Suchergebnisse

While unemployment in the EU is above 10%, the job vacancy rate also remains high around 1.5%. This suggests considerable unmet demand for skills, which is in the focus of the EU employment promotion policies. This paper studies the special role that schooled ICT experts in firms - an intangible input often neglected and difficult to measure – play for productivity. The effects are investigated both in isolation and in conjunction with the impact of ICT maturity on microdata in six European countries (UK, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) for the period 2001-2009. We find that increases in the proportion of ICT-intensive human capital boosts productivity. This seems to confirm the case in favour of recruitment of highly skilled ICT employees. However, the gains vary across countries and industries, suggesting that the channels through which the effects operate are narrower for ICT-intensive human capital than for skilled human capital in general. Our findings provide an important message to the EU employment policy debate that currently revolves around the skill mismatch in general and the unmet demand for ICT skills in particular.

AbstractThis study offers new insights into the largest threats to natural and mixed World Heritage sites in developed countries as considered by their management. In addition to this, the capacity of the management to deal with threats is examined. An Ordered Probit model is used that distinguishes three groups of threats and four categories of adaptive capacity of the management. Data originate from the 2014 UNESCO Periodic Report II for sites in economically advanced countries (Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea) linked to the World Heritage Site database. Estimation results reveal that the probability of a major threat to World Heritage sites is perceived to be highest in the category of climate change and extreme weather events, followed by local conditions affecting the physical structure (temperature, rain, dust). Sites in tropical climates are perceived as significantly more threatened, as are those earlier listed as in danger. The likelihood of perceiving a major threat is highest in Turkey, Italy, Norway and North America. Threats related to climate change are those the management has the lowest capacity to deal with when other important aspects are controlled for. Large and natural areas have a higher perceived administrative capacity to deal with threats than others.

AbstractThis study estimates factors of importance for the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions generated by travellers flying for different reasons based on representative Austrian micro data for the period 2014–2016. The annual average number of flights taken by adults vary between 0.1 (visiting friends) and 0.8 (going on holiday), and the amount of CO2e emissions generated by each return flight is approximately 1100 kg. This leads to a total of 6 million tonnes CO2e emissions per year. Results of the Pseudo Poisson Maximum Likelihood estimations reveal that the amount of CO2e emissions created is related to socio-demographic, locational and seasonal factors, although mainly for the largest group of travellers: the holiday makers. In this group, individuals with university degrees, young persons (16–24 years) and capital city residents generate the largest amounts of emissions, as opposed to persons with children and large households. Residents of the capital region each quarter cause 64 kg more CO2e emissions than inhabitants of rural areas, persons with university degrees create 74 kg larger emissions than those without degrees and young adults instigate 90 kg more emissions than middle-aged persons. CO2e emissions of holiday flights are highest in the first quarter of the year. The importance of education is also pronounced for CO2e emissions related to business travel, as is gender.

This article estimates a count-data model on the flight behaviour of Austrian holiday-makers based on information from a large representative quarterly survey spanning the years 2014-2016. On average, the number of holiday flights ranges between 0.6 and 1.2 per year for residents in the least populated region and the capital, respectively. Results of the estimations reveal that the number of holiday flights is highest for persons with tertiary degrees, of a young age (16-24 years) and capital city residents, while it is lowest for individuals with children and large households. Residents of the capital city fly 78 percent more often in a given quarter than those living in Carinthia, the most rural region. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis reveals that the difference is rather related to location than to variations in individual characteristics. Socio-demographic aspects such as age, household size and travelling with children are of no relevance for the holiday flying behaviour of capital residents.