Crime, Unemployment, and Xenophobia? An Ecological Analysis of Right-Wing Election Results in Hamburg, 1986−2005

This paper investigates the consequences of immigration, crime and socio-economic depriviation for the performance of right-wing extremist and populist parties in the German city state of Hamburg between 1986 and 2005. The ecological determinants of voting for right-wing parties on the district level are compared to those for mainstream and other protest parties. Parallels and differences in spatial characteristics between right-wing extremist and populist parties' performance are identified. Our empirical results tend to confirm the general contextual sociological theory of right-wing radicalization by general social deprivation and immigration. Nevertheless they indicate that one has to be very cautious when interpreting the unemployment/crime - right-winger nexus. Moreover, crime does not seem to have a strong significant effect on right-wing populist parties' election successes despite its importance for their programmes and campaigns.elections, political extremism, labor market policy, welfare policy, immigration

Car Road Charging: Impact Assessment on German and Austrian Households

The authors apply a computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling framework to carry out a two-country comparison for Austria and Germany assessing the impact of road charging (RC). The pricing policy measure is introduced for the private motorized transport mode and applies to the overall road network. To derive and compare distributional effects of passenger car RC, the mode-specific travel demand of private households is integrated into the CGE model. Furthermore, the modeling framework accounts for different household categories with respect to disposable net income and the corresponding travel demand profiles introduced in terms of behavioral mobility parameters as well as household travel expenditures. Comparing the country-specific results, we find country-specific differences in the impact of RC on household categories, as well as similarities. The differences that we find indicate the importance of particular parameters for the evaluation of infrastructure pricing policy reforms. We can relate differences to prevalent country-specific differences in sociodemographic characteristics, land use structure, territorial population distribution, as well as macroeconomic indicators. To add substance to the two-country impact assessment, a sensitivity analysis is carried out, introducing different RC revenue use schemes. We find differences in distributional effects under equity concerns to be closely related to the revenue use pattern as well as to country- and household-specific travel demand profiles.Computable general equilibrium model, redistributive effects, road charging

Isospin violation in pion-nucleon scattering

We construct the complete effective chiral pion-nucleon Lagrangian in the presence of virtual photons to one loop. As an application, we consider strong and electromagnetic isospin violation for scattering of neutral pions off nucleons. We show that for the scattering lengths these isospin violating terms are of the same size as the purely hadronic ones. We also analyze isospin-violating effects for the $\sigma$--term. These can be as large as 10% for the absolute value but are negligible for the shift to the Cheng-Dashen point.Comment: 13 pp, LaTeX, uses epsf, 1 fi

GD 99 - an unusual, rarely observed DAV white dwarf

New observations of GD 99 are analysed. The unusual pulsation behaviour, showing both long and short periods, has been confirmed. All the available periods show a grouping of short and long period modes with roughly regular spacing. If we interpret the groups separately, a binary nature can be a possible explanation as in the similar cases of WD 2350-0054 and G29-38.Comment: 2 pages, 1 eps figure; has been accepted for publication in Communications in Asteroseismology (Vol. 150, 2007), Proceedings of the Vienna Workshop on the Future of Asteroseismolog

International trade regulation and sustainable development: An outlook

Sustainable development at both the national and the global level is increasingly acknowledged to be dependent upon the international trade system. The WTO Agreements and the continuing discussion in the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment are therefore examined here in the light of principles put forward by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. The current shortcomings in the WTO are analysed and some possible cornerstones for future WTO development indicated

Error Containment in the Presence of Metastability

Error containment is an important concept in fault tolerant system design, and techniques like voting are applied to mask erroneous outputs, thus preventing their propagation. In this presentation we will use the example of DARTS, a fault-tolerant distributed clock generation scheme in hardware, to demonstrate that metastability is a substantial threat to error containment. We will illustrate how metastability can originate and propagate such that a single fault may upset the system. The main conclusion is that modeling efforts on all design levels are definitely required in order to mitigate and quantify the deteriorating effect of metastability on system dependability

The Carbon Content of Austrian Trade Flows in the European and International Trade Context

In this study CO2 emissions embodied in Austrian international trade are quantified employing a 66-region input output model of multidirectional trade. We find that Austria’s final demand CO2 responsibilities on a global scale are 38% higher than conventional statistics report (110 Mt-CO2 versus 79 Mt-CO2 in 2004). For each unit of Austrian final demand, currently two thirds of the thus triggered CO2 emissions occur outside Austrian borders. We then develop a 19-region computable general equilibrium model of Austria and its major trading partners and world regions to find that future Austrian climate policy can achieve the EU 20-20 emission reduction targets, but that its carbon trade balance would worsen considerably. Both unilateral EU and internationally coordinated climate policies affect Austrian international trade stronger than its domestic production.Multi-regional Input-Output Analysis, Multi-regional Computable General Equilibrium, Embodied emissions, Consumption-based principle, Carbon Leakage, Carbon dioxide, Unilateral Climate Policy