Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Although horror films are quite prevalent in Hollywood as well as in various national cinemas, they are not so in the tradition of Greek cinema. However, there are several Greek horror films as well as film-makers – both amateur and professional – working on the genre. This article provides an overview of contemporary horror cinema in Greece, briefly discussing its background and highlighting a change both in the quantity and quality of Greek horror films after 2010. The article also presents key themes found in Greek horror films and traces threads that connect the films while also noting the ways recent horror films have been influenced by and commented upon the Greek economic and sociopolitical crisis. It situates these films in an emerging culture that surrounds, sustains, and seeks to develop this phenomenon in Greece. Finally, the article is followed by an appendix that offers a chronologically organized indicative list of Greek horror films encountered online during this research from early precursors in the mid-1970s to the more recent production discussed in the article, from 2004 down to the present.

Frame analysis has been often used by scholars studying New Social Movements to analyze their discourses and their ability to mobilise people. This paper refers to the application of 'frame analysis' to a different context, namely to discourses of both social movements and institutional actors in the context of public policy-making. More particularly, the study is concerned with the discourses of social actors who participate in the making of EU environmental policy. The advantages and limitations of frame analysis as a method for analysing discourse in an institutional context are discussed. Two case-studies are used to highlight the pros and cons of the method. First, the competing discourses of environmental organisations, business associations, and EU officials with regard to environmental sustainability and the Fifth Action Programme are examined. The second case study addresses the issue of Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-Ts) and examines different types of framing of sustainable mobility developed by policy actors. Conclusions are drawn with regard to the contribution of frame theory in the analysis of policy-making processes.

Empirical evidence shows that fiscal multipliers depend on the state of the cycle, the nature of fiscal policy and the level of debt. In other words, evidence points to non-linearities in the effects of fiscal policy. This paper provides a framework to simultaneously assess the relevance of the fiscal space of the government together with other sources of non-linearities. The empirical analysis, which uses a panel of 13 countries between 1980 and 2014, finds that fiscal consolidations based on tax increases are in general self-defeating, in that they result in an increase of the debt-to-GDP ratio. Increasing taxes in periods of expansion has the most recessionary effect on the economy. Cutting public expenditure has a less pronounced effect on economic activity and can stabilize debt. This paper also discusses the econometrics of non-linearities. Though the literature has often adopted the local projections approach to derive impulse response functions, I address the potential pitfalls of this method both analytically and econometrically.

This paper presents the challenges of increasing the energy efficiency investments in European Union (EU) residential buildings in the context of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The paper presents the results of the PRIMES buildings model in key energy policy applications to support cost-effective and fair policy making in buildings across Europe. The model covers, in detail, the building sector for all the EU Member States (MS), segmenting the buildings into many categories. The approach proposed includes non-market barriers in conventional microeconomic modelling, which combined with idiosyncratic preferences can capture poor energy efficiency choices and still represent rational behaviours. The model includes a detailed portrayal of policies specific to the sector, comprising economic and regulatory policies as well as institutional measures. The results of the model show that the removal of non-market barriers is of great importance in reducing energy consumption and increasing both the pace and the depth of renovation investment. However, the institutional measures alone are not enough to induce energy efficiency improvement to the scale required to achieve the climate neutrality objectives. Economic (i.e., subsidies) or regulatory measures (i.e., energy performance standards) are also required to decrease emissions and energy consumption in buildings and the paper compares different configurations thereof. The optimum policy mix obviously derives from a compromise among various aims including the cost-effectiveness of the policy budget and the distributional impacts across building and consumer types.

This paper presents the challenges of increasing the energy efficiency investments in European Union (EU) residential buildings in the context of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The paper presents the results of the PRIMES buildings model in key energy policy applications to support cost-effective and fair policy making in buildings across Europe. The model covers, in detail, the building sector for all the EU Member States (MS), segmenting the buildings into many categories. The approach proposed includes non-market barriers in conventional microeconomic modelling, which combined with idiosyncratic preferences can capture poor energy efficiency choices and still represent rational behaviours. The model includes a detailed portrayal of policies specific to the sector, comprising economic and regulatory policies as well as institutional measures. The results of the model show that the removal of non-market barriers is of great importance in reducing energy consumption and increasing both the pace and the depth of renovation investment. However, the institutional measures alone are not enough to induce energy efficiency improvement to the scale required to achieve the climate neutrality objectives. Economic (i.e., subsidies) or regulatory measures (i.e., energy performance standards) are also required to decrease emissions and energy consumption in buildings and the paper compares different configurations thereof. The optimum policy mix obviously derives from a compromise among various aims including the cost-effectiveness of the policy budget and the distributional impacts across building and consumer types.