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During the 20th century, Russian women were assigned the triple role of social and political activists, workers, caregivers and mothers. This paper makes an overview of the main steps undertaken first by the Soviet and later by the modern Russian governments to influence family formation models and fertility levels, in order to improve the demographic situation over the period from 1917 until 2015. The overview pays close attention to such measures of demographic policy as marriage and divorce regulation, support of families through family benefits and the tax system, reconciliation of family and work spheres (maternity/paternity leaves, workplace flexibility measures), fertility promotion, childbearing and childcare support, as well as rare reproductive health protection initiatives.

During the 20th century, Russian women were assigned the triple role of social and political activists, workers, caregivers and mothers. This paper makes an overview of the main steps undertaken first by the Soviet and later by the modern Russian governments to influence family formation models and fertility levels, in order to improve the demographic situation over the period from 1917 until 2015. The overview pays close attention to such measures of demographic policy as marriage and divorce regulation, support of families through family benefits and the tax system, reconciliation of family and work spheres (maternity/paternity leaves, workplace flexibility measures), fertility promotion, childbearing and childcare support, as well as rare reproductive health protection initiatives.

The main goal of the German Prostitution Act of 2002 to improve the human and labor rights of sex workers has not been achieved. The gradual substitution of German sex workers with migrants, most of whom stem from Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union countries, is overlooked, since multiple sex workers from these countries are, in reality, not covered by the Act; victims of human trafficking are also not adequately protected by current legislation. The issue is complex and regulation requires policy makers in Germany and the EU to address it together with human trafficking and migration issues.

This article gives a short overview of the population dynamics in the Russian Far East, and of the recent efforts of the Russian government to make the region more attractive for internal and external migrants and capital flows. This paper will also evaluate the role of China, a country sharing more than 3500 kilometres of border with the Far Eastern Federal District, in the region's economy. To unfold the potential of the region, further efforts should be made to invest into the industrial infrastructure, but also into the development of social infrastructure. The latter, together with information on implementation of Target Federal Programmes in mass-media, should create positive stimuli for migration inflows. Higher transparency of legislation related to migration and investment may create pre-requisites for attracting more Chinese (seasonal) manpower and financial resources, without aggravating sovereignity concerns of local population and politicians.

This paper analyses the influence of country-level education mismatch on the individual-level relationship between education and the probability of being unemployed or staying in alternative labour statuses, for young people aged 15-34 in 2006, 2008 and 2010, living in 21 EU countries. We assume that young people may fall in five labour market statuses: 1) Employee; 2) Self-employed; 3) Unemployed; 4) In Education; 5) Inactive, and perform a multinomial logit model to study the effects of years of education on relative probability of being in labour statuses 2, 3, 4, or 5, compared to the base category (Employee). Afterwards, we interact the individual-level years of education with a country-level indicator of education mismatch in order to identify the heterogeneous effects of the aggregate mismatch among people with different educational attainments. Results show that more years of education: i) reduce the relative probability of being unemployed; ii) have a cumulative effect by extending the period of education; iii) slightly raise the relative probability to be self-employed. As regards country-level education mismatch, we found that only after 2008 it produces an additional effect on better educated young people by further reducing their relative unemployment risk when it is compared to that of low educated youngsters. This outcome tells us that improving access to university degrees remains the main road to tackle youth unemployment caused by education mismatch, even after the outburst of the current financial and economic crisis.

This paper studies gender earnings inequality in ten Central and Eastern EU countries before (2007) and during the ongoing crisis (2009), using quantile regression methods. The analysis reveals remarkable cross-country diversity in levels and patterns of the gender gap along the earning distribution. We address then the role played by country-specific labour market institutions in forming this variety. Labour market deregulation increases gender inequality, particularly reinforcing the glass-ceiling effect. Higher union density and wage coordination reduce the pay gap, with stronger equalizing effects again in the better-paid jobs. Lastly, the crisis seems to further weaken the already poor role of institutions in the low-pay sector.

This paper exploits data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to re-examine the gender wage gap in Germany on the basis of inequality-adjusted measures of wage differentials which fully account for gender differences in pay distributions. The inequality-adjusted gender pay gap measures are significantly larger than suggested by standard indicators, especially in East Germany. Women appear penalized twice, with both lower mean wages and greater wage inequality. A hypothetical risky investment question collected in 2004 in the SOEP is used to estimate individual risk aversion parameters and benchmark the ranges of inequality-adjusted wage differentials measures.

Thermoelectric efficiency of a material is described by the so-called thermoelectric figure of merit ZT = S2σκ-1T, where S is the Seebeck coefficient, σ and κ are correspondingly the electrical and the total thermal conductivities. Nanostructuring has opened new ways to improve thermoelectric performance of a material either by decreasing κ or by increasing S2σ. We have studied thermoelectric properties of two nanostructured systems: heavily-doped polycrystalline silicon films with embedded nanocavities and InGaAs films with high concentration rare-earth TbAs embedded nanoparticles. In the first system, we have analysed the effect of the formation of nanocavities, which were expected to act as efficient phonon scattering centres, thus reducing the thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity was about half of the reported value in bulk polycrystalline silicon, however, the same low value was measured in the samples without nanocavities. This might suggest that the film microstructure dominates the thermal conductivity in all cases. The material also showed outstanding thermoelectric properties. Upon thermal treatments at temperatures above 800°C we measured higher Seebeck coefficients than those normally found in monocrystalline silicon at corresponding doping level. This increase was found to be connected to the electron energy filtering by the potential barriers at the grain boundaries which accumulated dopant precipitates during the thermal treatments. As the result we have obtained a maximum ZT of 0.18 at room temperature. In the second system, we studied the effect of embedded TbAs nanoparticles on the thermoelectric properties of InGaAs. In this group of materials, the nanoparticles serve to reduce thermal conductivity (through phonon scattering), increase Seebeck coefficient (through electron energy filtering), and increase of electrical conductivity (through nanoparticle donation of electrons). Both presence of the electron filtering and decrease of the thermal conductivity was experimentally observed. The electrical conductivity, however, drastically decreased and no enhancement of ZT was achieved.

Two decades of economic transition revealed that Russian women are on average less happy than men. This paper addresses individual subjective well-being from the intra-family perspective and investigates whether the gender satisfaction gap could be caused, among all, by a mismatch between the socially imposed patriarchal family gender roles and the actually performed ones. I test for the presence of the following phenomena: (1) a fair share of income brought by each of the spouses into their household is judged according to the patriarchal model attributing the role of the breadwinner to men; (2) division of housework, with women, even if working, holding the main responsibility for housekeeping activities, is perceived as fair. Prime-age working adults living in partnership constitute the dataset which is a part of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for 1994-2004. Life satisfaction is modelled with the help of the seemingly unrelated bivariate ordered probit model aiming at the adjustment for unobserved factors influencing happiness evaluation of both partners. For the period 1994-1998, the results show that women's relative unhappiness is likely to be causes by their increasing earning powers with relative to men, and overload with hours spent on housekeeping in households with children. In the second period of economic growth, 2000 - 2004, I observe a change in women's preferences over time-use and total income shares, suggesting a tendency towards their emancipation.

Subjective well-being patterns found for developed economies do not always valid for the economies in transition. This paper overviews happiness and satisfaction studies on income, work and family life domains with a particular attention to those on transitional countries. While there is a range of similarities in conclusions for two types of economies, the main differences seems to be a result of uncertainty and fast changing conditions in transitional settings. The terms happiness and life satisfaction should be distinguished, when evaluating the successfulness of transformational period and socio-economic policies. A short summary for 76 studies involving subjective indicators on data from the economies in transition is included.

Mestrado em Ciência e Engenharia de Materiais Compósitos Magnetoelectricos baseados em ferrites hexagonais BaFe12O19, SrFe12O19, Ba3Co2Fe24O41, e em perovsquites ferroelectricas BaTiO3, foram estudadas. Foram realizadas análises estruturais por difracção de Raios-X e microscopia de varrimento de electrões; ambas as fases, ferroelectrica e ferromagnética apresentam distorções apreciáveis dos parâmetros de rede cristalina. As propriedades ferroelectricas foram medidas por microscopia de força de resposta piezoelectrica, sendo detectado uma diminuição das propriedades ferroelectricas nos compósitos em comparação com o material BaTiO3 puro. Medidas magnéticas foram realizadas com magnetometria por vibração da amostra (VSM) e microscopia de força magnética (MFM). As medidas efectuadas por VSM confirmam a proporcionalidade entre a magnetização saturação e a respectiva fracção da fase ferromagnetica em todos os compósitos. Medidas locais do acoplamento magnetoelectrico foram efectuadas através de microscopia de força atómica, tendo sido detectadas efeitos localizados na magnetização de grãos ferrite contíguos a grãos de BaTiO3 sujeitos a uma inversão da polarização. ABSTRACT: Magnetoelectric composites based on the hexagonal ferrites BaFe12O19, SrFe12O19, Ba3Co2Fe24O41, and the ferroelectric perovskite BaTiO3, were studied. Structural and phase analysis of the samples was done by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Both ferroelectric and magnetic phases have structural distortion of the unit cell. Ferroelectic properties were studied by piezoresponse force microscopy. The results show significant worsening of ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties in the composite compared to the pure ferroelectric phase. Magnetic analyses were done by vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) and magnetic force microscopy (MFM). The VSM measurements confirmed linear dependence of the magnetization saturation on the fraction of magnetic phase in all of the composites. The experiment on local electromagnetic coupling was performed by means of atomic force microscopy (AFM). It resulted in a weak effect of polarization switching on the local magnetic properties.