The European Commission’s stronger role in economic governance has made it an unexpected ‘winner’ from the Eurozone crisis

Several commentators have argued that the Eurozone crisis has resulted in more intergovernmental EU decision-making, with the European Commission in particular being weakened by the role taken on by the European Council in the area of economic governance. Michael W. Bauer and Stefan Becker write, however, that while the Commission’s agenda setting powers have been curtailed, it has been considerably strengthened in managerial terms. They argue that far from being weakened, the Commission has emerged as an unexpected institutional ‘winner’ from the recent transformations of economic governance in the EU

The impact of public employment: evidence from Bonn

This paper evaluates the impact of public employment on private sector activity using the relocation of the German federal government from Berlin to Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous variation. To guide our empirical analysis, we develop a simple economic geography model in which public sector employment in a city can crowd out private employment through higher wages and house prices, but also generates potential productivity and amenity spillovers. We find that relative to a control group of cities, Bonn experiences a substantial increase in public employment. However, this results in only modest increases in private sector employment with each additional public sector job destroying around 0.2 jobs in industries and creating just over one additional job in other parts of the private sector. We show how this finding can be explained by our model and provide several pieces of evidence for the mechanisms emphasised by the mode

Strenuous physical exercise induces monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 release in patients with coronary artery disease

Infiltration of the arterial vessel wall with monocytes is one of the initial inflammatory events. Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) is the key chemokine for the recruitment of monocytes to the atherosclerotic lesion. So far, it is unknown, if strenuous exercise enhances or reduces the release of MCP-1, the key initiator of pro-atherosclerotic inflammatory events in patients at risk for atherosclerotic diseases. 15 Patients with at least three coronary risk factors (CRF) like smoking, hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia and overweight and 17 corresponding healthy controls were tested with bicycle ergometry. Additionally, 8 patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) were investigated. Before and 10 minutes after maximal exercise, venous blood was taken and MCP-1 serum levels were analyzed. Furthermore, we measured monocyte CD11b expression by flow cytometry. Independently of CRF, the MCP-1 serum level was significantly increased after exercise. In control subjects the MCP-1 serum level rose from 71 pg/ml to 94 pg/ml (p<=0.05). In patients with CRF the MCP-1 serum level went up from 154 pg/ml to 224 pg/ml (p<=0.05). Patients with coronary artery disease had elevated MCP-1 serum levels before and after exercise, too, even if they did not have CRF (143 vs. 174 pg/ml; p<=0.05). The monocyte activation parameter CD11b showed a significant raise after physical exercise (relative fluorescence intensity 31 vs. 44; p<=0.05). These data indicate, that MCP-1 serum levels are elevated after physical exercise especially in patients at risk for coronary artery disease. These effects may in part result from an increased monocyte activation following strenuous physical exercise

Konfigurative Referenzmodellierung mit dem H2-Toolset

Die am Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Informationsmanagement der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster entwickelte Software H2 ist ein Meta-Modellierungswerkzeug, mit dem sich hierarchisch strukturierte Modellierungssprachen definieren und diesen Sprachdefinitionen entsprechende Modelle konstruieren lassen.11 Das Ziel des Projektseminars COIN (COnfigurative INformation Modeling) bestand darin, das H2-Toolset um Methoden der konfigurativen Referenzmodellierung zu erweitern. An der Realisation dieses Projekts waren neun studentische Teilnehmer sowie drei Betreuer im Zeitraum von Oktober 2005 bis Mai 2006 beteiligt. Diese Arbeit dokumentiert die durchgeführten Arbeitsschritte