30472 research outputs found
Sort by
The gods of Dura-Europos
No full textFrom the worship of local Syrian protector gods to Christianity, many different religions flourished in the cosmopolitan crossroads city of Dura-Europos. Jen Baird brings us face to face with the diverse divine through the art of this ancient site
Firm ownership and macroeconomics of incentive leakages
Get PDFQuestions about market power have become salient in macroeconomics.
We consider the role of institutional structures in addressing these within a dynamic general equilibrium model.
In standard models, monopoly profits are accounted for as a lump-sum payment to the representative agent. We label this an ``incentive leakage,'' and show this to be a general characteristic of firm-optimal arrangements.
We show that structures such as shareholder-operated or worker-operated firms that eliminate the leakage can generate within-firm incentives that effectively reduce the monopoly distortion in equilibrium. When all firms operate similarly, an additional general equilibrium effect arises through the internalization of an aggregate demand externality. We characterize steady-state welfare across structures, and show how zero-leakage institutions lead to aggregate improvements towards the steady-state Golden Rule benchmark. Overall, our paper takes the first step towards an analysis of the macroeconomics of institutions without incentive leakage
Aristotle and Materialism
No full textThis chapter details how Aristotle invented and then employed the concept ‘matter’ (hulê), with certain opposing views in mind. For Aristotle, matter solves the problem of what remains during natural change and generation, that which underlies. Matter is also has the potential readiness to respond to the agency of form and soul that will direct it towards natural ends. A material account is thus integral to Aristotle’s teleological metaphysics. He accuses other theorists of nature of referring only to materials in their explanations, meaning that instead of bifurcating what underlies and is passive to formal agency, their materials are already active and animate. The fundamental difference between Aristotle and his predecessors is more subtle than has sometimes been supposed, and relates to their differing views of the world – for his opponents, the world is created from a state of disorder, whereas for Aristotle the order has been there all along. The complexity of Aristotle’s viewpoint and his characterisation of other natural philosophical perspectives has made him attractive to various different camps in the history of materialism. In the past, this included considering Aristotle to have himself been some kind of materialist, associating psychic action with bodily materials such as pneuma and vital heat. These views in turn were to be taken up by sympathizers of non-reductive materialists in contemporary philosophy of mind. This chapter gives a brief overview of these developments in the interpretation and influences of Aristotelianism
Towards a European system of industrial relations? The ETUC in the twenty-first century
No full textBook synopsis: Often, perhaps too often, the history of organisations is written without due attention given to the actors involved in their construction. This book shows how the role that trade unions play on the European stage is constantly being shaped by internal dynamics, specific political contexts, and disparate national realities.
It mainly covers, but also reaches beyond, the period of 2003-2015, corresponding to the mandates of General Secretaries John Monks and Bernadette Ségol of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). This work is a historical fresco depicting not only the political scene of the period but, more particularly, the continuous formation of an international organisation out of its national affiliates – rich in their diversity but thus also diverse in their structures, traditions and strategies.
The book traces the major political debates in the EU at the beginning of the 21st century, as seen through the trade union prism: the revision of the European treaties, enlargement to include the countries of central and eastern Europe, and the economic governance of the EU. It then goes on to look at issues linked to the core business of European trade unionism: social policy, employment, social dialogue, environmental challenges and the international dimension. Readers are offered an insight beyond the slogans into the complex process of strategy and consensus-building in the service of a more social Europe
Neuroadaptive Bayesian Optimisation can allow integrative design spaces at the individual level in the social and behavioural sciences… and beyond
Get PDFAlmaatouq and colleagues (2022) propose an integrative experimental design space combined with large samples for scientific advancement. We argue recent innovative designs combining closed-loop experimental designs and Bayesian Optimisation allow for integrative experiments at an individual level during a single session, circumventing the necessity for large samples. This method can be applied across disciplines, including developmental and clinical research
The Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) Project: Longitudinal cohort study protocol
Get PDFThere is a scarcity of prospective longitudinal research targeted at early postnatal life which maps developmental pathways of early-stage processing and brain specialisation in the context of early adversity. Follow up from infancy into the one-five year age range is key, as it constitutes a critical gap between infant and early childhood studies. Availability of portable neuroimaging (functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG)) has enabled access to rural settings increasing the diversity of our sampling and broadening developmental research to include previously underrepresented ethnic-racial and geographical groups in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). The primary objective of the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project was to establish brain function - using longitudinal data from mother - for-age reference curves infant dyads living in the UK and rural Gambia and investigate the association between context-associated moderators and developmental trajectories across the first two years of life in The Gambia. In total, 265 participating families were seen during pregnancy, at 7–14 days, 1-, 5-, 8-, 12-, 18- and 24-months post-partum. An additional visit is now underway at 3–5 years to assess pre-school outcomes. The majority of our Gambian cohort live in poverty, but while resource-poor in many factors they commonly experience a rich and beneficial family and caregiving context with multigenerational care and a close-knit supportive community. Understanding the impact of different factors at play in such an environment (i.e., detrimental undernutrition versus beneficial multigenerational family support) will (i) improve the representativeness of models of general cognitive developmental pathways from birth, (ii) identify causal pathways of altered trajectories associated with early adversity at both individual and group level, and (iii) identify the context-associated moderators (i.e. social context) that protect development despite the presence of poverty-associated challenges. This will in turn contribute to the development of targeted interventions
Donors and international aid in neoliberal Africa: taking stock of the 2010s
Get PDFThis article lays out the rationale for the special issue on Donors and International Aid in Neoliberal Africa in the 2010s. It gives an overview of some of the scholarly foci and debates since the millennium in order to set up the discussion of the different papers of the issue and their contributions to analysis and discussion
Emerging business models for digital innovation intermediaries: evidence from the Digital Innovation Hubs Initiative
Get PDFDigital transition is a complex process in which innovation intermediaries play an important role as facilitators of the adoption and diffusion of digital technologies. A multitude of organisations act as innovation intermediaries in the digital landscape. In this paper, we study digital innovation intermediaries focusing specifically on their business models. Building on a rich data covering 20 digital intermediaries in five European countries – Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and UK – we show that a distinction can be made, on one hand, between intermediaries that focus primarily on supporting a local ecosystem and intermediaries that focus primarily on developing an ecosystem around a specific sector or technology, and, on the other hand, between intermediaries that have centralised and decentralised governance. We analyse our sample of intermediaries based on these two dimensions (ecosystem focus and governance), and detail their roles in the digital transition. Our findings thus uncover a link between the organisational forms and business models of digital innovation intermediaries. We discuss the implications of our study, for research, practice, and policy
'For Over a Century, Telepathy has been Just Around the Corner'
No full textA historical genealogy of Elon Musk's 2024 brain implant, 'Telepathy', tracing its origins back to the Society for Psychical Research in 1882
Civil society organizations and public policy
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to explore the connection between the decline of the presence of encompassing civil society organizations (CSOs) in the policy-making process and the composition of public expenditure in advanced economies. Empirical estimates on a panel of 41 countries for the period 1979-2019 show that the lack of involvement of CSOs in the policy-making process is associated to public policies whose benefits are limited to specific sets of constituencies while the involvement of CSOs is associated to public policies whose benefits accrue to a large fraction of the society. We argue that the decline of the intermediate structures observed in the last decades has altered the composition of public expenditure towards a less desirable direction for the societies
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Birkbeck Institutional Research Online? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!