The Impact of Regional Support on Growth and Convergence in the European Union

regional, growth, convergence, European Union

The impact of relative position and returns on sacrifice and reciprocity: an experimental study using individual decisions

We present a comprehensive experimental design that makes it possible to characterize other-regarding preferences and their relationship to the decision maker’s relative position. Participants are faced with a large number of decisions involving variations in the trade-offs between own and other’s payoffs, as well as in other potentially important factors like the decision maker’s relative position. We find that: (1) choices are responsive to the cost of helping and hurting others; (2) The weight a decision maker places on others’ monetary payoffs depends on whether the decision maker is in an advantageous or disadvantageous relative position; and (3) We find no evidence of reciprocity of the type linked to menu-dependence. The results of a mixture-model estimation show considerable heterogeneity in subjects’ motivations and confirm the absence of reciprocal motives. Pure selfish behavior is the most frequently observed behavior. Among the subjects exhibiting social preferences, social-welfare maximization is the most frequent, followed by inequality-aversion and by competitiveness

Meteorological effects of the solar eclipse of 20 March 2015: analysis of UK Met Office automatic weather station data and comparison with automatic weather station data from the Faroes and Iceland.

Here, we analyse high-frequency (1 min) surface air temperature, mean sea-level pressure (MSLP), wind speed and direction and cloud-cover data acquired during the solar eclipse of 20 March 2015 from 76 UK Met Office weather stations, and compare the results with those from 30 weather stations in the Faroe Islands and 148 stations in Iceland. There was a statistically significant mean UK temperature drop of 0.83±0.63°C, which occurred over 39 min on average, and the minimum temperature lagged the peak of the eclipse by about 10 min. For a subset of 14 (16) relatively clear (cloudy) stations, the mean temperature drop was 0.91±0.78 (0.31±0.40)°C but the mean temperature drops for relatively calm and windy stations were almost identical. Mean wind speed dropped significantly by 9% on average during the first half of the eclipse. There was no discernible effect of the eclipse on the wind-direction or MSLP time series, and therefore we can discount any localized eclipse cyclone effect over Britain during this event. Similar changes in air temperature and wind speed are observed for Iceland, where conditions were generally clearer, but here too there was no evidence of an eclipse cyclone; in the Faroes, there was a much more muted meteorological signature.This article is part of the themed issue 'Atmospheric effects of solar eclipses stimulated by the 2015 UK eclipse'

Greenland Blocking Index 1851-2015: a regional climate change signal

We present an extended monthly and seasonal Greenland Blocking Index (GBI) from January 1851- December 2015, which more than doubles the length of the existing published GBI series. We achieve this by homogenising the Twentieth Century Reanalysis version 2c-based GBI and splicing it with the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis-based GBI. For the whole time period there are significant decreases in GBI in autumn, October and November, and no significant monthly, seasonal or annual increases. More recently, since 1981 there are significant GBI increases in all seasons and annually, with the strongest monthly increases in July and August. A recent clustering of high GBI values is evident in summer, when seven out of the top eleven values in the last 165 years – including the two latest years 2014 and 2015 - occurred since 2007. Also, 2010 is the highest GBI year in the annual, spring, winter and December series but 2011 is the record low GBI value in the spring and April series. Moreover, since 1851 there have been significant increases in GBI variability in May and especially December. December has also shown a significant clustering of extreme high and low GBI values since 2001, mirroring a similar, recently identified phenomenon in the December North Atlantic Oscillation index, suggesting a related driving mechanism. We discuss changes in hemispheric circulation that are associated with high compared with low GBI conditions. Our GBI time series should be useful for climatologists and other scientists interested in aspects and impacts of Arctic variability and change

Будівельна лихоманка на Київських схилах

Forty marine-terminating glaciers have been surveyed daily since 2000 using cloud-free MODIS visible imagery (Box and Decker 2011; http://bprc. osu.edu/MODIS/). The net area change of the 40 glaciers during the period of observation has been -1775 km2, with the 18 northernmost (>72°N) glaciers alone contributing to half of the net area change. In 2012, the northernmost glaciers lost a collective area of 255 km2, or 86% of the total net area change of the 40 glaciers surveyed. The six glaciers with the largest net area loss in 2012 were Petermann (-141 km2), 79 glacier (-27 km2), Zachariae (-26 km2), Steenstrup (-19 km2), Steensby (-16 km2, the greatest retreat since observations began), and Jakobshavn (-13 km2). While the total area change was negative in 2012, the area of four of the forty glaciers did increase relative to the end of the 2011 melt season. The anomalous advance of these four glaciers is not easily explained, as the mechanisms controlling the behavior of individual glaciers are uncertain due to their often unique geographic!settings