Macerata Lectures on European Economic Policy. Poverty and the EU: the New Decade

The EU is currently drawing up its agenda EU2020 for the next decade. In doing so, account must be taken of the successes and limitations of the Lisbon Agenda 2000-2009, notably the failure to achieve a decisive impact on the eradication of poverty and social exclusion. From the experience of the Lisbon Agenda, we learn that social policy and economic policy have to be designed together, in such a way that their actions are complementary rather than in conflict. If real progress is to be made in reducing poverty in Europe in the next decade, then it is essential that in the EU2020 Agenda social inclusion should receive the same prominence as the other EU objectives. It is therefore welcome that the Commission has proposed the setting of a poverty target, but this raises many issues. The paper focuses on two: the choice of target variable (risk of poverty or material deprivation) and the extent of ambition. Moreover, alongside the introduction of a social inclusion target(s) there has to be an agreed procedure for monitoring progress. Finally, in order to make real progress, the EU needs to take concrete policy initiatives. The proposal made here is that the EU begins with a Guaranteed Income for Children. Each Member State would be required to guarantee unconditionally to every child a basic income. This measure would significantly reduce child poverty, and would contribute positively to the achievement of other EU2020 objectives in the fields of education and employment.Social Policy,EU2020 Agenda,Poverty,Social Exclusion

EUROMOD and the Development of EU Social Policy

The purpose of this paper is to set EUROMOD - the EU-wide tax and benefit model - in the context of the development of EU social policy. It explores the relation between the rapidly evolving EU social inclusion process and investment in European social science infrastructure. In so doing, I look mainly to the future, but I would like to begin in Sections 1 and 2 with the historical background. It is only in this way that we can place in context the achievements of EU social policy and understand the need for further development. I then describe in Section 3 the main elements of the EU Social Inclusion process and the National Action Plans of Member States. A key role is played by the social indicators agreed at Laeken in 2001, which are the subject of Section 4. Looking to the future, the monitoring of performance by means of social indicators may lead to the setting of targets (Section 5). All of this relates to process and analysis, but substantive progress requires policy innovation and policy learning. In Section 6, I begin with the assessment of policy at the national level, arguing that there is a role for EUROMOD in analysing the policies of individual Member States on a consistent basis across the EU. The role is clearly crucial at the EU level (Section 7). The potential for policy assessment is demonstrated in Section 8 in the context of a "new intergenerational pact", and in terms of working back from possible targets in Section 9. The main lessons for policy analysis are summarised in Section 10.

Reducing income inequality in Europe

World leaders have come to recognise the challenge posed by high and rising economic inequality. This paper asks how Europe can address excessive inequality. It argues that we should learn from the lessons of history; there have been significant periods in the past when inequality fell. We can make use of economic analysis, drawing on both recent and older literatures. Inequality arises not only between skilled and unskilled workers, but also between labour and capital. In seeking solutions, we should go beyond the options currently prominent in public debate and be willing to think ?outside the box?

Income Distribution in Europe and the United States

This paper assembles and reviews empirical evidence about the personal distribution of income in Europe and makes a comparison with the United States. From his analysis, the author concludes, among other things, that: the United States has higher income inequality than Europe; within Western Europe, the Scandinavian countries, Benelux and West Germany have less inequality, Southern Europe and Ireland have higher inequality, and France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, occupy an intermediate position; differences in the distribution of income outweigh differences in average incomes: the poorest families in the United States fare less well than those in a number of European countries; and, the 'Europe-wide' distribution, viewing the European Union as an entity, is less unequal than that in the United States

Income Distribution in European Countries

This paper summarizes the recent literature on income distribution in European nations drawing on some of the material used in the OECD project report (see above) and additional new material

Income Distribution in Advanced Economies: The Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)

This paper summarizes the highlights and implications of the forthcoming OECD project report entitled 'Income Distribution in OECD Countries: The Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study.

AVIATR - Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance A Titan Airplane Mission Concept

We describe a mission concept for a stand-alone Titan airplane mission: Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance (AVIATR). With independent delivery and direct-to-Earth communications, AVIATR could contribute to Titan science either alone or as part of a sustained Titan Exploration Program. As a focused mission, AVIATR as we have envisioned it would concentrate on the science that an airplane can do best: exploration of Titan's global diversity. We focus on surface geology/hydrology and lower-atmospheric structure and dynamics. With a carefully chosen set of seven instruments-2 near-IR cameras, 1 near-IR spectrometer, a RADAR altimeter, an atmospheric structure suite, a haze sensor, and a raindrop detector-AVIATR could accomplish a significant subset of the scientific objectives of the aerial element of flagship studies. The AVIATR spacecraft stack is composed of a Space Vehicle (SV) for cruise, an Entry Vehicle (EV) for entry and descent, and the Air Vehicle (AV) to fly in Titan's atmosphere. Using an Earth-Jupiter gravity assist trajectory delivers the spacecraft to Titan in 7.5 years, after which the AVIATR AV would operate for a 1-Earth-year nominal mission. We propose a novel 'gravity battery' climb-then-glide strategy to store energy for optimal use during telecommunications sessions. We would optimize our science by using the flexibility of the airplane platform, generating context data and stereo pairs by flying and banking the AV instead of using gimbaled cameras. AVIATR would climb up to 14 km altitude and descend down to 3.5 km altitude once per Earth day, allowing for repeated atmospheric structure and wind measurements all over the globe. An initial Team-X run at JPL priced the AVIATR mission at FY10 $715M based on the rules stipulated in the recent Discovery announcement of opportunity. Hence we find that a standalone Titan airplane mission can achieve important science building on Cassini's discoveries and can likely do so within a New Frontiers budget

The “Flexi-Chamber”: A Novel Cost-Effective In Situ Respirometry Chamber for Coral Physiological Measurements

Coral reefs are threatened worldwide, with environmental stressors increasingly affecting the ability of reef-building corals to sustain growth from calcification (G), photosynthesis (P) and respiration (R). These processes support the foundation of coral reefs by directly influencing biogeochemical nutrient cycles and complex ecological interactions and therefore represent key knowledge required for effective reef management. However, metabolic rates are not trivial to quantify and typically rely on the use of cumbersome in situ respirometry chambers and/or the need to remove material and examine ex situ, thereby fundamentally limiting the scale, resolution and possibly the accuracy of the rate data. Here we describe a novel low-cost in situ respirometry bag that mitigates many constraints of traditional glass and plexi-glass incubation chambers. We subsequently demonstrate the effectiveness of our novel "Flexi-Chamber" approach via two case studies: 1) the Flexi-Chamber provides values of P, R and G for the reef-building coral Siderastrea cf. stellata collected from reefs close to Salvador, Brazil, which were statistically similar to values collected from a traditional glass respirometry vessel; and 2) wide-scale application of obtaining P, R and G rates for different species across different habitats to obtain inter- and intra-species differences. Our novel cost-effective design allows us to increase sampling scale of metabolic rate measurements in situ without the need for destructive sampling and thus significantly expands on existing research potential, not only for corals as we have demonstrated here, but also other important benthic groups

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV