The environment in the dynamics and interactions between economic growth and openness to international trade

Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade,

GlobalTrait: Personality Alignment of Multilingual Word Embeddings

We propose a multilingual model to recognize Big Five Personality traits from text data in four different languages: English, Spanish, Dutch and Italian. Our analysis shows that words having a similar semantic meaning in different languages do not necessarily correspond to the same personality traits. Therefore, we propose a personality alignment method, GlobalTrait, which has a mapping for each trait from the source language to the target language (English), such that words that correlate positively to each trait are close together in the multilingual vector space. Using these aligned embeddings for training, we can transfer personality related training features from high-resource languages such as English to other low-resource languages, and get better multilingual results, when compared to using simple monolingual and unaligned multilingual embeddings. We achieve an average F-score increase (across all three languages except English) from 65 to 73.4 (+8.4), when comparing our monolingual model to multilingual using CNN with personality aligned embeddings. We also show relatively good performance in the regression tasks, and better classification results when evaluating our model on a separate Chinese dataset.Comment: Submitted and accepted to AAAI 2019 conferenc

Labour Markets in EMU - What has changed and what needs to change

This paper reviews theoretical and empirical aspects of the interaction between Europe's Economic and Monetary Union and recent labour market developments. Policies meant to increase and stabilize labour incomes also tend to reduce employment and productivity, theory suggests that the latter effects should be sharper and more relevant within an integrated market area, making it harder for National policy makers to address the consequences of financial and other market imperfections. Empirical patterns of policy and outcome indicators in member and non-member countries of EMU are consistent with that theoretical mechanism. In the data, tighter economic integration is associated with better employment performance, substantial deregulation, sharper disemployment effects of remaining regulatory differences, and somewhat higher inequality and larger private financial market volume..labour market, monetary union, unemployment, employment, labour income, Bertola

Do institutions matter for technological change in transition economies? The case of the Russia's 89 regions and republics

We explore the impact of institutions on technological change in a transition economy. We use regional panel data for Russia's 89 regions and republics during the period of recovery and growth from 1998 to 2004 to show the impact of large variation in institutional development, ranging from full enforcement of property rights in the Northwest to red belt Communist regimes in the southeast. We find an unambiguous relationship between strong and sustained institutional development and technological change. We provide one model proxying the quality of institutions by the investment risk rating compiled by the rating agency ExpertRA Regions

Impact of Nucleon-Nucleon Bremsstrahlung Rates Beyond One-Pion Exchange

Neutrino-pair production and annihilation through nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung is included in current supernova simulations by rates that are based on the one-pion-exchange approximation. Here we explore the consequences of bremsstrahlung rates based on a modern nuclear interactions for proto-neutron star cooling and the corresponding neutrino emission. We find that despite a reduction of the bremsstrahlung emission by a factor of 2-5 in the neutrinospheric region, models with the improved treatment exhibit only $\lesssim$5% changes of the neutrino luminosities and an increase of $\lesssim$0.7 MeV of the average energies of the radiated neutrino spectra, with the largest effects for the antineutrinos of all flavors and at late times. Overall, the proto-neutron star cooling evolution is slowed down modestly by $\lesssim$0.5-1 s.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, minor changes and additions, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Uncomplicating the business of repositories

In this presentation, we discuss how our library runs our repository in production to meet the needs of our “business” as efficiently as possible. We have an interest in limiting the number of digital platforms we manage, for the purposes of sustainability and efficiency, but we must also consider how well a general platform can meet specific user needs. A governance group of administrators, in conference with stakeholders and developers, seeks to find the best way to accommodate each collection or functional need, with an eye to minimizing technical complexity, offering stakeholders self-serve options when possible, and maintaining a single canonical copy of each object. We will present some case studies of how material has been handled in our developing digital ecosystem, where preservation and access sometimes present conflicting priorities. We are exploring how our repository can best evolve to support our aims of making data and documents freely available

Supporting Dynamic Service Composition at Runtime based on End-user Requirements

Network-based software application services are receiving a lot of attention in recent years, as observed in developments as Internet of Services, Software as a Service and Cloud Computing. A service-oriented computing ecosystem is being created where the end-user is having an increasingly more active role in the service creation process. However, supporting end-users in the creation process, at runtime, is a difficult undertaking. Users have different requirements and preferences towards application services, use services in different situations and expect highly abstract mechanisms in the creation process. Furthermore, there are different types of end-users: some can deliver more detailed requirements or can be provided with more advanced request interface, while others can not. To tackle these issues and provide end-users with personalised service delivery, we claim that runtime automated service composition mechanisms are required. In this paper we present the DynamiCoS framework, which aims at supporting the different phases required to provide end-users with automatic service discovery, selection and composition process. In this paper we also present the developed prototype and its evaluation

More Than a Pretty Interface: The Louisiana Digital Library as a Data Hub

The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is an online platform for libraries, museums, archives, and historical organizations across the state. The books, manuscripts, oral histories, maps, and photographs held in the LDL showcase the cultural resources of Louisiana. The interface enables users to discover materials through search and browse, and to view and interact with these materials. The metadata about these items is also a great asset. When explored in their entirety, the data held in the LDL is as valuable as the digital facsimiles. The LDL may be conceptualized as a data hub, a place to gather and share the metadata of the participating institutions. Open data is a growing trend in archives and special collections, enabling new types of interactions with collection material. Exposing the data held in digital libraries, in ways that extend beyond traditional digital library discovery and access, opens pathways for researchers to investigate complex questions. This paper contextualizes the field of open data in historical institutions, and explores uses for downloaded metadata from the LDL

The geographical psychology of recent graduates in the Netherlands: Relating environmental factors and personality traits to location choice

There is ample evidence from different research disciplines that location factors such as employment opportunities or the availability of amenities and facilities are a powerful predictor of settlement behaviour. Recent research suggests that citizens’ mean personality traits could be an additional predictor of where young people settle. We therefore explore 1) the extent to which recent graduates in the Netherlands are geographically clustered with respect to five different personality traits, 2) whether the geographical clustering of graduates is intensified as they grow older, 3) how regional environmental characteristics are related to personality traits, and 4) the extent to which personality traits play a role in graduates’ location choices. Our results reveal a distinct geographical clustering of personality traits among the different regions in the Netherlands. We also show that this geographical clustering becomes more blurred as graduates age. The results furthermore show robust associations between personality traits and several environmental characteristics with respect to demographic, economic, health, political, sociocultural, crime, and religious outcomes. In addition, we show that personality traits play a role in graduates’ location choices. Economic factors seem to have a larger impact in determining location choices than personality traits

The geographical psychology of recent graduates in the Netherlands: Relating enviornmental factors and personality traits to location choice

There is ample evidence from different research disciplines that location factors such as employment opportunities or the availability of amenities and facilities are a powerful predictor of settlement behaviour. Recent research suggests that citizens’ mean personality traits could be an additional predictor of where young people settle. We therefore explore 1) the extent to which recent graduates in the Netherlands are geographically clustered with respect to five different personality traits, 2) whether the geographical clustering of graduates is intensified as they grow older, 3) how regional environmental characteristics are related to personality traits, and 4) the extent to which personality traits play a role in graduates’ location choices. Our results reveal a distinct geographical clustering of personality traits among the different regions in the Netherlands. We also show that this geographical clustering becomes more blurred as graduates age. The results furthermore show robust associations between personality traits and several environmental characteristics with respect to demographic, economic, health, political, sociocultural, crime, and religious outcomes. In addition, we show that personality traits play a role in graduates’ location choices. Economic factors seem to have a larger impact in determining location choices than personality traits