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The paper addresses a concept of differentiated integration in Slovenian politics. The analysis showed that the key words associated with the salience of DI are seldom used in parliamentary debates, coalition programmes or prime minister speeches. The issue of DI is more a topic for academic discussion than for daily politics. We identify that the common thread throughout Slovenian foreign policy from independence onwards has been that a strong and united EU, which is of key importance for Slovenia. Primarily because of a fear that a multi-tier EU would mean fewer opportunities for future Slovenian governments and in general fewer opportunities for smaller and/or less developed countries.

Human beings are cultural beings. This implies that being deprived of valuable cultural objects may directly affect them in their possibilities of being human. This predicament could explain the special attention given to cases of Nazi-looted cultural objects and, more recently, to collections of cultural objects looted or acquired under duress in territories of the former colonial empires. It may be one of the reasons why, in particular, the quest for restitution of specific cultural objects is deemed to be so important, despite efforts to also explore alternative 'fair and just solutions', as indicated in the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art of 1998. With reference to ideas of the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), this paper explores the value of restitution in more detail. How could these ideas be helpful in understanding and perhaps overcoming legal obstacles in the present on the road to restitution of objects from colonial collections?

International audience; The crucial and growing role performed by different financial intermediaries such as venture capitalists and angel investors as well as more traditional intermediaries such as commercial banks in developing entrepreneurial or innovative firms and boosting product market innovations has led to great research interest in the economics of innovation and entrepreneurial finance. Besides this, there are some important factors or developments which have affected the entrepreneurial finance in general as well as its influence upon different entrepreneurial or innovative firms. Indeed, it is also true that the financial and ownership structures of the different entrepreneurial firms and the legal as well as institutional environment, in which they operate, itself affects the product market innovations (Chemmanur and Fulghieri, 2014). .Therefore, in this paper I want to target a broad theme i.e. analysis of the mechanisms behind this scenario, especially, in the context of Indian market system.

This paper has been written as a background review for the European Research Council-funded PASTRES project (Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins, pastres.org). Lessons from pastoralists, we argue, may help others working in other domains to develop more effective responses to uncertain contexts. Following prof. Scoones’ paper What is uncertainty and why does it matter?, this is one of two papers developed with a view to analyse and reflect on the interfaces and interrelationships between pastoral societies, the uncertainties that embed their livelihoods, and the related coping/adaptive principles, strategies, and practices. Through a structured review and a meta-analysis of existing literature, the environmental, market, and governance dimensions characterizing uncertainty for pastoralists are explored in six different settings: a) Central and southern Asia, with specific references to the Tibetan plateau in China and to Indian pastoralists; b) the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, with a focus on Morocco in the Maghreb-Mashreq region and a wider perspective on pastoralism in Mediterranean Europe; c) the eastern and western flanks of Sub-Saharan Africa drylands, with a specific focus on the Fulani and Borana pastoral groups inhabiting these regions. This paper assesses the practices and strategies pastoral communties adopt in responding to the stresses and shocks generated by the uncertainties that surround them, with a view to understand and appreciate the underpinning inspiring principles. The responses displayed and applied by pastoral communities in the different settings show in fact relevant and intriguing degrees of similarity across the regions. This helps identify a common framework and a set of overarching principles and patterns for pastoralists in dealing with risk and uncertainty. The paper concludes by indicating potential ways we could learn from pastoralists, as part of a wider conversation about embracing uncertainties to meet the challenges of our turbulent world. This endeavour is complemented by another paper that explores the diverse and constantly changing uncertainty frameworks characterising different pastoral regions of the globe.

This country report analyses the salience and position of differentiated integration (DI) in Portugal in the period between 2004-2020. Employing a quantitative and a qualitative analysis, it first examines the salience of DI models and mechanisms for the successive Portuguese governments using documents such as government programmes, Prime-Minister speeches, parliamentary debates, and statements by the Prime Minister in European Council meetings. Secondly, it reviews governments’ general positions on DI, while zooming in on four peaks of salience: the Lisbon Treaty, the debate on the Unitary Patent, the financial crisis and the discussions on the Financial Transaction Tax and the Fiscal Compact, and the White Paper on the Future of Europe. The results from the salience analysis demonstrate a low saliency of differentiated integration (DI) and, more generally, European integration in Portugal. DI models were more salient than DI mechanisms, while DI instances are the most salient. Salience was enhanced by an increasing intersection between domestic and European politics during the euro crisis period, politicising the debate especially around DI instances of an economic nature. The position of Portuguese governments regarding DI during the period analysed was overwhelmingly negative. In general, this stance was also shared by the opposition parties. Over the period of analysis, a wide consensus stood out among Portuguese political parties that DI models clearly go against both the European – by risking a disaggregation of the EU – and the national interest – by possibly pushing Portugal into an even more peripheral position. Notwithstanding this generally negative view of DI, mainstream parties – which alternated in government during the timeframe of the analysis – viewed the enhanced co-operation mechanism in a generally positive manner, recognising its potential to promote advances in European integration when the EU faced critical deadlocks. This Working paper is part of the InDivEU project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

This paper argues for introducing data (infrastructural) literacy as a potential response of journalism education to the challenge of growing datafication in the media industry. It begins with pointing to the vocational orientation and centrality of technology in journalism education. Moving on to datafication as the most recent technological revolution and respective changes it is bringing in the news work. After brief mapping out of the existing responses of journalism education to the challenges posed by datafication, arguments in favor of introducing data infrastructural literacy in curricula of journalism education are presented. Arguments raised in this paper are based on the review of the previous literature as well as the insights gained from the in-depth semi-structured interviews with data analysts from the most influential media organizations in Norway.

Recent research suggests that firm-level factors play a significant role in the gender wage gap. This paper adds to this literature by analysing the role of sorting between firms and bargaining within firms using the methodology of Card et al. (2016). We employ linked employer-employee data for the whole population of firms and employees from Estonia for 2006–2017. Estonia is a country with the highest gender wage gap in the EU with about two-thirds of that unexplained by conventional factors. The results show that firm-level factors are important determinants of the gender wage gap, explaining as much as 35% of the gap. We find that within-firm bargaining plays a larger role in the gender wage gap than similar prior papers. This could be related to lenient labour market institutions, as reflected in low minimum wages and union power, and to lower bargaining skills of women. Further, the role of firm-level factors in the gender wage gap have increased over time, and these are especially important at the top of the wage distribution and among workers that are more skilled. There is a heavy penalty for motherhood in wages, 4–9 log points, but this is not related to firm-specific time-invariant productivity premiums.

This report reviews the salience of differentiated integration (DI) in Denmark as well as the shifting positions of Danish governments on DI models and mechanisms. DI was generally a low-salience issue at the level of conceptual models in Denmark in 2004-2020, which is reflected in the government positions, as Danish governments did not take clear public stance on conceptual DI in either 2008, 2012 or 2017-2020. This was the case despite that the EU in general was as salient as economic and social/welfare issues in the period. By contrast, DI mechanisms were highly salient in the Danish debate, driven by discussions on the Danish opt-outs. Danish governments, it seems, would rather engage in public discussions on concrete policies and mechanisms than at the abstract conceptual level when it comes to DI. In 2008 the government wanted to abolish the opt-outs on JHA, the euro and defence. In 2012, it wanted to abolish the opt-out on defence and replace the JHA opt-out with an opt-in model. Neither succeeded. In 2017-2020, after the JHA opt-out referendum in 2015, this position had somewhat changed, supposedly making governments less eager to argue for abolishing the opt-outs. However, the Social Democratic government in 2019-2020 was the only government analysed that did not position itself clearly negatively towards the Danish opt-outs and, as a consequence, DI mechanisms, indicating a policy shift since previous periods. This working paper is part of the InDivEU project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304.

This paper examines competing understanding of gender justice between CSDP civil and military staff and representatives of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). Using the three GLOBUS concepts of justice as an analytical framework the paper shows that there is a sharp contrast between CSDP staff discourse on gender justice and the implementation the Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, and discourse from CSOs. It finds that approaches to gender justice in CSDP missions have been largely dominated by a justice as impartiality approach, located in the language of universal human rights but when we look at the actual the implementation of the WPS agenda in the field (or lack thereof), an approach rooted in the state-centric model of justice as non-domination emerges. In contrast, CSOs tend to advocate for the inclusion of a more context specific approach, one that takes account of intersectionality and complexity, more aligned with justice as mutual recognition. This disconnect in understandings of gender justice is problematic because in order for missions to be successful, or to have any transformative power, there is a need for a level of engagement between mission staff and CSOs. This is in order to take a context specific approach to gender justice in CDPD missions and to avoid the curtailing of certain women’s voices. The paper uses qualitative data from interviews with civilian and personnel from within military field missions and representatives of a variety of CSOs from both the global North and South.

Article 17 of the Directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (the DSM Directive) has strengthened the protection of copyright holders. Moving forward, online content-sharing providers will be responsible for copyright infringement unless the use of works on their platforms is authorized or if they have made ‘best efforts’ to obtain an authorization and prevent the availability of unlicensed works. At the same time, the Directive has made it clear that users of protected works shall be able to rely on the existing limitations and exceptions regarding quotation, criticism and review and caricature, parody or pastiche. The Directive even casts these limitations and exceptions as user rights. This paper points out that copyright’s limitations and exceptions have traditionally consti- tuted a corner stone in the internal balancing of the interests of users against rights holders and with a clear view of safeguarding the interests of free expression and information protected by the Charter. Given the overall purpose of the DSM Directive in strengthening the position of rights holders, there is a dire risk that the benefits of the limitations and exceptions evaporate in the attempts of platform operators to escape liability by use of algorithmic enforcement. The article uses the recent decisions of the CJEU in Pelham, Funke Medien and Spiegel Online to draw attention to the central importance of the limitations and exception as the primary channel for fundamental rights analyses in copyright. It is finally pointed out how the DSM Directive –despite of its on-the-paper recognition of users’ rights– is most likely going to lead to a devaluation of those same rights.

This paper will explore what has been called ‘cryptographic law’ or ‘smart regulation’, referring to self-executing code as a new type of legal regulation. The first part of the paper describes what code-driven law ‘is’ by explaining what it ‘does’. We will then investigate the assumptions of code-driven law, notably concerning our ability to sufficiently foresee the future at the moment of codifying legal norms. This will be related to the concept of legal certainty and connected with the other constitutive aims of the law, those of justice and instrumentality. Finally, the paper will inquire into the nature of code-driven law, raising the question of the meaning of ‘legal by design’ and its relationship to ‘legal protection by design’.

Held up for its emancipatory aims, derided for its hegemonic ways, human security (HS) is the object of contradictory claims that revolve around the concept’s critical credentials. Particularly its cosmopolitan ethos that calls for individuals to be made the referent object of security policy and the equal and global concern for us all is contentious in this regard. While this can be read as liberating people from statist security associations to prioritise their needs and fears, critics argue that its cosmopolitan call emanates from a particular standpoint that imposes on its referents a certain (liberal) understanding of security. This paper attempts to reconcile the cosmopolitan desire to ‘help others’ (who, in cosmopolitan thought, are part of the ‘we’) with the emancipatory necessity to hear the affected. It argues that the question of emancipation is closely tied to justice, where the procedure of arriving at definitions of, and approaches to, security needs to be free from dominance. This conceptualises justice in terms of Erik Eriksen’s justice as mutual recognition. Employing insights from Jonathan Gilmore’s work on post-universal cosmopolitanism, Jenny Peterson’s agonistic approach to HS and Oliver Richmond’s work on hybridity, the paper sketches what a negotiated HS could look like and what its limitations are. These limitations, and a discussion of other emancipatory challenges to the HS concept, highlight that HS remains a work in progress and that emancipation is perhaps never possible, only ever approachable.

Norway is a somewhat exceptional country in Europe in political terms. It is one of the few European countries that are not members of the European Union (EU). Rather it has structured its connections with European institutions and organisations through membership in the European Economic Area (EEA) and a host of other agreements and accessions to EU policies. It is in this context that this paper addresses Norway’s migration policies from the vantage point of three conceptions of global justice. The time period for definitional analysis is recent developments, with a main focus on 2009 to 2016. A relatively recent historical phenomenon to Norway, migration is rapidly becoming an ever more important topic of political debate and policy-making. As any territorial state, Norway is part of the system of states, with effects on the logic of membership and gatekeeping on access to the territory and residence. This system has, however, become more ‘porous’ with supranational actors such as the EU, international legal obligations, and increased interconnectedness in cultural and economic terms transforming the nation-state. A firm conclusion on the adherence of Norway’s migration policy with the three conceptions of justice cannot be provided based on the descriptive definitional work of this paper. If anything, it has shown that there is arguably a tilt toward more adherences with justice as non-domination. Still, in terms of economic migration there is movement in the direction toward justice as impartiality in the equal treatment and non-discrimination principles for EU and EEA citizens. On the other hand, parts of asylum policy clearly stand in the way of realising the notion of reciprocity in the justice as impartiality or mutual recognition.

The report analyses the salience of differentiated integration in the programmes of Bulgarian governments, speeches by heads of governments and heads of state and parliamentary debates between 2007 and 2020 using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Salience analyses produce two key findings. First, the salience of DI models and mechanisms is generally low in official government positions and parliamentary debates. Second, in the case of Bulgaria, the salience of Schengen and EMU is an expression of a preference for more integration, given that fully-fledged participation in these areas has been consistently considered not only an obligation deriving from EU Membership but also a priority by Bulgarian decision-makers ever since 2007. The report shows that European policy and debates on Europe’s future are not central in Bulgarian government positions. Governing parties and opposition parties share a clearly negative stance towards models of DI. In the rhetoric of national politicians, ‘core Еurope’ is used in parallel with ‘periphery,’ triggering negative associations with second-class membership in a union of more developed and powerful countries. While the position on DI seems to be independent of context, the position towards deepening European integration seems to be more complex and context-driven. This Working paper is part of the InDivEU project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304.

Lawyers and some branches of the government use artificial intelligence based programs to take decisions and develop their business strategies. In addition, several research teams have developed AI programs that are able to predict court decisions. Similar systems may be used in courts in the near future to administer files, support judges, or maybe replace them. In this paper, we assess possible consequence of deploying AI in European courts. The paper is divided in four main sections. First, we distinguish between AI in the court – when AI is used by parties or the court administration, – and AI as the court – AI that can support or replace judges. Second, we categorise civil cases in Europe according to their complexity and conflict, suggesting that judges may be assisted by AI systems, but cannot be replaced for complex high-conflict cases. Third, we assess to what extent AI can replace judges and still meet the legal requirements following from (1) principles of access to justice like accessibility, transparency, and accountability; and (2) from the fundamental right to an effective remedy and the right to a fair trial as protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. Fourth, we conclude that under the current legal framework it is already feasible to replace judges by AI for non-complex low-conflict cases. In addition, using only AI to decide cases with higher complexity and conflict would threaten access to justice as well as the right to a fair trial. We, also, recognizes that in the future an increasing use of AI in courts will challenge our traditional understanding of concepts like access to justice and the right to a fair trial. This understanding will be driven by the perception court-users will have of AI as the court.

This paper provides a detailed description of the Eurace@Unibi model, which has been developed as a versatile tool for economic policy analysis. The model explicitly incorporates the decentralized interaction of heterogeneous agents across different sectors and regions. The modeling of individual behavior is based on heuristics with empirical microfoundations. Although Eurace@Unibi has been applied successfully to different policy domains, the complexity of the structure of the model, which is similar to other agent-based macroeconomic models, has given rise to concerns about the reproducibility and robustness of the obtained insights. This paper addresses these concerns by describing the exact details of all decision rules, interaction protocols and balance sheets used in the model. Furthermore, we discuss the use of a virtual appliance as a tool allowing third parties to reproduce and verify the simulation results. The paper provides a systematic and extensive sensitivity analysis of the simulation output with respect to a set of key parameters. Particular emphasis is put on the question which parameter constellations give rise to strong economic fluctuations and high frequencies of sudden downturns in economic activity.

Archaeobotanical and genetic analysis of modern plant materials are drawing a complex scenario for the origins of cereal agriculture in the Levant. This paper presents an improved method for the study of early farming harvesting systems based on the texture analysis of gloss observed on sickle blades through confocal microscopy. Using this method, we identify different plant harvesting activities (unripe/semi-ripe/ripe cereal reaping and reed and grass cutting) quantitatively and evaluate their evolution during the time when plant cultivation activities started and domesticated crops appeared in the Levant (12,800 to 7000 cal BC). The state of maturity of cereals when harvested shifted over time from unripe, to semi-ripe and finally to ripe. Most of these changes in harvesting techniques are explained by the modification of crops during the transition to agriculture. The shift in plant harvesting strategies was neither chronologically linear nor geographically homogeneous. Fully mature cereal harvesting becomes dominant around 8500 cal BC in Southern Levant and one millennium later in Northern Levant, which accords with the appearance of domestic varieties in the archaeobotanical record. The evolution of plant harvesting better fits with the gradualist model of explanation of cereal agriculture than with the punctuated one., We acknowledge all the archaeologists who excavated the sites from which the glossed tools analyzed in this paper have been recovered: Dr. J. Cauvin, Dr H. Gebel, Dr. D. Stordeur, Dr- M. Molist, Dr. E. Coqueugniot, Dr. F. Valla, Dr. A.M.T. Moore and Dr. O. Bar-Yosef. The research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science (PID2019-105767GB-I00), the Shelby White-Leon Levy Foundation (Publication of Tell Qarassa), the Palarq Foundation (Excavation of Kharaysin) and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Proyectos Intramurales para Arqueología en el Exterior).

This paper introduces an approach for estimation of treatment effect heterogeneity in event studies with staggered adoption. Traditional impact evaluation methods can be near-term biased in those settings. The proposed approach attenuates biases and recovers heterogeneity more efficiently than traditional methods. It is shown that machine learning algorithms can be used to accurately predict counterfactuals, which can then be used to estimate a distribution of treatment effects. Simulations demonstrate how that approach can be accurate and efficient, even in the presence of dynamic treatment effects. The paper concludes with an application to a large energy efficiency program in the US.

This paper highlights the way in which workers of different ages and abilities are affected by anticipated and unanticipated trade liberalisations. A two-factor (skilled and unskilled labour), two-sector Heckscher–Ohlin trade model is supplemented with an education sector which uses skilled labour and time to convert unskilled workers into skilled workers. A skilled worker's income depends on her ability, but all unskilled workers have the same income. Trade liberalisation in a relatively skilled labour abundant country increases the relative skilled wage and induces skill upgrading by the existing workforce, with younger and more able unskilled workers most likely to upgrade. But not all upgraders are better off as a result of the liberalisation. The older and less able upgraders are likely to lose. For an anticipated liberalisation we show that the preferred upgrading strategies depend on a worker's ability and that much of the upgrading will take place before the liberalisation. Hence some workers who would have upgraded had they anticipated the liberalisation will not if it is unanticipated, and adjustment assistance that applies only to post-liberalisation upgraders will fail to compensate some losers and distort the upgrading decisions of others.

It is well known that cultural links between countries increase bilateral trade. In this paper we exploit Portuguese firm-level data on exports to 199 destinations to investigate the questions: How? Do cultural links increase the number of exporters, or the shipments per exporter? What is the role of firm heterogeneity? The results reveal that cultural links, measured by common language/colonial ties and emigrant communities, are significantly associated with a lower incidence of within-firm export zeros and with larger shipments per exporter. Furthermore, they show that the former of these relationships tends to be magnified by firm size, suggesting that firm heterogeneity is key in shaping the interplay between cultural links and the extensive margin of international trade.

Cryptocurrencies are gaining momentum in investor attention, are about to become a new asset class, and may provide a hedging alternative against the risk of devaluation of fiat currencies following the COVID-19 crisis. In order to provide a thorough understanding of this new asset class, risk indicators need to consider tail risk behaviour and the interdependencies between the cryptocurrencies not only for risk management but also for portfolio optimization. The tail risk network analysis framework proposed in the paper is able to identify individual risk characteristics and capture spillover effect in a network topology. Finally we construct tail event sensitive portfolios and consequently test the performance during an unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic.

Virtual currencies, like Bitcoin, raise new legal questions due to their innovative technological concepts. While academic research covers nearly all areas of the technological concepts of those currencies, legal research focuses only on a few topics. The papers which have been published so far discuss mainly economic law, tax law and financial regulations. At the same time governments are starting to explicitly regulate virtual currencies in terms of anti-money-laundering (AML) and to clarify or strengthen the legal basis for prosecuting crimes in the context of virtual currencies. Furthermore, criminal investigation in the context of virtual currencies is intensifying with the rising number of virtual currency related crimes. Moreover, governments should also start to consider crime prevention in the context of virtual currencies. AML regulation, crime prevention and prosecution have to take heed of the fundamental rights of the citizens affected. To date, legal research has not discussed the relationship between AML regulation (in the context of virtual currencies), crime prevention (in the context of virtual currencies), the prosecution of virtual currencies and fundamental rights. Many regulatory concepts will collide with the fundamental right to property of the owners of virtual currency units and the freedom to pursue a trade or profession of owners and operators of exchange platforms, mining pools etc. In virtual currencies organized as peer-to-peer systems, the freedom of association also has to be mentioned. With particular regard to prosecuting, law enforcement agencies restrict the freedom of telecommunication, data privacy (including the right to informational self-determination), freedom of expression, and the freedom of information. Whenever some of these fundamental rights are impinged upon, regulation concepts and investigation or prosecution approaches must be provided for by law and must fulfill the criterion of necessity. Further interdisciplinary research is needed to develop efficient and legit prevention and criminal investigation concepts.

The EU fundamentally changed its positions from 2009 to 2015 with respect to the procedural aspects of global climate collaboration; from being a strong defender of an impartial international regime, founded on a view of global justice as impartiality, the EU started to promote a global structure founded on global justice as mutual recognition. Rather than continuing to oppose the positions of the BASIC countries (Brazil, China, India and South-Africa), the EU aligned to and largely adopted their positions. While geopolitical changes certainly played a role in this, it also resulted from a shift in which behaviours that were understood as appropriate within global climate politics, both within the global climate regime and in the EU. Based on reviews of the literature on global climate negotiations and international diplomacy, we identified two ideal type institutional climate logics: the scientific and the diplomatic institutional logics. The two logics produce different understandings of how to develop climate negotiation positions. A shift towards increased importance of the diplomatic logic contributes to explain the shift in EU positions. By analysing how and why the BASIC countries have influenced the changes in EU positions after the climate negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, this paper contributes to bridging the gap between the literature on the BASIC countries and the literature on the EU in climate negotiations. Moreover, the study results in findings of general value to the literatures on the EU as an international actor and global climate politics.

Working from home (WFH) is meanwhile a technologically feasible solution for regular employment in many sectors and with positive impacts on health, resource consumption and the environment. The paper addresses the Corona crisis as a situation where working people are forced to switch to teleworking. A global secondary perception analysis and a subsequent econometric analysis for Southern Germany at district level confirms teleworkability to be a significant tool for more climate protection if implemented in real life (WFH). Higher infection incidence seems to indicate lower levels of teleworkability or less acceptance or less responsiveness during the pandemic. Teleworkability translated into true WFH might also strengthen regional resilience against contagion. It is thus a potential instrument of safer public infrastructure. &nbsp

We analyse impacts of the rising labor force participation of women on the gender wage gap. We formulate and structurally estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market in which the elasticity of substitution between male and female labor is allowed to vary depending on the task content of occupations. We find that the elasticity of substitution is higher in high- paying occupations that are intensive in abstract and analytical tasks than in low-paying manual and routine occupations. Consistent with this we find a narrowing of the gender wage gap towards the upper end of the wage distribution and an increase in the gender wage gap at the low end. Demand side trends favoured women and this attenuated the supply-driven downward pressure on women's wages in low-paying occupations, and fully counteracted it in high-paying occupations. The paper contributes new evidence on the distribution of the gender wage gaps, and contributes to a wider literature on technological change, occupational sorting, wage inequality and polarization.

One of the European Union’s (EU) aim is to boost regional economic integration among developing countries. The empowerment of regional organisations, such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC), suggests that the EU promotes global justice in the form of non-domination of actors in the Global South. Yet, scholarship has heavily criticised the EU for how it negotiated an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the SADC, arguing that it contributed to disturbing regional integration. Indeed, it is puzzling why the EU pursued a bilateral trade agreement with South Africa separate from SADC’s customs union, and why it negotiated an EPA with a limited SADC negotiating group rather than with the full regional organisation. By making use of the concept of cohesion and embedding this in a conception of justice as non-domination, I argue that the initial absence of SADC’s cohesion made the EPA negotiations vulnerable to a dominant EU. The empirical case of the EU-SADC EPA suggests that regional integration is necessary for realizing global justice. However, this working paper argues that regional organisations are not sufficient to achieve justice in the form of non-domination, but they need to be accompanied by cohesion or solidarity among their members. Non-domination as a principle of global justice therefore requires an enabling context of cohesive developing regions.

Turkey’s futures with the European Union has never looked so uncertain. Turkey’s relations with the European Union are at a stalemate, with accession negotiations effectively frozen. Yet, Turkey and the EU have a high degree of functional cooperation, where Turkey complies with the EU acquis. Turkey’s opting into the EU acquis in multiple policy areas, where its voluntary compliance-prior to or an alternative to accession, could be conceptualized as external differentiated integration. Turkey adjusts itself to the EU rules on foreign policy, customs union, Schengen regime, development policy to name a few. This paper looks at the varying degrees of Turkish compliance into the EU acquis, and proposes that Turkey will remain an integral part of the European integration.

Do new communication technologies, such as social media, reduce collective action problem? This paper provides evidence that penetration of VK, the dominant Russian online social network, affected protest activity during a wave of protests in Russia in 2011. As a source of exogenous variation in network penetration, we use information on the city of origin of the students who studied together with the founder of VK, controlling for the city of origin of the students who studied at the same university several years earlier or later. We find that a 10% increase in VK penetration increased the probability of a protest by 4.6%, and the number of protesters by 19%. Additional results suggest that social media has affected protest activity by reducing the costs of coordination, rather than by spreading information critical of the government. In particular, VK penetration increased pro-governmental support and reduced the number of people who were ready to participate in protests right before the protests took place. Also, cities with higher fractionalization of network users between VK and Facebook experienced fewer protests. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that municipalities with higher VK penetration received smaller transfers from the central government after the occurrence of protests.

The Brexit process has not just one, but several sub-national dimensions which have not been discussed as prominently as many of the sub-national entities of the European Union would consider necessary. The withdrawal of a Member State, especially of one the United Kingdom (UK) with its very distinct set of relationships between its sub-national components, will affect the dense network of vertical and horizontal relationships that EU membership has fostered between sub-national entities and within the EU institutional system. A net-contributor such as Great Britain leaving also profoundly impacts cohesion policy and thereby risks deepening regional disparities in the EU 27. The European Committee of the Regions has been the champion of the concerns of both EU and UK sub-national levels of governance in the Brexit process and has continuously highlighted the 'asymmetric' and in many cases still unclear effects of this momentous change on the EU multi-level system.

In this paper, we develop a penalized realized variance (PRV) estimator of the quadratic variation (QV) of a high-dimensional continuous It\^{o} semimartingale. We adapt the principle idea of regularization from linear regression to covariance estimation in a continuous-time high-frequency setting. We show that under a nuclear norm penalization, the PRV is computed by soft-thresholding the eigenvalues of realized variance (RV). It therefore encourages sparsity of singular values or, equivalently, low rank of the solution. We prove our estimator is minimax optimal up to a logarithmic factor. We derive a concentration inequality, which reveals that the rank of PRV is -- with a high probability -- the number of non-negligible eigenvalues of the QV. Moreover, we also provide the associated non-asymptotic analysis for the spot variance. We suggest an intuitive data-driven bootstrap procedure to select the shrinkage parameter. Our theory is supplemented by a simulation study and an empirical application. The PRV detects about three-five factors in the equity market, with a notable rank decrease during times of distress in financial markets. This is consistent with most standard asset pricing models, where a limited amount of systematic factors driving the cross-section of stock returns are perturbed by idiosyncratic errors, rendering the QV -- and also RV -- of full rank.

Can bombs and broadcasts instigate resistance against a foreign regime? In this paper, we examine the canonical case of bombing designed to undermine enemy morale-the Allied bomber offensive against Germany during World War II. Our evidence shows that air power and the airwaves indeed undermined regime support. We collect data on treason trials and combine it with information on the bombing of over 900 German towns and cities. Using plausibly exogenous variation in weather, we show that places that suffered more bombardment saw noticeably more opposition. Bombing also reduced the combat motivation of soldiers: fighter pilots from bombed-out cities performed markedly less well after raids. We also provide evidence that exposure to BBC radio, especially together with bombing, increased the number of resistance cases. We corroborate these findings with the evidence on people's opinions and behavior using unique survey data collected in 1945.

Since its inception, the European Union has proclaimed an ambition to promote values and justice at the global level. In this paper, I discuss how we can assess a foreign policy that has such an ambition. There is no common understanding of how claims to justice beyond borders should be met. Further, in order to be relevant, any critical assessment of foreign policy must take into consideration the constraints of global politics, while at the same time not losing sight of normative requirements. In order to take heed of these concerns, I suggest an analytical framework based on three different conceptions of global justice. These conceptions come with strengths and weaknesses, as they prioritise some challenges to global justice over others. The differences between these conceptions facilitate the empirical effort of discerning inhibiting and facilitating factors for the conduct of a just foreign policy – of taking into account the constraints of global politics. At the same time, the framework acknowledges the contested nature of justice without compromising on the need to assess foreign policy practice against explicit normative criteria. The approach makes it possible for the analyst to provide a more nuanced assessment as well as one based on what might be considered feasible criteria for justice, and to specify the strengths and weaknesses of the observed foreign policy practice from different perspectives.

The DMX process is a second-generation CO2 capture process using a phase change solvent. The development of this process including lab scale and minipilot experimentation has been carried out by IFPEN within different projects such as OCTAVIUS & VALORCO. These studies highlighted the main advantages of the DMX process : high cyclic solvent capacity (from 0.1 to 1 mol CO2/mol solvent), low heat required for regeneration (less than 2.3 GJ/tCO2 for 90 % capture rate), high CO2 purity, no degradation of the solvent (up to 160°C) allowing to carry out the regeneration step at higher temperature and pressure, producing CO2 at higher pressure (up to 6-7 bara), no corrosion of the solvent allowing the use of Carbon Steel material for the construction of the future industrial units. First techno-economic evaluations have shown an OPEX reduction and a CO2 capture cost reduction up to 30 % compared to the first-generation processes using amine-based solvents. DMX process is very promising but it needs now to be demonstrated in an industrial scale pilot plant in order to increase its TRL from 4 to 7. This demonstration, which is the last step before the commercialisation of this process by AXENS, will be carried within the 3D (DMX Demonstration in Dunkirk) project on an industrial pilot plant to be built at the ArcelorMittal steel mill in Dunkirk (France) In this paper, are presented the design of the industrial pilot plant; first experimentation plan is also presented and explained. Planning of the demonstration and expected commercialisation will be discussed.

Justice is a contested concept with complex conceptual frameworks premising a particular approach. This paper defends an approach to justice based on the concept of ‘recognition’, one of the three founding principles of the GLOBUS project. The argument is that ‘recognition’ creates mutual obligations and is not just a discursive acceptance of another. Upon this framework, the other two principles of justice, nondomination and impartiality, are integrated into a conceptual framework to analyse European Union/South African obligations regarding clean energy. This is not a distributive justice argument. It is an argument premised on recognising that developed countries, in this case those in the European Union, have contributed more to climate change than developing countries, in this case South Africa. However, a distributive obligation follows from struggles for recognition. The consequences of climate change are experienced asymmetrically, with developing countries both being more affected and having fewer resources to adapt to and mitigate it. Developed countries consequently have an obligation to contribute significantly to developing countries’ adaptation and mitigation programmes. In this way, a just transition away from fossil fuels in developing countries is possible. At the same time, ‘obligation’ gives content to the abstract principles of ‘non-domination’ and ‘impartiality’.

This paper looks at how differing conceptions of justice (Eriksen 2016) are reflected in, and impact upon, the EU’s efforts in the thematic area of ethno-national conflict resolution. As seen in the case studies of Serbia - Kosovo (Tomic 2020) and Cyprus (Diez 2019), the EU’s conflict resolution policy has been characterised by inconsistency. In each case, the EU showed potential for different approaches to justice to be utilised however the focus predominantly remained within a state-centred, approach. As ethno-national conflicts are based on a variety of factors, including territorial disputes, identity, culture and historical injustice, the limitations of justice within such a framework become evident, highlighting the potential of alternative justice models. Simultaneously the EU has aligned its conflict resolution strategy to its ongoing integration and enlargement policies. With enlargement directly linked to the EU’s efforts in conflict resolution, the two case studies show that the EU’s lack of coherence, vis-a-vis its enlargement strategy, prevents it from effectively contributing to ethno-national conflict resolution within its integration policy. In those cases where the EU membership is not the primary aim, the EU’s vision portrays a tentative balance between different approaches to global justice with consequences for policy coherence and effectiveness (Tomic and Tonra 2018). The conclusion provides a summary of considerations to be made for the EU’s role in global justice and ethno-national conflict resolution to be better aligned.

This report analyses the salience and position of the German government concerning differentiated integration in the European Union. The report employs a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse government programs, speeches of the prime minister and parliamentary debates. The results of the salience analysis show that differentiated integration is sparsely mentioned by the German government. It occurs most frequently in parliamentary debates, where it is discussed on a concrete level and concerns instances and mechanisms of differentiated integration. The results of the position analysis show that the German government and opposition parties take a very similar stance that encourages homogenous European legislation in reference to Germany’s historical role and responsibility in Europe. However, when the parliament discusses a specific issue that is in one of the parties’ or Germany’s general interest, mechanisms of differentiated integration are embraced as a way to move forward. This stance can be summarized as homogenisation if possible, DI if necessary. This [report/publication/etc] is part of the InDivEU project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304.

Recent scholarly literature on the EU’s development policy has argued that the Union is using its provision of development cooperation to advance its geo-strategic interests. This paper investigates whether there has been an equivalent rupture with the EU’s core normative commitment, namely to conduct a human rights-based approach to development. Contrary to the hypothesis of change, I find that continuity characterises the EU’s mandate for a new partnership with the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific group of states. In fact, the EU’s commitment to a rights-based approach to development shaped the EU’s negotiating directives for a post-Cotonou agreement. In particular, the EU sought to make sure that human rights commitments in the self-standing EPA trade agreements were not lost, as these relied on references to the Cotonou-acquis. However, drawing on a concept of justice as impartiality, I also find that there are ambiguities to the EU’s rights-based approach. I find that national executives’ delegated authority to initiate and conduct dispute settlement on violations of the Cotonou-acquis comes at the cost of promoting individuals’ and civil society’s right to autonomy. Arguably, the EU’s political conditionality policy prioritises support to duty-bearers (states) to uphold their obligations over the empowerment of rights-holders (individuals) to claim their rights.

This paper investigates the role of social influences in preferences for redistribution using data from the General Social Survey. We employ social interaction models with a socioeconomic network structure and intertemporal feedbacks during the impressionable years. We find substantial evidence of both lagged endogenous and contextual effects that imply that the redistributive preferences are intertemporally dependent. Interestingly, controlling for individual income, the contextual effect of income is negative and strongly significant. Our results highlight the key role of fathers' education in the structure of the social network. We interpret our findings as suggestive evidence that social identity can explain attitudes towards redistribution. We also uncover evidence of threshold effects in preferences for redistribution that are consistent with the predictions of theoretical models that exhibit multiple equilibria. Finally, we show that our results extend to a range of other attitudes and beliefs, including politics, religion, and ethics.

What would datafication look like seen… ‘upside down’? What questions would we ask? What concepts,theories, and methods would we embrace or have to devise? What do we miss if we stick to the mainstream, Western perspective(s)? This paper calls for exploring the question of 'Big Data from the South'. It acknowledges that, while many scholars of various disciplines have started to critically explore the implications of datafication across the social, cultural and political domains, much of this critical scholarship has emerged along a Western axis ideally connecting Silicon Valley, Cambridge, MA and Northern Europe. But how does datafication unfold in countries with fragile democracies, flimsy economies, and impending poverty? Is our conceptual and methodological toolbox able to capture and to understand the dark developments and the amazing creativity emerging at the periphery of the empire? Our South is not just a geographical area, it is primarily a place (and a metaphor) of resistance, subversion and creativity.

Has the increase in female medical researchers led to more medical advances for women? In this paper, we investigate if the gender of inventors shapes their types of inventions. Using data on the universe of US biomedical patents, we find that patents with women inventors are significantly more likely to focus on female diseases and conditions. Consistent with the idea of women researchers choosing to innovate for women, we find stronger effects when the lead inventor on the patent is a woman. Women-led research teams are 26 percent more likely to focus on female health outcomes. This link between the gender focus of the scientist and the type of invention, in combination with the rise of women inventors, appears to have influenced the direction of innovation over the last four decades. Our findings suggest that the demography of inventors matters not just for who invents but also for what is invented.

In this paper, we build a theoretical model to study the underlying factors behind the various partnership levels in different cooperation schemes between airline and high-speed rail (HSR). We study two different intermodal relationships: a parallel one where the networks of the airline and the rail operator overlap partially and a vertical one where they do not overlap at all. We examine the situations when the cooperation levels are either exogenous or endogenous. For any given cooperation level, we show that the incremental profit of a vertical partnership is higher than that of a parallel partnership. However, when the two types of partnerships are both possible, the parallel partnership might be dominated by the vertical partnership only when the air-rail connecting service is sufficiently inferior to the connecting flight. The social welfare level of a parallel partnership is higher than that of a vertical partnership when the air-rail connecting service is sufficiently superior to the connecting flight. When the cooperation level is also a decision variable, a parallel partnership will have higher cooperation level than a vertical partnership when the travel time of HSR is sufficiently short compared with that of air.

The literature on trade liberalisation has presented female labour force participation and employment as positive outcomes which can be realised through trade. Given that female employment depends on the growth and gender composition of the industries affected by trade, authors have found conflicting evidence on the topic. However, Caǧatay (2005) has put forth hypotheses to explain possible scenarios under which feminisation of the labour force can take place, namely the buffer, segmentation and substitution hypotheses. The purpose of this research paper is to determine which of these hypotheses are congruent with changes in female labour force participation in Botswana and South Africa. Both are middle income countries with similar trade compositions which have undertaken trade liberalisation strategies over the last few decades and have experienced positive growth in female labour force participation. Micro and macroeconomic data on trade and employment were utilised for both countries and the findings suggest that the substitution hypothesis holds for both the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in Botswana. While the substitution hypothesis also holds in the South African agricultural sector, the buffer hypothesis holds in the manufacturing sector. Though the female employment growth in both these countries is a positive labour market indicator, developing countries such as these should strive towards attaining outcomes which resemble the segmentation hypothesis to ensure the sustainability of female employment growth. To achieve this, trade and industrial policies should identify female-dominated sectors, or at least sectors which are an important source of female employment, and gear development towards those. In addition, labour policies should be developed in conjunction with these trade and industrial policies to protect the rights of the workers in these industries.

This paper examines the relationship between oil price movements and systemic risk of many financial institutions in major petroleum-based economies. We estimate ΔcoVaR for those institutions and thereby observe the presence of elevated increases in the levels corresponding to the subprime and global financial crises. The results provide evidence in favour of a better risk measurement by accounting for oil returns in the risk functions. The estimated spread between the standard CoVaR and the CoVaR that includes oil is absorbed in a time range that is longer than the duration of the oil shocks. This indicates that the drop in oil prices has a longer effect on risk and requires more time to be discounted by the financial institutions. To support the analysis, we consider other major market-based systemic risk measures. This version: November 5, 2017