107 research outputs found

    How Do Policies Affect the Exit Rate out of Unemployment? Disentangling Job Creation from Labour Market Frictions

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    This paper assesses the effects of labour market policies on the unemployment outflow rate while disentangling two channels, namely labour market tightness and employer–employee matching efficiency. Using a sample of 11 OECD countries over the period 1985–2007, we treat the endogeneity of market tightness with business cycle shocks and the tax wedge as instruments. We find that the replacement rate of unemployment benefits, Active Labour Market Policies as well as the tax wedge in countries with poorly representative unions, have a significant, robust, and large impact on market tightness. Employment protection has a negative but small impact on matching efficiency. Overall, policy effects appear to be mostly channeled through market tightness and job creation

    Unemployment at risk: the policy determinants of labour market exposure to economic shocks

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    This paper examines the vulnerability of labour markets to adverse economic shocks. We define labour market exposure as the cumulated amount of excess unemployment generated by a shock before unemployment returns to steady-state. We use a panel of 19 countries covering the period 1985–2010 to assess the influence of labour market policies on labour market exposure, which is also calculated country by country. We find that less generous unemployment insurance, more active labour market policies or a lower minimum wage imply a trade-off between average unemployment and labour market exposure, as they help low-skilled workers to get out of unemployment at the cost of increased vulnerability to adverse shocks. On the other hand, reducing the tax wedge is conducive to both lower steady-state unemployment and labour market exposure

    Do environmental and economic performance go together? A review of micro-level empirical evidence from the past decade or so

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    This article reviews the empirical literature combining economic and environmental performance data at the micro-level, i.e. firm or facility level. The literature has generally found a positive and statistically significant correlation between economic performance, as measured by profitability indicators or stock market returns, and environmental performance, as measured by emissions of pollutants or adoption of international environmental standards. The main reason for this finding seems to be that firms that reduce their material and energy costs experience both better economic performance and lower emissions. Only a small and recent literature analyses the joint causal impact of environmental regulations on environmental and economic performance. Interestingly, this literature shows that environmental regulations tend to improve environmental performance while not weakening economic performance. However, the evidence so far is limited to a handful of environmental regulations that are not extremely stringent, so the result cannot be easily generalized. More research is needed to assess the joint effects of environmental regulations on environmental and economic performance, to explore the heterogeneity of these effects across sectors, countries and types of policies, and to understand which policy designs allow improving environmental quality while not coming at a cost in terms of economic performance of regulated businesses

    Enquête épidémiologique sur la maladie des muqueuses : absence de la maladie à Madagascar

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    Une enquête épidémiologique sur la maladie des muqueuses des bovins, par inoculation de sang suspect ou recherche d'anticorps, confirme l'absence de cette maladie à Madagasca

    Life, time, and the organism:Temporal registers in the construction of life forms

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    In this paper, we articulate how time and temporalities are involved in the making of living things. For these purposes, we draw on an instructive episode concerning Norfolk Horn sheep. We attend to historical debates over the nature of the breed, whether it is extinct or not, and whether presently living exemplars are faithful copies of those that came before. We argue that there are features to these debates that are important to understanding contemporary configurations of life, time and the organism, especially as these are articulated within the field of synthetic biology. In particular, we highlight how organisms are configured within different material and semiotic assemblages that are always structured temporally. While we identify three distinct structures, namely the historical, phyletic and molecular registers, we do not regard the list as exhaustive. We also highlight how these structures are related to the care and value invested in the organisms at issue. Finally, because we are interested ultimately in ways of producing time, our subject matter requires us to think about historiographical practice reflexively. This draws us into dialogue with other scholars interested in time, not just historians, but also philosophers and sociologists, and into conversations with them about time as always multiple and never an inert background

    Differential Geometry, the Informational Surface and Oceanic Art: The Role of Pattern in Knowledge Economies

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    Graphic pattern (e.g. geometric design) and number-based code (e.g. digital sequencing) can store and transmit complex information more efficiently than referential modes of representation. The analysis of the two genres and their relation to one another has not advanced significantly beyond a general classification based on motion-centred geometries of symmetry. This article examines an intriguing example of patchwork coverlets from the maritime societies of Oceania, where information referencing a complex genealogical system is lodged in geometric designs. By drawing attention to the interplay of graphic pattern and number-based code and its role in the knowledge economies of maritime societies, the article offers new insight into possible ways of designing a digital informational surface that captures the behaviour of an operational system, allowing both for differentiation and integration
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