Suchergebnisse

The literature on antidumping (AD) has documented various aspects of thisprotectionist tool. However, a peculiar feature of AD has not receivedmuch attention: these measures are endogenous to the behavior of theexporting firms, which can adjust the dumping margin by changing theirexport price and ask the authority to amend the AD measures accordingly.The objective of this paper is to fill part of this gap in the literature byanalyzing the AD reviews conducted by the European Union foraffirmative petitions initiated in 1980-2009. To this end, a novel dataset ofall such reviews has been assembled. Summary statistics reveal that morethan a third of all petitions concluded with the imposition of AD measuresare reviewed at least once before their expiration and most reviews lead tolower AD duties (still, almost 20% of the firms investigated throughinterim reviews see their duties increase). There are significant differencesin the outcome of the reviews depending on the party requesting them (i.e.reviews lodged by European producers are less likely to lead to lowerduties). These conclusions are confirmed by the econometric analysis,which also shows that Chinese firms see their duties reduced significantlyless than those of firms from other countries. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This article presents the results of a quantitative research in a Romanian rural community, which aimed to analyze how the socio-economic conditions and family type can influence the phenomenon of school dropout. The results of our research are also confirmed by the results of other specialized studies that highlight the fact that 1 in 2 children living in rural Romania are at risk of poverty and socio-economic marginalization. Or, poverty and socio-economic marginalization, to which we can add the family profile (especially the parents' level of education), are the main determinants of the school dropout of children living in rural communities. In order to verify this hypothesis, our research was conducted on a sample of 363 people from a rural community in South-Western Romania, which is in line with the national demographic trends existing in the rural communities exposed to marginalization and poverty: a decreasing birth rate in the last 5 years, a high mortality (above county average), a negative natural growth, a high share of the illiterate, a high share of people whom children are facing difficulties in access to education etc.

Farming landscapes of Europe are vital arenas for social-ecological sustainability because their significant coverage and potential to integrate food production with biodiversity conservation. While the term 'governance' is popular but imprecise, network governance is well defined, and allows the analysis of informal and formal arrangements where independent people or organization work together towards a common goal (Scarlett and McKinney 2016). Even though real progress has been made in conceptualizing and analyzing network governance in landscape conservation, the use of social network analysis remains at an exploratory stage. This is mostly because methodological and epistemological differences between social science and ecology tools, which make the interdisciplinary approaches a challenging task (Popescu et al. 2014). The number of studies focused on management of grasslands in Romania is limited, and the grasslands management is still deficient despite the late legal motions, which most often do not consider the contribution of science to the process. Therefore, one important issue affecting grasslands management is the gap between practice and research, and no current approach captures the level of cooperation among the researchers in the field. As a result, it is necessary to demonstrate that interactions between researchers, policy makers and stakeholders can have a crucial impact on the management quality. This is why, this paper aims at using Social Network Analysis (SNA), a well-developed scientific domain that envisages network theory to analyze relationships between authors and current situation of the overall scientific network (available online on Scopus) compared with the Romanian network. The results illustrate co-authorship networks, invisible authors, academic stars, research groups dealing with grasslands, research topics in clusters, collaboration between domains, most central researchers, bridge researchers, and also interinstitutional cooperation. Thus, understanding the roles of researchers in the field, and also the connections established within a grassland management network may provide information for designing a better management (Plieninger et al. 2015) and will help Romanian scientists to reframe the debate surrounding the conservation of biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. Our SNA findings will lead to improved collaboration and knowledge exchange between practitioners, scientists, policy makers and stakeholders and therefore will help overcome the main issues caused by Common Agricultural Policies. Because of the biodiversity impacts of contradictory EU policies, it is fundamental for Romanian scientists and authorities to re-evaluate the traditional approaches based exclusively on protection and conservation, and rethink the landscape policy, leading it towards planning and managing by considering the past experiences, research, traditions, and public attitudes. ; peerReviewed

A substantial coverage of native vegetation with high diversity of structural elements, protected species and functional groups can be an important source of resilience for the farming landscapes. Nevertheless, the new Common Agricultural Policies (CAP) measures contradict the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 objective of halting the loss of grasslands, by making agricultural intensification or afforestation an attractive option for farmers (Pe'er et al. 2014). This situation can be interpreted as a "rigidity trap" case, where the landowners recognize the unsuitability of CAP measures but are encouraged to continue by EU subsidies. Furthermore, acquisition of agricultural lands by large landowners (land concentration) allows a small number of owners to control large swaths of land. Such threats simplify the management of grasslands, change the connections among farmers and ultimately disrupt the traditional land use (Hartel and Plieninger 2014). Governance structures involved in agricultural landscape management are highly fragmented mostly because policy and operational responsibilities are divided between an array of organizations and persons which makes the analysis of governance structures difficult with conventional tools. However, network governance allows the analysis of informal and formal arrangements where independent people or organisations work together for a common goal, such as management of grasslands (Alexander et al. 2016). To analyze the changes in grasslands governance induced by EU CAP policies, we use social network analysis to contrast two areas over time (before and after influence of CAP) in two regions from Romania - Iron Gates Natural Park and Dobrogea. We selected two Romanian regions (Iron Gates Natural Park (IGNP) - SW Romania and Dobrogea - SE Romania), representative for grassland management in mountain and lowland settings, respectively. The IGNP pasture management was traditionally performed in a decentralized, community-level system and this type of management continues to this day. In contrast, Dobrogea was characterized by a centralized, state-run management regime during the communist time, and by large landowners after transition period ended. We first identified actors of grasslands' governance (i.e., organisations, local people) and analyse management networks using social network metrics (e.g., network-level metrics), we then, identified actors or groups of actors with leadership roles, mainly those promoting sustainability of traditionally managed grasslands in a EU policy-driven management context (e.g., pioneer, sponsor, steward, facilitator of a network), and finally, reported the difference between management regimes in two areas. The results allowed us to explore barriers and opportunities for successful governance by considering influences of typical practices regarding landscape governance and performance, and to understand how formal policy networks influence informal social networks. ; peerReviewed