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Introduction: The total demand for freight transport in Europe has increased significantly in recent decades, but most of it has been handled by road transport. To fulfil the modal shift targets set in the EU White Paper 2011, it will be necessary to double rail's market share from today's 18 %, by 2050. Translating this into reality means rail will have to handle 3 to 4 times the cargo volume it does today. With this in mind, the paper develops a vision of an efficient rail freight system in 2050. Methodology: To achieve the above objective, the research applies literature survey and group discussion methodology and applying a system approach. Keeping on board the EU Transport White Paper 2011 modal shift targets, as well as future freight demand and customer requirements, the current research attempts to answer the following three critical questions: Results: The authors find that the service quality can be improved by better planning, application of appropriate ICT-systems and adoption of an integrated supply chain approach. A more customer-orientated service can also be achieved by further deregulation of rail. There is also an urgent need for a faster implementation of Rail Freight Corridors (RFC). As well as liner trains, future rail freight services should be offering end-point trains, with semi/ fully automated loading/unloading equipment in hub-terminals, as well as terminals at sidings to improve the availability of intermodal operation. Conclusion: To offer a competitive price and reliable service, a reduction in operating costs will be vital by implementing a number of measures, including operation of heavier and longer trains, wider loading gauge, higher average speed, and better utilisation of wagon space and all assets. This will bring increased capacity, as well as better timetable planning, signalling systems and infrastructure improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies spouses' intrahousehold decision-making, using unique information from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions special module on Intrahousehold Sharing of Resources. We build an index to measure the bargaining power of the wife in household decision-making in European countries and analyze how that index correlates with household demographic characteristics. We find cross-country differences in the values of this index, although estimates show that, in general, older, relatively more educated and working spouses with higher wages, have more power in intrahousehold decision-making. Furthermore, country-level conditions correlate with spouses' bargaining power in household decision-making. The paper provides a direct empirical exploration of intrahousehold decision-making in a cross-country setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses all the peer-reviewed articles published by European authors in 161 neurological journals screened by ISI in accordance with Current Contents/Life Science and Current Contents/Clinical Medicine in the period 1995–1998. Our aim was to report the amount and quality of neurological research in the different countries of the European Union (EU), the USA and the world. The number of papers, the impact factors (IF), the population of the source country and gross domestic product (GDP), were downloaded. Data show that in the EU there is a progressive increase in the number of published papers from 1995 to 1998 and that large countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy rank at the top four places for absolute number of papers. The gap in the number of papers between the USA and the EU significantly diminished in the examined period, from a difference of 14 % to 6 %. However, when the IF is considered, the USA performed better than EU, although excellent results have been obtained by the United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands and Sweden. When the number and quality of papers are plotted against the number of inhabitants or GDP, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland are the leading countries in Europe. The present study demonstrates that neurological research in the EU is active and productive, is steadily increasing and is now a relevant part of all biomedical world research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the analysis of the statistical properties of the profitability yielded by Private Equity from a fractionally integrated viewpoint. Using quarterly data from 1981q2 to 2021q3, the results support the hypothesis of stationarity and mean reversion in all cases; however, we observe differences in the degree of persistence across regions, Europe being the closest to short memory while the US shows the highest degree of long range dependence and thus the longer lasting effects of shocks. Some policy recommendations of the results obtained are included at the end of the manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European power markets are in the midst of unprecedented changes, with a record-breaking surge in energy prices. This paper investigates the impact of the green transition on the level and volatility of wholesale electricity prices at a granular level, using monthly observations for a panel of 24 European countries over the period 2014–2021 and alternative estimation methods including a panel quantile regression approach. We find that renewable energy is associated with a significant reduction in wholesale electricity prices in Europe, with an average impact of 0.6 percent for each 1 percentage points increase in renewable share. We also find evidence for a nonlinear effect—that is, higher the share of renewables, the greater its effect on electricity prices. On the other hand, while quantile estimation results are mixed with regards to the impact of renewables on the volatility of electricity prices, we obtain evidence that renewable energy has a negative effect on volatility at the highest quantiles. Overall, our analysis indicates that policy reforms can help accelerate the green transition while minimizing the volatility in electricity prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of corporate social responsibility on firm performance by integrating simultaneously the moderating effects of the firm size and its industry profile. To conduct our study, we use annual environmental, social and governance (ESG) data on 407 European firms listed in STOXX Europe 600 Index during the period 2002–2018. Results reveal that the moderating effect of size is positive for environmentally sensitive industries and negative for environmentally non-sensitive industries. We conclude that in environmentally non-sensitive industries, large firms engage in symbolic CSR practices, while smaller ones implement substantive CSR actions. However, in environmentally sensitive industries, in order to meet stakeholders' requirements, large firms engage in effective CSR initiatives, while smaller ones, being forced to involve in costly CSR practices, would be harmed and lose all interest in CSR implementation. This study has implications for policymakers, investors and corporate managers in various industries for evaluating and controlling the effectiveness of CSR practices and initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While prior studies have examined various factors that affect immigration policymaking across Europe, little attention has been paid to the impact of the gender structure within parliament. It has been found that female parliamentarians are more concerned with the interests of women, children, and other marginalized groups than their male colleagues. Consequently, they are more likely to prioritize the rights of immigrants who represent an important social minority in European settings. Leveraging a panel data set spanning 26 European states from 2007 to 2019, the paper shows that an increase in the share of women parliamentarians is indeed associated with the liberalization of immigration policy. The results remain significant when employing historical female enrollment as an instrumental variable. Notably, the growth of the right-wing parties (including mainstream and radical right parties) in parliament would undercut the positive impact of female parliamentarians. The paper sheds some light on European immigration policymaking and female political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the differences in economic performance across European regions? In addressing this question, this paper takes inspiration from two different approaches. One approach highlights the role of capability-building, of a technological or social nature, while another perspective emphasizes the potential advantages of proximity and, hence, a relatively diversified economic structure, for regional economic performance. The paper argues that the impacts of capability-building and diversification on regional economic development need to be assessed jointly. Using information for 261 regions at NUTS2 level in 27 European countries in the 2000s, novel data sources are exploited to construct measures of technological and social capabilities, which are combined with indicators of related and unrelated variety in the analysis of regional economic dynamics. The results suggest that capability-building play a key role in regional economic development while the results for diversification are more mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the gender gap in time allocation in European countries, offering a comparison of the 2000s and the 2010s, along with an explanation of the documented gender gaps, based on social norms and institutional factors. The results show that the gender gap in both paid and unpaid work has decreased in most countries, but with a significant level of cross-country heterogeneity in the size of the gender gaps. More traditional social norms are related to greater gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work, while countries with better family-friendly policies and a greater representation of women in politics and in the labour market exhibit smaller gender inequalities. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of gender gaps in Europe, and attempts to monitor the progress towards the elimination of gender inequalities. Despite that some degree of gender convergence in paid and unpaid work has taken place, there remain inequalities in the distribution of labour in European countries, and possible solutions may be related to social norms and family-friendly policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides novel evidence on the importance of the phenomenon of poverty and its heterogeneity across European countries. We analyze the determinants of poverty in Europe and their evolution over time by disentangling the role of genuine state dependence and heterogeneity. We apply alternative dynamic probit models accounting for endogenous initial conditions and correlated random effects to the pre-Great Recession period of 2005–2008 and the post- Great Recession period of 2015–2018 using EU-SILC longitudinal datasets for a sample of European countries in order to estimate genuine state dependence and uncover the role of observable and unobservable factors in determining the risk of poverty. Our findings suggest that the degree of genuine state dependence is relevant in Europe and that it increased slightly from pre- to post-Great Recession. This suggests that measures aimed at lifting individuals out of poverty, including cash transfers, have become even more important during the Europe 2020 decade. Our analysis also reveals that Europe is characterized by an increasing scarring effect of poverty, the trend of which has been exacerbated in the post-recession period. The analysis at the country level clarifies why the evolution of genuine state dependence was heterogeneous. While a clear pattern within macro-regions does not emerge, we find an association between country-level variation in genuine state dependence and some macroeconomic indicators. Finally, our results suggest that the protective role of higher education has diminished over time, while the role of employment stability and of childcare provision during early childhood has become even more important in the post-recession period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about the quality of housing feature prominently in academic and policy discussion on housing, yet there is little agreement about how housing deprivation should be measured or monitored. In empirical studies, measures of housing deprivation are typically examined for one of two purposes—either to compare incidences of housing quality problems for different groups, which typically leads to an examination of performance of different measures of housing deprivation, or as dependent variables to examine competing theories about what explains cross-national variation in such problems, which typically ignores these measurement considerations. Our paper seeks to analyse measurement and theory jointly, focussing in particular on the EU's severe housing deprivation measure, and its subcomponents—overcrowding and housing conditions problems. In descriptive analysis, we show that the two components of the severe housing deprivation measure are weakly related and pattern differently across nations and that the aggregation rule of the main measure has a substantial influence on observed incidences of this problem. We subsequently construct multi-level regression-based models and demonstrate that the two components have quite different determinants. Our paper has implications for the measurement of severe housing deprivation in Europe, for theories that seek to account for differences in housing outcomes, and for policy that seeks to tackle housing deprivation problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the volatility transmission between European Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs) and implied stock market volatility. A Dynamic Conditional Correlation Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity model is applied to determine the dynamic correlation between returns of Europe's GSIBs and the world's most prominent measure of market "fear", the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX). The results identify a higher negative co-relationship between the VIX and GSIB returns during the COVID-19 period compared with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), with one-day lagged changes in the VIX negatively Granger-causing bank returns. The asymmetric impact of changes in implied volatility is examined by quantile regressions, with the findings showing that in the lower quartile–where extreme negative bank returns are present–jumps in the VIX are highly significant. This effect is more pronounced during COVID-19 than during the GFC. Additional robustness analysis shows that these findings are consistent during the periods of the Swine Flu and Zika virus epidemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roma communities across Europe still remain a neglected population group by way of the social and economic disadvantage that largely characterizes their lives. Roma communities continue to experience structural socioeconomic health inequalities on the grounds of their ethnic origin, alarmingly unveiling a pattern of systematic discrimination and ethnic marginalization. Without any doubt, such a highly worrying situation calls for States to incorporate Roma health rights within their law and policy agendas in a manner consistent with right to health requirements. Against this background, this paper seeks to identify an operational human rights framework for States as a driver for better informed policies and implementation as well as for Roma engagement in the deliberations about their life prospects. The paper argues that continuing, concerted, and proactive State engagement is required for effectively addressing the structural obstacles impeding Roma socioeconomic health rights realization and maximizing Roma opportunities for well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalizing connections that defined the European Bronze Age in the second millennium BC either ended or abruptly changed in the decades around 1200 BC. The impact of climate change at 3.2 ka on such social changes has been debated for the eastern Mediterranean. This paper extends this enquiry of shifting human–climate relationships during the later Bronze Age into Europe for the first time. There, climate data indicate that significant shifts occurred in hydroclimate and temperatures in various parts of Europe ca. 3.2 ka. To test potential societal impacts, I review and evaluate archaeological data from Ireland and Britain, the Nordic area, the Carpathian Basin, the Po Valley, and the Aegean region in parallel with paleoclimate data. I argue that 1200 BC was a turning point for many societies in Europe and that climate played an important role in shaping this. Although long-term trajectories of sociopolitical systems were paramount in defining how and when specific societies changed, climate change acted as a force multiplier that undermined societal resilience in the wake of initial social disjunctures. In this way, it shaped, often detrimentally, the reconfiguration of societies. By impacting more directly on social venues of political recovery, realignment, and reorganization, climate forces accentuate societal crises and, in some areas, sustained them to the point of sociopolitical collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are over 80 countries in the world that currently use some kind of energy label for electric household appliances. In Europe, as an example, a lot of appliances are obliged to have an energy label when shown for sale, including online. Energy labels give relevant information to the consumers to help them make an environmentally beneficial choice when buying a new appliance. However, the desire for an energy efficient appliance does not outweigh the wish for good performance. Therefore, some energy labels provide information about the performance of the appliance based on international performance measurement standards (hereafter: "international standards"). Indeed, within the one appliance, increased performance can often mean increased energy consumption, so a balance between these parameters needs to be made by product designers and users. Unlike measurements that are traceable to Systeme Internationale units through metrological traceability chains, there is no natural reference data for performance measurements. Therefore, some international standards use a reference machine to relate their testing results to. The comparison of test and reference machine eliminates variances, for example, due to the auxiliary materials used and the influence of manual preparation or assessment methods. Three international standards that are currently using reference machines are examined closely in this paper. It is assessed how the reference machines and their testing results are treated, whether the reference machines are comparable with their corresponding test machines and if the use of a reference machine can be considered beneficial for the testing procedure. Additionally, three key questions are developed that will indicate whether 13 other international standards for electric household appliances could also benefit from using a reference machine. The paper concludes with six recommendations for standardisation groups and energy policymakers that will help with deciding whether a reference machine should be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent elections have highlighted how electoral cycles are often accompanied by increases in negative rhetoric surrounding immigration. Exploiting as-if random assignment in individual interview dates for the European Social Survey, this paper examines how proximity to elections affects individual preferences on immigration. We find that closer to elections, attitudes toward immigration become more negative. This effect is primarily driven by country-elections where party platforms are more likely to include anti-immigrant rhetoric. When elections are more distant, these effects largely disappear, highlighting the possibility that anti-immigration electoral mandates are based on artificially inflated concerns of the electorate about immigration. Overall, these results provide important insights into how elections influence issue stances and social cohesion in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research within this paper compares the positioning of students and corporate branding features on higher education institution websites within the higher education systems of Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Poland. The selection of countries reflects among other things different governance regimes. The paper first outlines the analytical framework used for content analysis of the extent to which evidence of the marketization of higher education is present on higher education institutions' websites—especially with regard to the positioning and construction of student applicants. Secondly, it uses MANOVA to explain the variance by country and institutional type in relation to the presence (or absence) of different website features. Analysis of higher education institutions' websites confirms the initial expectations about the link between market-driven higher education governance structures and constructions of students as customers. Nevertheless, the variance in these overall trends is high. Despite the presence of corporate-style features on the higher education institution websites and the linked understanding of students as customers, the between-country and within-country differences reveal also sometimes even more dominant alternative understandings of students and student applicants. In the systems with more academic self-governance or with a state-centred mode of governance (usually mixed together like in Germany, Spain or the state sector in Poland), students are seen either as novices in the academic community or recipients of public service. The empirical findings presented in this article suggest that there is considerable diversity in the portrayal of student applicants on higher education institution websites in Europe, rather than a common construction as only consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on the other papers in this special issue, this synopsis characterises some essential trends in European Landscape Ecology, including the challenges it is facing in society. It describes the various perspectives on the 'contents' of landscape that are currently being practiced, and especially considers the notion of 'environment' as something intrinsic to human activity. Landscape classification and typology are discussed in their potential but limited use for landscape science. The specificity of the European approach appears to be related to the large diversity of cultural landscapes, currently losing their functional ties with the land-use systems that had formed them. European landscape research reports show a large commitment to this decreasing diversity, a dedication characterised by a strong sense of 'loss and grief'. On the other hand, it is concluded that European landscape research has a specific niche with a clear focus on applied landscape studies explicitly including people's perceptions and images, as well as the participation of the public and stakeholders. Since globalisation tends to reinforce the detachment of people from their environment; an increased effort is needed to compensate for this effect, and therefore the consideration of the various dimensions of the landscape is today more pertinent than ever. Meeting the challenges of present landscapes, in the face of new multifunctional demands in old diverse landscapes, requires more than before the combination of various perspectives and methods, and of various scales of application, in order to design innovative and adaptive paths for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore the intergenerational transmission of female labor force participation from mothers to children. Using data collected by the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2018 (N = 118,219), we analyse four different samples of native and immigrant women and men in order to assess the relationship between working mothers and their daughters and sons' wives participation to the labour market. For both native and immigrant women, having had their mothers employed when the respondents were 14 was associated with higher probability they were employed at the time of survey. Similarly, for both native and immigrant men, having had their mothers employed when the respondents were 14 was associated with higher probability their wives were employed at the time of the survey. We concentrate our attention on the role of religion. We find that religiosity is negatively related to the participation of women in the labour market, with differences between those who had a working mother and those who had not. Results of some augmented models indicate that the intergenerational transmission of female labor force participation varies according to religious affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a vast literature on the health benefits associated with volunteering for volunteers. Such health advantages are likely to vary across groups of volunteers with different characteristics. The current paper aims to examine the health advantages of volunteering for European volunteers and explore heterogeneity in the association between volunteering and health. We carry out a mega-analysis on microdata from six panel surveys, covering 952,026 observations from 267,212 respondents in 22 European countries. We provide open access to the code we developed for data harmonization. We use ordinary least squares, fixed effects, first difference, and fixed effect quantile regressions to estimate how volunteering activities and changes therein are related to self-rated health for different groups. Our results indicate a small but consistently positive association between changes in volunteering and changes in health within individuals. This association is stronger for older adults. For respondents 60 years and older, within-person changes in volunteering are significantly related to changes in self-rated health. Additionally, the health advantage of volunteering is larger for respondents in worse health. The advantage is largest at the lowest decile and gradually declines along the health distribution. The magnitude of the association at the first decile is about twice the magnitude of the association at the ninth decile. These results suggest that volunteering may be more beneficial for the health of specific groups in society. With small health advantages from year to year, volunteering may protect older and less healthy adults from health decline in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines SHARE Corona Survey and SHARE Wave 7 data for 25 European countries and Israel (N = 40,919) with institutional and epidemic-related country characteristics to investigate healthcare access for Europeans aged 50+ during the outbreak of COVID-19. We use a micro–macro approach to examine whether and to what extent barriers to accessing healthcare measured by reported unmet healthcare needs vary within and between countries. We consider various aspects of barriers and distinguish among: (1) respondents who forewent medical treatment because they were afraid of becoming infected with the Coronavirus; (2) respondents who had pre-scheduled medical appointments postponed by health providers due to the outbreak; and (3) respondents who tried to arrange a medical appointment but were denied one. Limited access to healthcare during the initial outbreak was more common for the occupationally active, women, the more educated and those living in urban areas. A bad economic situation, poor overall health and higher healthcare utilisation were robust predictors of unmet healthcare. People aged 50+ in countries of 'Old' Europe, countries with higher universal health coverage and stricter containment and closure policies were more likely to have medical services postponed. Policymakers should address the healthcare needs of older people with chronic health conditions and a poor socio-economic status who were made more vulnerable by this pandemic. In the aftermath of the health crisis, public health systems might experience a great revival in healthcare demand, a challenge that should be mitigated by careful planning and provision of healthcare services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyse the effect that operating leverage exerts on the profitability of SMEs, both in isolation and indirectly through its other determinants. We use panel data from a total of 9652 European agri-food SMEs from 2009 to 2016. The work's principal contribution is the study of the SMEs of a key sector of the European economy in terms of the cost structure, since this is an issue that directly affects the competitiveness of firms, but which has not garnered sufficient attention in the literature. It also considers the importance of the institutional and legal environment on the risk assumed by companies. The results obtained confirm that operating leverage or cost structure, in addition to affecting profitability, also affects the relationship between that profitability and other sources of risk that depend on the country in which the company operates. More specifically, indebtedness, size, innovation specificity and reputation all affect profitability to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the level of operating leverage of the company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The treatment with a cochlear implant (CI) is the gold standard in therapy of patients with profound hearing loss or deafness. Successful hearing rehabilitation with a CI is a complex, multi-stage process. In medicine, "Clinical Practice Guidelines" (CPG) are widely accepted for the standardization of such processes. These are supplemented by medical registries in which data regarding the treatment can be collected and evaluated. The aim of this paper is to identify currently existing CI-related CPGs and registries in Europe. Methods: Between 01/2021 and 06/2021, 42 countries on the European continent, including the United Kingdom, Russia and Turkey, were screened using an internet search (search engine: Google) and a key word search in the Pubmed database. Search terms were the respective country name combined with the following terms: "Cochlear Implant", "CI", "Cochlear implant clinical practice guideline", "CI Guideline", "Cochlear Implant Registry", "CI Registry", "Ear nose throat society". The internet search was conducted in English as well as in the corresponding national language. The objective was to identify a CI-related CPG or registry. Results: A CPG was found in 16 of 42 (38%) countries. In terms of population, this accounts for 645 million out of 838 million people (77%). A registry existed in 4 of the 42 (10%) countries assessed. This corresponds to 102 million out of 838 million (12%) people. In total, 4 out of 42 countries (10%) had both a CPG and a registry. Conclusion: Our work shows numerous efforts in Europe to standardize CI care at the national level. While most people in Europe already live in countries with a CPG, this is not the case for CI registries. European-wide consensus on CPGs or registries does not yet exist. The present study thus provides a first assessment of the distribution of CI-related CPGs and registries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the European Union (EU)'s current goal of making its continent the world's first climate-neutral continent by 2050, the EU will need to set a path for new policies in the areas of Europe's economy, energy consumption, and agriculture. Thus, this paper analyzes the marginal impact of energy price and economic freedom on Europe's CO2 emissions grounded on the extended Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology ecology (STIRPAT) model together with the spatial econometric models. The results indicate the existence of spatial spillover effect of CO2 emissions among some countries in Europe. The Hausman test was also performed to select the best model between the random effects and the fixed effects. The findings suggest that increasing both economic freedom and energy price in a local country turns to reduce the country's own CO2 emissions and also reduces the emissions of its adjacent countries. Comparing the direct effect of economic freedom and energy price to that of the SDM fixed effect, a feedback of 12.77% and 23.53% of the direct effect was observed, respectively. The results also indicated that the turning point of economic freedom and economic growth was 6.714 and thus 9.083. Overall, the study spotlighted some policy suggestions for the energy market for the European commission in reducing the emissions of CO2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the association of opportunity and choice enhancing societal conditions and perceived autonomy with life satisfaction in Europe. Building on the capability approach, I investigate whether the positive effects of six basic functionings—safety, friendship, health, financial security, leisure, and respect—on people's life satisfaction are weaker when people have more opportunity and choice. This paper addresses two main questions: (1) Are people more satisfied with their life when they have more opportunity and choice? (2) Do basic functionings play a smaller role for life satisfaction in societies that enable more opportunity and choice and for individuals with more perceived autonomy? The analyses are based on the European Quality of Life Survey (2016), covering 36,460 individuals in 33 European countries and using multilevel linear regressions. My study finds that both choice and opportunity enhancing societal conditions and individual's perceived autonomy are positively associated with on life satisfaction. Further, all six basic functionings are conducive to individual life satisfaction. The positive effects of health, financial security, respect, and friendship are reduced when people experience a great deal of autonomy over their lives. Societal conditions that provide people with more opportunity and choice further lower the positive effects of financial security, leisure, respect, and safety on individual life satisfaction. This corroborates the importance the capability approach attributes to individual opportunities and freedom of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the dynamics of structural polarization and macroeconomic divergence in the context of European integration, where the latter is primarily understood as an increase in economic and financial openness. In the process of estimating the dynamic effects of such an openness shock on 26 EU countries, we develop a taxonomy of European economies that consists of four groups: core, periphery, and catching-up countries in Eastern Europe as well as financial hubs. We show that these four country groups have responded in a distinct way to the openness shock imposed by European integration and argue that the latter should be seen as an evolutionary process that has given rise to different path-dependent developmental trajectories. These trajectories are linked to the sectoral development of European economies and the evolution of their technological capabilities. We propose a set of interrelated policy measures to counteract structural polarization and to promote macroeconomic convergence in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Can we reconstruct how prehistoric people perceived things (their "ways of seeing" or visual culture)? This challenge is made more difficult by the traditional disciplinary assumptions built into prehistoric art studies, for instance focusing narrowly upon a single body of art in isolation. This paper proposes an alternative approach, using comparative study to reveal broad regional changes in visual culture. Although prehistoric art specialists rarely work comparatively, art historians are familiar with describing continent-wide general developments in visual culture and placing them in social context (for instance, the traditional broad-brush history from Classical to medieval to Renaissance systems of representation). This paper does the same for Neolithic (6000–2500 BC) vs. Bronze Age (2500–800 BC) and Iron Age (800 BC–Classical) rock and cave art from sites across Europe, uncovering broad patterns of change. The principal pattern is a shift from a Neolithic iconic art which uses heavily encoded imagery, often schematic geometric motifs, to a Bronze/Iron Age narrative art, which increasingly involves imagery of identifiable people, animals and objects. Moreover, there is also an increasing tendency for motifs to be associated in scenes rather than purely accumulative, and with contextual changes in how art is used—a movement from hidden places to more open or accessible places. Underlying all these changes is a shift in how rock and cave art was used, from citations reproducing ritual knowledge to composed arrays telling narratives of personhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire foods in socially acceptable ways. The study presents a comparison of the principal determinants of individual food insecurity in Europe and other Continents, with particular regard to gender, since the literature clearly states the importance of women in the administration of food in the household. The study of gender related differences in food insecurity is particularly important in Europe, since women experience food insecurity at a larger extent than men, but with a variability related to the geographical distribution and with complex relationships with economic and social drivers. Using a large international sample of individual level data, that allows the analysis for developed Countries for the first time, and the first experiential measure of food insecurity comparable at the global level, the paper analyses the principal determinants of gender differences in food insecurity. In order to verify if women's vulnerability in food insecurity is moderated by specific factors, the modelling approach allows gender to vary by education, poverty, place of residence. The results suggest that the driver that could most mitigate women disadvantage is education: people with a university degree present a lower probability of experiencing food insecurity, both for men and for women. On the contrary, familial characteristics, such as the number of children in the household, present a higher impact on women's food insecurity than on men's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European policy makers are increasingly interested in higher spatial representations of future macro-economic consequences from climate-induced shifts in the energy demand. Indeed, EU sub-national level analyses are currently missing in the literature. In this paper, we conduct a macro-economic assessment of the climate change impacts on energy demand at the EU sub-national level by considering twelve types of energy demand impacts, which refer to three carriers (petroleum, gas, and electricity) and four sectors (agriculture, industry, services, and residential). These impacts have been estimated using climatic data at a high spatial resolution across nine Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) combinations. The impacts feed into a Computable General Equilibrium model, whose regional coverage has been extended to the sub-national NUTS2 and NUTS1 level. Results show that negative macroeconomic effects are not negligible in regions located in Southern Europe mainly driven by increased energy demand for cooling. By 2070, we find negative effects larger than 1% of GDP, especially in SSP5-RCP8.5 and SSP3-RCP4.5 with a maximum of − 7.5% in Cyprus. Regarding regional differences, we identify economic patterns of winners and losers between Northern and Southern Europe. Contrasting scenario combinations, we find that mitigation reduces adverse macro-economic effects for Europe up to a factor of ten in 2070, from 0.4% GDP loss in SSP5-RCP8.5 to 0.04% in SSP2-RCP2.6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we review and discuss some challenges in insuring flood risk in Europe on the national level, including high correlation of damages. Making use of recent advances in extreme value theory, we, furthermore, model flood risk with heavy-tailed distributions and their truncated counterparts and apply the discussed techniques to an inflation- and building-value-adjusted annual data set of flood losses in Europe. The analysis leads to Value-at-Risk estimates for individual countries and for Europe as a whole, allowing to quantify the diversification potential for flood risk in Europe. Finally, we identify optimal risk pooling possibilities in case a joint insurance strategy on the European level cannot be realized and quantify the resulting inefficiency in terms of additional necessary solvency capital. Thus, the results also contribute to the ongoing discussion on how public risk transfer mechanisms can supplement missing private insurance coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using macro-level data for 32 European countries, the present paper explores developments in the education distributions among solo self-employed workers and employer entrepreneurs in the non-agricultural economy over the period 1997–2014. Our dynamic analysis reveals that over this period, the number of solo self-employed workers, but particularly the high-educated solo self-employed, has increased considerably in Europe. This trend is even more pronounced for female solo self-employment. The education distribution of the solo self-employed is thus shifting quickly towards higher levels of education. Moreover, our static analysis based on 2014 reveals that, for the higher-developed countries within Europe (Western Europe including Scandinavia), solo self-employed and employer entrepreneurs are on average equally highly educated. We also find that the solo self-employed in Western Europe are considerably higher educated than their counterparts in the rest of Europe. In general, our results underline the rapidly increasing importance of, particularly high-educated, solo self-employed workers in modern, highly developed economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the individual data from the European Social Survey of 2004 and 2010, the authors of this paper investigate how employment type (permanent, temporary or informal employment) affects subjective well-being in respect to employment protection legislation across European countries. Our study outcomes are in line with previous research disclosing the negative impact of being temporally or informally employed on subjective well-being. The additional contribution of this study is the rigorous analysis of how employment protection legislation (EPL) moderates this effect by applying the multilevel modeling approach for 27 countries. In countries with strict EPL temporary and informal workers are significantly less satisfied with their lives than permanent employees. In countries with liberal EPL no significant decreasing effect from temporary or informal employment on people's subjective well-being was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy production is necessary for digital society; it is also beneficial for labor market and sustainable development. This paper examines the impact of renewable energy production on unemployment rate by employing panel NARDL-PMG and robust asymmetric quantile regression for European countries from 1991 to 2019. The results reveal that renewable energy production significantly reduced unemployment in European countries in long run. The renewable energy production effect is found significant in the asymmetric model, specifically, in European countries; a positive change in renewable energy production has a negative significant impact on unemployment, and a negative change in renewable energy production has a positive significant impact on unemployment in long run. The GDP, investment, and technology innovation process are found to be triggered in labor market by reducing the unemployment rate in the long run. In addition, the asymmetric effects of renewable energy production on unemployment growth are robust in the different quantile regression. The findings suggest some insightful policy implications for government officials and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the extent to which the job insecurity brought about by the Great Recession has had an impact on fertility decisions across Europe. My results rely not only on objective measures of job insecurity (e.g., the unemployment rate or the ratio of workers made redundant in their last job), but also on aggregate perceptions of job precariousness (e.g., the percentage of workers who say they are looking for another job because they fear they will lose their current position, or the ratio of unemployed who say they are not seeking work because they believe there is none available). Main results indicate that unemployment, long-term unemployment and the impossibility of finding a full-time job are the three indicators with the strongest link to reduced fertility over the period. However, results vary by age group, gender, and especially income, immigrant origin and country cluster. More importantly, my findings show that the Great Recession made the chances of childbearing more unequal, depending on socio-economic background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second European Conference on Domestic Violence (ECDV) was held in Porto, Portugal in September 2017. Given the interest in and focus on children and adolescents at both the first and second ECDV, and the identified need to gather research and researchers working in the field of children and domestic violence in Europe, the JOFV made a call for a special issue on European research on children, adolescents and domestic violence. The call has resulted in this double issue of 17 articles which comment on research conducted across Europe, authored from differed scientific backgrounds and reflecting diversity in topics and methods. The work reflects not only how far we have come in Europe on developing research based knowledge on children and domestic violence, but it has also has played an important role in identifying multiple gaps and address needs for the future.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The particular location of port infrastructure holds characteristics that determine the activity of the port, both with respect to traffic and with respect to implementing competitive strategies; and the efficiency and efficacy of infrastructure depend on the governance systems that regulate the ports. Likewise, the development of port activity echoes in the regional economy as well, hence governance becomes integral to maximizing the impact of ports on their region's economic development. However, the activity of a port transcends the domestic/regional frontiers, as long as the port intends to take part in a global supply chain. Achieving this aim poses a challenge on the authorities that govern port activity, and this challenge needs to be seized when it comes to adjusting the governance to external and internal goals. In the specific case of the analysed ports, the prevailing governance model is known as Landlord, which differs noticeably from port to port. These differences make it possible to distinguish the orientation of European ports from that of the analysed Latin American ports, showing a dissimilar adjustment of the conception of governance that followed objectives that were not simultaneous. The paper draws forth a questioning of the uniqueness of the denomination Landlord and its legitimacy given the new challenges. Furthermore, the paper opens the way to understanding the need to adapt governance to changes, given the examined experiences. The analysis covers the following cases: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, quantitative analysis on the depth of mortgage markets across a broad set of countries has been very limited. This paper uses a rich and balanced data set on 31 European countries to investigate the cross-country variations in the depth of mortgage markets during the period 2005-2012. The present paper might be accepted as the updated and enriched version of existing research for the European region in terms of the coverage of countries, historical data and the empirical analyses. Our empirical findings reveal that developed countries have sizeable residential mortgage markets and this is mainly associated with higher urbanization rates and stronger legal rights. One of the most notable results of this study is that, statistical significance of explanatory variables in modeling the depth of the mortgage markets depends heavily on both the variables, countries (regions) included in the models and the regression methodology used. Hence, we argue that strong conclusions based on such analyses should be avoided and the findings of previous research on the variations of the depth of mortgage markets should be carefully evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to identify and describe the European evidence on opportunities and barriers to access and utilization of palliative care among non- western migrants. A systematic review in accordance with PRISMA guidelines was conducted in June 2020, searching Medline, CINAHL, PsychINFO and EMBASE databases. PROSPERO# CRD42020193651. Studies included empirical research published between 2011 and 2020. Search words were, for example, ethnic groups and palliative care. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data. Twenty nine qualitative and six quantitative studies were included. Four main themes were identified: communication and language; knowledge and awareness; patient preferences, cultural and religious issues; and lack of resources at different levels of palliative care service provision. Migrants' access to palliative care is impeded at system, community and individual levels, yet, recommendations are mostly at the individual level. Closer attention is required to these different levels when designing future palliative interventions for migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is renewed interest in earnings differentials between social classes, the contribution of social class to overall earnings inequality across countries and net of compositional effects remains largely uncharted territory. This paper uses data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions to assess earnings differentials between social classes (as measured by ESeC) and the role of between-class inequality in overall earnings inequality across 30 European countries. We find that there is substantial variation in earnings differences between social classes across countries. Countries with higher levels of between-class inequality tend to display higher levels of overall earnings inequality, but this relationship is far from perfect. Even with highly aggregated class measures, between-class inequality accounts for a non-negligible share of total earnings inequality (between 15 and 25% in most countries). Controlling for observed between-class differences in composition shows that these account for much of the observed between-class earnings inequality, while in most countries between-class differences in returns to observed compositional variables do not play a major role. In all these respects we find considerable variation across countries, implying that both the size of between-class differences in earnings and the primary mechanisms that produce these class differences vary substantially between European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to compare living standards in Asia and in Europe with respect to several cultural dimensions to which the research on economic prosperity has paid attention. Some studies pool countries in multiple regions to identify cultural effects on economic prosperity, and this paper argues that such regional differences in culture must be considered. In addition to empirically distinguishing Asia and Europe in terms of living standards with respect to selected cultural dimensions, this study also distinguishes and investigates regions within Europe. A theoretical argument explains each region's dominant cultural dimension, thereby hypothesizing regionally distinct effects of culture on living standards. A quadruple model is developed, and different samples are used to test the reliability and validity of the theoretical proposition. Two cultural dimensions, individualism and power distance, are identified as hallmarks of the divergence of living standards between Asia and Europe. Individualism has a significantly positive effect in Europe but insignificant in Asia, whereas the findings are opposite for power distance. The results remain robust even after controlling for confounders. The findings suggest potential barriers to maximizing the effectiveness of economic policies because a development approach adopted from Europe could be less effective in Asia, and vice versa, owing to a different dominant culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2010, the European Commission launched the Europe 2020 strategy 'for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth' in the EU. Education is a major pillar of the Europe 2020 strategy due to its long-run impact on economic growth, productivity, and social cohesion. The Europe 2020 strategy established two headline targets on early leavers from education and training and tertiary educational attainment at the EU level. This paper attempts to assess the Europe 2020 strategy for the education pillar in terms of convergence across countries. Despite the fact that every country in the EU has its own national targets in these two headline indicators, progress on the achievement of the Europe 2020 strategy requires convergence. Thus, even if the EU as a whole meets its targets in 2020, the existence of a growing divide between the best and worst performing countries would cast doubt on the prospects of real economic convergence and the sustainability of the process. Our empirical findings reveal the existence of convergence clubs in educational attainment and the early leavers rate, and points towards the idea of multi-speed transitional dynamics in Europe, calling into question the convergence in educational performance in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary climate warming is a key problem faced not only by scientists, but also all by humanity because, as is shown by the experience of recent years, it has multiple environmental, economic and biometeorological implications. In this paper, the authors identify the magnitude of annual and seasonal temperature changes in Europe and its immediate surroundings on the basis of data from 210 weather stations from 1951 to 2020. An analysis of temperatures in the 70-year period shows that air temperature has continued to grow linearly in Europe since 1985. The rate of temperature rise in three seasons of the year, namely winter, spring and summer, does not differ greatly. The highest growth over the 1985–2020 timespan was recorded in spring and the lowest in autumn—0.061 °C/year and 0.045 °C/year, respectively. In winter, the rise in temperature should be considered the least steady, as opposed to the summer when it displays the greatest stability. Overall, the warming intensifies towards the north-east of the continent. Such a strong gradient of change is especially perceivable in winter and spring, and is also marked in autumn. The opposite is true in summer, when it increases towards the south and south-west. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil liquefaction is a well-known ground instability phenomenon that may occur during earthquakes. This paper presents a novel catalogue of earthquake-induced manifestations of soil liquefaction occurred in Europe in the latest 1000 years or so. This unique digital archive, named "European interactive Catalogue of earthquake-induced soil Liquefaction phenomena" ECLiq, contains documented historical information regarding liquefaction-related phenomena (e.g. sand ejecta and boils, soil settlements and lateral spreading, ground and structural failures) triggered by seismic activity in continental Europe. It is publicly available as web-based GIS (Geographical Information System) platform at the link http://ecliq.eucentre.it/. Data and metadata were gathered within the time window 1117–2019 AD and include: the main seismological characteristics of the earthquake (e.g. UTC date, epicentre coordinates, magnitude, etc.), location of the site where liquefaction phenomena were documented, a description of the features of ground failure. The archive was built within the framework of LIQUEFACT, a 3.5-year research project funded under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. LIQUEFACT is the largest research project on the assessment and mitigation of risks associated with earthquake-induced soil liquefaction ever funded by the European Commission. Indeed, data and information have been retrieved, collected, critically reviewed and harmonized to compile a composite, homogeneous, and well-documented catalogue of earthquake-induced liquefaction occurrences in Europe. ECLiq is built as an interactive digital archive fully accessible as WebGIS and, as such, it will be useful to a broad range of stakeholders and end-users. ECLiq may help decision makers in identifying urban areas susceptible to undergo liquefaction-induced damage. Furthermore, it may also encourage the scientific community to upgrade soil liquefaction risk models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a need to measure and improve the quality of paediatric primary care in Europe where major differences in the delivery and outcomes of child health care exist. A collaborative panel of paediatric senior experts developed a Core Set of Indicators for Paediatric Primary Care in Europe by compiling 42 quality indicators in a modified consensus process following the RAND/UCLA appropriateness method. The aim of this study was to explore the feasibility of the quality indicator set in European paediatric primary care practices. Seventy-nine practices from eight countries participated in a detailed online interview. The practices rated the applicability, relevance, reliability and acceptance of the 42 quality indicator as well as the availability, technical feasibility and effort to retrieve the needed data from their medical records. Most quality indicators were considered applicable, available, reliable, acceptable and relevant for monitoring quality of care in paediatric primary care. Respondents rated feasibility and effort to retrieve the data lowest because of difficulties collecting the data from the medical records.Conclusion: European paediatric primary care practices generally agree with the proposed quality indicator set. They document most of the parameters. However, the collection of specific needed values from available routine patient-data is considered technically difficult and time-consuming. What is Known? • Paediatric primary care systems in Europe show striking differences in their performance. Pre-existing sets of quality indicators are predominantly limited to national populations, specific diseases and hospital care. • A Core Set of 42 quality indicators for paediatric primary care in Europe was developed by European paediatricians using a systematic literature review and a consensus process following a modified RAND/UCLA appropriateness method. What is New? • Paediatric primary care providers in Europe agree with the idea to use COSI-PPC-EU to monitor and improve the quality of care. The set was considered applicable, available, reliable, acceptable, and relevant for quality improvement. • The score for feasibility and effort to retrieve the data was low, because of technical reasons; the electronical or paper-based medical documentation in most cases does not allow convenient access to all necessary data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the continued efforts of policy makers, Western European start-ups are still struggling. Further, as questions are being raised about the effectiveness of incubators, there is a growing call for incubators around the world to learn from each other and improve themselves. Our paper enables Western European incubators to learn from their foreign peers by qualitatively exploring the challenges faced by Western European start-ups and the practices that incubators around the world use to address these challenges. Our study thereby takes a two-step approach. First, using the components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to structure data coming from 90 qualitative interviews with Western European entrepreneurs and incubator managers, we explore five interrelated challenges that constrain the ability of Western European start-ups to grow into high-impact businesses. In the second part of our study, we conduct a total of 191 interviews in Silicon Valley, the greater Boston area, Israel and Australia to identify practices that incubators in these regions use to address the five challenges identified in the first study. Our findings suggest that, rather than addressing the underlying institutions that cause challenges in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, incubators provide symptomatic solutions by creating an environment that protects start-ups from unfavorable institutions. Accordingly, we conclude that existing incubators have only limited potential to strengthen entrepreneurial ecosystems, and we end our paper with a call for a new generation of ‘systemic incubators’ that aim to transform or create institutions to address the institutional challenges that constrain start-up activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change-related excess mortality estimates clearly demonstrate a dramatic impact on public health and human mortality. However, life expectancy at birth is more easily communicated and understood by the public. By properly situating climate change mortality within the contexts of life expectancy, we better represent the cost of climate change on longevity. In this paper, we convert excess mortality estimates due to increases in extreme weather from climate change (heat waves, cold waves, droughts, wildfires, river and coastal floods, and windstorms) into potential reductions in life expectancy at birth in thirty-one European countries. We project climate change extremes to reduce life expectancy at birth by 0.24 years for the average European country with differences in excess of 1.0 years in some countries by 2100. We only estimate the impact of mortality directly related to climate extremes, making our estimates conservative. Thus, the cost of inaction on climate change could approach, and likely to exceed, one year of life in some European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population ageing, together with the negative effects of the recent economic and financial crisis that some European countries are still facing, have threatened the sustainability of public pension systems. In this context, voluntary private pensions have emerged as the most feasible alternative to supplement the minimum provided by Social Security Systems; however, this financial product does not enjoy its expected popularity. A potential explanation of this reality might be due to the fact that European countries are far from being homogeneous, nor their pensions systems. Therefore, any policy geared toward improving financial retirement planning should take into account these potential differences. As a first approach to their analysis, this paper proposes the existence of four different ‘social models’ in Europe -namely, Continental, Mediterranean, Nordic and Transitional-. Overall, empirical evidence confirmed the significant influence of country’ ‘social model’ on the decision to invest in retirement accounts on a sample of 31,468 individuals in 2013. It was also proved that this decision is positively related to age, household income and wealth, higher levels of formal education, job situation, good health status, and long-term planning horizons; and negatively related to age squared, household size or financial risk aversion. In short, future policies and reforms regarding private pensions should not only take into account the existence of individual differences among Europeans, but also the existence of differences depending on institutional and cultural country factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses region-level technical efficiency in nine European countries over the 1995-2007 period. We propose the application of a nonparametric conditional frontier approach to account for the presence of heterogeneous conditions in the form of geographical externalities. Such environmental factors are beyond the control of regional authorities, but may affect the production function. Therefore, they need to be considered in the frontier estimation. Specifically, a spatial autoregressive term is included as an external conditioning factor in a robust order- m model. Thus we can test the hypothesis of non-separability (the external factor impacts both the input-output space and the distribution of efficiencies), demonstrating the existence of significant global interregional spillovers into the production process. Our findings show that geographical externalities affect both the frontier level and the probability of being more or less efficient. Specifically, the results support the fact that the spatial lag variable has an inverted U-shaped non-linear impact on the performance of regions. This finding can be interpreted as a differential effect of interregional spillovers depending on the size of the neighboring economies: positive externalities for small values, possibly related to agglomeration economies, and negative externalities for high values, indicating the possibility of production congestion. Additionally, evidence of the existence of a strong geographic pattern of European regional efficiency is reported and the levels of technical efficiency are acknowledged to have converged during the period under analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a rising issue in western societies as a consequence of international migration. Our paper presents demography-driven projections of female flows with FGM/C from each practicing country to each EU28 member state for the 3 sub-periods 2016-2020, 2021-2025, and 2026-2030, with the aim of supporting resource planning and policy making. According to our projections, the EU28 countries will receive a flow of around 400,000 female migrants between 2016 and 2020, and around 1.3 million female migrants between 2016 and 2030 from FGM/C practicing countries. About one-third of them, corresponding to an estimated 127,000 between 2016 and 2020, and more than 400,000 between 2016 and 2030 will have undergone FGM/C before migration. Among these female flows, slightly more than 20% is expected to be made up of girls aged 0-14. According to the expected age at arrival, 20% of these girls are expected to have already undergone FGM/C, while slightly less than 10% are to be considered potentially at risk of undergoing FGM/C after migration. As the number of women with FGM/C in Europe is expected to rise at quite a fast rate, it is important to act timely by designing targeted interventions and policies at the national and at the European level to assist cut women and protect children. Such measures are particularly compelling in France, Italy, Spain, UK, and Sweden that are expected to be the most affected countries by migration from FGM/C practicing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]