Integration in the German-Polish border region ? Status Quo and Current Developments

National borders within the European Union have significantly lost importance during the last decades. That is because the costs for the movement of goods, services, production factors and information across borders continuously decreased in the course of advancing integration. Lower distance costs and almost meaningless national borders open up best conditions for intensifying trade, factor mobility and the international and interregional division of labour. Thus, European integration is likely to affect the economic geography within the participating countries. Most probably, among other factors, also a region's relative geographical position in the whole integration area impacts the regional effects of European integration. Marked by a particular geographical position are those regions which are located along the national borders among integrating countries and thus are from the geographical perspective the focal point of integration. A striking feature of those inner border regions of the EU is that their relative geographical position is immensely altered in the course of integration: It changes from a peripheral position on the national scale to a more or less central one within the whole integration area. The paper investigates economic structure and development of the EU inner border regions. The empirical analysis covers the time period from 1980 to 1998 and deals with employment, GDP and population density and development The analysed question is whether there are - measured by these indicators - systematic differences in economic development among inner border regions and the rest of their respective country. The analysis of the EU's inner border regions is first of all interesting regarding historical and prospective developments among current European Union member states. Furthermore, plenty of inner border regions will emerge in the course of EU Eastern enlargement, for example along the border between Germany and Poland.

Surveying the welfare state: challenges, policy development and causes of resilience

This paper takes a closer look at the supposed mechanisms behind German welfare state resilience, which are given in mainstream institutionalist theories. I focus on reform hurdles associated with the make-up of the German welfare state, both at the macro-level (principles) as well as at the meso-level (programmes), exposing systematically mechanisms of path-dependence and other sources of policy stickiness. In addition, I zoom in on the political- institutional sources of resilience. This survey of institutional reform obstacles is complemented by a review of reform pressures and policy developments in the main social policy areas, old age pensions, health care, and unemployment policy between 1975 and 2004. The main conclusion is that despite numerous sources of pressure for far-reaching welfare state reform, the various mechanisms of resilience have made for a pattern of incremental reform, although a number of structural reforms have occurred fairly recently. -- Dieses Arbeitspapier befasst sich mit den Mechanismen, die gemäß institutionellen Wohlfahrtstaatstheorien die Reformresistenz des deutschen Sozialstaats erklären sollen. Es richtet sich dabei auf Reformhindernisse, die auf der institutionellen Struktur des Wohlfahrtsstaats beruhen, sowohl auf Makroniveau (sozialstaatliche Prinzipien) als auch auf Mesoniveau (Teilbereiche). Dabei legt es systematisch dar, wo sich tatsächlich Pfadabhängigkeiten und andere Ursachen von Veränderungsresistenz verbergen. Darüber hinaus wird auf die politisch-institutionellen Quellen der Reformresistenz eingegangen. Die Analyse wird ergänzt durch eine Besprechung der Ursachen des wachsenden Reformdrucks und einer Übersicht der Policy-Entwicklung der letzten 30 Jahre in den Teilbereichen Rente, Arbeitslosenversicherung und Gesundheitspolitik. Das Papier kommt zu dem Schluss, dass trotz des erheblichen Reformdrucks die zahlreichen Resistenzmechanismen ein Muster inkrementeller Veränderungen zur Folge hatten und dieses erst in den letzten Jahren durch eine Reihe von Strukturreformen unterbrochen wurde.

Reciprocal peer dislike and psychosocial adjustment in childhood

Reciprocal peer dislike was examined as a predictor of school adjustment and social relationship quality. One hundred and fifty one (69 male and 74 female, Mage = 9.53, SDage = 1.87 years) children completed measures of school liking, loneliness, and friendship quality twice over three months. From ratings of the amount of time participants liked to spend with individual classmates, social network analyses were used to determine reciprocal peer dislike. Curvilinear regression analyses revealed that reciprocal peer dislike at Time 1 predicted changes in the children’s loneliness and friendship quality assessed as help, security, and closeness over three months. The findings support the conclusion that reciprocal peer dislike predicts aspects of school adjustment and social relationship qualities

Centrality in children's best friend networks: the role of social behaviour

Centrality is an indicator of an individual's relative importance within a social group. Predictors of centrality in best friendship networks were examined in 146 children (70 boys, 76 girls, Mage= 9.95). Children completed measures of social confidence, social desirability, friendship quality, school liking, and loneliness, and nominated their best friends from within their class at two time points, 3 months apart. Multigroup path analysis revealed gender differences in the antecedents of centrality. Social confidence, social desirability, and friendship quality predicted changes in the indicators of centrality in best friend networks over time. In boys’ social behaviour positively predicted changes in centrality whereas in girls’ social behaviour negatively predicted changes in centrality. Together, these findings suggest that some aspects of social behaviour are influential for centrality in best friend groups

Limited Visibility and Uncertainty Aware Motion Planning for Automated Driving

Adverse weather conditions and occlusions in urban environments result in impaired perception. The uncertainties are handled in different modules of an automated vehicle, ranging from sensor level over situation prediction until motion planning. This paper focuses on motion planning given an uncertain environment model with occlusions. We present a method to remain collision free for the worst-case evolution of the given scene. We define criteria that measure the available margins to a collision while considering visibility and interactions, and consequently integrate conditions that apply these criteria into an optimization-based motion planner. We show the generality of our method by validating it in several distinct urban scenarios

The future of the Baltic Sea region: Potentials and challenges

The study analyses the development possibilities of the Baltic Sea region from various perspectives. It deals with the current situation, the potential and the future challenges. Thereby this study puts its focus on trade in the Baltic Sea area, demographic trends, capacity for innovation and the economic impact of the cities in this area. --