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Many developing countries are populated by multiple ethnic groups who use their own language in daily life and in local business, but have to use a common language in national business and in communications with other groups. In these countries, how much weights should be placed on teaching a local ethnic language and teaching a common language is a critical issue. A similar conflict arises in low-income countries in general between teaching skills that are "practical" and directly useful in local jobs, and teaching academic skills that are important in modern sector jobs. This paper develops a model to examine these questions theoretically. It is shown that balanced education of the two languages/skills is critical for skill development of those with limited wealth for education. It is also found that the balanced education brings higher earnings net of educational expenditure, only when a country has favorable conditions (TFP is reasonably high, and education, in particular, common language education [academic education] is reasonably effective) and only for those with adequate wealth. Common-language-only (academic-only) education maximizes net earnings of those with little wealth, and, when the country's conditions are not good, maximizes net earnings of all. This implies that there exists a trade-off between educational and economic outcomes for those with little wealth, and, when the conditions are not good, the trade-off exists for everyone without adequate wealth. Policy implications derived from the results too are discussed.

The impact of environmental motivations on the individual’s decisions regarding investments in energy efficiency and the adoption of energy-saving habits are analyzed for a representative sample of Chinese inhabitants from the larger Beijing area, replicating a comparative study on Western Europe. For the considered type of energy efficiency investments and daily energy-saving activities similarities and discrepancies between the two regions are discussed in regard to their sociocultural background as well as governmental regulations. The study provides empirical evidence that for Chinese environmental issues if all only play a tertiary role after monetary and regulatory incentives. The findings could suggest that in China policy programs aimed at raising environmental awareness and forming pro-environmental motivations might not lead to an increase in energy efficiency investments and daily energy-saving activities and the Chinese government’s interests in this regard might be better served by implementing corresponding incentives via regulations. In the long-term. However, social peer pressure might affect a change in the Chinese mentality.

Could experiencing a health pandemic aid in understanding the nature of financial crisis? It might, for example, help to discriminate between different narratives that claim to do so. In this spirit, two influential accounts of the near-collapse of shadow banking in the US financial crisis of 2008 are analysed: one developed by Mark Gertler and Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and the other presented by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission of the US Congress. Using a common two-sector framework, key features of these contrasting accounts of the market for banking services are presented, along with their corresponding diagnoses of what precipitated financial crisis. To see what the experience of Covid might imply about their relative credibility, four aspects of the current pandemic are considered: how it began from a small biological shock; how it gets spread by contagion; the significance of externalities; and how it may end with a vaccine. But the reader is left to form his or her own judgement.

We address the presence, magnitude, and composition of wage gains related to former co-workers and discuss the mechanisms that could explain their existence. Using Hungarian linked employer–employee administrative data and proxying actual co-workership with overlapping work histories, we show that the overall wage gain attributable to former co-workers consists of multiple elements: a contact-specific, an individual-specific, a firm-specific and a match-specific component. Former co-workers, besides the direct effect of their presence, may funnel individuals into high-paying firms, enhance the sorting of good quality workers into firms, and may contribute to the creation of better employer–employee matches. By introducing and applying a wage-decomposition technique, we demonstrate that there are non-negligible differences between linked and market hires in all empirically separable wage elements. By focusing on specific scenarios, we provide additional empirical evidence in favor of employee referral and information transmission as the main drivers of co-worker gains.

16 p., La interdisciplinaridad es un ámbito hoy pendiente tanto en lo que afecta a la investigación como en la docencia como consecuencia del fuerte aislamiento adquirido en el ámbito científico de la especialización. Lo que se refleja también tanto en la acción económica y social como en el ámbito de la gobernanza y organización de las Instituciones y, en particular, en el ámbito de la empresa. Lo que se refleja, en primer término, en el campo científico y en el desarrollo de las personas creando deficiencias significativas en los procesos de coordinación, así como en el propio desarrollo de la persona en la Institución. Lo que incide en la dificultad para integrar la diversidad de las situaciones reales y la contribución de la Ciencia a la Sociedad. La referencia a la dimensión humana y social de toda acción económico-social e institucional solo se logra en la búsqueda de lo global, del todo, de las personas y de sus fines en la sociedad., Today interdisciplinarity is an ambit still pending in terms of both research and teaching. This is the result of the high degree of isolation that the scientific ambit has acquired as a result of specialisation. It is reflected in economic and social action in the governance and organisation of Institutions, particularly in the world of business. It is reflected, primarily, in the field of science and in the development of the individual, creating significant differences in coordination processes, as well as in the development of the individual him/herself within the Institution. This, in turn, makes the task of integrating the diversity of real situations and Science’s contribution to Society more difficult. Reference to the human and social dimension of all socio-economic and institutional actions is only achieved when one seeks the global element, that of everyone, that of the individual and their objectives within Society.

This chapter explains the rationale behind the book. It provides basic definitions of the concept of the sharing economy as well as the primary meanings related to the subject of the analysis undertaken in the subsequent chapters. This Introduction also includes a description of the main benefits of the analysis of the sharing economy from a European perspective. It highlights that the idea of the book emerged from the collaboration of most co-authors in the COST Action CA16121 ‘From Sharing to Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy.’ Finally, the outline of the book is presented, providing a description of the content of each chapter within this academic collection.

The chapter is the final one in the volume of collected papers aiming to discuss the sharing economy in Europe. The idea of the book emerged within the research network created by the COST Action CA16121 ‘From Sharing to Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy.’ The authors of the chapter sum up theoretical and empirical materials as well as country-specific cases provided in the book. The article critically assesses the current status of the sharing economy in European countries by highlighting major controversial issues related to deregulation, market disruption, or social inequality. The authors conclude that, considering the comprehensive and up-to-date materials collected and analysed in the book, it may become an outstanding source of knowledge and a practical tool in the process of expansion of the sharing economy in Europe and beyond.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse approaches to the sharing economy from the perspective of public policy science. In the first part of the text, attention is paid to perceiving the development of the emerging sharing economy not only as phenomenon with positive economic effects but also as a set of public problems (e.g., on the labour market and for existing economic structures) that require intervention at the level of national governments as well as at international level. Subsequent sections identify possible actions for regulating the development of the sharing economy. The role of soft law, stakeholders’ networks, self-regulation and standardisation are discussed in the chapter. The summary includes potential directions for further research.

Among leftists, predicting the end of capitalism is a favorite parlor game. For example, as a graduate student in the 2010s, I remember discovering the 1976 edition of Marx’s Capital and being struck by the introduction. Written by the Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel, the foreword concluded that it was ‘most unlikely’ that capitalism would survive another half-century. This prediction (and many like it) did not age well. What capitalism’s critics often misunderstand is that social orders rarely ‘die’. More often, they fade into irrelevance. Just as no one can point to the end-date of feudalism, it seems unlikely that capitalism will have a decisive ‘finish’. But what it may have is a peak. The goal of this post is to chart the rise (and potential peak) of ‘capitalism’ … as I understand it. This caveat is key. To study a social system, we must first define it. To many people, capitalism is a ‘mode of production’ (a definition inherited from Marx). The view that I take here, however, is that capitalism is primarily an ideology — or what Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler call a ‘mode of power’. Capitalism is a set of ideas that justify the modern social order. Although there are many ways to chart the rise of capitalism, what interests me here is that it was the first major ideology to have spread during the era of mass publication. That means capitalism’s rise (and potential peak) should be visible in the word frequency of written language. For example, as capitalism spread, we’d expect that capitalist jargon — words like ‘market’ and ‘price’ — should become more common. And feudal jargon — words like ‘fief’ and ‘vassal’ — should become less common. Now, I’ve chosen these specific words as an illustration. But for my actual analysis, I do not ‘choose’ the jargon words. Instead, I choose a corpus of text that I believe encapsulates the ideology in question (capitalism or feudalism). And from there, I let the jargon of the text speak for itself. The basic idea is that jargon words are those that are both frequently used in a text corpus and overused relative to mainstream English. The first step of the analysis, then, is to select a corpus of ideological texts. To capture feudal ideology, I use a sample of 22 modern English bibles. I use modern translations because I don’t want text that contains archaic words (like ‘thou’). And I use the Bible because christian theology formed the backbone of European feudalism.1 To capture capitalist ideology, I use a sample of 43 introductory economics textbooks. My claim is that these textbooks deal mostly in capitalist metaphysics; they describe a fantasy world of self-equilibrating markets in which each person earns what they produce.2 With my sample of biblical and economics text, I first isolate the jargon words of each corpus. Then I use the Google English corpus to measure how the frequency of this jargon has changed over time. (As a consistency check, I also analyze the text in paper titles on the Sci-Hub database and book titles in Library Genesis.) I find that over the last several centuries, biblical jargon became less popular and was slowly replaced by economics jargon. I also find evidence that the popularity of economics language peaked during the 1980s, and has since declined. Ominously, this peak coincides with an uptick in the popularity of biblical language. In simple terms, it seems that we (anglophones) are in the midst of an ideological transition.

We evaluate a natural experiment at a Swedish university, in which students were randomized to either taking all their courses online, or to have some courses online and some on campus (blended learning). Our setting creates two groups for the online courses: One group with no access to campus whatsoever, and one group treated with campus classes in parallel, but unrelated, courses. We show that campus access in parallel courses improved academic performance in online courses only among female students with affluent parents. Detailed individual-level survey data suggests that there was no relationship between social status and adverse mental health amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, by estimating each student's network position, linked with administrative data on parental income, we show that female students with wealthy parents have significantly less constrained social networks, enabling them to utilize scarcely available campus time to communicate with classmates more efficiently.

Since the beginning of the recession period in Europe, unemployment has greatly affected the young adult population. In this context, Spain is regarded as an extreme case, due to its exceptionally high youth unemployment rates. This article seeks to identify the determinants that have led certain groups of Spanish young people to suffer labour market trajectories with higher levels of unemployment and instability during the Great Recession than others. To do this, retrospective data from the 2012 Catalan Youth Survey are used. With these data and using cluster analysis, a typology of labour market trajectories is constructed. Next, multinomial logistic regressions are used to identify what individual socio-demographic characteristics and pre-crisis employment experiences are connected to these different typological career paths. Results show that the highly differentiated career paths are associated with different social profiles and differences in the presence of unemployment. Moreover, interesting differences among the most unstable career paths appear. For the most vulnerable social profiles the employment trajectory prior to the crisis seems to point towards the existence of an entrapment in low-skilled jobs that alternate with situations of unemployment. For those with a slightly better position their employment situation after the initiation of the crisis seems to have been impacted by their brief labour market trajectory before the crisis and their resulting work experience gap. We would like to thank the Catalan Youth Observatory for letting us use the data from the Catalan Youth Survey 2012. We would particularly like to thank Pau Serracant for his help and for encouraging us to send our study to the Journal of Labour Market Research in response to their call for research on Youth unemployment in Europe. We are also grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments, which enabled us to greatly improve the quality of our paper. It goes without saying that any errors in this article are the sole responsibility of the authors.

In 1999, the "Bologna Process" was initiated to improve higher education enrolment, study success and students' employability across Europe, mainly by introducing the two-cycle degree structure of Bachelor (BA) and Master (MA). More than 20 years later, we examine whether these goals were met by reviewing quantitative articles from sociology and economics. We find that the literature is surprisingly small, selective, and ambiguous. While enrolment seems to have increased in countries implementing the reform more quickly, the evidence on study success is mixed and hardly available regarding student mobility. The results on employment outcomes are more consistent, with BA graduates having lower labour market returns than graduates with MA or traditional degrees. Altogether, studies often do not allow for causal conclusions and only provide a fragmented picture, which makes evidence-based adjustments in reform implementation difficult. This calls for further research using better data, more state-of-the-art methods and deeper theoretical reasoning.

Raport powstał z inicjatywy Fundacji Pomocy Matematykom i Informatykom Niesprawnym Ruchowo w ramach projektu „Centrum Edukacji i Aktywizacji Zawodowej Osób Niepełnosprawnych - Oddziały Bydgoszcz i Łódź". Stanowi on rezultat badań zjawiska niepełnosprawności i kategorii społecznej, jaką stanowią osoby niepełnosprawne, oraz funkcjonowania ponad 30 agencji zatrudnienia wyspecjalizowanych we wsparciu osób niepełnosprawnych na rynku pracy. Pierwszy rozdział ekspertyzy dotyczy sposobów definiowania zjawiska niepełnosprawności, w drugim zaś - podjęto zagadnienie budowania potencjału niepublicznych służb zatrudnienia osób niepełnosprawnych. Trzeci rozdział raportu zawiera informacje dotyczące przyjętej metodologii badań, a czwarty prezentuje wyniki analiz zebranego materiału empirycznego w odniesieniu do oferty agencji zatrudnienia i jej klientów. Tematem piątego rozdziału pracy jest kondycja agencji zatrudnienia osób niepełnosprawnych, prowadzonych przez organizacje pozarządowe. Motyw przewodni kolejnego rozdziału to otoczenie zewnętrzne agencji zatrudnienia. Ostatnia cześć raportu dotyczy rekomendacji wspomagających rozwiązywanie dylematów rozwojowych, przed którymi stoją agencje zatrudnienia. This report was made on the initiative of the Foundation Supporting Disabled Mathematicians and IT professionals in the project "Centre for Education and Vocational Activation of Persons with Disabilities - Branches Bydgoszcz and Lodz." It is the result of research on disability phenomenon and people with disabilities social category. It contains information about operations of more than 30 employment agencies specialized in helping people with disabilities into the labor market. First chapter of expertise relates to methods for defining the prevalence of disability and in the second - it was the issue of capacity building for non-disabled employment services. Third chapter of the report provides information on the methodology of research, and the fourth presents the results of an empirical analysis of the collected material in relation to the offer of employment agencies and their clients. Theme of the fifth chapter of the work is the condition of the disabled employment agency run by NGOs. Theme of the next chapter is the external environment of employment agencies. Last part of the report focuses on solving a recommendation supporting development dilemmas faced by agencies employment. Badanie zrealizowane w ramach projektu „Centrum Edukacji i Aktywizacji Zawodowej Osób Niepełnosprawnych – Oddziały Bydgoszcz i Łódź”, wdrażanego przez Fundację Pomocy Matematykom i Informatykom Niesprawnym Ruchowo dzięki dofinansowaniu ze środków Państwowego Funduszu Rehabilitacji Osób Niepełnosprawnych. Andrzej Klimczuk

In der Debatte über die Pluralisierung der Volkswirtschaftslehre sind Beiträge aus der Nachbardisziplin der Soziologie bisher kaum aufgegriffen worden. Dabei hat sich hier mit der Neuen Wirtschaftssoziologie ein Forschungsstrang etabliert, dessen Selbstverständnis dezidiert in einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit der Neoklassik verankert ist. So bietet die Neue Wirtschaftssoziologie diverse Anknüpfungspunkte für die heterodoxe Kritik am Mainstream. Vor allem im Hinblick auf das mikroökonomische Gleichgewichtsgewichtsmodell der Neoklassik liefert die Neue Wirtschaftssoziologie wichtige Erkenntnisse, welche die Funktionsweise von Märkten nicht nur anhand des Preismechanismus erklären. Die Analyse offenbart gleichwohl ganz deutlich, dass eine umfassende Anschlussfähigkeit der Neuen Wirtschaftssoziologie an die heterodoxe Kritik nur bedingt gegeben ist. Die methodologischen Unterschiede zwischen den Wirtschaftswissenschaften und der (Wirtschafts-)Soziologie zeigen die Grenzen einer soziologischen Mainstreamkritik.

Modern exchange theories model a large market, but do not explain single exchanges. This paper considers the phenomenon of single exchange and formulates the general exchange problem in the form of a system of two equations, subjective and objective. Subjective equilibrium is given by the Walras–Jevons marginal utility equation. Objective equilibrium equations by Walras and Jevons are averaged over all transactions in the market and can only give a rough general picture without explaining the specific price of an individual exchange. An exchange micro-condition must be found that, when averaged, will give the Walras market equilibrium macro-condition. The study of the internal structure of exchange leads to the need to consider power. The concept of generalized power is introduced. It is generalized power that serves as the primary comparable and measurable objective basis of exchange. The power theory of exchange provides the objective price-equation. It is demonstrated that money is a measure of generalized power in exchange and a certification of generalized power in subsequent exchanges. This methodology is based on an interdisciplinary analysis of an abstract exchange model in the form of a system of equations. The proposed theory is able to uniformly explain any exchange, including a single one, which is impossible with the existing theories of exchange.

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of countries’ interconnections in understanding and reacting to the spread of the virus.This paper uses a global model with a sample of 41 countries to study the interdependencies between COVID-19 health shocks, populations’ risk perceptions about the disease, and their social distancing responses; it also provides some early evidence about potential economic effects.Social networks are a central component in understanding the international transmission.We exploit a dataset on existing social connections across country borders, made available by Facebook, and show that social networks help explain not only the spread of the disease, but also cross-country spillovers in risk perceptions and in social behavior. Social distancing responses across countries are measured based on aggregated mobility tracking indicators, obtained from Google Mobility Reports.We estimate a Global VAR (GVAR) model, which allows for endogeneity of each health, social, and economic, domestic variable, and for a dependence of domestic variables on country-specific foreign aggregates, which depend in turn on the matrix of social connections.Our empirical results highlight the importance of cross-country interdependencies and social networks. Risk perceptions and social responses are affected by experiences abroad, with Italy and the U.S. playing large roles in our sample. The social distancing responses to domestic health shocks are heterogeneous across countries, but they share some similarities: they adjust only gradually and with delay, hence displaying adaptive behavior.Early indicators are suggestive of unemployment consequences that vary widely across countries, depending on their labor market characteristics. Unemployment is particularly responsive to health shocks in the U.S. and Spain, while the fluctuations are attenuated almost everywhere else.

& RÉSUMÉ: Despite the Corona crisis, London is pushing ahead with the implementation of Brexit. This will have a profound impact not only on the EU but also on Africa. The British government's vision of a reinvigorated 'Global Britain' relies heavily on a reinforced cooperation with Commonwealth Sub-Saharan Africa. Already the temporary closure of manufacturing supply chains between China and the rest of the world because of the pandemic seriously affected economic activity in GB and the EU. However, African commodity exporters such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya will likely bear the brunt of both the direct and indirect effects of this weaker demand. This will add up to the economic effects of the spread of Corona in Africa. Most likely the vulnerable and the poor in Africa's informal sector will have to suffer the most by both health hazards and the economic decline. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ RÉSUMÉ: Malgré la crise de Corona, Londres poursuit la mise en œuvre du Brexit. Cela aura un impact profond non seulement sur l'UE mais aussi sur l'Afrique. La vision du gouvernement britannique d'une «Grande-Bretagne mondiale» revigorée repose largement sur une coopération renforcée avec l'Afrique subsaharienne du Commonwealth. Déjà, la fermeture temporaire des chaînes d'approvisionnement manufacturières entre la Chine et le reste du monde en raison de la pandémie a sérieusement affecté l'activité économique en GB et dans l'UE. Cependant, les exportateurs africains de matières premières tels que le Nigeria, l'Afrique du Sud et le Kenya supporteront probablement le poids des effets directs et indirects de cette demande plus faible. Cela s'ajoutera aux effets économiques de la propagation de Corona en Afrique. Les personnes vulnérables et pauvres du secteur informel africain devront très probablement souffrir le plus des risques sanitaires et du déclin économique., Updated Version of Kohnert, Dirk (2020): The impact of Brexit on Africa in times of the Corona Crisis. Hamburg: GIGA, June 17, 2020

In modern economic theories, human qualities are treated as autonomous production factors, which are called “human capital”. However, these theories provide no description of the relationship between human capital and the man who is its “bearer”, nor an explanation of the formation process of that capital. In the thesis, the author tries to justify it as follows: human qualities, including knowledge and skills, are an integral part of a human being, that is, they are involved in every human act. It is, therefore, wrong to analyse their economic significance in isolation from the whole structure of human activity. Through his or her action, man discovers the potential in things and relationships in the form of the possibility of using them for a particular purpose. Capital is thus realized by the human potential of things that form a system for transforming the world. In the first part of the article, a general description of human capital will be provided. In the second part, it will be criticized, while in the third part, there will be an attempt to show the proper relationship between man and capital from the perspective of personalism. Publication of English-language versions of the volumes of the “Annales. Ethics in Economic Life” financed through contract no. 501/1/P-DUN/2017 from the funds of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education devoted to the promotion of scholarship.