regarding the content of the representations; moreover, in both samples the representations of competition and fraud lacked significant overlap. Hungarian representations of competition and fraud are characterized by a lower level of coherence. Furthermore, academic cheating is mentioned more frequently by Hungarian students than by French students. Following the methodological guidelines of social representations, in order to confirm the results of the first study, a second investigation was carried out (NFrench=115, NHungarian=127) with an alternative associative method. These results confirmed the first study in terms of the content of the social representations and differences regarding coherence. Finally, in the case of Hungarian students a higher prevalence of reference to academic cheating, and links between fraud and competition were found. Hungariansâ competitive result orientation, linked social representations of competition and fraud via a higher prevalence of academic cheating which can refer to the weaker inclination of Hungarians in terms of rule keeping behaviours, which is one of the hallmarks of a good citizen
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