Integration, Growth, and Cohesion in an Enlarged European Union
This book’s thirteen contributions bring together the results of recent research on determinants of regional specialization, growth, and convergence in the context of European integration. They offer fresh theoretical and empirical evidence on patterns of regional production structures, specialization, regional disparities, convergence and divergence processes, and evaluation of cohesion policies on both current and future European Union (EU) member states in the context of increased integration. These subjects are addressed in both individual and cross-country analysis using innovative methodologies. They examine structural changes and economic performance differentials across regions and countries in an enlarged EU as well as on evaluating existing policies aimed at reducing economic imbalances.
Integrating Science and Politics for Public Health
This volume is a welcome and timely contribution to our understanding of public health policy making as an essentially political endeavour. A sophisticated mix of theoretical, conceptual and empirical analysis serves as a guide to the challenges inherent in making public policy that accounts for and improves population health.
Insurance intermediation : An economic analysis of the information services market
Insurance intermediaries can help consumers to economize on information and transaction costs in insurance markets. However, competing intermediaries provide heterogeneous information services, which are difficult to assess by incompletely informed consumers. Conduct and performance in the market for insurance information services are analyzed by applying search theoretical and industrial organization approaches. Based on a sample of 927 insurance intermediaries, the factors that affect the quality of the information services provided by them are studied empirically. The results obtained support the main hypotheses derived from industrial organization theories as to the poor working of quality competition under incomplete and asymmetric information on the side of consumers.
Innovation, Networks, and Knowledge Spillovers : Selected Essays
The volume is in three parts. The first part demonstrates that the processes of innovation and technological change are spatially differentiated, both regionally within countries and internationally between countries. The second part broadens, both conceptually and empirically, our understanding of the innovation process and the process of network formation, by examining the increasing importance of knowledge creation and diffusion in the new economy and how this is changing the nature of firms in crucial ways. Particular focus is laid on identifying the growing pressures for firms to develop more inter- and intrafirm networks and on providing lucid illustrations of these different kinds of networks. The third part discusses key issues related to the systems of innovation approach as a conceptual framework for regional innovation analysis and directs attention to enlightening conceptual and empirical work on the issue how knowledge spills over locally.
Innovation, Industrial Dynamics and Structural Transformation : Schumpeterian Legacies
This book provides an account of work in the Schumpeterian and evolutionary tradition of industrial dynamics and the evolution of industries. It is shown that over time industries evolve and change their structure. In this dynamic process change is affected and sometimes constraint by many factors: knowledge and technologies, the capabilities and incentives of actors, new products and processes, and institutions. All these elements and their relations drive innovative activities and affect economic performance in an industry. Investigations into these complex phenomena show a deep interdependence between empirical work delivering a rich account of regularities and stylized facts in the structure of industries and their change, and theoretical analyses ranging from appreciate theorizing to formal modeling.
Innovation and Firm Performance : An Empirical Investigation for German Firms
The process of firms’ growth – in terms of productivity or employment – is a major concern of policy makers. In this context, innovations are considered to play a crucial role in stimulating firms’ performance. This book investigates this general hypothesis by looking at three topics: 1. Does innovation lead to an increase in employment growth? 2. Does innovation boost labour productivity? 3. Does innovation in one period improve innovation performance in subsequent periods? Based on a comprehensive innovation panel dataset for German firms, this book presents detailed results for each question, in particular by separating the effects induced by new products from those induced by the introduction of new production technologies. From a theoretical point of view, amongst others, a new multi-product model has been developed to study employment effects.
Informed Traders as Liquidity Providers : Evidence from the German Equity Market
A high frequency transaction data set for the German equity market is the basis for Alexandra Hachmeister’s extensive empirical analysis. This includes a detailed market description of the German equity market, a new methodological approach for the identification of informed traders and finally the analysis of the individual liquidity providing and demanding behavior of the identified informed traders. Questioning the existing theoretical literature on liquidity provision in equity markets, she finds strong evidence for liquidity providing behavior of informed traders.
Information theory and machine learning
The recent successes of machine learning, especially regarding systems based on deep neural networks, have encouraged further research activities and raised a new set of challenges in understanding and designing complex machine learning algorithms. New applications require learning algorithms to be distributed, have transferable learning results, use computation resources efficiently, convergence quickly on online settings, have performance guarantees, satisfy fairness or privacy constraints, incorporate domain knowledge on model structures, etc. A new wave of developments in statistical learning theory and information theory has set out to address these challenges.
Information infrastructures within European health care : Working with the installed base
This book consolidates experiences from across Europe on the design, development, implementation and evolution of inter-organisational information infrastructures for healthcare. It provides insights with practical relevance for those involved or interested in the planning and implementation of such infrastructures and includes 11 empirical cases on the introduction of core infrastructural arrangements in different national settings: six cases investigate the use of e-prescriptions and five the public platforms for patient-oriented eHealth services. Both are linked to different types of aims.
Information context : Nature, impact, and role ; 5th International conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Sciences, CoLIS 2005, Glasgow, UK, June 4-8, 2005 Proceedings
.CoLIS examinesthehistorical,theoretical,empiricalandtechnicalissuesrelatingtoour understanding and use of information, promoting an interdisciplinary approach to research. CoLIS seeks to provide a broad platform for the examination of context as it relates to our theoretical, empirical and technical development of information-centered disciplines. The theme for CoLIS 5 was the nature, impact and role of context within information-centered research. Context is a complex, dynamic and multi- - mensional concept that in?uences both humans and machines: how they behave individually and how they interact with each other. In CoLIS 5 we took an interdisciplinary approach to the issue of context to help us understand and the theoretical approaches to modelling and understanding context, incorporate contextual reasoning within technology, and develop a shared framework for promoting the exploration of context.
Information and communication technologies in tourism 2007 ; Proceedings of the International Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2007
The 14th ENTER Conference had the theme "Connecting Destinations: New Technologies, New Thinking, New Solutions." This focus reflects efforts to gather cutting-edge academic research and industry applications to address the challenges of ICT advances fostering a globally networked and connected village. The diverse studies including theoretical, empirical, experimental, case studies and policy, all address a myriad of topics, themes, disciplines and approaches, thereby ensuring that any reader will find several studies of interest to them. This year’s proceedings are comprised of 50 research papers that have been double – blind peer reviewed by at three reviewers and represent the global corpus of state-of-the art ICT Travel and Tourism research.
Inevitable Aging? : Contributions to Evolutionary-Demographic Theory
Aging is inevitable: this is gerontological dogma. And humans do inevitably grow old, which is probably why it seems so unlikely to us that other forms of life could escape aging. Escaping aging is not escaping death. Death is an inherent part of life, and it can strike any time. But the question is whether death necessarily becomes more likely as life proceeds. And it does not. The theoretical results in this monograph indicate that life provides alternative strategies. While some organisms will deteriorate over adult ages, for others mortality appears to fall or remain constant, at least over an extended period of life after reproductive maturity. This is empirically observed especially for species that keep on growing during adult ages. Perhaps the diversity of aging matches the diversity of life. My thesis, the central insight of this monograph, is: to deeply understand why some species age it is necessary to understand why other species do not.
Individual Financial Planning for Retirement : Empirical Insights from the Affluent Segment in Germany
Over time, the responsibility for providing for a financially secure retirement has shifted more towards the individual. A number of implicit assumptions about perspectives, behavior, and individual choices underlie this shift. These assumptions presume that individuals are well-informed and reason unemotionally; that they process information correctly; and that they take rational decisions and act to maximize their own welfare. Empirical evidence, however, shows that such maxims do not often guide individuals’ actual behavior. Building on a new structure applied to insights drawn from behavioral finance, this book analyzes the perspectives of individuals with regard to their financial situation in retirement and compares the actions they take with ideal behavior. The work provides new insights into the broadly defined topic of individual retirement-specific financial planning behavior.
Inclusion, Education and Translanguaging : How to Promote Social Justice in (Teacher) Education?
This book is designed as an international anthology on the broader subject of inclusion, education, social justice and translanguaging. Prefaced by Ofelia García, the volume unites conceptional and empirical contributions focusing on various actors within educational institutions, from early childhood to secondary education and teacher training, while offering insights into multiple European and North-American educational systems.
Immanent Realism : An Introduction to Brentano
A set of knotty questions are implied in the very title of Brentano's work "Psychology from an empirical standpoint". To solve them, Albertazzi guides us systematically through Brentano's life and works, investigating into the inherent complexity of both his view of mental life and the related methodology. In so doing, she discloses a number of threads into the open texture of modern philosophy of mind." Lia Formigari, Ordinary professor of Philosophy of Language, La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
Ifo Survey Data in Business Cycle and Monetary Policy Analysis
The business surveys of the Ifo Institute (short for Information and Forschung) are internationally renowned. Every month close to 7,000 enterprises are questioned on their short-term planning and their appraisals of the actual and future business situation. The confidence indicator frequently referred to as the Ifo Business Climate Index is derived from the responses to this Ifo Business Survey. While the Index attracts a lot of attention by practitioners (especially financial market analysts), the use and empirical exploitation of this and other components of Ifo business surveys is – amongst academics – still relatively scarce. The present volume, based on a conference entitled "The Academic Use of Ifo Survey Data", gives examples of timely research questions which can be addressed by qualitative survey data like the monthly Ifo Business Survey. It shows that this type of real-time data can be very informative when it comes to forecasting real economic activity or exploring monetary policy transmission.
Identities at Work
This edited volume on Identities at Work brings together international theory and empirical research that deals with continuity and change of identity formation processes at work under conditions of modern working processes and labour market flexibility. Modern work processes in manufacturing and service organisations increasingly rely upon responsible and competent employees who are willing and able to engage in the tasks that their job requires and in continuous learning. That employees are able to engage in taking up new forms of responsibility and master complex work situations is, on the one hand, dependent upon employees’ skills and how well they are trained. On the other hand, it requires that employees identify with what they do and commit to their work and the performance of tasks.
Humanistic foundation of criminal law
Uses humanity-rationality and experience and the freedom of human will as a theoretical perspective to examine the basic framework of criminal law theories constructed by the criminal classic school and the criminal empirical school. The author puts forward the principle of the duality of rationality and experience of humanity and affirms the determinism of human behavior in the ontological sense and the freedom of will in the axiological sense. From this point of view, this book examines the humanistic foundations of crime and punishment, legislation and justice.
Human motion : Understanding, modeling, capture and animation
Edward Muybridge (1830–1904) is known as the pioneer in motion capt- ing with his famous experiments in 1887 called “Animal Locomotion”. Since then, the feld of animal or human motion analysis has grown in many dir- tions. However, research and results that involve human-like animation and the recovery of motion is still far from being satisfactory. Progress in human motion analysis depends on empirically anchored and grounded research in computer vision, computer graphics, and biomechanics. This book is based on a June 2006 workshop held in Dagstuhl, Germany. This workshop brought together for the frst time researchers from the afo- mentioned disciplines.
Histories of experience in the world of lived religion
This book offers a theoretical introduction to the history of experience on three conceptual levels: everyday experience, experience as process, and experience as structure. Chapters apply 'experience' to empirical case studies, exploring how people have made and shared their religion through experience in history. This book understands experience as a simultaneously socially constructed and intimately personal process that connects individuals to communities and past to future, thereby forming structures that create and direct societies. It represents the crossroads of a new field of the history of experience, and an established tradition of the history of lived religion.



















