Income inequality within European regions: determinants and effects on growth

Economic inequality across Europe has been largely investigated by analysing the determinants and dynamics of the disparities between countries and regions. Similarly, many studies have focused on inequality within European countries. So far, less attention has been devoted to economic inequality within European regions, mainly due to data shortages. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on this level of analysis. After the introductory section, the first part of the paper poses the conceptual bases of the study, examining relevant theoretical and empirical arguments about (i) the determinants of economic inequality, (ii) the relationship between economic inequality and growth, and (iii) the desirability and specificity of regional analysis. The second part of the paper, by means of various econometric approaches, provides evidence of the centrality, for regional inequality levels, of labour market qualitative and quantitative aspects and of some country-level institutional settings. As regards the effects of inequality on growth, outcomes suggest that a positive relationship may exist.Inequality, Regional Systems, Europe, Growth

An improved Belief Propagation algorithm finds many Bethe states in the random field Ising model on random graphs

We first present an empirical study of the Belief Propagation (BP) algorithm, when run on the random field Ising model defined on random regular graphs in the zero temperature limit. We introduce the notion of maximal solutions for the BP equations and we use them to fix a fraction of spins in their ground state configuration. At the phase transition point the fraction of unconstrained spins percolates and their number diverges with the system size. This in turn makes the associated optimization problem highly non trivial in the critical region. Using the bounds on the BP messages provided by the maximal solutions we design a new and very easy to implement BP scheme which is able to output a large number of stable fixed points. On one side this new algorithm is able to provide the minimum energy configuration with high probability in a competitive time. On the other side we found that the number of fixed points of the BP algorithm grows with the system size in the critical region. This unexpected feature poses new relevant questions on the physics of this class of models.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figure

ImageSieve: Exploratory search of museum archives with named entity-based faceted browsing

Over the last few years, faceted search emerged as an attractive alternative to the traditional "text box" search and has become one of the standard ways of interaction on many e-commerce sites. However, these applications of faceted search are limited to domains where the objects of interests have already been classified along several independent dimensions, such as price, year, or brand. While automatic approaches to generate faceted search interfaces were proposed, it is not yet clear to what extent the automatically-produced interfaces will be useful to real users, and whether their quality can match or surpass their manually-produced predecessors. The goal of this paper is to introduce an exploratory search interface called ImageSieve, which shares many features with traditional faceted browsing, but can function without the use of traditional faceted metadata. ImageSieve uses automatically extracted and classified named entities, which play important roles in many domains (such as news collections, image archives, etc.). We describe one specific application of ImageSieve for image search. Here, named entities extracted from the descriptions of the retrieved images are used to organize a faceted browsing interface, which then helps users to make sense of and further explore the retrieved images. The results of a user study of ImageSieve demonstrate that a faceted search system based on named entities can help users explore large collections and find relevant information more effectively

The Partial Evaluation Approach to Information Personalization

Information personalization refers to the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to an individual user. By reducing information overload and customizing information access, personalization systems have emerged as an important segment of the Internet economy. This paper presents a systematic modeling methodology - PIPE (`Personalization is Partial Evaluation') - for personalization. Personalization systems are designed and implemented in PIPE by modeling an information-seeking interaction in a programmatic representation. The representation supports the description of information-seeking activities as partial information and their subsequent realization by partial evaluation, a technique for specializing programs. We describe the modeling methodology at a conceptual level and outline representational choices. We present two application case studies that use PIPE for personalizing web sites and describe how PIPE suggests a novel evaluation criterion for information system designs. Finally, we mention several fundamental implications of adopting the PIPE model for personalization and when it is (and is not) applicable.Comment: Comprehensive overview of the PIPE model for personalizatio

Employment Intensity of Growth in Italy A Note Using Regional Data

The aim of this paper is to provide a measure of the relationship between employment and output growth in Italy and to illustrate its dynamics across a relatively extended time-span (1970-2004). Given the well-known and persisting regional differences of labour market performance and dynamics in Italy, our analytical approach favours the exploitation of spatially disaggregated information, employing regional (NUTS 2) data. The availability of industry composition of employment and value added also allows light to be shed on sector employment intensity of output growth, and the estimation of sector elasticity to GDP describes structural change. The empirical analysis supplies quantitative information about the evolution of employment elasticity during the period considered, clearly depicting the well-known period of job-rich growth (observed since the mid-1990s), after a period of jobless growth. The outcomes also show how regional levels of analysis, together with industry breakdown, may provide very useful information, especially on policy grounds and the desirability of the extension of the study to European level.employment elasticity, growth, productivity, regions

FDI, R&D and Human Capital in Central and Eastern European Countries

The recent literature dealing with the determinants of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) has increasingly emphasised the importance of technological aspects, as both attractive factors and FDI-related technological transfer effects. Focusing on the second perspective, this paper explores the theoretical and empirical relationships between innovative inputs (particularly FDI) and innovative outputs in the EU-27 countries, focusing in particular on the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). Findings provide evidence of strong East/West specificities, but also of marked heterogeneity within the CEECs, thus supporting our approach, which emphasises complexity and the specificities of productive and economic conditions.FDI, Technological spillovers, Knowledge complementarity, Innovative inputs and outputs

Staging Transformations for Multimodal Web Interaction Management

Multimodal interfaces are becoming increasingly ubiquitous with the advent of mobile devices, accessibility considerations, and novel software technologies that combine diverse interaction media. In addition to improving access and delivery capabilities, such interfaces enable flexible and personalized dialogs with websites, much like a conversation between humans. In this paper, we present a software framework for multimodal web interaction management that supports mixed-initiative dialogs between users and websites. A mixed-initiative dialog is one where the user and the website take turns changing the flow of interaction. The framework supports the functional specification and realization of such dialogs using staging transformations -- a theory for representing and reasoning about dialogs based on partial input. It supports multiple interaction interfaces, and offers sessioning, caching, and co-ordination functions through the use of an interaction manager. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the promise of this approach.Comment: Describes framework and software architecture for multimodal web interaction managemen

Factor decomposition of cross-country income inequality with interaction effects

In this paper we propose a decomposition of the Theil measures of per capita income inequality which accounts for interaction effects between its multiplicative factors. Our theoretical findings, supported by an empirical application referring to EU-25 countries, suggest that neglecting these effects may strongly bias the relative importance of some factors, with consequent misleading policy implications.Inequality, Decomposition, Interaction Effects

"La lozana andaluza" y sus traducciones italianas

Il traduttore di un’opera letteraria sembra doversi sempre giustificare rispetto al suo compito. In realtà egli è un coautore, che, come suggerisce Antoine Berman, si offre all’accoglienza dell’altro, dell’estraneo, del diverso, in onore alla fedeltà verso il testo di partenza senza lasciarsi deviare da facili concessioni al pubblico. Rinunciando al primato della comunicazione, come era già stato nei voti di Benjamin, fa sì che il lettore sia educato alla stranezza o anche all’oscurità del testo. La traduzione di un’opera “strana” e fuori dai canoni, come La Lozana andaluza, è stata una sfida all’intraducibilità di un sistema linguistico e semantico polisemico. Nell’articolo si analizzano le varie traduzioni italiane a partire dai primi del Novecento fino ai nostri giorni.The translator of a literary work seems to have always to justify himself about his job. Really he’s a co-author who, as Antoine Berman suggests, welcomes the other one, the stranger, the unlike, loyal to the original text, without concessions to the reading public. Giving up the supremacy of communication, as Benjamin wished, the translation forces the reader to improve himself to oddity or obscurity of the text. The translation of an odd work, far from the rules, like La Lozana andaluza, has been a challenge to an untranslatable polysemic system. In this article the various Italian translations of this work are examined, from early twentieth-century to our days.El traductor de una obra literaria parece tener siempre que justificarse respecto a su tarea. En realidad él es un coautor que, como sugiere Antoine Berman, se abre a la acogida de lo otro, de lo extraño, de lo ajeno, fiel al texto de origen sin dejarse desviar por concesiones al público. Al renunciar a la primacía de la comunicación, como ya auspiciaba Benjamin, deja que el lector se eduque en la extrañeza o en la oscuridad del texto. La traducción de una obra “rara” y lejana del canon, como La Lozana andaluza, ha sido un desafío ante la imposibilidad de traducción de un sistema polisémico lingüística y semánticamente. En el artículo se examinan las traducciones italianas de esta obra en el curso del siglo XX hasta nuestros días