The article discusses research results of socio-economic challenges in modern society using selected international statistics and presented in the format of National Transfer Accounts (NTA) as a follow-up to the author's prior publications in the journal «Voprosy Statistiki» (Issues 4 and 11 of 2019; Issue 5 of 2020). Introduction to the article rationalizes the subject matter topicality both given the pressing problem of ageing of modern society and in connection with the necessity of practical adoption of National Transfer Accounts in the system of Russian statistics as a coherent derivation and elaboration of the System of National Accounts (SNA), expanding analytical capabilities of statistics. Going into the main part of the article, the author applies statistical methods to explore the key macroeconomic consequences of the global ageing of modern societies. The article provides evidence that macroeconomic challenges and risks to sustainable development emerge primarily in the countries featuring low birth rates, a high share of seniors, and significant levels of government support to the households. The author studies how shifts in the population age distribution translate into changes in consumer spending and incomes. The article presents and analyzes initial findings of the quantitative evaluation of these correlations based on historical data on healthcare expenditures and per capita labor income. The paper identifies the factors and the extent of their impact on how people choose the economic behavior model that ultimately determines the volume and structure of consumption in high inflation economies. Finally, the article lays down a number of conclusions to the following essence: (1) empirical estimates confirm the hypothesis that ageing society presents a heavier «economic burden» for the government finances rather than for the economy as a whole and (2) further advances in macro-statistic work (SNA core sections, National Transfer Accounts, satellite accounts within SNA) become increasingly important for expanding analytical capabilities required to seek for a more effective mechanism to build-up and utilize national resources in the face of population ageing. ; В статье изложены результаты исследования социально-экономических проблем современного общества с использованием материалов международной статистики, представленных в формате национальных трансфертных счетов (NTA), в продолжение авторских публикаций в журнале «Вопросы статистики» (2019 г. – № 4, № 11; 2020 г. – № 5). Во вводной части статьи аргументируется актуальность рассматриваемой темы как с учетом остроты проблемы старения современного общества, так и в связи с необходимостью практического освоения в национальной статистике национальных трансфертных счетов как гармоничного ответвления и развития системы национальных счетов, расширяющего аналитические возможности статистики. В основной части статьи с применением статистических методов исследуются ключевые макропоследствия глобального старения обществ. Показано насколько значительны макроэкономические вызовы и риски устойчивому развитию, прежде всего в странах, имеющих низкую рождаемость, высокую долю людей пенсионного возраста и значимый уровень государственной поддержки населения. Рассматривается в какие изменения трансформируется структурный сдвиг возрастного профиля для потребительских расходов населения и его доходов. Представлены и проанализированы первые результаты количественного измерения этой взаимосвязи (на ретроспективных данных) для расходов на здравоохранение и уровня среднедушевого трудового дохода. Определены факторы и степень их влияния на выбор населением той или иной модели экономического поведения, в конечном итоге определяющего размеры и структуру потребления в высокоинфляционных экономиках. В заключительном разделе статьи формулируется ряд выводов, смысл которых состоит в следующем: 1) подтверждена на основе эмпирических расчетов гипотеза о том, что старение общества более «экономически обременительно» для государственных финансов, чем для экономики в целом, 2) существенно возрастает актуальность дальнейшего совершенствования новых макростатистических разработок (центральных разделов СНС, национальных трансфертных счетов, сателлитных счетов СНС) с целью повышения их аналитических возможностей для выработки более эффективного механизма формирования и использования национальных ресурсов в условиях старения общества.
The efficient and equitable use of urban road space considered as a public good and a scarce resource, leads to giving priority to sustainable transport modes (walking, cycling and public transport). Private vehicle sees its space reduced due to its negative externalities (space consumption, in addition to pollution, noise, accidents, barrier effect, etc.). This trend is international and has been applied progressively since the last decades (with the time lag and graduation conditioned by the prevailing type of local urban planning). It still does not have a methodological formulation that brings the scientific support: decisions are made on the political ground or based on "road/street supply models", which do not always have technical background. This thesis develops the conceptual and methodological bases of an alternative mobility management instrument called " Road Space Retribution Charge by Congestion Costs". We obtain the quantity (supply) of urban road space currently used by the private vehicle that must be transferred to sustainable transport modes using principles of transportation microeconomics. In a similar way but a century ago, Pigou formulated a tax to internalize the traffic congestion externalities. The restriction of space to vehicular traffic entails increases in travel times for the private vehicle, but even so it can favor the global mobility of the city: alternative modes enjoy more space for exclusive use and increase their commercial speed and their modal share, while the remaining traffic can be reassigned in the network more efficiently. The social welfare improves and the disincentive in the use of the private vehicle is similar to the Pigouvian tax. The methodological development is applied to the historic center of Santiago de Cali (Colombia), resulting in that a hybrid scheme of "Reallocation of the Use of Road Space" and "Traffic Management and Control" is the most appropriate for the internalization of externalities due to congestion. The results of the practical application suggest that the social benefits of the desirable scenario with respect to the baseline scenario include a 26% reduction in polluting emissions and an increase of 52 percentage points in the participation of sustainable transport modes in the use of urban road space. The research carried out finds general application in cities or parts of them that intend to humanize and recover part of the space currently occupied by the wheeled traffic of private vehicles. It can also be used to decide to implement urban projects such as " super-blocks" (restriction of access and through traffic in few contiguous blocks) or in embodiments of " tactical urbanism" such as the new post-pandemic Covid19 " normality". Future research should link the methodology developed here with the " Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram" of urban traffic (relationship between traffic flow and density at the zone level), it could include other positive environmental and social effects, improvements in the simulation model, and a systemization for the generation of " packages" of street sections and their continuity at the zone / neighborhood level. ; El uso eficiente y equitativo del espacio viario urbano considerado como un bien público y un recurso escaso conlleva a otorgar prioridad a los modos de transporte sostenible (caminar, bicicleta y transporte público) en detrimento del vehículo particular por sus externalidades negativas (consumo de espacio, además de contaminación, ruido, accidentes, efecto barrera, etc.). Esta tendencia es internacional y se aplica progresivamente desde los últimos decenios (con el decalaje temporal y graduación condicionados por el tipo de urbanismo local imperante), pero aún no cuenta con una formulación metodológica que le dé soporte científico: las decisiones se toman en el terreno político o basadas en "modelos de oferta vial", que no siempre gozan de un respaldo técnico. Esta tesis desarrolla las bases conceptuales y metodológicas de un instrumento alternativo de gestión de la movilidad denominado "Retribución de Espacio Viario según Costes Sociales de Congestión". A partir de los principios de la microeconomía aplicada al transporte, se obtiene la cantidad (oferta) de espacio viario urbano actualmente usado por el vehículo privado que debe ser transferido a los modos de transporte sostenible, de forma similar a la tarifa o tasa internalizadora de externalidades de congestión formulada por Pigou hace un siglo. La restricción del espacio al tránsito vehicular conlleva aumentos de los tiempos de viaje para el vehículo particular, pero aun así puede favorecer la movilidad global de la ciudad: los modos alternativos gozan de más espacio de uso exclusivo y aumentan su velocidad comercial y su cuota de participación, mientras que el tránsito remanente puede reasignarse en la red de forma más eficiente. El bienestar social mejora y el desincentivo en el uso del vehículo particular es similar a la tarifa. El desarrollo metodológico se aplica al centro histórico de Santiago de Cali (Colombia), resultando que un esquema híbrido de "Redistribución del Uso del Espacio Viario" y "Gestión y Control del Tráfico" es el más adecuado para la internalización de externalidades por congestión. Los resultados de la aplicación práctica sugieren que los beneficios sociales del escenario deseable con respecto al escenario base, incluyen una reducción del 26% en las emisiones contaminantes y un incremento de 52 puntos porcentuales en la participación de los modos de transporte sostenible en el uso del espacio viario urbano. La investigación desarrollada es de aplicación general a ciudades o parte de ellas que pretendan humanizar y recuperar parte del espacio hoy en día ocupado por el tránsito rodado de vehículos particulares. También puede usarse para decidir implantar proyectos urbanos como las "súper-manzanas" (restricción del acceso y tránsito de paso en unidades de pocas manzanas contiguas) o en plasmaciones de "urbanismo táctico" como la nueva normalidad post-pandemia de la Covid19. La investigación futura debería enlazar la metodología aquí desarrollada con el "Diagrama Fundamental Macroscópico" del tránsito urbano (relación entre flujo y densidad vehicular a nivel de zona), podría incluir otros efectos positivos ambientales y sociales, mejoras en el modelo de simulación y una sistematización para la generación de "paquetes" de secciones de calles y su continuidad a nivel de zona/barrio. ; Postprint (published version)
Image-based 3D reconstruction is a photogrammetric technique that recovers the real 3D world from its 2D images. It has become an active research field in computer vision because of its application in numerous areas, including science, medicine, culture, military, architecture, and entertainment. The principle that stands behind image-based 3D reconstruction is called triangulation. It is used to determine the location of a point in the real 3D world based on its projections in two or more 2D images. Hence, for a successful triangulation, it is important to know the exact projections of 3D points in 2D images. This is usually inferred through image correspondences and matching features between multiple views of the target object. Unfortunately, feature detection and matching algorithms usually fail in some challenging surfaces, like those of weakly-textured and weakly-illuminated objects. As a result, completeness and accuracy of the estimated 3D geometry for objects of such challenging surfaces can be low (containing deficiencies like virtual holes and outliers). Meshing techniques are usually used to repair these deficiencies and fill holes in the generated reconstructions. However, none of them approaches to only fill virtual holes and avoid negligent filling of real holes that are physically present in the 3D objects. This happens because both types of holes look similar in point clouds. This poses an ambiguity in deciding which hole should be filled and which must be left as it is. To solve this ambiguity problem, this thesis first proposes a simple approach for the detection of holes in point clouds. Then it investigates different statistical measures for automatic classification of these detected holes in point clouds. According to our knowledge, hole classification has not been addressed beforehand. Experiments show that most of the holes in the reconstructions of evaluated objects are accurately identified and classified using the proposed approaches. Point-cloud deficiencies are inherent when trying to reconstruct objects of challenging surfaces. This thesis investigates a variety of indirect solutions for improving the performance of 3D reconstruction techniques that are based on images containing objects of challenging surfaces. A new method to enhance image-based 3D reconstruction of weakly-textured surfaces is proposed. The idea behind it is to enhance the contrast of images, especially in weakly-textured regions, before feeding them to the reconstruction pipeline. Image contrast is enhanced using a recently proposed approach for noise reduction. The dynamic range of the generated denoised images has to be squeezed to the limited 8-bit range that is used by the standard 3D reconstruction pipelines. Dynamic range squeezing is a very critical process and can lead to loss of relevant information since many intensities in the original range will no longer be available in the limited target range. To this end, this thesis proposes a new tone-mapping approach that is based on Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE). It amplifies the local contrast adaptively to effectively use the limited target range. At the same time, it uses a limit to prevent local noise from being amplified. Using the proposed approach leads to a significant improvement of up to 400% in the completeness of the evaluated 3D reconstructions. To improve 3D reconstruction under low illumination, this thesis proposes a simple solution for reviving hidden features in dark images before feeding them into 3D reconstruction pipelines. Nowadays, many approaches for improving the visibility of details in dark images exist. However, according to our knowledge, none of them fulfills the requirements for a successful 3D reconstruction. The proposed approach aims not only to enhance the visibility but also the contrast of features in dark images. Experiments conducted using challenging data sets of dark images demonstrate a significant improvement of generated 3D models in terms of visibility, completeness, and accuracy. It also shows that the proposed methodology outperforms state-of-the-art approaches that tackle the same problem. ; Die bildbasierte 3D-Rekonstruktion ist eine photogrammetrische Technik, die die reale 3D-Welt aus ihren 2D-Bildern wiederherstellt. Sie ist zu einem sehr aktiven Forschungsfeld im Bereich der Computer Vision geworden aufgrund seiner Anwendung in zahlreichen Bereichen wie Wissenschaft, Medizin, Kultur, Militär, Architektur und Unterhaltung. Das Prinzip, das hinter der bildbasierten 3D-Rekonstruktion steht, heißt Triangulation. Sie wird verwendet, um die Position eines Punktes in der realen 3D-Welt auf der Grundlage seiner Projektionen in zwei oder mehr 2D-Bildern zu bestimmen. Für eine erfolgreiche Triangulation ist es daher wichtig, die genauen Projektionen von 3D-Punkten in 2D-Bildern zu kennen. Dies wird in der Regel durch Bildkorrespondenzen und übereinstimmende Merkmale zwischen mehreren Ansichten des Zielobjekts abgeleitet. Leider versagen Feature-Erkennungs- und Matching-Algorithmen normalerweise bei einigen schwierigen Oberflächen, wie die von schwach texturierten und schwach beleuchteten Objekten. Infolgedessen kann die Vollständigkeit und Genauigkeit der geschätzten 3D-Geometrie für Objekte mit solch anspruchsvollen Oberflächen gering sein (mit Mängeln wie virtuellen Löchern und Ausreißern). Das Meshing-Verfahren wird normalerweise verwendet, um diese Mängel zu beheben und Löcher in den erzeugten Rekonstruktionen zu füllen. Keine von ihnen versucht jedoch, nur virtuelle Löcher zu füllen und das fahrlässige Füllen von realen Löchern, die physisch in den 3D-Objekten vorhanden sind, zu vermeiden. Dies geschieht, weil beide Arten von Löchern in Punktwolken ähnlich aussehen. Dies stellt eine Zweideutigkeit bei der Entscheidung dar, welches Loch gefüllt werden soll und welches unverändert bleiben muss. Um dieses Mehrdeutigkeitsproblem zu lösen, wird in dieser Arbeit zunächst ein einfacher Ansatz für die Erkennung von Löchern in Punktwolken vorgeschlagen. Dann werden verschiedene statistische Maße zur automatischen Klassifizierung dieser erkannten Löcher in Punktwolken untersucht. Nach unserem Kenntnisstand wurde die Klassifikation von Löchern bisher in keiner anderen Arbeit behandelt. Experimente zeigen, dass die meisten Löcher in den Rekonstruktionen der ausgewerteten Objekte mit den vorgeschlagenen Ansätzen genau identifiziert und klassifiziert werden. Punktwolkenmängel sind inhärent, wenn man versucht, Objekte mit schwierigen Oberflächen zu rekonstruieren. In dieser Arbeit wird eine Vielzahl indirekter Lösungen zur Verbesserung der Leistung von 3D-Rekonstruktionstechniken untersucht, die auf Bildern basieren, die Objekte mit schwierigen Oberflächen enthalten. Es wird eine neue Methode zur Verbesserung der bildbasierten 3D-Rekonstruktion von schwach texturierten Oberflächen vorgeschlagen. Die Idee dahinter ist es, den Kontrast der Bilder, insbesondere in schwach strukturierten Regionen, zu verbessern, bevor sie in die Rekonstruktionspipeline eingespeist werden. Der Bildkontrast wird durch einen kürzlich vorgeschlagenen Ansatz zur Rauschunterdrückung verbessert. Der dynamische Bereich der erzeugten entrauschten Bilder muss auf den begrenzten 8-Bit-Bereich, der von den Standard-3D-Rekonstruktionspipelines verwendet wird, reduziert werden. Die Komprimierung des dynamischen Bereichs ist ein sehr kritischer Prozess und kann zum Verlust relevanter Informationen führen, da viele Intensitäten im ursprünglichen Bereich nicht in den limitierten Zielbereich abbildbar sind. Zu diesem Zweck wird in dieser Arbeit ein neuer Tone-Mapping-Ansatz vorgeschlagen, der auf der Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) basiert. Er verstärkt den lokalen Kontrast adaptiv, um den begrenzten Zielbereich effektiv zu nutzen. Gleichzeitig verwendet er eine Begrenzung, um zu verhindern, dass lokales Rauschen verstärkt wird. Die Anwendung des vorgeschlagenen Ansatzes führt zu einer signifikanten Verbesserung der Vollständigkeit der ausgewerteten 3D-Rekonstruktionen um bis zu 400%. Um die 3D-Rekonstruktion unter schwacher Beleuchtung zu verbessern, wird in dieser Arbeit eine einfache Lösung zur Wiederbelebung verborgener Merkmale in dunklen Bildern vorgeschlagen, bevor diese in 3D-Rekonstruktionspipelines eingespeist werden. Heutzutage gibt es viele Ansätze zur Verbesserung der Sichtbarkeit von Details in dunklen Bildern. Nach unserem Kenntnisstand erfüllt jedoch keiner davon die Voraussetzungen für eine erfolgreiche 3D-Rekonstruktion. Der vorgeschlagene Ansatz zielt darauf ab, nicht nur die Sichtbarkeit, sondern auch den Kontrast von Merkmalen in dunklen Bildern zu verbessern. Experimente, die mit anspruchsvollen Datensätzen von dunklen Bildern durchgeführt wurden, zeigen eine signifikante Verbesserung der generierten 3D-Modelle in Bezug auf Sichtbarkeit, Vollständigkeit und Genauigkeit. Es zeigt auch, dass die vorgeschlagene Methode dem Stand der Technik entsprechende Ansätze, die dasselbe Problem angehen, übertrifft.
We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently.We acknowledge the support of ANPCyT, Argentina; YerPhI, Armenia; ARC, Australia; BMWFW and FWF, Austria; ANAS, Azerbaijan; SSTC, Belarus; CNPq and FAPESP, Brazil; NSERC, NRC and CFI, Canada; CERN; CONICYT, Chile; CAS, MOST and NSFC, China; COLCIENCIAS, Colombia; MSMT CR, MPO CR and VSC CR, Czech Republic; DNRF, DNSRC and Lundbeck Foundation, Denmark; EPLANET, ERC and NSRF, European Union; IN2P3-CNRS, CEA-DSM/IRFU, France; GNSF, Georgia; BMBF, DFG, HGF, MPG and AvH Foundation, Germany; GSRT and NSRF, Greece; ISF, MINERVA, GIF, I-CORE and Benoziyo Center, Israel; INFN, Italy; MEXT and JSPS, Japan; CNRST, Morocco; FOM and NWO, Netherlands; BRF and RCN, Norway; MNiSW and NCN, Poland; GRICES and FCT, Portugal; MNE/IFA, Romania; MES of Russia and ROSATOM, Russian Federation; JINR; MSTD, Serbia; MSSR, Slovakia; ARRS and MIZŠ, Slovenia; DST/NRF, South Africa; MINECO, Spain; SRC and Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; SER, SNSF and Cantons of Bern and Geneva, Switzerland; NSC, Taiwan; TAEK, Turkey; STFC, the Royal Society and Leverhulme Trust, United Kingdom; DOE and NSF, United States of America. The crucial computing support from all WLCG partners is acknowledged gratefully, in particular from CERN and the ATLAS Tier-1 facilities at TRIUMF (Canada), NDGF (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), CC-IN2P3 (France), KIT/GridKA (Germany), INFN-CNAF (Italy), NL-T1 (Netherlands), PIC (Spain), ASGC (Taiwan), RAL (UK) and BNL (USA) and in the Tier-2 facilities worldwide. ; A measurement of the production processes of the recently discovered Higgs boson is performed in the two-photon final state using 4.5 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions data at √s=7 TeV and 20.3 fb−1 at √s=8 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The number of observed Higgs boson decays to diphotons divided by the corresponding Standard Model prediction, called the signal strength, is found to be μ=1.17±0.27 at the value of the Higgs boson mass measured by ATLAS, mH=125.4 GeV. The analysis is optimized to measure the signal strengths for individual Higgs boson production processes at this value of mH. They are found to be μggF=1.32±0.38, μVBF=0.8±0.7, μWH=1.0±1.6, μZH=0.1+3.7−0.1, and μt¯tH=1.6+2.7−1.8, for Higgs boson production through gluon fusion, vector-boson fusion, and in association with a W or Z boson or a top-quark pair, respectively. Compared with the previously published ATLAS analysis, the results reported here also benefit from a new energy calibration procedure for photons and the subsequent reduction of the systematic uncertainty on the diphoton mass resolution. No significant deviations from the predictions of the Standard Model are found. ; ANPCyT ; YerPhI, Armenia ; Australian Research Council ; BMWFW ; Austrian Science Fund (FWF) ; Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) ; SSTC, Belarus ; National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) ; Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP) ; NSERC, NRC ; CERN ; Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT) ; Chinese Academy of Sciences ; MOST ; National Natural Science Foundation of China ; Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion Colciencias ; Canada Foundation for Innovation ; Ministry of Education, Youth & Sports - Czech Republic ; MPO CR ; Czech Republic Government ; DNRF ; Danish Natural Science Research Council ; Lundbeckfonden ; EPLANET ; European Research Council (ERC) ; European Union (EU) ; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) ; CEA-DSM/IRFU, France ; GNSF, Georgia ; Federal Ministry of Education & Research (BMBF) ; German Research Foundation (DFG) ; HGF ; Max Planck Society ; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation ; Greek Ministry of Development-GSRT ; NSRF, Greece ; Israel Science Foundation ; MINERVA ; German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development ; I-CORE ; Benoziyo Center, Israel ; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) ; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT) Japan Society for the Promotion of Science ; CNRST, Morocco ; FOM (The Netherlands) ; Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Netherlands Government ; BRF ; RCN, Norway ; Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Poland ; NCN, Poland ; GRICES ; Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology ; MNE/IFA, Romania ; MES of Russia ; Russian Federation ; JINR ; MSTD, Serbia ; MSSR, Slovakia ; Slovenian Research Agency - Slovenia ; MIZS, Slovenia ; DST/NRF, South Africa ; MINECO, Spain ; SRC ; Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden ; SER ; Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) ; Cantons of Bern ; Geneva, Switzerland ; National Science Council of Taiwan ; Ministry of Energy & Natural Resources - Turkey ; Royal Society and Leverhulme Trust, United Kingdom ; United States Department of Energy (DOE) ; National Science Foundation (NSF) ; ICREA ; Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) ST/M001474/1 ST/J005525/1 ST/I006056/1 ATLAS Upgrade ATLAS ST/J004928/1 ST/L006480/1 ST/L003414/1 ST/J005487/1 ST/I006056/1 ST/L006464/1 ST/J004928/1 ATLAS Upgrade ST/M007103/1 ATLAS Upgrades ST/L001179/1 ATLAS Upgrades PP/D002915/1 ST/K003658/1 ST/H001069/2 ST/M001504/1 ST/K003658/1 GRIDPP GRIDPP ST/J00474X/1 ATLAS Upgrades ST/I00372X/1 GRIDPP ST/I00372X/1 ST/K001426/1 ATLAS ST/K001264/1 ATLAS ST/L000970/1 ST/K00140X/1 PP/E002846/1 ST/M003213/1 ST/M002306/1 PP/E003087/1 ST/L001179/1 ATLAS Upgrade ST/I006080/1 ST/G502320/1 ST/J004928/1 ATLAS Upgrades ST/J00474X/1 ST/L000970/1 ATLAS Upgrades ST/K001248/1 ST/K001418/1 ST/J004944/1 ST/M000761/1 ST/L000970/1 ATLAS Upgrade ST/K001302/1 ST/I005803/1 GRIDPP ST/I005803/1 ST/I000178/1 ST/H001085/2 ST/I006056/1 ATLAS Upgrades ST/K00137X/1 ST/I000186/1 ST/L003325/1 ST/L00352X/1 ST/L001179/1 ST/M002071/1 ATLAS Upgrades ST/M001733/1 ST/J005576/1 ST/M002306/1 ATLAS Upgrades ST/G50228X/1 PP/E000444/1 ST/L001209/1 ATLAS Upgrades
Over the last few years, the incentives for entrepreneurship have multiplied in media discourses, and have thrown our governments into a dynamic of promoting and supporting entrepreneurship, especially among young people. Despite the proliferation of public and private initiatives going in this direction, the transformation into entrepreneurial action remains problematic, 5% of the French population being effectively involved in gestation activities (GEM, 2018-2019). And when actions are actually carried out to create a new activity, they in no way presume the continuation or the future success of the project. There is therefore a stake in better understanding what can encourage, strengthen and influence nascent entrepreneurs' path.This questioning is in line with recent calls from the entrepreneurial literature to investigate the entrepreneurial intention-action gap, to better understand the volitional phase of the entrepreneurial process, especially its self-regulation mechanisms. This doctoral work is in line with of these efforts, and examines the role of the nascent entrepreneur's commitment profile in this crucial phase of the entrepreneurial process. It proposes to operationalize the organizational commitment model developed by Allen and Meyer (1990), differentiating affective, normative and calculated commitments, in the context of nascent entrepreneurship. It questions the forms that engagement can take in this specific context of creation and emergence, but also the factors leading to their development and their behavioral consequences in terms of investment (personal resources, overinvestment).The protocol underlying this thesis combines qualitative surveys (semi-directed interviews and focus groups) and three quantitative surveys by questionnaire on samples of nascent entrepreneurs from Observatory Impact of the Chaire Pépite France. It enabled to test and validate two new measurement scales: a two-dimensional (affective and instrumental) entrepreneurial commitment scale and a side-bets scale based on the work of Howard Becker (1960). Doing so, it questioned the classic three-dimensional factorial structure of commitment models, and shed light on the specificities of the entrepreneurial situation, compared to the organizational context in which most of these models have been developed. It also identified the factors - individual, social and resource-related - and behavioral consequences of different forms of entrepreneurial engagement. Finally, it resulted in the construction of a taxonomy revealing three engagement profiles among nascent entrepreneurs: the weakly committed, the affectively committed and the fully committed. This classification was consistent with the levels of advancement and investment of nascent entrepreneurs from each group.The results of this work reveal that the commitment profile of nascent entrepreneurs plays a crucial role in the way they will invest themselves and persist into the entrepreneurial process. They refine our understanding of how nascent entrepreneurs can feel tied to their project, but also to the broader process of becoming entrepreneurs. In that, they are important for public institutions and professionals seeking to consolidate entrepreneurial careers, especially of students and young graduates. ; Depuis quelques années, les incitations à entreprendre se sont multipliées dans les discours médiatiques, et ont projeté les pouvoirs publics dans une dynamique de promotion et de soutien à l'entrepreneuriat, notamment chez les jeunes. Malgré le foisonnement des initiatives publiques et privées allant en ce sens, le passage à l'acte entrepreneurial demeure problématique, 5% de la population française étant impliqué dans des activités de création (GEM, 2018-2019). Et quand des actions sont effectivement réalisées en vue de créer une activité nouvelles, elles ne présument en rien de la poursuite, ni du succès futur du projet. Il y a donc un enjeu à mieux comprendre ce qui peut encourager, renforcer et infléchir les trajectoires des entrepreneurs naissants.Ce questionnement rejoint des appels récents de la littérature entrepreneuriale à investiguer le passage de l'intention à l'action entrepreneuriale, pour mieux comprendre la phase dite volitionnelle du processus entrepreneurial, notamment les mécanismes d'auto-régulation qui s'y jouent. Ce travail doctoral s'inscrit dans la continuité de ces efforts, en s'intéressant au rôle du profil d'engagement de l'entrepreneur naissant dans cette phase cruciale du processus entrepreneurial. Il propose d'opérationnaliser le modèle d'engagement organisationnel développé par Allen et Meyer (1990), différenciant les engagements affectif, normatif et calculé, au contexte de l'entrepreneuriat naissant. Il questionne les formes que peut prendre l'engagement dans ce contexte spécifique de création et d'émergence, les facteurs favorisant leur développement et mais également leurs conséquences en termes de comportement d'investissement (ressources personnelles, surinvestissement). Le protocole qui sous-tend cette thèse mêle enquêtes qualitatives par entretien et focus groups et trois enquêtes quantitatives par questionnaire sur des populations d'entrepreneurs naissants issus de l'observatoire d'impact de la Chaire Pépite France. Il a permis de tester et de valider deux nouvelles échelles de mesure : une échelle de l'engagement entrepreneurial à deux dimensions (affective et instrumentale) et une échelle de sept paris subsidiaires (side-bets) inspirée des travaux d'Howard Becker (1960). En cela, ce travail remet en cause la structure factorielle tridimensionnelle classique des modèles d'engagement, et met en lumière les spécificités de la situation entrepreneuriale, par rapport au contexte organisationnel dans lequel la plupart de ces modèles ont été forgés. Il a également permis d'identifier les facteurs – individuels, sociaux et liés aux ressources - et conséquences comportementales des différentes formes d'engagement entrepreneurial. Enfin, il a abouti à la construction d'une taxonomie différenciant trois profils d'engagement chez les entrepreneurs naissants : les faiblement engagés, les affectivement engagés et les complètement engagés. Celle-ci s'est révélé discriminante quant aux niveaux d'avancement et d'investissement des entrepreneurs naissants issus de chaque groupe.Les résultats de ce travail permettent de défendre la thèse selon laquelle le profil d'engagement de l'entrepreneur naissant joue un rôle crucial dans la manière dont le processus entrepreneurial sera conduit, poursuivi et mené à son terme. Ils affinent notre compréhension de la manière dont les entrepreneurs naissants peuvent se sentir liés à leur projet, mais également au processus plus global par lequel ils deviennent entrepreneurs. En cela, ils sont d'intérêt pour les pouvoirs publics et professionnels de l'accompagnement cherchant à consolider les carrières entrepreneuriales, en particulier chez les étudiants et jeunes diplômés.
This dissertation analyzes the mechanisms behind labor market dynamics from different angles. Entrepreneurship is, as well as an alternative to paid labor, a source of job creation. High rates of nascent entrepreneurship can considerably decrease unemployment if the matching of new jobs and the unemployed is efficient and without large institutional frictions. As the matching of new jobs and the unemployed is not an instantaneous process, frictional unemployment is part of a healthy labor market. When short-term unemployment turns into long-term, the Beveridge curve --- with its negative relationship between vacancy rate and unemployment rate --- shifts outwards, indicating an inefficient matching processes that may lead to persistent mismatch patterns and unemployment. Here, instruments of Active Labor Market Policy (ALMP) can also decrease unemployment if they work as intended, which must be carefully evaluated. Tools to evaluate labor market must eventually deal with the large heterogeneity in real world societies concerning individual traits such as education, age, etc. From a macroeconomic perspective, the interactions between firms and workers, and the flows of people between unemployment and employment or out of the labor force are strongly affected by periods of up- and down-turns in the business cycle. The exact reasons for fluctuations in job finding and separation rates still pose puzzles in macroeconomic research of labor market dynamics. Labor market fluctuations, and in particular their magnitudes and autocorrelations after shocks in productivity and separation are still not fully understood today. A better replication and, hence, understanding, lies in the openness to new analytical models, exploratory methodologies or the work in interdisciplinary teams to adapt promising standard methods from one field to the other. The incidence of long and persistent unemployment remains one of the major challenges in economic policy. There is large body of literature that documents the negative consequences of unemployment for society and the individual: the economy is undermined by declining human capital, lower wages and increasing governmental expenditures on unemployment and welfare benefits. %textcolor{blue}{ Ja, aber das kommt nicht wirklich schlimm rüber, finde ich. Wohin führt das, historische Beispiele anbringen}. On the individual level, long-term unemployed people often experience a lower wellbeing and an impairment of mental and physical health. During the last two decades, many European countries went through a paradigm shift in unemployment policy from welfare towards workfare as a response to high and structural unemployment rates. Training measures, job-search monitoring, and sanctions for non-compliance with job-search requirements have become well-established measured used by Active Labor Market Policies (ALMPs) that aim to shorten periods of unemployment. The evaluation of specific instruments of ALMPs regarding the effectiveness in encouraging unemployed people to take up jobs earlier and/or not become locked-in to training measures is highly important, they might turn out to be ambiguous for the heterogeneous group of unemployed. In Germany, the focus of this thesis, a major part of the decline in unemployment has been attributed to the reform of active and passive labor market policy in the period 2003--2005. The so called 'Hartz' reform led to a substantial restructuring of the unemployment and social benefit system. Its core was the implementation of an extensive monitoring and sanctioning system that aimed to dramatically increase individual job search activities. Even though the overall unemployment rate decreases from $11.17%$ in 2005 to $4.98%$ in 2014, a high stock of long-term unemployed with $44.66%$ still remains. To date, sanctions are one of the major instruments to encourage unemployed to search and actively apply for jobs. Existing studies generally confirm sanctions as effective instruments to increase the likelihood of finding a job for recipients of unemployment insurance. However, a continuous evaluation of the effect of sanctions on welfare recipients, specific inflow cohorts or specific groups --- e.g. the long-term, elderly, or youth --- is required to prevent unintended (side) effects. Based on public administrative regional data, I estimate an empirical matching function in functional form of a stochastic efficiency frontier that seeks evidence for the effect of the 'Hartz IV' reform on matching efficiency before and after its implementation in 2005. As a functional framework I choose the translog function to address the interactions of stocks and flows in generating new hirings. Furthermore, the twofold structure of a stochastic frontier allows for a modeling of potential sources expected to induce an increase or decrease in matching efficiency over time and between regions (e.g. 'Hartz IV'). According to the results, 'Hartz IV' has increased the matching efficiency for both specifications. The younger and the long-term unemployed contribute to a significantly higher matching efficiency, which is in line with the aims of the 'Hartz IV' reform. Another study of my thesis aims to evaluate the effect of Unemployment Benefit II (UB II) sanctions on unemployment outflow. Under 'Hartz IV', the monitoring and sanction system was radically reshaped to lower the persistent stock of unemployed, in particular long-term unemployed. By far the majority of European studies, evaluating the effect of sanctions, focus on the recipients of unemployment insurance (UI). Compared to welfare recipients, they are, on average, more likely to find a job. Using a survey sample of UB II recipients covering the years 2005--2007, we also ask whether the intended positive effect of benefit sanctions on employment entry of UB II recipients also results in unintended and increased incentives to leave the labor market. Controlling for the endogeneity of a sanction enforcement, we employ a mixed proportional hazard model for both destinations. Our findings suggest an increasing impact on the outflow to both employment and non-employment. Venture creation with a successful performance implies job creation and a reduction in unemployment. A fruitful entrepreneurship landscape is determined by venture creation, and in particular their establishment and survival. The factors that divide the group of entrepreneurs from the group of (un-)employed are examined by a growing number of empirical and theoretical studies on entrepreneurship. Besides regional factors --- such as urbanization and localization economies, regional knowledge creation and public institutions --- personal traits and individual behavior are found to be highly influential upon the decision to become an entrepreneur and stay in business. Moreover, evidence suggests that the group of self-employed is very heterogeneous. Differences between, for example, female and male entrepreneurs, between necessity and opportunity self-employed, or between own-account-self-employed and self-employed who become employers and hire other workers are broadly investigated. Do we observe other differences in the group of self-employed? Lately, working as self-employed, either part-time, or with an additional wage job on the side ('hybrid' self-employed) has become popular in Germany and Europe. Which personal traits or regional determinants influence this development? What exactly turns an employed worker into a part-time or into a hybrid entrepreneur? My contribution to this topic is to explain the entry decisions of nascent entrepreneurs who choose between part-time and full-time self-employment, or between hybrid and exclusive self-employment. My findings reveal the importance of accounting for possible (re)transitions between the two pairs of subtypes of self-employment in addition to the alternative of self-employment exit. Thes results suggest that people with a low risk propensity benefit from an intermediate step into hybrid entrepreneurship. This intermediate step appears crucial, yielding a higher probability of subsequently switching to exclusive self-employment. From a political perspective, is it of particular interest to analyze which factors ensure the success and survival of ventures. This knowledge can help develop and improve start-up programs aimed to support entrepreneurs with the best chances to survive and create employment. The last chapter is a methodological excursion to a novel application of Rule-Based Modeling (RBM) --- a subclass of agent-based modeling --- in labor economics. Thinking outside the box, a rule-based labor model approach illustrates the interactions and transitions between employed, unemployed and entrepreneurs that have been highlighted in the previous chapters. We apply rule-based modeling (RBM) to a simple labor market model, consisting of employed, unemployed and entrepreneurs. The interaction between these agents follows both explicit-defined and emergent rules. Our simulation allows us to observe the macro-level-effects that emerge from the micro-level-interactions of the agents. This simple example model aims to illustrate the potential of RBM to replicate the labor market dynamics at the macro level 'emerging' from micro interactions between unemployed, employed and entrepreneurs. It represents an introductory work that establishes RBM as an alternative tool in the field of agent-based computational economics.
Before considering the new concepts in cataloguing which are likely to govern bibliographic control in the future, it is important to look back at the way in which the migration of the card catalogue to a networked environment has affected the organization of libraries. In many ways, the implementation of the National Library Service (SBN) has played a decisive role in "the slow and painstaking process of standardising the catalogues, with respect to cataloguing rules and record formats", which is among the main concerns of the Italian library authorities and therefore marked as one of the objectives of a national action plan as early as 1959. The production of the tapes containing the National Bibliography records in 1975 is the first episode of some importance in the history of library automation in Italy. Used for the photomechanical processing of the bibliography in its printed version, those tapes provided data in machine readable form which could be exchanged within the framework of the Universal Bibliographic Control programme strongly endorsed by IFLA. These records were given the ANNAMARC format structure, a local variant of the MARC format in use at the Library of Congress at the time. It was Maltese who recommended the adoption of MARC on the assumption that this would facilitate the integration of the Italian agency in the international bibliographic circuit. For several years only a few libraries, if any, could benefit from the availability of the national bibliography records. Copy cataloguing was in fact not a traditional procedure in Italian libraries the way it had been since the beginning of the 20th century in North-American libraries. The success of bibliographic utilities such as OCLC, RLG, WLN and UTLAS as well as the adoption of MARC and AACR2 as standards can easily be explained with the practice of importing the records produced at the Library of Congress into the various local catalogues. Most Italian developed cataloguing systems, instead, did not even include an import-export module, making it therefore impossible for Italian librarians to consider copy cataloguing as a promising, cost-effective option. Technology is not the only explanation for such a scarcity of cooperative efforts. Other factors include the non existence of library schools and the absence of an overall coordination policy at a national level. The first task to be undertaken by the National Library Service was therefore of an educational nature: the systematic training of librarians towards the use of standard cataloguing criteria. This required the adoption of a closed, centralised architecture, which replaced the distributed model initially envisaged by Vinay and Boisset. In joining the network each library or group of libraries added its existing records to the union catalogue through successive migrations of data. As a consequence of such a process, the quality of the records became rather uneven, forcing the national library as a routine to merge the duplicates and clean up the indexes. Most important, the project led to the creation of a database consisting of over 4.5 million records, contributed day by day by a thousand libraries of all shapes and sizes. The sense of cooperation, resulting in a general refinement of the acquisitions strategies as well as in the improvement of the exploitation of existing bibliographic resources, is particularly important in view of the development of the Italian digital library, as was emphasized during the 3rd National conference of libraries held at Padua last February. Descriptive cataloguing should become a minor concern for libraries as a consequence of the improved coverage offered by the various bibliographic utilities, in conjunction with the increasing number of digital documents. This has nothing to do with the idea that digital entities will catalogue themselves and that cataloguing standards are becoming unimportant since they do not apply to web sites and the rest. Such views, according to Gorman, are "not only wrong but also noxious because, though masquerading as progressive, they are impeding progress". Instead cataloguers should aim at developing linking devices to connect packages of recorded knowledge and information, using their titles, edition statements, issuers, dates and any other known data, and adding formalized names and titles to those descriptions and to those digital entities that allow library users to retrieve and collocate those documents, and relating them to a location either physical or virtual. However, it proves difficult for most librarians to abandon a system of bibliographic control that has been so successful and to adopt an entirely new set of concepts that will take full advantage of the new digital environment. The professional debate at an international level seemed so far more concerned with improvements needed within the established framework and hardly looked in any great depth at new concepts in cataloguing which are required if one wants to benefit from the intrinsic feature of a computer which resides in the ability to "establish, coordinate and connect syntaxes of signs", as suggested by Serrai. The need for a reassessment of the foundations on which cataloguing is based appeared with great evidence in the theoretical activities leading to the publication of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records in 1998. On the one hand it was felt that many inconsistencies were caused by bibliographic representations heavily relying on ISBD, a standard which uses principles having little relevance in an electronic environment, having been defined with a concern for the printed versions of the national bibliography and the exchange of bibliographic record at an international level, rather than as a data model for the needs of the individual library catalogue. On the other hand, it is evident that because of the large size of many databases and the number of hits that most searches produce, users tend to be frustrated in attempting to use a catalogue and sometimes wonder if the complexity is really necessary, especially if compared to the apparent user-friendliness of the general web search engine. The difference, according to Ayres, is a conceptual one which is already to be found in information retrieval where two basic types of searching have become established. These are pre-coordinate and post-coordinate. Cataloguing has so far always been a pre-coordinate operation and is based on what cataloguers do at the input phase, both as regards the description and the access terms. In particular, authority control (or "entry point control" as Gorman termed it already in 1977) in its present form is expensive to set up, to maintain and to use. Nevertheless, it is the foundation stone of sound cataloguing and a key factor in information retrieval and digital resources management. Again Ayres suggests that authority control be used to provide the link rather than the preferred heading, bearing in mind that from the user's viewpoint the preferred heading is the heading that he/she searches by and that in searching he/she wants the heading that he/she has thought about to be linked to the headings that he/she has not thought about. This means that the present authority control files will become linking files and that the entire procedure will implicitly be a post-coordinate operation. A fully developed electronic catalogue should be able to function in two ways, according to the specific needs of the user, providing "intellectual" (that is, access to the contents of library resources) as well as "bibliographic" control (that is, access to the physical packages in which content appears). Eventually, catalogues should give access to cultural heritage information, not just of a bibliographic nature, which is now under distributed control, bridging the barriers to access that have been created by specific traditions of custody and documentation. The feasibility of such a vision largely depends on the capability of the system within which they are stored to interoperate with those around them, but above all it relies on the intellectual effort dedicated to build up some kind of semantic, political, human and legal interoperability, both nationally and internationally.
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Associate Director of Global Networks and Inclusion Maya Ranganath reflects on the goals, outcomes, and key learnings of this summer's 11th annual Africa Evidence Summit in Nairobi. The Summit would not be possible without our partners: the Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and many others mentioned in the post below.https://medium.com/media/f17cd8514f9c798ca99f083c6c2054d7/hrefLow and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) disproportionately experience the world's greatest challenges — climate change, food security, and rampant inequality. Effective solutions to these problems must be evidence-informed and inclusive of scholars living in these countries. However, many LMICs face a shortage of researchers — only two percent of the world's research output is produced by African scholars. The evidence-informed policy community has marshaled significant momentum to address this problem and invest in LMIC research infrastructure. In fact, a recent report from the Center for Global Development identified a 26 percent increase in organizations with impact evaluation capacity since 2019. The Africa Evidence Summit, co-hosted by CEGA and the Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA) this summer, further showcased this progress.Now with more than a decade of momentum, the Summit returned to Nairobi for its largest gathering yet: In a signal of the demand for more rigorous and locally-led evidence on what works to combat poverty, more than 500 researchers, policymakers, and practitioners attended. As every year, the Summit had four goals:Elevate the voices of African scholarsDisseminate new research findings to decision-makersSeed new collaborationsGenerate insights to advance evidence-informed policymaking and, specifically, ways to make the ecosystem more inclusiveTo this end, the Summit featured 21 research presentations from CEGA affiliated faculty, our fellows network, and partners (see here for a full list of presentations). It also included several panels that focused on meta-themes, including:Incentives, resources, and pathways for African-led publicationFunder perspectives on supporting African-led researchSupporting pro-poor growth in sub-Saharan Africa (led by event partner African Economic Research Consortium)Centering African voices in policy-making and advocacy (led by event partner Afrobarometer)Below we present some key insights from the event. Please see our takeaways document for more information.Evidence must be generated by, and in partnership with, local researchers…"To claim the 21st century as the turning point for Africa, African experts and scholars should step up to define, own, and drive the continent's development agenda," said Dr. Eliya Zulu, Executive Director of the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP), in his keynote address.Summit co-host NIERA (comprised of alumni of CEGA's fellowship program) is leading this movement as the first all-African network of evidence generators. But greater investment is needed.As Rose Oronje, AFIDEP Director of Public Policy and Knowledge Translation and Head of Kenya Office, discussed, the low rate of publications by African scholars reflects a need for greater investments by governments in research infrastructure. Constantine Manda, 2012 CEGA Fellow and Assistant Professor at UC Irvine added, "We need to reform our institutions — for not just the number of publications, but the quality of them." "The incentive structure is broken and something needs to change," noted Chris Chibwana, Program Officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.…which requires re-aligning incentives, investing in research capacity, and collaborating.A variety of solutions were proposed. Oronje suggested including more editors from Africa on journals, "as they will be looking at research differently because they understand the context." Aurelia Munene, founder of Eider Africa, proposed engaging NGOs to complement African universities, training new faculty on supervision, and "providing researchers with a sense of belonging." Jordan Kyongo, Head of the East Africa Research & Innovation Hub at the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), added that "universities must support an enabling environment for students to [become] researchers." Manda urged scholars in high-income countries to "ask for invitations to present work to an African audience" to expose students to new research methods, insights, and questions.In this vein, collaboration is not only an important driver of innovation but also the keystone in inclusive evidence generation. The growing group of impact evaluators, big data researchers, and other evidence generators in LMICs relies on a close-knit community for intellectual partnership, capacity building, evidence dissemination, and funding. Indeed, the Summit would not have succeeded without its local partners (NIERA, AFIDEP, Afrobarometer, AERC, Busara, among others) and the many talented researchers who presented posters.From left to right: CEGA Fellows Jonathan Izudi, Bezawit Bahru, and Michel Ndayikeza listen to a presentation at AES 2023 | Luft VenturesEvidence is essential, but insufficient alone, for policy changeThe summit featured many research studies aimed to assist decision-makers to support vulnerable communities. A few highlights include:CEGA Faculty Co-Director Ted Miguel's study on the intergenerational impacts of child health investments in East Africa, which shows that deworming school children decreases under-five mortality in the children of those dewormed by one-fifth.A randomized control trial presented by Youth Impact's Thato Letsomo demonstrated that the ConnectEd intervention, which sends children a weekly math problem and provides tutoring phone calls, improved learning in Uganda by more than a standard year of schooling.University of Ghana's Edward Asiedu's study found that providing patients with information on their insurance coverage reduces their out-of-pocket expenditure on health.2021 CEGA Fellow Mary Nantongo's early-stage design to evaluate the impact of Uganda's Parish Development Model on the poverty levels, incomes, and participation in decision-making of beneficiary households.However, Dr. Zulu made a powerful point, saying "Evidence is essential, but not sufficient for policy. Researchers need to understand the key people and decisions being made in order to help." Building on this, Tricia Ryan from USAID led a presentation on evidence gap maps, a visual tool that identifies where more evidence is needed on a particular research subject. 2020 CEGA Fellow and Director of Research at the International Center for Evaluation and Development (ICED) Solomon Zena Walelign presented his evidence gap map, which found that more research is needed on how infrastructure interacts with the nutritional needs of people in LMICs, especially women, girls, and low-income consumers.CEGA's long history of working to shift norms in development economics toward greater leadership by African scholars has produced significant results. The Africa Evidence Summit reflects that growth, and we are excited to harness this community's momentum to advance our shared goals. Sign up for our Global Networks newsletter to hear first about next year's Summit.Supporting an inclusive evidence ecosystem: Insights from the 2023 Africa Evidence Summit was originally published in CEGA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
La thèse présentée est intitulée « Le principe d'autonomie de la volonté de la patiente enceinte avant l'accouchement: Modèle de communication hospitalière ». Le travail de recherche est essentiellement méthodologique. Il comporte également une partie d'étude empirique, des enquêtes sous forme de témoignages auprès de plus de 500 patientes ayant subi une IVG en Europe. Il contribue à un thème de recherche important, la mise en place des mécanismes juridiques nécessaires à l'évolution des stratégies de santé publique du droit à l'IVG. La thèse est structurée en deux grandes parties : I. La consécration de l'autonomie de la femme lors d'une grossesse indésirée II. Les atteintes à l'autonomie de la femme lors d'une grossesse indésirée (modèle de communication) Ce découpage met en évidence le développement juridique autour de la remise en cause de la procédure d'accès à l'IVG par un éclairage de l'autonomie de la patiente. La première partie est divisée en deux titres qui présentent le respect de l'autonomie et le recueil du consentement. Le travail de recherche se construit par une analyse des données nécessaires pour évaluer les impacts du consentement perverti par le profane et le milieu médical dans lequel il s'inscrit. La deuxième partie propose deux titres qui présentent la responsabilité médicale et l'effet relatif des responsabilités quant à l'autonomie de la femme enceinte, permettant d'analyser les limites à la détermination de la patiente, le préjudice subi de la perte d'autonomie et les inégalités qui découlent des traitements différents selon les législations en vigueur. Malgré l'impossibilité de conclure à priori sur l'autonomie du processus de décision médicale, des solutions juridiques sont néanmoins proposées dans le dernier chapitre : il s'agit d'une étude de cas pour le renforcement juridique du consentement de la patiente (2019) menée aux Hôpitaux de Genève (HUG) en Suisse permettant, notamment, une déconstruction du principe de « libre-choix » de la patiente. Loin d'entrer dans une logique critique et antinomique pro-IVG, la thèse propose d'analyser les failles procédurales (le paradoxe de la responsabilité médicale) dans une étude nourrie de réflexions juridiques sur la notion d'autonomie et le statut de la femme lors de la décision IVG. ; The thesis presented is entitled "The principle of autonomy of will of the pregnant patient before giving birth : a hospital communication model. The research work is essentially methodological. It also includes a part of empirical study, surveys in the form of testimonies with more than 500 patients having undergone a VTP care, in the 3 European countries determined in the study, in France, Poland and Switzerland. It contributes to an important research theme, the establishment of the legal mechanisms necessary for the evolution of public health strategies of the VTP right. The thesis is structured in two main parts : I. The recognition of women's autonomy when deciding on the use of the VTP care. II. Violations of women's autonomy when deciding on the use of the VTP care (hospital communication model). This division highlights the legal development around the questioning of the procedure of access to the VTP care by a lighting of the autonomy of the patient. The first part is divided into two titles that show respect for autonomy and the collection of consent. The research work is constructed by an analysis of the data needed to evaluate the impact of perverted consent by the lay person and the medical community in which he is enrolled. The second part proposes two titles that present the special medical responsibility and the relative effect of responsibilities on the autonomy of the pregnant woman, allowing to analyze the limits to the determination of the patient, the harm suffered from the loss of autonomy and the inequalities that result from different treatments according to the legislation in force. Despite the impossibility of concluding a priori on the autonomy of the medical decision-making process, legal solutions are nevertheless proposed in the last chapter : it is a case study for the legal strengthening of the patient's consent (2018) conducted at the Geneva Hospitals (HUG) in Switzerland allowing, in particular, a deconstruction of the principle of "free choice" of the patient. Far from entering a critical and antinomic pro-VTP logic, the thesis proposes to analyze the procedural flaws (the paradox of medical responsibility) in a study nourished by legal reflections on the notion of autonomy and the status of women during the decision IVG.
BMBWF (Austria) ; FWF (Austria) ; FNRS (Belgium) ; FWO (Belgium) ; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) ; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) ; FAPERGS (Brazil) ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) ; MES (Bulgaria) ; CERN ; CAS (China) ; MoST (China) ; NSFC (China) ; COLCIENCIAS (Colombia) ; MSES (Croatia) ; CSF (Croatia) ; RPF (Cyprus) ; SENESCYT (Ecuador) ; MoER (Estonia) ; ERC (Estonia) ; IUT (Estonia) ; ERDF (Estonia) ; Academy of Finland, (Finland) ; MEC, (Finland) ; HIP (Finland) ; CEA (France) ; CNRS/IN2P3 (France) ; BMBF (Germany) ; DFG (Germany) ; HGF (Germany) ; GSRT (Greece) ; NKFIA (Hungary) ; DAE (India) ; DST (India) ; IPM (Iran) ; SFI (Ireland) ; INFN (Italy) ; MSIP (Republic of Korea) ; NRF (Republic of Korea) ; MES (Latvia) ; LAS (Lithuania) ; MOE (Malaysia) ; UM (Malaysia) ; BUAP (Mexico) ; CINVESTAV (Mexico) ; CONACYT (Mexico) ; LNS (Mexico) ; SEP (Mexico) ; UASLP-FAI (Mexico) ; MOS (Montenegro) ; MBIE (New Zealand) ; PAEC (Pakistan) ; MSHE (Poland) ; NSC (Poland) ; FCT (Portugal) ; JINR (Dubna) ; MON (Russia) ; RosAtom (Russia) ; RAS (Russia) ; RFBR (Russia) ; NRC KI (Russia) ; MESTD (Serbia) ; SEIDI (Spain) ; CPAN (Spain) ; PCTI (Spain) ; FEDER (Spain) ; MOSTR (Sri Lanka) ; Swiss Funding Agencies (Switzerland) ; MST (Taipei) ; ThEPCenter (Thailand) ; IPST (Thailand) ; STAR (Thailand) ; NSTDA (Thailand) ; TUBITAK (Turkey) ; TAEK (Turkey) ; NASU (Ukraine) ; SFFR (Ukraine) ; STFC (United Kingdom) ; DOE (USA) ; NSF (USA) ; Marie-Curie program ; European Research Council (European Union) ; Leventis Foundation ; A. P. Sloan Foundation ; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation ; Belgian Federal Science Policy Office ; Fonds pour la Formation a la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium) ; Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium) ; F. R. S.-FNRS (Belgium) under the Excellence of Science-EOS-be.h project ; FWO (Belgium) under the Excellence of Science-EOS-be.h project ; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of the Czech Republic ; Lendulet (Momentum) Program ; Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program UNKP, the NKFIA research ; Council of Science and Industrial Research, India ; HOMING PLUS program of the Foundation for Polish Science ; National Priorities Research Program by Qatar National Research Fund ; Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnica de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu ; Programa Severo Ochoa del Principado de Asturias ; Thalis program - EU-ESF ; Greek NSRF ; Rachadapisek Sompot Fund for Postdoctoral Fellowship, Chulalongkorn University (Thailand) ; Chulalongkorn Academic into Its 2nd Century Project Advancement Project (Thailand) ; Welch Foundation ; Weston Havens Foundation (USA) ; Horizon 2020 Grant (European Union) ; European Union, Regional Development Fund ; Mobility Plus program of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education ; National Science Center (Poland) ; Aristeia program - EU-ESF ; European Research Council (European Union): 675440 ; F. R. S.-FNRS (Belgium) under the Excellence of Science-EOS-be.h project: 30820817 ; FWO (Belgium) under the Excellence of Science-EOS-be.h project: 30820817 ; Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program UNKP, the NKFIA research: 123842 ; Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program UNKP, the NKFIA research: 123959 ; Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program UNKP, the NKFIA research: 124845 ; Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program UNKP, the NKFIA research: 124850 ; Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program UNKP, the NKFIA research: 125105 ; Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnica de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu: MDM-2015-0509 ; Welch Foundation: C-1845 ; Horizon 2020 Grant (European Union): 675440 ; National Science Center (Poland): 2014/14/M/ST2/00428 ; National Science Center (Poland): 2014/13/B/ST2/02543 ; National Science Center (Poland): 2014/15/B/ST2/03998 ; National Science Center (Poland): 2015/19/B/ST2/02861 ; National Science Center (Poland): Sonata-bis 2012/07/E/ST2/01406 ; Studies of on-shell and off-shell Higgs boson production in the four-lepton final state are presented, using data from the CMS experiment at the LHC that correspond to an integrated luminosity of 80.2 fb(-1) at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Joint constraints are set on the Higgs boson total width and parameters that express its anomalous couplings to two electroweak vector bosons. These results are combined with those obtained from the data collected at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 5.1 and 19.7 fb(-1), respectively. Kinematic information from the decay particles and the associated jets are combined using matrix element techniques to identify the production mechanism and to increase sensitivity to the Higgs boson couplings in both production and decay. The constraints on anomalous HVV couplings are found to be consistent with the standard model expectation in both the on-shell and off-shell regions. Under the assumption of a coupling structure similar to that in the standard model, the Higgs boson width is constrained to be 3.2(-2.2)(+2.8)MeV while the expected constraint based on simulation is 4.1(-4.0)(+5.0) MeV. The constraints on the width remain similar with the inclusion of the tested anomalous HVV interactions.
The article is devoted to the study of the concept, stages of formation and modern aspects of the implementationand protection of the right to be forgotten. The article focuses on the need to update the legal regulation of personal non-property rights of an individual that arise and are realized on the global Internet, which are inextricably linked with the development of modern technologies and electronic information services. This need to update the legal regulation of personal non-property rights of individuals is also associated with the recodification of the civil legislation of Ukraine, the purpose of which is to create the latest legal structures and mechanisms. The focus is on the need to improve modern areas of personal data protection provided by the GDPR, also through the introduction of the right to be forgotten into the modern system of civil legislation of Ukraine. The need to urgently bring national legislation on the protection of personal data into line with the ideas and directions provided for in the GDPR is also indicated. The study defines the right to be forgotten, characterizes its content and certain features of law enforcement. The conclusion is drawn about the European and world prospects for the development of the right to be forgotten and the possible problems of its introduction and implementation. The article also raises the question of the possibility, feasibility and relevance of the traditional format of legal regulation for relations that arise on the Internet. The conclusion is drawn about the need to review some models of legal regulation taking into account current trends in the development of legislation and law. It is proposed to pay attention to European methods and methods of private regulation of public relations and use them in the process of recodification of civil legislation of Ukraine. As a result of the study, it is concluded that today the right to be forgotten is a European achievement. But whether this right will become a world achievement only time and practice will show. ; Статья посвящена исследованию понятия, этапов формирования и современных аспектов реализации и защиты права физического лица на забвение. В статье акцентируется внимание на необходимости обновления правового регулирования отдельных личных неимущественных прав физического лица, которые возникают и реализуются в мировой сети интернет и неразрывно связаны с развитием современных технологий и электронных информационных сервисов. Такая необходимость обновления правового регулирования личных неимущественных прав физических лиц связывается также с рекодификацией гражданского законодательства Украины, целью которой является создание новейших правовых конструкций и механизмов. Акцентируется внимание на необходимости усовершенствования современных направлений защиты персональных данных физических лиц, предусмотренных GDPR, в том числе посредством введения в современную систему гражданского законодательства Украины права на забвение. Также обосновывается необходимость срочного приведения национального законодательства по вопросам защиты персональных данных в соответствие с идеями и направлениями, предусмотренными в GDPR. В ходе исследования дается определение права на забвение, характеризуется его содержание и отдельныеособенности правоприменения. Делается вывод относительно европейских и мировых перспектив развития права на забвение и возможных проблем его введения и реализации. Также поднимается вопрос о возможности, целесообразности и соответствия традиционного формата правового регулирования общественных отношений для отношений, которые возникают в сети интернет. Делается вывод о необходимости пересмотра некоторыхмоделей правового регулирования с учетом современных тенденций развития законодательства и права. Предлагается обратить внимание на европейские методы и способы частно-правового регулирования общественных отношений и использовать их в процессе рекодификации гражданского законодательства Украины. Отдельное внимания уделяется формирующимся направлениям развития права на забвение в странах-членах ЕС. Рассматривается возможность имплементации конструкции права на забвение в национальное гражданское законодательство в свете рекодификации гражданского кодекса Украины. Характеризуются отдельные решения европейских судов по вопросам защиты права на забвение и акцентируется внимание на необходимости детального изучения таких решений с целью формирования практики правоприменения права на забвение в современном обществе. Обращается внимание на специфику реализации и защиты права на забвение, которая заключается в объединении оффлайн и онлайн общественных отношений. В результате проведенного исследования делается вывод, что уже сегодня право на забвение является приобретением европейским. Но станет ли это право мировым приобретением, покажут время и практика. ; Стаття присвячена дослідженню поняття, етапів формування та сучасних аспектів реалізації й захисту правафізичної особи на забуття. У статті акцентується увага на необхідності оновлення правового регулювання окремих особистих немайнових прав фізичної особи, що виникають і реалізуються в мережі інтернет і невід'ємно пов'язані з розвитком сучасних технологій та інформаційних сервісів. Таке оновлення пов'язується також із рекодифікацією цивільного законодавства України, яка має на меті створення новітніх правових конструкцій і механізмів. Наголошується на необхідності вдосконалення сучасних напрямів захисту персональних даних, передбачених GDPR, у тому числі через упровадження в сучасну систему цивільного законодавства України права на забуття. Надається визначення права на забуття, характеризується його зміст та окремі особливості застосування. Робиться висновок про європейські та світові перспективи розвитку права на забуття й можливі проблеми його впровадження та реалізації. Також порушується питання про можливість, доцільність і відповідність звичного формату правового регулювання суспільних відносин для відносин, що виникають у мережі інтернет, і робиться висновок про необхідність перегляду деяких моделей правового регулювання з урахуванням сучасних тенденцій розвитку законодавства і права. Окрема увага приділяється напрямам розвитку права на забуття в країнах-членах ЄС. Розглядається можливість імплементації права на забуття у вітчизняне законодавство України у світлі рекодифікації цивільного законодавства. Характеризуються окремі рішення європейських судів з питань захисту права на забуття й наголошується на необхідності детального дослідження таких рішень з метою формування практики правозастосування права на забуття в сучасному суспільстві. Унаслідок проведеного дослідження авторкою робиться висновок про те, що вже сьогодні право на забуття можна вважати європейським здобутком. Однак чи стане це право здобутком глобальним, мають показати час і практика.
In: Henstra , D J 2000 , ' The evolution of the money standard in medieval Frisia : a treatise on the history of the systems of money of account in the former Frisia (c.600-c.1500) ' , Doctor of Philosophy , University of Groningen , Groningen .
Today, many economists want a better understanding of the impact of economic institutions on the economic processes. It therefore pays to know how economic institutions evolve, particularly in case the evolution is a spontaneous one. Besides building models on rational decision making it appears worthwhile to study how an 'organic' institutional evolution operates in the real world. The conditions for such a study were provided by medieval Frisia, a country without a central government during most of the time in nine centuries and yet one of the most prosperous and earliest monetised areas of its time. The evolution of its money of account system could be seen as the evolution of an economic institution that was almost entirely the unintended result of freely interacting market forces. The foregoing sections of this article have been focussed on the first rule of a medieval money of account system: what standard coin would be mutually recognised as the basis for the unit of account? We found that this problem occurred only five times in the nine centuries covered, resulting in a current money standard being replaced by another. Once this was politically enforced (the introduction of the Carolingian system by Charlemagne, in 793/794) but it was doubted whether this reform took really grounds; at least in Frisia Ulterior the Carolingian system was 'illegally' reduced to the bi-metallic system valid before the reform of Charlemagne as it seems. In the other four cases the change was of the kind that we are looking for. The 10th century transition was in fact the tacit reduction of the extant bi-metallic system to a silver standard based system after the gold base had gone out of use (the replacement of the Carolingian system by the 'old-Frisian' system, in the 10th century). The other three cases demonstrate, that shortcomings of a current system were met by incorporating new elements in the system of account (as an 'adaptive compromise'), which in some cases gradually grew into a new standard when becoming appreciated as preferable to the old standard. So we found 'sceattas' ousting solidi, in around 700; sterlings ousting 'old-Frisian' money, in the 13th century; 'new-Frisian' money ousting sterlings, in the 14th century. These three instances are to be considered as the 'organic' ones, characterised by path-dependence. They represent clear examples of the mechanism of institutional evolution. Because of the inherent limitation of an article, the other rules of the medieval Frisian money of account system remained under-exposed. Yet the second rule, mentioned above (p.), deserves attention. It rules as to what face value the standard coin was to be accepted. This rule too, was not ordered top-down – except in some very few cases which were not successful mostly – but was determined by the market that is, by the social response to the inevitable 'normal decrease'. However, this decrease was usually regular and slow: to c.0.3g of silver a century on the average. Because of the slow effect of these forces, the value decreased so little from generation to generation, that this itself would hardly have been felt in everyday life. But although the decrease was small in absolute figures, the percentage decrease was accelerating to the extent the coins became lighter and thus caused a growing upward pressure on prices. Therefore, during the process, its influence on the prices would have grown stronger; this is demonstrated particularly clearly in the 13th century. Taking this into account, the surprising discovery of the study is that the value of the money standard in medieval Frisia evolved rather orderly and, on the whole, rendered a slow and rather equable decline of the silver equivalence of the unit of account. It demonstrates a quiet acceptance of a phenomenon, that was apparently inevitable. But it also demonstrates the social tenacity of an ingrained custom, because the adaptations – as far as we can be sure about this with the scarcity of data – occurred often after the decrease in silver equivalence of the current standard coins had become almost general. This would imply the existence of trust in the social acceptance of the current face value of the standard coins to a certain degree, comparable with our trust nowadays in fiduciary money. Moreover, trust in the reliability of the private minters might have been stronger than trust in the royal minthouses operated by lords with selfish political motives. The experience in the 14th century with the lords of Coevorden, by then owners of the mint in Groningen, compared with the anonymous minters elsewhere in Frisia, seems to illustrate this. Taken together, it is surprising to find so stable a development of the money of account system in a country without central government, continually exposed to external threat and internal strife. No doubt the local economy must have suffered from the destruction caused by these conflicts, but floods or cattle-plague probably had an even more destabilising effect on production and commerce. To find nevertheless so balanced an evolution of an economic institution, not directed by intelligible governance but by a market controlled currency, for me, was quite unexpected. As I view it, this could only be attained under condition of social trust based on cultural experience; trust among the participants of the Frisian markets that 'the others' will behave accordingly in the current money system. This insight, not derived from a theory of rational decision making but from the understanding of a real world history, might contribute a little to the body of knowledge in economics, a science that nowadays is urged to face the problems of a global economy with a lack of proper economic institutions.
One key strategy to achieve reduction in maternal and neonatal mortality is to scale up the availability of skilled birth attendants (SBAs). The staff nurses (i.e., registered nurse and midwives) are skilled birth attendants recognized by the government of India. Aim and objectives: This thesis studied women's choices, perceptions, and practices related to childbirth, and how these were affected by modernity in general and modernity brought in by maternal health policies (Paper-I). The midwifery scope of practice of staff nurses was studied in government facilities (Paper-II). The confidence of the final-year students on selected midwifery skills, from the diploma and bachelor's programmes, was assessed against the list of competencies of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) (Paper-III). The teaching and learning approaches associated with confidence were also studied (Paper-IV). Methods: The grounded theory approach was used to develop models for describing the transition in childbirth practices amongst tribal women (Paper -I) and to describe the scope of midwifery practice of staff nurses (Paper-II). Data used for Paper-I included eight focus groups with women and five in-depth interviews with traditional birth attendants and staff nurses. For Paper-II, 28 service providers and teachers from schools of nursing were interviewed in depth. A cross sectional survey design was used to assess the confidence of final-year students from 25 randomly selected educational institutions stratified by type of programme (diploma/bachelor's) and ownership (private/government) (Paper-III & IV). Students assessed their confidence using a 4-point Likert scale in the competency domains of antepartum, intrapartum, postpartum, and newborn care. Explorative factor analysis using principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce skill statements into subscales for each domain. Crude and adjusted odds ratios with 95% CI were calculated to compare students with high confidence (≤75th percentile of scores) and those without high confidence (> 75th percentile) to compare diploma and bachelor students (Paper-III) and to study the association of teaching-learning methods and high and not high confidence for each subscale (Paper -IV). Results: A transition in childbirth practices was noted amongst women—a shift from home to hospital births seen as a trade-off between desirables (i.e., secure surroundings) and essentials (i.e., reduced risk of mortality)' (Paper-I). General development, increased access to western medical care, and international/national maternal health policies socialized women into western childbirth practices. The communities increasingly relied on hospitals as a consequence of role redefinition and deskilling of the Traditional Birth Attendants. Existing cultural beliefs facilitated the acceptance of medical interventions. The midwifery practice of staff nurses was ‗circumstance-driven' and ranged from extended to marginal because the legal right to practice was unclear Paper-II). Their restricted practice led to deskilling, and extended practice was perceived as risky. The clinical midwifery education of students was marginalized. Because of dual registration as nurse and midwife, the identity of a nurse was predominant. From 633 students, 25-40% scored above the 75th percentile and 38-50% below the 50th percentile of confidence in all subscales Paper-III). A majority had not attended the required number of births prescribed by the Indian Nursing Council. The diploma students were 2-4 times more likely to have high confidence in all subscales compared to the bachelor students. High confidence was associated with number of births attended, practice on manikins, and being satisfied with supervision during clinical practice (Paper-IV). Conclusions: Access to hospitals increases women's choices for childbirth in the context of high mortality. Inequitable distribution of health facilities requires region specific strategies. The women are dissatisfied with the psychosocial aspects of hospital care. India has a national regulatory body, but midwifery specific regulation is lacking. In this situation, the midwifery scope of practice of staff nurses is undefined. The pre-service midwifery education does not develop student's confidence to provide first level care for childbirth, as expected by the governments. Short-term and long-term measures to professionalize midwives in India are suggested
As a normative principle, federalism describes "the method of dividing powers so that the general and regional governments are each, within a sphere, co-ordinate and independent" (Wheare 1963: 10). The federal principle thus prescribes subnational self-rule on matters of local and regional scope and shared rule of the subnational units and the federal government on matters that transcend regional capabilities and jurisdiction (Elazar 1987). To not confuse federalism with other means and ways to territorially distribute power, e.g. decentralization, the vertical division and diffusion of jurisdiction needs to be constitutionally enshrined and cannot be unilaterally altered (Hueglin 2013). The constitutional safeguard is the core of federations that are the empirical embodiments of the normative principle of subnational autonomy on the one hand and federally shared jurisdiction on the other. Hence, federations are states that possess a federal constitution, i.e. a written agreement enshrining the basic political order of a state (who does what), that necessitates the approval of all constitutive parts, i.e. the federal government and the subnational units (Watts 2008: 8–9). Since "federalism is some one or several varieties of political philosophy or ideology and […] federation […] some type of political institution" (King 1982: 75), the constitution and its political institutions are only the formal framework within which actors of different levels of government work. Thus, federalism does not only encompass structure (polities) but also processes and culture (politics). The latter describes the political actors' behavior according to the logic of compromise and accommodation but also a commitment of the people as a whole towards territorial power sharing and the aforementioned logic of "thinking federal" (Elazar 1987: 192–197; see also Duchacek 1970). Especially, processes and practices within and beyond the federal frame stand out. One procedural characteristic in multi-tiered, federal systems are intergovernmental relations (IGR) that describe "ways and means of operationalizing a system of government" (Elazar 1987: 16). In its broadest terms, IGR are formal and informal interactions of government units between and within layers of government (Poirier and Saunders 2015a). Intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) and intergovernmental councils (IGCs), the two central embodiments of IGR, come into play when self-rule or shared rule is granted but cannot be sufficiently or satisfactorily fulfilled (for a general introduction see Poirier et al. 2015; for an encompassing discussion of IGCs see Bolleyer 2009 and Behnke and Mueller 2017; for an introduction to IGAs see country specific literature). The dissertation project "Federal Reform and Intergovernmental Relations in Switzerland. An Analysis of Intercantonal Agreements and Parliamentary Scrutiny in the Wake of the NFA" starts from the conceptual dualism of federalism and IGR. It aims at answering crucial questions on the most recent developments in the Swiss federal system with respect to horizontal IGAs and the role of subnational legislatures when such IGAs are at stake. The basic and overall research question of the dissertation is directly derived from the underlying research project1 on "[t]he hidden political effects of the Swiss federal reform: The NFA and the changing power relations in the Swiss cantons": To what extent has the NFA affected the cantons and their political systems? The research strategy is twofold and so is the research question further split in two: A first preparatory part approaches the research objects at hand and a second part then aims at answering the basic research question. First, the dissertation asks for the significance of horizontal IGAs between the Swiss cantons and for the factors that explain their occurrence: (I) What is the state of intercantonal cooperation by means of IGAs and what explains the intensity of their use? While literature in the international (Parker 2015) and the Swiss context (Bochsler and Sciarini 2006) assign crucial importance to IGAs, barely anything is known about their empirical significance as well as the factors that drive it. Two exceptions stand out: the investigations by Frenkel and Blaser (1981) and Bochsler (2009) address both questions – state and explanatory factors of IGAs – within the Swiss federal system. However, research on the topic resides in the shadow. Answering research question (I) adds another point in time to the two existing ones – Frenkel and Blaser (1981) analyze IGAs as of 1980 and Bochsler (2009) as of 2005. The subsequent analysis checks whether the state of horizontal IGAs has changed and whether the explanatory factors tested are still of significance. Both is by no means certain: The most recent and encompassing federal reform, the Neugestaltung des Finanzausgleichs und der Aufgabenteilung zwischen Bund und Kantonen (NFA), took force on 1 January 2008 and, among others, strengthened intercantonal cooperation especially with reference to the conclusion of IGAs providing public goods and services that require the sharing of costs and burdens. Art. 48a para. 1 lit. a.–i. Cst prescribes the use of IGAs in certain policy areas, e.g. school and higher education, cultural infrastructure but also waste management and waste water treatment. The further institutionalization of IGAs by its strong codification in the federal constitution and the enshrined federal enforcement mechanisms were widely expected to spur intercantonal cooperation (see Bochsler and Sciarini 2006: 36). After around ten years since the NFA has taken force, the subsequent analysis investigates whether this expectation was right and whether the logic behind the conclusion of IGAs has changed or remained the same. Hence, it provides for the better understanding of state and occurrence of IGAs in general. Furthermore, it puts a special focus on such addressed by the NFA in particular. First, the descriptive analysis shows that there is no clear answer to the question on the development of IGAs: While the mere number of IGAs has not significantly changed of late but consolidated on a high level, other (fiscal) indicators point towards enhanced intercantonal cooperation. With respect to the explanatory model, applying cross-sectional regression analysis as well as the Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP) on dyadic data of intercantonal contracting, the subsequent analysis replicates but also expands the analysis of Bochsler (2009). One of the main findings is that intercantonal cooperation by IGAs mainly takes place within functional, geographically demarcated areas. Mobility plays a crucial role and is one of the main predictors of the intensity of horizontal contractual cooperation. To abstract from the Swiss case, a comparative analysis of the German Bundesländer and the U.S. states is conducted. The crucial question here is whether it exists a similar state and a common logic behind IGAs in other federations as well or whether country specific differences occur. The second part of the dissertation project deals with specific political effects of the NFA, namely effects on the cantonal parliaments as one of the core political institutions on the subnational level (Vatter 2002). While the first part approaches the topic by clarifying state and logic behind IGAs to assess its overall significance for the cantons, the second part directly addresses the basic research question on the political effects of the NFA on power relations within the cantons: (II) How do cantonal parliamentary rights of participation and scrutiny in intercantonal affairs have developed over time and what explains this development? Research on the Swiss cantons provides not only specific descriptive knowledge on singular cases (see Iff et al. 2010 for the canton of Berne and Schwarz et al. 2015 for the canton of Uri) but also on all cantons (Strebel 2014). However, both approaches lack a quantitative comparative and explanatory perspective. Towards answering question (II), it is hypothesized that the NFA and the accompanying public debates and executing national legislation2 triggered change in cantonal parliamentary rights of participation and scrutiny. As already pointed out, the reform heightened the expectation of more executive-driven intercantonal cooperation. Additionally, the federal government settled minimal standards for the conclusion of IGAs that lie within Art. 48a para. 1 lit. a.–i. Cst. Strebel (2014: 231ff.) discusses reforms on the cantonal level towards better parliamentary participation and scrutiny against the background of the NFA. However, a quantitative comparative analysis of the specific factors explaining institutional change stands out: Did the NFA trigger parliamentary reforms in the cantons and what role did other factors play, e.g. the institutional context and the parliaments itself as well as partisan actors within the cantonal arenas? The analysis builds on approaches testing similar effects in other contexts, e.g. the effects of increased activity of state officials on the European level on more parliamentary scrutiny of national governments 'at home' (Raunio and Hix 2000, O'Brennan and Raunio 2007, Winzen 2012, Auel et al. 2015). Methodically, the investigation in this second part makes use of time-series analysis on panel data to isolate the factors explaining institutional change. Besides, an in-depth discussion on a typical case (Lieberman 2005) gives further insights on the workings of the explanatory mechanisms. The dissertation closes by discussing the major implications that can be drawn from the analyses. While the first analysis addressed a trend within federations, i.e. increasing horizontal interactions, the second investigated a major challenge, i.e. efficiency versus democratic accountability (Poirier and Saunders 2015b). The concluding discussion links the two parts of the dissertation and hypothesizes the following: it was the very development towards enhanced parliamentary participation (second analysis) that has hampered the intensity of intercantonal contracting most recently (first analysis). Furthermore, the capability of cantonal political systems is critically discussed. 1 See the abstract of the research project The hidden political effects of the Swiss federal reform: The NFA and the changing power relations in the Swiss cantons (SNSF No. 159343; http://p3.snf.ch/Project-159343, accessed 31 March 2020). 2 i.e. the Bundesgesetz über den Finanz- und Lastenausgleich (FiLaG), in force since 1 April 2005, and the Rahmenvereinbarung über die interkantonale Zusammenarbeit mit Lastenausgleich (IRV), passed for ratification on 24 June 2005.