Euro adoption and Maastricht criteria: Rules or discretion?

In connection with the prospective euro adoption by the new EU members, the issue of how strictly to enforce the Maastricht criteria for joining the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has been discussed for some time. Arguments have been made in favor of a more flexible interpretation of some Maastricht criteria to take into account the specific conditions of the new member states (NMS). This paper makes a case for a more flexible interpretation of the Maastricht inflation criterion and proposes a different specification. Further, it examines the compatibility of inflation and exchange rate Maastricht targets and argues that under the specific circumstances of euro adoption, and taking into account the way these targets are defined, meeting both of them during a limited period of time should not pose a problem. Finally, the paper argues that both for short-term cyclical and long-term sustainability reasons, the NMS may aim at somewhat more ambitious fiscal targets before euro adoption than required by the Maastricht fiscal criteria.     

The environment and the entrepreneurial city: searching for the urban ‘sustainability fix’ in Manchester and Leeds

There is evidence that the politics of economic development in the post‐industrial city is increasingly bound up with the ability of urban elites to manage ecological impacts and environmental demands emanating from within and outside the urban area. More than simply a question of promoting quality of life in cities in response to interurban competition and pressures from local residents, the greening of the urban growth machine reflects changes in state rules and incentives structuring urban governance as part of an evolving geopolitics of nature and the environment. The adoption of principles and practices of ecological modernization potentially represents a dramatic shift in the social regulation of urban governance away from unconstrained neoliberalized modes. In this article we explore how different demands on and for urban environmental policy have played out vis‐à‐vis changing modes and practices of governance in two English post‐industrial cities. We explore differences in the ways that entrepreneurial urban regimes have sought to incorporate the green agenda (Leeds), or insulate themselves from ecological dissent (Manchester). We further attempt to conceptualize evolving urban economy‐environment relations in the UK in terms of an ensemble of governance practices, strategies, alliances and discourses that enables the local state to manage, though not necessarily resolve, seemingly conflicting economic, social and environmental demands at different scales of territoriality. Here we propose the notion of an ‘urban sustainability fix’ to describe the selective incorporation of ecological objectives in local territorial structures during an era of ecological modernization. Dans les villes post‐industrielles, la politique de développement économique semble liée de plus en plus étroitement à l'aptitude des élites urbaines à gérer les impacts écologiques et les exigences environnementales venus de l'intérieur et de l'extérieur. Au‐delà de la simple défense d'une qualité de vie en ville, répondant à la concurrence interurbaine et aux pressions des habitants, l'intégration de la cause Verte dans la machine de croissance urbaine reflète les nouvelles règles et mesures d'encouragement étatiques qui structurent la gouvernance des villes dans le cadre d'une géopolitique évolutive de la nature et de l'environnement. L'adoption de principes et pratiques de modernisation écologique pourrait traduire un revirement dans la régulation sociale de la gouvernance urbaine, en remplaçant la totale latitude des réponses néolibérales. L'article explore comment les demandes variées de et en politique urbaine d'environnement se sont exercées dans le contexte changeant des modalités et pratiques de gouvernance de deux villes post‐industrielles anglaises. Il s'intéresse aux différences de démarches qu'ont adoptées des régimes urbains ayant l'esprit d'entreprise pour incorporer le programme vert (Leeds) ou s'affranchir de la dissidence écologique (Manchester). De plus, il s'efforce de conceptualiser les relations évolutives économie‐environnement dans le cadre urbain britannique en tant qu'ensemble de pratiques de gouvernance, stratégies, alliances et discours permettant à l'État local de gérer (sans toujours les satisfaire) des exigences économiques, sociales et environnementales apparemment contradictoires, et ce aux différents échelons de territorialité. La notion de ‘solution de durabilité urbaine’ est proposée pour décrire l'intégration sélective d'objectifs écologiques dans les structures territoriales locales pendant une phase de modernisation écologique.     

Can targeted food taxes and subsidies improve the diet? Distributional effects among income groups

This paper analyses distributional effects of revenue-neutral tax reforms aimed at improving dietary quality and encouraging healthier grain consumption. Using data on household grain purchases, we analyse both the impact on dietary quality and the tax incidence among income groups of VAT reforms and excise duty reforms. The VAT reforms include subsidies of healthy products (products labelled with the Swedish National Food Administration’s healthy symbol) funded by increased VAT on ‘less healthy’ products. The excise duty reforms contain a subsidy of fibre content, funded by excise duties on either added sugar or saturated fat. Our results suggest that the VAT reforms have a similar impact on dietary quality across all income groups, with increases in fibre intake, but also unwanted increases in the intake of nutrients frequently overconsumed: fat, salt and sugar. The impact on dietary quality of the VAT reforms is therefore difficult to evaluate. With the exception of the lowest income group, the excise duty reforms seem to have a positive health effect across all other income groups, with increases in the intake of fibre and reductions in the intake of saturated fat, sugar and added sugar. For the lowest income group we find the highest increase in the intake of fibre, but generally an increase in the intake of the other nutrients, too. The excise duty reforms also result in a more energy-dense grain diet, with increases in the intake of calories for all income groups. Both the VAT reforms and the excise duty reforms appear to be progressive. The lowest income group pays less food taxes and generally faces a lower overall post-reform price level. The income group that increases its tax payments most is the one with the highest income. This is also the income group that faces the largest increase in the overall post-reform price level.     

The electronic trading systems and bid-ask spreads in the foreign exchange market

This paper examines the impact of electronic trading systems on the bid-ask spreads in the foreign exchange market. The paper finds: first, the EBS reduces spreads significantly; second, the EBS is more influential than the Reuters system for the currency pair DEM/USD; third, dealers with information advantage tend to quote relatively wider spreads with the new systems; fourth, geographical differences in market liquidity are reduced through the new systems, and finally, the effects occur immediately and persist in the long-term. Thus, both proposed positive and negative impacts of the electronic systems are found to be true in this paper, but our findings also suggest that positive effects dominate and the electronic systems overall increase FX market liquidity.     

Curbing domestic violence: instantiating C–K theory with formal concept analysis and emergent self-organizing maps

We propose a human-centred process for knowledge discovery from unstructured text that makes use of formal concept analysis and emergent self-organizing maps. The knowledge discovery process is conceptualized and interpreted as successive iterations through the concept–knowledge (C–K) theory design square. To illustrate its effectiveness, we report on a real-life case study of using the process at the Amsterdam–Amstelland police in the Netherlands aimed at distilling concepts to identify domestic violence from the unstructured text in actual police reports. The case study allows us to show how the process was not only able to uncover the nature of a phenomenon such as domestic violence, but also enabled analysts to identify many types of anomaly in the practice of policing. We will illustrate how the insights obtained from this exercise resulted in major improvements in the management of domestic violence cases. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The medium is the message: Comparing paper-based and web-based course evaluation modalities

An increasing number of universities have moved student evaluation of faculty and courses out of the classroom, where it had resided for many years, and onto the web. The increased efficiency of the web-based administrative modality of these instruments seems self-apparent. However, whether the measures obtained using the new modality are the same as the old modality is unclear. This paper compares the results of questionnaires administered on the web with those collected from the same students while they were in class. Data from 181 course offerings over seven terms at one university were utilized. Significantly lower evaluation scores for both the instructor and the course are produced when a web-based modality is used. In general, these results did not vary for courses at different levels of matriculation or at different levels of student participation. However, the magnitude of modality differences varied between highly rated and poorly rated courses. Implications for faculty evaluation are offered.     

Competition between Employed and Unemployed Job Applicants: Swedish Evidence*

We use the Swedish Applicant Database to investigate empirically whether being unemployed per se reduces the probability of getting contacted by a firm. All searchers looking for a new job are invited to submit their personal details to this database over the internet. Since we have access to exactly the same information as the firms, we can minimize the problems associated with unobserved heterogeneity. Our results show that an unemployed applicant faces a lower contact probability than an otherwise identical employed applicant, thus supporting the notion that firms view employment status as a signal of productivity.