2019 European Elections Threaten to Bring the EU to Standstill
For these reasons, the upcoming elections hold great significance, and in terms of the EU going forward, could yet be defining. The centre ground across much of Europe has been vacated, no longer thought equipped to deal with the problems the continent faces, and populism from both the left and right has rushed to fill the political void. These changes will be reflected in the results of the elections, quite in what form, though, remains to be seen. What could such changes spell for EU politics? And should we be worried? Here we take a look at the paths down which the union may potentially turn, and consider the immediate future of the biggest trading bloc the world has ever seen. The complexion of Parliament The vote - scheduled for 23-26 May – will dictate which 751 MEPs sit in the European Parliament (EP). In its current constellation, the European People’s Party (EPP) representing the centre-right, and Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), representing the centre-left, form a majority, together making up 54% of the assembly’s seats. This has been hugely beneficial in terms of creating law. Owing to the cooperation of the groupings, the mechanics of EU politics, notoriously both slow and disjointed, have been lubricated, and through negotiation and compromise the last 5 years has seen a steady flow of legislation passed. However, if national politics and polls are anything to go by, this looks sets to change, and radically. The EPP, for instance, looks set to be punished at the polls. Since 2012, centre-right parties have lost popularity across the continent - a trend encapsulated by the Sarkozy induced capitulation of Les Republican in France. More recently, the bloc has also suffered from disunity, unable to agree on how best to deal with a Hungarian government intent on dismantling democratic checks and balances. The wedge issue continues to disrupt the group's cohesion, and the Hungarians remain controversially suspended. Across the floor, the S&D isn’t expected to fare much better. Since the financial crash, its member parties have seen their domestic support slide. In fact, social democracy across Europe looks moribund. German, Dutch, and Italian centre-left parties, in particular, have all had their share of the vote decimated, and there is little sign of the tide changing. Only in Portugal, and perhaps to a lesser degree Spain, is there anything resembling social-democratic revival. It looks, then, as though big change is dawning. Next month we could potentially be looking at an unrecognisable European Parliament, fragmented and divided between integrationists and nationalists, Europhiles and Eurosceptics, and right and left wingers. But could this mean for actual legislation? The effects on legislation Well, such an impasse, as some observers are predicting, would almost certainly make the already difficult process of passing legalisation even trickier. While this might detract from the parliament’s legislative efficiency, a more 'open-to-all' decision-making process may have a positive effect on public interest in democracy at the EU level. However, if populist parties gain enough power to block crucial decisions, as its perfectly plausible they may, all the other parties will have to pull together to keep the EU functioning - and there is no guarantee that will be feasible. In such a scenario, movement on issues like migration and Eurozone reform - likely to be centre-stage during campaigning - would almost certainly stall. For Emmanuel Macron this development, this potential legislative logjam, would be especially frustrating. The French President had made integrationist reform a priority of his; a commitment that has taken on additional personal significance because of the problems he is experiencing at home. Throughout his presidency he has been especially vocal about the need for reform of the Eurozone, suggesting that Europe should harmonise its tax policies and establish a minimum wage in each country. Italy’s far-right Lega party - projected to increase its number of seats by around 20 - is expected to lead a serious challenge to these proposals, and have already shown their disdain for EU prescriptions when they agreed, with their Five Star Movement partners, to a sharp increase in domestic public spending. This flew in the face of repeated admonishments from the EU that Italy must rein in its public spending amid fears it could trigger a debt crisis. Other mooted proposals for further EU integration include the creation of an EU Finance Minister, a joint Eurozone budget, and the establishment of a body tasked with overseeing bloc-wide economic policy. With a larger Eurosceptic faction in parliament these, too, are likely to be kicked into the long grass. Hungarian Premier and populist stalwart Viktor Orban has disparagingly likened such calls to an attempt to build a ‘liberal empire’, and instead has talked up a Europe based ‘strong nation states’ and ‘Christian culture’. To achieve this he believes that migration must be better controlled. This leads us to the area where, besides merely stifling policy, right-wing parties may have the power to seriously influence policy agenda. Although diverging on multiple issues, there is a consensus among them for stronger collective border controls and the militarization of borders. Also discussed has been a possible expansion of policing operations across North Africa, aimed at blocking African migration routes to Europe - the nationalist right has long favoured military solutions to social problems. Post May elections Evidently, an influx of EU-phobic, right-wing MEPs would make the tone of parliamentary debate harsher and legislation harder to pass. At the same time, it could also set the stage for mainstream MEPs to speak out more stridently in defence of European values and the European project more generally; an activity the Brexit remain campaign conspicuously neglected. Routinely, we fail to recognise all that the EU has brought us in its short history – workers rights, environmental protections, lasting peace - too often these are taken for granted. It really wasn't so long ago that none were guaranteed. If we truly are about to enter a battle for the continent’s future, progressives among us better prepare a positive, aspirational vision. And given the false sense of security that seems to have descended, a gentle reminder of the EU’s past achievements could make for a useful start.
With the European elections just two weeks away the EU’s future is looking far from certain - the union is beset by crises and the resolve of its member states is being tested like never before. Much has changed since Europeans last took to the polls: Ukraine had its borders forcibly redrawn when an increasingly hawkish Russia invaded and annexed Crimea; global drought, poverty and violence drove record numbers of refugees to the shores of the Mediterranean; and China has continued its march as a formidable economic and political force. There has also been the small matter of Brexit and the emergence of a populist movement that has made electoral gains across the continent. The current moment, evidently, is one of flux, and the full implications of the transforming political landscape are still to be fully understood.
Public Economics & Economic Policy (JEL H)
Resources for economics students to learn statistics
However, if your background is more in social sciences than in mathematics, statistics can be a challenging subject because it is unfamiliar. Not only are there new concepts and terms to learn, but also the quantitative approach of mathematics differs from the argumentative approach of most social science subjects. Not to mention the assignments, which are likely in the form of short answer questions and tasks rather than essays or longer form answers. Browse our program listings for more opportunities If you're an economics student and are struggling with statistics, however, you don't need to despair! In addition to the statistics courses that will almost certainly be a part of your studies, there are many more resources out there which can help you learn. In this article, we'll go through some of the different resources that are available to help you learn statistics. Websites When there is a particular topic you need to understand or a specific technique that you want to use, then you can quickly find information online. If you just need a formula or an explanation of a term, then Wikipedia can be surprisingly helpful, as some of their statistics pages are quite a high level. But for more in-depth knowledge, then you want a speciality statistics site. Blogs are also a useful source of knowledge. One useful site is Discovering Statistics, which is the site run by British professor Andy Field. It has all of the information on statistics that an average undergraduate would need, and topics are explained in a funny and easy to read way. The big advantage of this site is that it is written in plain English, with no jargon or difficult to understand terminology. If you're more of a words person than a mathematics person, then this site will suit you well. Another great site is Stat Trek. This site has tutorials, tools, and tables as well as information on statistics. It is aimed at advanced high school students, but will cover most of what undergraduate students need to know as well. Doing tutorials that let you work a problem through from the beginning to the end is an excellent way to build your confidence at working with statistics. Finally, Simply Statistics is a good resource for more advanced students. This site has a blog with thoughtful blog posts about data science plus interviews, information on conferences, and links to courses at online learning institutions like Coursera or courses hosted independently by other academics. <11an>limit:2;categories:jobs|courses|conferences|Professor;disciplines:Econometrics, Statistics and Quantitative Methods (JEL C)</11an> Podcasts Something to remember is that learning statistics isn't only about memorising equations or specific statistical terms. It also requires a broad understanding of mathematics, probability, and numerical accuracy. In order to build your broader knowledge, you can turn to resources like podcasts. Most podcasts are more fun and casual than textbooks, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful learning tools. Plus you can listen to them while you travel or while you're doing jobs around the house, allowing you to learn in this downtime. One of the most popular statistics podcasts is More or Less: Behind the Stats from the BBC. This podcast digs into a statistics topic each episode, such as recent episodes on vaccines and herd immunity, assessing the value of foreign aid, and how to calculate mortality following a natural disaster. The podcast Partially Derivative ended in 2017, but there is still a big archive of episodes available. This podcast covers the “data of everything” with a specific interest in computing, and looks at the data related to topics like AI, deep learning, and bots. Finally, a useful podcast hosted by two data scientists is Not So Standard Deviations. They discuss the latest news in the field of data science and dive in depth on topics like the use of statistics program R, books in the field, and specific examples of topics relevant to statistics. A recent series on the podcast has been a chapter by chapter discussion of the book Design Thinking by Nigel Cross. Online Courses If you want more in-depth help with statistics, such as learning a topic before your semester starts or catching up on something important that you missed in your lectures while you were sick, then you can try an online course. There are lots of free online courses available which might include video lectures, slides, exercises, and more to teach you a topic. Sometimes the course materials are available for you to work through at your own pace, but often the materials will form part of a course which you take over a number of weeks. While online courses can't offer the direct teaching and classroom environment of an in-person course, they can get you up to speed on the essentials of a topic to help boost your confidence and get you over a statistics hump. We have a full article with 10 free online courses in statistics, but we'll break down some of the best here as well. Intro to Statistics from Stanford University and Udacity. A course that lasts 8 weeks in total and is aimed at students who have no university experience with statistics at all. The perfect course for new undergraduates who are worried about the statistics component of their course and want to prepare in advance. Statistics: The Science of Decisions from San Jose State University and Udacity. This self-paced course typically runs for around 4 months, depending on how fast you work through the material. This is a more advanced course, suited for an undergraduate who has already completed an introductory statistics course. The background required for this course is a basic understanding of proportions (fractions, decimals, and percentages), negative numbers, basic algebra (solving equations), and exponents and square roots. Statistical Thinking for Data Science and Analytics from Columbia University and EDX. This course takes 7 – 10 hours per week and runs for 5 weeks, aiming to teach the principles of statistics as applied to data science. It is an introductory course for no knowledge of statistics is required to start. Learning from Data from Caltech. This is another self-guided course, so lectures and homework are made available and you work through them at your own pace. The course teaches an introduction to machine learning by focusing on the application of algorithms and applications to big data. Because it is more specialised than the other courses, this would be a great choice for an economics student who is interested in getting into data science but wants to get some experience in the topic before deciding whether to take a full in-person course. General interest books As well as textbooks, you can also learn about statistics from more general interest books which are geared towards the public. Obviously, these books will not have the same depth or detail as an academic text, but they are quick and fun to read and help broaden your understanding. If you have a holiday coming up or a bit of free time and you want to learn while also enjoying yourself, try out some of these books: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis is the book which the famous movie about statistics and baseball was based on. It tells the true story of a struggling baseball team who turn to a statistician to help them select new players and to improve their team. These events had a huge impact on how modern sports operate, and the book serves as an example of the power of statistics when put into practice. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell is another famous book which gained a huge public following. It describes the factors that makeup success in various fields, and as a part of this it covers a lot of material about probability, statistics, and economics. It's not a serious academic text but it's a fun and easy read. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner is a book which aims to make economics exciting. By looking at topics in pop culture, it teaches readers about the essential principles of economics, including statistics. The authors find fun and quirky examples to make their lessons engaging and easy to read. Looking for a graduate program to continue your studies? Check out our program listings.
A subject that many new economics students – and some older economics students too – struggle with is statistics. Statistics are an essential tool for economics, allowing data analysis and modelling to be accurate and mathematically correct. More broadly, statistics are of great importance in all of our daily lives.
Econometrics, Statistics and Quantitative Methods (JEL C)
Also, as a reader it's useful to know about the most popular and prestigious journals, so that you can more easily locate information which you need when doing literature reviews. For this reason, today we're sharing a list of the top 10 journals in the field of economics, so you can see at a glance which are the big-name journals which you should be aware of. Looking for a job in economics? Check out our job listings. 1. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press This is the oldest English language professional journal in the field of economics, and one of the most respected. It covers all aspects of the field, but has a specialisation in microtheory and macroeconomics – both empirical and theoretical work. 2. Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press Another long-standing journal, the Journal of Political Economy was first published in 1892 and has since covered both theoretical and empirical work in economics which could have long-term impact on the state of the field. Its specialisations include monetary theory, fiscal policy, labor economics, development, micro and macroeconomic theory, international trade and finance, industrial organization, and social economics. 3. Econometrica, Econometric Society With a specialisation in econometrics, this journal has been established since 1933. It aims to attract high-quality research through awarding of the Frisch Medal every two years, which recognises outstanding research published in the journal. 4. American Economic Review, American Economic Association Established in 1911, this is another well-established and well-respected journal in the field of economics. Once a year, in May, an issue is dedicated to presenting proceedings and papers from the annual meeting of the American Economic Association. 5. Journal of Finance, American Finance Association For the related field of finance, the Journal of Finance is the top place to publish, along with the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics. 6. Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier For those researching in macroeconomics and monetary economics, the Journal of Monetary Economics is an essential read. Covering empirical, methodological, and theoretical work, recent topics have included banking, credit and financial markets, behavioral macroeconomics, business cycle analysis, consumption, labor supply, and so on. 7. Journal of Economic Growth, Springer With a focus on economic growth and dynamic macroeconomics, this relatively new journal established in 1996 covers all aspects of growth, including growth models, income distribution, human capital, fertility, trade, development, migration, and money. 8. Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press Another long-established journal, RESTUD as it is known is a must-read for theoretical and applied economics. It was founded with the specific intent to publish work from young and up-and-coming economics researchers; a mission which it continues to this day. 9. The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press In the field of quantitative economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics is the gold standard. The bringing together of expertise from the fields of statistics and economics has resulted in hugely influential models, and this journal covers the most important aspects of this approach. 10. Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier Another influential journal in the area of econometrics is the Journal of Econometrics, established in 1973. The focus of the journal is on econometrics methodologies as well as the way in which these methodologies can be applied to substantive areas of economics. With these ten journals, you should be well up to date on all the latest happenings in the field of economics.
All academics know how important it is to get your work published. The journal which you publish your work in can have a big effect on how it is perceived and on how many people it reaches, so it's important to make the right decision when submitting your work for publication. You want to make sure that you submit to a journal which has a strong professional reputation for your work to be taken seriously.
The different types of fellowships available for postdocs
If you want to start a postdoc then you need to know about the different types of postdoc positions that are available. Typically, a postdoc can be paid a salary from a variety of sources: either paid directly by the PI from their research budget, or from being awarded a fellowship by an outside funding body. Getting a fellowship is generally considered a better option than being employed directly by a PI, as with a fellowship if you decide to move to a new institution or change to a different research topic you can keep the fellowship funding with you. There are a number of different types of fellowship that are available for postdocs, so if you are looking to apply for a fellowship then you will need to know what options are open to you. In this article, we'll talk about the different types of fellowship available to postdocs. Browse our postdoc job listings for more opportunities Browse our funding & scholarship listings Teaching fellowships A common way for postdocs to earn a salary is through a teaching fellowship. This means that the postdoc will have a regular teaching load for undergraduate, masters, or PhD students and will usually be responsible for lesson planning, setting and marking assessments, and supporting students on top of their regular teaching and research duties. The exact course load that a postdoc is required to teach will vary between fellowships, but it will often be around about equivalent to a half time teaching position. The advantage of a teaching fellowship is the direct, hands-on experience of teaching that it provides. In some countries, such as the U.S., having teaching experience is extremely important for getting a professorship position, so it makes sense to get as much practice in teaching as possible. In addition, some people find teaching less experienced students and conveying an interest in the subject to them to be extremely rewarding. The downside of a teaching fellowship is that it involves a whole extra job on top of your research duties, which can often end up being pushed aside when you are busy with teaching. In some countries in Europe, teaching is considered less prestigious than pure research and so the preference would be against teaching fellowships. If you do take up a teaching fellowship, be prepared to juggle responsibilities to students as well as to your own research. Individual fellowships Arguably the most desirable form of fellowship, an individual fellowship is awarded to you as a postdoctoral researcher in order to pursue the projects that you want. Even if you decide to move to a new institution or start a new project, you can continue to use the fellowship money for your salary and research expenses as it is tied to you personally, not to a position at an institution or specific research topic. This means that if you have an individual fellowship, you have quite some leverage over where you work and what you research. Most institutions are happy to take on a postdoc who comes with their own funding, so you get to choose which institution and department you want to work at. Individual fellowships will usually be awarded for a period of two to five years and will cover costs like your salary, research expenses, and sometimes even pay for supporting positions such as a PhD student or research assistant. Within the category of individual fellowships, there are a variety of sources of funding that we will consider next: Government funding One of the biggest sources of funding in most fields is government research organisations. Bodies like the National Science Foundation in the U.S., the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in Germany, or the Medical Research Council in the UK provide funding to researchers at all stages of their careers including postdoctoral. Some research topics attract more government funding than others, as governments tend to fund more projects which will have a direct and money-saving impact on governmental tasks in the future. However, often your project may be able to fit in more than one topic area, which you can use to your advantage. In the UK, for example, a psychology project would usually fall under the Economic and Social Research Council, but if the project has a clinical focus then it could also go under the Medical Research Council which generally has more generous funding available. Look into the specifics of which government bodies give out funding and try to identify where your project has the best change to receive funding. In most cases, you will apply for funding from the government of the country that you want to work in. So, if you are originally from France but you are currently working in the Netherlands and you plan to stay there for the foreseeable future, then you should apply for funding from Netherlands funding bodies. However, there can be some restrictions on government funding based on your citizenship and residency status, so check into this before you apply if you are an expat. Institutional funding Another source of potential funding is the institution at which you currently work or at which you want to work in the future. Universities have large research budgets, some of which will be allocated to postdoc positions. These fellowships can be for teaching and research or for pure research. These fellowships tend to be slightly easier to apply for and less intensely competitive than fellowships from governmental bodies. The advantage of these fellowships is that it is relatively easy to get funding if you are already working in a department. The disadvantage is that the funding is tied to a particular position, meaning that if you want to move to a new institution or take up a new project then you will lose your funding. Institutional funding can also be used for short-term periods to cover you between two longer periods of external funding, for example. So you can get institutional funding for six months or so while you are applying for a major grant from the government. Travel fellowships Finally, one type of fellowship funding that may be of interest is travel fellowships, where funding is offered for postdocs to travel to an institution in another country to gain knowledge or skills. This generally happens when a postdoc knows someone in research in another country, such as a collaborator, and wants to visit them for a shorter period to work together. If the hosting institution is supportive, then the postdoc can apply for a travel fellowship to cover their travel costs and salary during this period. You apply for funding from the country that you want to visit – so if you currently work in Japan but want to travel to a U.S. institution then you would apply for travel funding from the U.S. institution. Travel fellowships generally last between one and six months and can be a great support for postdocs who want to gain new skills. It is usually best to apply for a travel fellowship when there is a specific skill, type of knowledge, or technique that you can learn from the foreign institution that you cannot get from your own institution. The travel fellowships most likely to be awarded are those with a specific goal in mind, and in which the postdoc can return and spread knowledge among their home institution. Browse our programs listings for more opportunities
After finishing a PhD, most researchers who want to stay in academia will go on to one or more postdoc positions. As a postdoc you may conduct your own research, but most likely you will be supporting a principal investigator (PI) who decides what topics will be investigated. As a postdoc you will perform research, supervise PhD students, teach undergraduate or masters students, and present work at conferences and workshops.
Tips for reformatting your manuscript to submit to a new journal
Browse our job listings for more opportunities 1. Look up the formatting guidelines on the journal website Before you begin reformatting, make sure that you know exactly what the requirements of your new target journal are. Don't assume that just because you have formatted for one journal in your field that the requirements will be the same for other journals. Each journal will have its own requirements in terms of fonts, layouts, required appendices, image formatting guidelines, and supporting materials, so make sure that you research this thoroughly before you begin the reformatting process. You can find a full list of formatting guidelines on the website for the journal you are aiming to publish in. 2. Remember to check your tables One part of reformatting that always seems to take forever is formatting your tables of data. Tables are finicky and tend to break when compressed or stretched to fit different paper sizes or margins. Make sure that you check every single one of your tables to see that it is displaying correctly under the new formatting requirements. 3. Use a tool like LaTeX to format more quickly If you are looking for a way to make reformatting easier and you are fed up of using a word processor like Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer, then you can try a specialist academic typesetting program like LaTeX instead. LaTeX is a little more complicated to use than a standard word processor as it requires you to separate out your content and your formatting and to indicate your formatting choices through the use of a markup language. However, once you have a document prepared in LaTex then you can change the formatting of that document very easily. With a few clicks you can change the fonts, margins, columns, emphasis formatting, and more throughout the entire document. Instead of having to go through your entire manuscript and change every time you use italics, for example, you can just change the italics formatting setting and all of the italic text will be changed for you. If you have the time and patience to learn to use LaTeX now, you will save a lot of time on reformatting in the future. 4. Print your colour images before you finalise them Most academics read all of their journals electronically these days. But don't forget that journals are still printed on paper and that there is a group of people who prefer to read in this format. While text will typically not need any tweaking to look presentable in both electronic and paper formats, you need to pay attention to your figures or images to make sure that they look okay when printed. This is especially true if you use colour images, as colours can vary a great deal between printing and electronic display. Once you have reworked your images and you are happy with how they look on screen, do print them out and check how they look on paper. Often you might find that the colours look too washed out or too dark on paper, or that labels and other text are hard to read. Tweak the colour settings of your images until you are happy with them both on screen and on paper. <11an>limit:2;categories:conferences|Professor;disciplines:General Economics (JEL A)</11an> 5. Check your reference format One of the most time-consuming tasks when it comes to reformatting a manuscript is preparing all of the references or the bibliography. There are many different styles of reference that are used by different journals and it takes a lot of time and concentration to make sure that every reference is done with the exact correct punctuation, use of initials or names of the authors, formatting of the journal name, referencing the page numbers, and so on. If you have a shorter reference list, you can make these changes by hand. But if you have a very long reference list, then you may want to consider using a tool like Mendeley. Mendeley lets you keep a list of all of the references you are using for a project, and then can display those references in various different formats like APA or MLA. Once you have uploaded your reference list to the program, this makes reformatting your reference list much quicker. 6. Suggested reviewers Some journals will ask submitting authors to suggest other researchers who could be contacted to review the paper. Not all journals require this, so if you are submitting your paper to a new journal which does require it, then take some time to think of an appropriate person or people. You want to choose someone who you do not work closely with or know personally – so don't suggest someone in your department or someone you frequently collaborate with – but you do want someone who knows the field well. If you have met your suggested reviewer a few times, that's okay, but it shouldn't be someone you're close with. Pick someone whose work in the field you know and respect and who you think would have a clear and fair understanding of the work that you've done. 7. Data sharing Different journals have different policies about sharing data. In addition, your institution might have policies on data sharing that you should be aware of. Wherever possible, sharing your data helps demonstrate your transparency and commitment to high standards of research, as well as contributing to the broader academic community. Look into the journal's data sharing options and discuss with your co-authors and others in your department to find out if you should share your data publicly. 8. Cover letter Just like when you apply for a job, your cover letter for a journal submission should be adjusted to the particular requirements of the journal. Don't use a standard template letter for all of your manuscript submissions, though it is okay to start with a standard template and then make tweaks according to the journal. Try to specify why your work would be of interest to the particular readers of the journal in question – for example, is the journal read mostly by clinicians, or researchers, or educators? Also, if possible try to link your manuscript to a theme of the journal or to other articles which have previously been published in the journal. This helps to support the idea that your work would fit in with the journal's message and would be interesting to its readers. 9. Plagiarism detection Many journals now have some kind of electronic plagiarism detection, where you must upload your manuscript for it to be automatically checked against other work for similarities. Uploading your document and getting the detection software to accept it can take a few attempts and more time than you think, so don't leave this until the very last minute if you're on a strict deadline. 10. Be patient, it will take time When you need to reformat a paper, at first you might think that it will be a quick job. After all, you just need to tweak a few things with the layout, right? Unfortunately, the reality of reformatting is that it always takes more time than you expect. Even though the changes you are making to your manuscript are minor, it still requires time and attention to make sure everything is correct. Set aside a week or two to perform all the reformatting and try to be patient, as it will inevitably take a while to get the manuscript ready for your new journal submission. Looking for a graduate program to continue your studies? Check out our program listings.
As every academic knows, writing a paper for submission to a journal is a long and arduous process. It is common for papers to be rejected from the first journal that you submit to, so you will have to reformat the manuscript and resubmit it to another journal. This process of reformatting requires quite a bit of work, even when the paper is staying essentially the same and the only changes being made are cosmetic. Every journal has its own rules about formatting such as fonts to be used, margins, the type and number of images allowed, and citation format. To help you with this process, here are our tips for reformatting your manuscript to submit to a new journal.
Trump's failed attempt to bring back coal jobs
Check out our economics job listings Election promises There was obvious political expediency behind such a statement. As a message, bringing back coal jobs remained potent in the rust belt, particularly in states like West Virginia, ravaged by years of industrial decline. And as the election proved, it was sufficiently persuasive; Trump’s carrying of states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa – for many years blue – forged his unlikely route to the White House, despite losing the popular vote. As an election ploy, however, promises of coal riches, much like the rock itself, are one-use-only. If after great effort – as has been made – employment and money don’t return, the promise loses its credibility. And as the 2018 midterms showed, this reality has dawned and the grumbles of discontent are increasingly audible. From an economic perspective, the pinning of such significance on coal was always questionable, to say nothing of how catastrophic it is environmentally. As of 2018, coal made up just a sliver of the American economy, employing around 75,000 people. Or, put another way, fewer people than currently work at bowling alleys or nail salons. Renewables offer the answer Even if enlarged far beyond its current state – a project that would be prohibitively expensive – the industry is an incredibly inefficient means of job creation, for a number of reasons. Typically, the process by which energy is extracted from fossil fuels is mechanised and capital-intensive and does not require much human involvement. This is in stark contrast to the renewable energy industry, which is far more labour intensive. Solar panels, for example, require humans to install them, and wind farms need technicians for regular maintenance. If you want jobs, renewables are where they are. Statistically, this fact is already reflected in the number of Americans employed in renewable energy: around 260,000 work in solar power alone, over three times that of coal. The wind power industry also employs more than coal, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimating around 100,000 nationwide. And these numbers are growing: wind power technician is now the fastest growing job in the whole country – a fact unlikely to escape Trump’s lips any time soon. Positive Projections In a recent study assessing the sectors' potential for job creation, the NREL concluded that renewable energy technologies ‘create more jobs per dollar invested than conventional electricity generation technologies’. And, because they use ‘indigenous’ resources, most of the ‘energy dollars can be kept at home’. The study left little doubt: if the rust belt is to be redeveloped and employment levels boosted, investment into green energy is the way to go. It is less costly, less polluting, and the jobs it produces are more plentiful. Looking forward, the U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that ‘to achieve 20% wind power by 2030 the United States will require more than 100,000 additional wind turbines, creating more than 500,000 new jobs.’ The Wind Vision Report has made similar predictions, suggesting that wind has the potential to support more than 600,000 jobs in manufacturing, installation, maintenance and supporting services by 2050. The job creation would also be geographically well distributed. Turbines can be installed in rural areas at existing farms, often places that have suffered declining incomes and living standards, and where financial injection is most needed. A widespread program of wind farm installation across a state like Illinois, for instance, could provide significant boosts to otherwise flailing local economies. As one expert put it: ‘from a community perspective, the effects could be transformative.' The stimulation of manufacture Commitment to renewables also has the knock-on effect of stimulating manufacturing, an area which has declined across the country and another of Trump’s foremost gripes. This is already happening and wind, again, provides a good example. Turbines are complex bits of machinery, and their construction involves long supply chains. In response to growing demand, their parts are increasingly being sourced from within the US: between 2004-11, the number of manufacturing facilities increased tenfold. With additional commitment and investment in the sector this could be developed even further, and its benefits maximised. As of 2018, around 50% of ‘turbine value’ was produced in the U.S, twelve times that of just a few years prior. Many manufacturers are now planning to increase this to 100% – an expansion that should be encouraged at the federal level. Such impetus would certainly be a preferable alternative to the current situation, where jobs in coal have not been forthcoming. According to Andrew Cosgrove, a Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst, Trump’s ‘impact on the coal sector [thus far] has been extremely minimal in nature despite his rhetoric.' After two years in office, and much deregulation, ‘the needle has barely budged on U.S coal mining employment’. His announcement that ‘the coal industry is back’, delivered perversely to a room made up of many out-of-work coal miners in West Virginia, is simply not reflected in the data. How long will he persist? Ever since his election, Trump has been resolutely swimming against the tide. The coal industry dying for good reason, and there is little that can be done about it. The sector is an inefficient creator of jobs, and because of the increased costliness of transportation and general production, getting less and less competitive in the marketplace. And that is ignoring the environmental costs, which are so severe they are difficult to fully quantify. If Trump were sincere in his promise of putting Americans back to work, renewables would figure high on his agenda. That is where the future lies; it is folly to think otherwise. The fossil fuel lobby, however, has infiltrated deep into his government and gained a controlling stake. A former coal lobbyist actually heads up the Environmental Protection Agency in what appears to be a staggering conflict of interest. Sound energy policy now looks like it will have to wait for Trump to depart office. Until then, it remains to be seen how long his obsession with coal will last, despite the mounting evidence exposing its stupidity. How much money will need to be wasted? How many reports need to be published that point to better, greener alternatives to throwing money down a mine? Alas, like most predictions with this capricious, callous, and careless President, all bets are off.
Along with a border wall and vague promises of greatness, one of Trump’s key campaign pledges was to bring back jobs to the American people. He situated himself, in contrast to Clinton, as the protector of the everyman, a mystical demographic that were at the mercy of the Chinese, their jobs being poached from right under their noses. His plan – as far as he ever articulated it – was predictably grandiose, and in part based on the resuscitation of the dying coal industry. The mines, he promised, would be brought back, en masse, bringing with them jobs and prosperity. His envisioned ‘greatness’ was to arrive accompanied by thick, black, environment-threatening, smog.
What's the difference between a conference, a seminar, a workshop and a symposium?
This article was originally published on Conference Monkey and has been syndicated to our sister websites. If you're looking for a conference to head to this year, check out our conference listings on Conference Monkey. Moreover, the difference between a conference and a seminar may be that a conference has a more general theme with a focus on presentations and lectures, whereas a workshop is usually more specific and hands-on, so to speak. However, as we'll see there are grey areas between these types of events, and the line isn't always clear. Really, what's important is that everyone has a good time and learns something. Nonetheless, it's good to know exactly what you're getting into, especially if you're actually presenting a paper or giving a lecture. So let's dive into the specific differences between a conference, a seminar, a workshop, and a symposium. What's a conference? Conferences tend to be the largest events vs. smaller workshops and seminars. They can number anywhere between fifty attendees to thousands of attendees, and the largest may host even more visitors that that. You'll come across both national and international conferences – national conferences are typically attended primarily by people living within the country which is hosting the event, while international conferences can attract visitors from all over the world. Conferences tend to be the most prestigious forms of events as well, so they are the place where you most want the opportunity to present your work as a talk or as a poster. Speaking of which, conferences will usually involve a number of talks by prominent speakers in addition to poster sessions where researchers present their ideas and data in a visual format. When you attend a poster session, you can walk around and look at each of the different posters and stop to chat or to ask questions of the presenter as well. Presenters will stand next to their poster and will often have a short 5-10 minute explanation of the poster which they will give to anyone who asks. If the conference is a large one, you will find concurrent events. This means that there might be two, four, or even more talks happening at the same time in different locations. You need to be organised to find out when and where the talks you want to see are being held, and you should make good use of your conference timetable which will hold all of this information. If you're planning on attending a conference this year, check out our insight into 10 hacks for a better conference experience. What's a seminar? The difference between a seminar and a workshop is that a seminar tends to be held within one institution or university, and will often a seminar will be a small group of people – say, between five and ten attendees – who come together to focus on a particular issue. Often seminars will be less formally structured than conferences, so one person might give a presentation but it will probably be brief. There is more of a focus on discussion at these events, so do feel free to chime in with your thoughts on the topic at hand. Another difference between a seminar and a conference is that while conferences usually last for between a few days and a week, seminars will be much shorter. They may be for an hour or two in the afternoon rather than lasting all day. Some departments will organise regular seminars, so for example you might meet on the first Monday of every month. Seminars are a great place to test out some new ideas or theories that you've been thinking about but aren't 100% confident with yet. If you're working on a concept or an idea for an experiment but you want to hear some feedback on it before you develop it further, offer to present it at a seminar. This kind of small group is perfect for getting honest feedback and you might even get some suggestions for improvements to your ideas. Check out our insight into tips for a more interesting and memorable conference presentation if you're planning on presenting at any of these types of events this year. What's a workshop? The difference between a workshop and a conference is that workshops are generally smaller than conferences, and are usually only a day or two long and are dedicated to discussing a specific topic. Although these events are held as part of a department, you will often find outside visitors who attend them too. The atmosphere is somewhere between a seminar and a conference, meaning it is less structured than a conference but more formal than a seminar. Workshops are also sometimes more diverse in terms of attendees than other events. You'll find people from different departments and fields attending workshops together, and you may find non-academics such as journalists or people in business will attend too. The best workshops have a specific, action-oriented purpose, and aim to generate some concrete answers to current problems in the field. Workshops are a good opportunity to learn new skills and to familiarise yourself with a topic you don't know well. If this piece has inspired you to apply to a conference, workshop, symposium or seminar, read our piece on how to get accepted to an academic conference. What's a symposium? The main difference between a symposium and a conference is that a symposium tends to be similar to a conference, but smaller. The definition of a symposium isn't completely clear – the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary describes it simply as 'a small conference'. However, similarly to a workshop, a symposium tends to focus on a particular issue rather than a more general theme. Generally a number of experts will come together in order to present their ideas and papers to one another. Similar to a conference in that the focus is on presentations and lectures, and less hands-on than a workshop, a symposium is typically completed in a single day. Symposiums may be more prestigious than a conference, with an emphasis on experts presenting their work and occasionally discussing it afterwards (though not to the extent of a seminar). Finally, symposiums will generally be smaller than a conference. Saying all this, it's likely you'll visit a symposium that seems more like conference and a workshop that could easily be called a seminar. The difference isn't always clear, and there's usually some grey area. What's important is that you learn something while you are there, and get to listen to some of the leading experts in their fields discuss their work.
There are lots of different types of academic event that you might want to attend, such as conferences, seminars, workshops and symposiums. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, and generally they have a different slant. Size, for instance, is usually a big factor in whether something is regarded as a conference or a symposium. Usually the difference between a conference and a symposium is that a conference will be a larger event and a symposium a smaller one.
If you're thinking of going travelling but want to check out some Master's programs at the same time, take a look at our program listings. Set up a Virtual Private Network A virtual private network, or VPN, is a service that makes it safe and secure to use the Internet anywhere you happen to be. It does this by sending your connection through a server that hides what you're doing online. VPNs can be used wherever your travels take you and any data you use or create will be encrypted. That way no one can identify your computer, access your school data or steal your personal information. Make sure you're familiar with how VPNs are used in the countries you travel and be prepared for any technological or legal limitations in those places. Find an online study program Clearly a traditional program won't allow you to skip class and travel as the whim takes you. For that reason, you'll need to find an accredited and reputable online Master's degree program that you can access anywhere. There are many programs of this sort based out of many colleges and universities across the globe so do your research and find the one that best fits your area of study and your needs as you travel. Combine your itinerary with course requirements Whether you're traveling for work, pleasure or as a member of the military, look through the course requirements as you plan your trip itinerary. You will want to create an easy week if you have exams or a paper to write; don't pack your travel with sightseeing or constant meetings during these times! When you have an intense of week of study ahead of you, try to schedule more downtime or stops in relaxed locations where you'll have the time to get down to business when it's important. Pack the right materials You don't want to find yourself hundreds or thousands of miles from home without the materials you need to do your coursework. Make sure you have packed all relevant books, papers, and software you'll need to keep track of and complete your studies when you're away from home. In addition to that, you'll also want to make sure you have your laptop, smartphone, pencils, pens, notebooks, and any other supplies to help you study. You may want to subscribe to an online library so you can do research even if you can't get to a brick and mortar library. Enjoy the benefits The biggest perk to traveling while you do your Master's degree is the freedom to see the world and complete your bucket list without having to give up your ambitions when it comes to your education. While you travel, you will also be gaining worldly experience that will supplement your field of study and give you valuable skills and experiences you can include on your resume when you're ready to find a job using your Master's degree. Online classes are generally small, giving you a closer relationship with your instructor and peers so you can get the most out of your studies even if you're busy traveling. Understand the drawbacks As with anything, there are some cons to consider when you travel and complete your Master's degree at the same time. While they probably aren't serious enough to deter, it makes sense to understand the possible drawbacks so you can put a plan into place to deal with them. When you're travelling, you might find it hard to find the motivation to take the time to study and do your coursework. You will need to create a doable schedule that includes time for school so that you don't feel that you're missing out when you travel, but so you also don't get behind. Another possible drawback is that it could be hard to find an appropriate place to study when you aren't familiar with your location. Research each destination on your itinerary so you can find coffee shops, hostels geared for students, or libraries where you can settle in and get work done. Pay attention to time zones This is important as your work will have deadlines and you'll need to make sure you know what time it is where the assignment is due so that you get it turned in on time, regardless of where you happen to be at the time. Don't miss any deadlines because you thought you were five hours behind, but you were actually five hours ahead! Studying online is a prime way to have the freedom to travel and gain world experiences as you earn your Master's degree. Being prepared for everything you'll encounter means a smooth ride and enjoyable and productive travels. Bon voyage!
Having a Master's degree is a valuable way to advance your career and gain more knowledge in your chosen field. Unlike an undergraduate degree program, you may not have to go to school full time to achieve this step in your education. However, it does require some time and effort, which means you'll need to figure out how to fit it in with your lifestyle. If that lifestyle includes travel as a priority, you may wonder how you can complete your Master's without giving up your travel schedule. The good news is that you can do both. It won't be the conventional way to graduation that most post-grad students follow, but it can be done and you'll enjoy the freedom to travel while also completing your degree. Here's what you should know.
Universal Basic Income: a panacea for society's ills?
Browse our job listings for more opportunities Its popularity has risen in correlation with the increasing economic inequality that is now endemic across Europe, and whose spread, political tinkering has done little to inhibit. For their failure to address this widening gulf, centrist parties of the left and right have been punished at the polls, and politics has polarised. Electorates and experts, alike, have begun casting their eyes further afield for something more radical, something more transformative to address the crises in which societies are mired. Many have alighted on UBI as one such solution. But what exactly is Universal Basic Income? And what do its proponents say about it? UBI is cash payment delivered, periodically, to all individuals, without means testing, and regardless of employment status. The income is considered a right, and there are no restrictions placed on what it can be used for. There also exist variants on UBI, differentiated by those who are entitled to receive payment, called, simply, a Basic Income (BI) - context, generally, dictating the restriction. The following is a contemplation on the potential of such policies. Offsets technology-induced and stressful state of unemployment As technology advances with ever-growing rapidity more and more jobs are being lost to robots and algorithms. People entering the workforce now, unlike previous generations, are told to expect multiple career changes in their lives, and to brace themselves for periods of unemployment or low income whilst in between professions. For some, this reality is already being felt, and it's not a pleasant one. There is much research that shows enforced profession change, as will soon be completely mundane, can be psychologically very damaging. An issue compounded by the financial scarcity that is often its by-product. UBI would ease this stressful transition, allowing the jobless to get back to their feet while retaining their dignity, find suitable new work or training, and eventually restart contributing to the economy. The removal of absolute scarcity during this interim period has been shown to facilitate better decision-making by the individual - reducing rashness and encouraging a closer consideration of the longer term. The power to rejuvenate Sceptics of the proposition often question how society could justify giving free money to drug addicts, alcoholics, and ex-criminals, as they would be guaranteed under UBI. On this count, the evidence actually points to UBI having largely positive effects. A trial in Liberia revealed that many addicts and criminals who received UBI, rather than squandering their money as many presumed they would, spent their monthly endowments on subsistence and what the study described as ‘legitimate enterprise’. Similarly, in Give People Money, Journalist Annie Lowrey, identifies a UBI pilot in a small village in Kenya as producing the same results. Before the pilot, the village was made up of dirt roads, had little access to electricity and ran a largely open sewage system. Midway through – the program is ongoing – and the village has been transformed, almost unrecognisable, and is now a prime example of what Lowrey calls innovative entrepreneurship. Both of the above examples speak to an interesting psychological quirk that is often revealed in the discussion of UBI. Namely, when asked about its viability individuals tend to think that although they themselves would put their grant to good use, the initiative would fall down because of the profligacy of others, who are likely to make ill-advised, wasteful choices. In actual fact, when put into practice, UBI has consistently shown that people, irrespective of background, tend to be impressively shrewd when putting their money to use. Reduction in ever-growing bureaucracy In most states, there exist countless governmental organisations responsible for helping those in poverty, handing out unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc. The running of such sprawling, intertwining welfare programs is expensive, time-consuming, and often complicated for both administrators and recipients. A simple cash payment directly to the individual would cut down on this bureaucracy. To give some sense of scale, in the US there are 79 different means-tested programs. To the pleasure of all those concerned with reducing government and red tape, all these could all be scrapped with the introduction of a UBI. Tackling domestic abuse Less publically discussed, but of equally vital importance is its power to tackle abuse. To society’s embarrassment, domestic violence remains prevalent wherever you go. Those who suffer abuse - the majority of which are women - often remain trapped in violent situations, lacking the financial means needed to escape. By ensuring a certain level of financial independence, as UBI would provide, the process of leaving an abusive partner would be simplified. It is unclear how many people currently suffering in silence this could help. Empowering workers Those on the left see UBI as an opportunity to empower the working class, providing them with what historian Rutger Bergman has called ‘real freedom’. For him, this freedom is predicated on the ability to say no, a privilege currently enjoyed exclusively by the rich. UBI, he believes, would give individuals the ability to say no to jobs they didn’t want, to cities they no longer wanted to live in, and to employers who treated them unfairly – that ‘is what real freedom looks like’. Additionally, the redistribution of wealth would provide workers with greater bargaining power. As Annie Lowrey has questioned, ‘why take a crummy job for 7.25 an hour when you have a guaranteed 1,000 dollars a month to fall back on?’ In such a situation, employers would be inclined to take seriously the demands of their workforce, and improving working conditions would likely follow. The future of UBI In many people’s minds what is still lacking is a satisfactorily long, randomised trial of UBI, run with a sufficiently large pool of people. Currently, empirical proof of its long-term success or lack thereof simply does not exist. Even the much-hyped trial recently concluded in Finland, lasted just two years, focused only on the unemployed, and has already been criticised for lacking the scale or ambition to really put UBI, or Basic Income, to the test. Nonetheless, with its promises of transferring not just money, but dignify, responsibility and power back to the people UBI remains a seductive prospect, and one certainly worthy of continued experimentation. Trials are being planned for places as far-flung as India, Iran, and Scotland, and it’s with great anticipation we wait to see how they fare. UBI may yet have its time in the sun.
As a policy, support for Universal Basic Income (UBI) flouts traditional political and social lines, making unlikely bedfellows of those on both the right and left wing. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, free-market evangelist Milton Friedman, and firebrand economist Yanis Varoufakis all count among its high profile, and rather disparate, champions. With the help of their advocacy the initiative has entered into mainstream consciousness, and widespread political discussion of its implementation, in contrast to a few years ago, is now readily had. Gone are the days in which UBI was simply dismissed as an unattainable utopian concept.
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics (JEL E)
Economists are almost unanimous in their assessment that in this scenario the British economy would take a battering, and possibly slip into recession. Projections make for dismal reading and include a GDP depreciation of 9%, a drastic fall in house prices and a possible run on the pound. For most this is nothing new. Ardent remainers remind us of these forecasts on a daily basis, appearing to revel in the delivery of such gloomy predictions - project fear showing it has legs yet. Less, on the other hand, tends to be said of the damaging effects a ‘disorderly exit’ would have on the 27 remaining EU member states. Indeed, for those countries with high levels of integration with the UK economy, these effects could be severe. Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany stand out among those most at risk. Below we take a closer look at what each country can expect if, come March 31st, Britain leaves the EU with no withdrawal agreement in place, and reverts to WTO tariffs to regulate its trade. Ireland Worst affected of the EU27 countries is likely to be Ireland because of the highly integrated nature of the Irish and UK economies. Annually, Irelands’ trade with the UK is worth an estimated €65 billion, and sustains over 400,000 jobs on both islands. For this reason, the imposition of steep WTO tariffs on this trade; the huge increase in customs paperwork; and the risk of long delays on goods and shipments to and from the European mainland has got Irish businesses frantically preparing for the worst. And their fears seem to arranted. Only recently, the IMF predicted that Dublin would suffer a 4% hit to its GDP. Mainly, this is because two of the country’s top exports – meat and dairy products – would face some of the highest tariffs, as per WTO instruction. The price increase would be absorbed by the consumer and massively reduce the products’ competitiveness, meaning profits would tumble and businesses falter. Commenting on the consequences of no deal, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Phillip Lane, warned that ‘the agri-food sector would be disproportionately affected, with a corresponding outsized [negative] impact on rural regions, especially near the Border.’ The economic damage, he cautioned, although unevenly distributed, would also likely be ubiquitous, every area of economic activity enduring at least some disruptive effects. And this, of course, is before even mentioning the backstop. The European Commission has made it clear that no deal would make the creation of a hard border unavoidable. There is widespread fear that anything but a soft border could destabilise Ireland’s highly sensitive peace process – a hard border compared, by one leading expert, as like re-opening a ‘gaping wound’. Netherlands Britain is the Netherlands' third-biggest trading partner and also stands to take a significant economic hit. A study from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development expects exports to Britain to fall by 17% if no withdrawal agreement is secured. Research published by the Dutch Court of Audit has fleshed out these claims, estimating that this would cost the Netherlands an estimated €2.3 billion by 2023. Acute disruption would be especially felt in port cities like Rotterdam whose docks, rail yards and warehouses handle nearly 1 million tonnes of goods moving to and from Britain every week. With increased customs inspections shipping and logistics companies are predicting that what currently takes a day to get to Britain could, post-Brexit, take almost two. For a system in which margins of error are customarily measured in minutes, this is a dramatic increase, and there is concern that the roads leading to the ports will quickly come to look like parking lots. At present, there is no overflow space for trucks unable to drive straight onto ships. Belgium Neighbouring Belgium is also bracing itself. Former Minister Johan Van Overtveldt has been explicit in his warnings, explaining: 'Belgium is the fourth exporter, in nominal amounts, into the UK, on a par with France, which is a much bigger country. And so, if Brexit goes the wrong way, in terms of the hard Brexit, it will hurt the Belgian economy very seriously.’ The Belgian government has told businesses that a no-deal Brexit could lead to the imposition of up to €2.2bn (£1.96bn) in extra tariffs on goods and the loss of more than 40,000 jobs. It intends to present a series of emergency Brexit legislation to parliament before the end of February to avoid any further Belgium’s finance minister, Alexander de Croo, has complained that the British need to finally decide what they actually want from negotiations. 'Over the last few months we’ve fallen from one surprise into another,' he said in an interview with radio-station De Ochtend. 'The only constant is that the British are masters at shooting themselves in the foot and creating associated chaos.' The scale of that potential chaos he made clear claiming that only 5,000 of the 25,000 Belgian companies that trade with Britain were ready for the customs checks that could follow Brexit. How this deficit will be handled remains to be seen. Germany Even the economic powerhouse Germany will face trouble. Currently, the country exports an array of industrial goods to Britain, including around 800,000 cars per year - 14% of all cars it produces domestically - which accounts for 20% of the country’s global exports. No deal would jeopardise at least 100,000 jobs, and economists have calculated that 15,000 workers in the German car industry - t close to one in ten - could be made redundant if WTO tariffs sprang up in Britain. The blow would be felt across much of the country but it would probably concentrate on high-tech manufacturing centres such as Wolfsburg, the home of Volkswagen, and Böblingen, a suburb of Stuttgart where Siemens and IBM are the leading employers. In a potential sign of things to come, the flow of German products to the UK has fallen between 6-8% since the Brexit referendum.
The Brexit clock is now deafening, and the British political and media establishments seem utterly consumed by its inexorable ticking. In the public realm, little else is considered, even less discussed. And yet, despite this obsession, with just 42 days before Britain departs the European Union, negotiations for a withdrawal agreement remain in deadlock, and the hopes of breakthrough seem to be fading. At the core of the dispute is the Irish backstop and, by proxy, participation in a customs union. On both, neither the Conservatives nor Labour appears capable of sincere compromise, favouring, instead, a game of high-risk brinksmanship. The stakes: the future of the country. By using the approaching deadline as leverage, aimed to cow opposition, Prime Minister Theresa May is gambling, big. And at the point of writing, it's unclear who will hold their nerve. Without concessions being made, Britain will crash out of the EU with no deal, with World Trade Organisation (WTO) tariffs beckoning.
Urban, Rural and Transportation Economics (JEL R)
No Deal Brexit and the Threat to Developing Countries
Chances of a Brexit deal fade Prime Minister Theresa May continues, with almost admirable obstinacy, to defy political convention, staggering on apparently blind to the repeated failures of her ailing administration. Her political capital on this issue has long been exhausted, a fact hammered home by the record-breaking rejection of her withdrawal agreement in Parliament – the last in a long series of nails in her coffin. It now seems highly unlikely that a May-led government could get any kind of Brexit deal through Parliament, such is her tarnished reputation. And for this reason, the dreaded 'no deal' edges closer, simply because anything else seems so improbable. Everything But Arms Developing countries have been watching this process as one would a slow-motion car crash: with a mixture of terror, powerlessness, and morbid fascination. Their concern revolves around the Everything But Arms (EBA) agreement, which currently permits the 49 Least Developed Countries to export to the European Union, duty and quota-free, with the exception - as the name indicates - of armaments. The initiative came into force in 2001 with the aim to encourage the development of the world’s poorest economies. Since its inception, it has been widely commended for ‘levelling of the playing field’. The simulations don't look good Brexit, however, threatens its practice. In both hard exit and a 'no deal' scenarios these vulnerable states would be denied access to the UK market through EBA, and the consequences, in some cases, could be dire. Simulations run by the German Development Institute (GDI), published earlier this month, have shown the impact various forms of Brexit would have on countries outside of Europe. In its results, Cambodia is forecast to take the 'heaviest blow'. At present, it sends 7.7% of its exports – mostly garments and footwear - to the UK. Kristen Hopewell, a lecturer at Edinburgh University, predicts that in the case of no deal and a reversion to World Trade Organisation rules, the country would simply be ‘priced out of the market’, becoming ‘collateral damage in the Brexit process’. As a result of increased tariffs, Cambodia’s GDP is projected to fall by 1.04%, and household consumption by 1.4%. The effects of this would be stark: the proportion of Cambodians living in extreme poverty would increase by around 1%, equating to over 150,000 people. Ethiopia is expected to endure a similar fate following a no deal. Its main exports coffee and vegetables would struggle to compete in the British market without the preferential treatment the EBA ensures. Competition from advanced economies would significantly diminish the UK demand for Ethiopian goods – a phenomenon generally known as ‘the trade destruction effect’. Estimates suggest this decline in trade, given the country’s economic dependence on the UK, would plunge an additional 1.12% of Ethiopians into extreme poverty. Bangladesh also stands to be hit hard, according to the report. Goods sold to Britain make up 9% of the country’s exports, the large majority of which are Ready Made Garments (RMG). Hannah Timmis, a researcher at the Center for Global Development, has predicted that under WTO regulations the already stricken country would see a $400,000,000 reduction in its exports - a huge blow to a fragile economy. Millions could be plunged into poverty Overall, the GDI simulation estimates that a 'no deal' Brexit could ‘increase the population living in extreme poverty in the EBA countries by nearly 1.7 million’. And this shocking assessment is actually thought to be a conservative one, because it does not take into consideration the knock-on effects of a damaged UK economy. British economic downturn, for instance, is likely to decrease state aid, foreign investment and remittances, all, at the very least, in the short term. Many of the EBA countries are dependant on these sources of income for the maintenance of already-stretched systems of welfare and other vital national infrastructure. Without contingency plans, the consequences could be deadly. It is unsurprising that there is such concern. The government response Of course, it is possible that the UK government could act to ward off such outcomes, and pass legislation to replicate the EBA agreement, a process that would have to be carried out on a country-by-country basis, and, to avoid disruption and the diversion of trade away from developing countries, be secured by the 29 March. The general consensus is that these trade agreements will eventually be struck, as even outside of the humanitarian concern the UK’s economy also heavily relies on this business. What is far more doubtful is whether they will be reached on time. On this the GDI is sceptical, stating the ‘UK may draw up new free trade agreements with individual developing countries, but that is unlikely given the short notice and [if it did] it would limit the number of countries covered.’ There also exists the belief that as Britain has shown such flagrant disregard for its own economic welfare – a no deal would epitomise this – it would be irresponsible to expect it to treat others any differently. This, perhaps, is too cynical. People’s lives are reliant on UK trade. And it must be this that is at the centre of the decision making process. All must be done to avoid missing the 29th March deadline, and if that is not possible, then to strike deals as quickly as is possible. Unfortunately, in the uncertainty and unpredictability of current moment, nothing can be guaranteed.
In the cacophony of the Brexit debate the names Phnom Penh, Dhaka and Addis Ababa, if ever spoken, are rarely heard. And yet, with the March deadline looming on the not-too-distant horizon, and little, if anything, seemingly agreed upon, it is they who stand to be most affected, particularly if a no deal comes to pass. And things in that regard are not looking good.
Economic Development, Innovation and Growth (JEL O)
No Deal Brexit and the Threat to UK Universities
The threat to universities Last week it was the turn of the universities to express their horror at a possibility of a ‘no deal’. An open letter from five higher education groups, including the Russell Group and University Alliance, described its consequences, unequivocally, as the ‘biggest threat’ UK universities have ever faced. As of January 2019, the bodies collectively represented 50,000 EU staff and 130,000 EU students in the UK, along with 15,000 UK students studying on the continent - all, they stressed, now face a future fraught with uncertainty. For some institutions, the threat posed is an existential one. With the number of EU students predicted to fall as much as 60%, and a potential loss of an estimated €1.3bn of European Research Funding, certain universities could be forced to seek government bailouts to stay open. In such a scenario, the government's response remains uncertain, the current signs, though, look far from positive. Just two months ago, the Office for Students (OfS) declared that universities that were not financially sustainable would not be bailed out. Evidently, the mantra ‘too big to fail’, a favourite of the banks, doesn’t seem to apply to educational institutions. Failing finances These predictions, too, come at a time when British universities are already feeling the pinch. Earlier this year regulators warned that many stood on ‘the brink of a credit crunch’, having embarked on ill-advised borrowing sprees designed to boost student intake. The sector’s debt is reported to have risen to £10.8 billion, more than three times what it was prior to the financial crash. And now the fear is that ‘no deal Brexit’ will be like dousing an already dangerous looking fire with a can of petrol, while simultaneously knowing that the fire service is on strike. To make matters even worse, university closure, if it does happen, is likely to be regionally uneven and will help exacerbate existing inequality. As Vice Chancellor of Buckingham University Sir Anthony Seldon has warned, “The ones that will close will be in the areas of greatest social and economic need. The damage that will do will be immense to the social fabric of this country and the economy of those regions.” So far, there has been little reassurance that measures will be taken to prevent this outcome. Government response, or lack thereof Rather, the common response, when there’s been one, has been a reminder of the government’s adherence to the principle ‘science knows no borders’ and the promise that Brexit will not jeopardise this. Yet, with only the Horizon 2020 funding guaranteed, this has for some time sounded like empty rhetoric. The maxim itself, though, is informative, recognising that scientific research would be among the worst hit areas in the case of ‘no deal’. For instance, projects involving the development of cancer treatments and the combatting of climate change are widely expected to be compromised. Certainly, vice-chancellors remain unconvinced the requisite measures will be implemented, and are seeking ‘cast-iron guarantees’ that European Research Council and Marie Sklodowska-Curie funding, in particular, will either be protected or replaced. Without, they fear academics and researchers, and those considering relocating to the UK for academic purposes will rethink. This would disrupt essential research networks, and in the process, further dis-incentivise research in the UK. Vice-Chancellor of Warwick University, Stuart Croft, has suggested this would eventually even affect British nationals, and force them to ‘think hard about their positions.’ The wider concerns The projected brain drain would hit the economy too, at a time, which - if post-Brexit forecasts are anything to go by - it will likely already be floundering. Currently, the university sector contributes £21bn to UK GDP every year and supports almost a million jobs, making the potential problem, as university heads have put it, ‘critical to the national interest’. It would constitute, they say, ‘an academic, cultural and scientific setback from which it would take decades to recover.’ Alongside the NHS and BBC, British universities are among the UK’s most prized possessions. Their history of innovation and breakthrough has accounted for countless advances in the natural sciences, technology, and medicine, and has pushed boundaries in both literature and the arts. Their legacy is everywhere and unavoidable. For the UK to achieve the thriving post-Brexit future it craves its universities will have to play an integral role - their protection, thus, is imperative. Assurances must be given so that, regardless of the political outcome, regardless of in-party fighting, personal opportunism, and all we have come to expect from the political classes, the most damaging effects on British higher education can be kept to an absolute minimum. Britain’s future relies on it.
With every passing day - and they seem to be whizzing by now – the likelihood of the UK leaving the EU without a deal, known as a ‘no deal Brexit’, is increasing. For the large majority, the prospect of this is nightmarish. In the event, it is widely understood that there would be a number of inevitabilities: the economy would slump, possibly crash; many businesses would flee, and with them whatever tax receipts they hadn’t yet evaded; and the Tory hard right would sit back and revel. That only a handful of MPs and a slither of the broader population actually desire this, testifies to the failure of parliament, and more so, the failure of government in dealing with the negotiations. For two years, it has concerned itself with little else, shelving manifesto pledges to deliver the country here, to the now. And the situation, to put it lightly, is a shambles.
Looking for a graduate program to continue your studies? Check out our program listings. Odds and the efficient market hypothesis If you go to make a bet on a particular sporting outcome, the bookmaker will offer you odds: that is, their figure for how much they will pay out if you win the bet, based on their estimation of the probability of you winning. For an event that is highly likely, you will get odds that pay out very little, but for an unexpected turn of events, you would be paid more. Setting these odds is one of the most important jobs of a bookmaker, as the odds that they offer must be realistic enough to draw in betters but not too generous that the bookmaker risks losing money. The economics comes in when we consider the efficient market hypothesis, which states that markets will natural organise themselves into the most efficient form, so that the price of any goods or services are inherently linked to the worth of those goods or services. This assumption is pervasive throughout economics theory, and if it held for sports betting then we would expect that the odds offered by a bookmaker represented the exact odds of that event occurring. However, this is clearly not the case as if it was, neither bookmakers nor gamblers would ever make a long-term profit. Instead, both bookmakers and betters are driven by psychological forces, such as peer pressure – feeling that you ought to make a bet because everyone else is doing so – and the sunk cost fallacy – when you know your faith in a certain team is misplaced but you keep betting on them anyway because you don't want to confront the fact you were wrong about their skills. These are examples of a recent approach to economics, behavioural economics, which has been championed by Richard Thaler and others and which seeks to bring together insights from both economics and psychology. The costs and benefits of gambling Another feature of gambling noted by both economists and psychologists is the individual differences in how people respond to betting. For the majority of people who gamble, betting is an entertaining activity that they enjoy periodically and usually don't take too seriously. But for a minority of people, gambling becomes highly addictive and a destructive force in their lives. It is for this reason that gambling is heavily regulated in most countries and outright banned in others. There is a tension here between the free market approach which would classify sports betting as similar to trading on the stock exchange or any other kind of investment activity, and a paternalistic approach which says that gambling can be harmful and people should not be allowed unfettered access to gambling. As David Forrest put it in his 2013 paper on gambling in Great Britain, “Across the World, there therefore appears to be a strong current of opinion that gambling is 'exceptional' and has special characteristics which mean that significant numbers in the population would, unrestrained by restrictions, take systematically poor and self-harming decisions about their levels of consumption.” Gambling clearly brings pleasure and amusement to many, but the fact that it is regulated in most places shows that despite economic assumptions that people will maximise their own self-interest, when betting, they often do not. The economics of match-fixing A final point of interest when looking at the role of economics in sports betting is that of match-fixing. Match-fixing is a problem throughout both amateur and professional sports, and some argue that fixing arises in part because the stars of sports are young players who are often from humble backgrounds, who may not have a lot of experience with issues of finance, and taking bribes to fix a match is a temptation that is too strong for them to ignore. However, economic theory suggests that the problem is more complex than young men who suddenly become famous having poor impulse control. In his paper on match-fixing from 2015, Bibhas Saha argues that there are hidden economic incentives to cheat. He divides cheating behaviours into “cheating to win” like smuggling notes into an exam, and “cheating to lose” like a student who deliberately flunks an exam because she does not want to continue her field of study despite her family's ardent wishes. But match-fixing is different, because the aim is not for the player being bribed to lose, but rather to under-perform. The issue is that this method of cheating is hard to spot, especially in team sports where each player has only a limited influence on the outcome of a match. Further, with the rise of betting websites, there are more incentives for players to participate in match-fixing because there are more financial opportunities available, and the anonymised exchange of money facilitated by these sites makes taking that money less risky. One way to identify this more complex form of cheating is to look at aggregated data from betting websites, which is what Christine Deutscher and colleagues did in their 2017 review of match-fixing in the German Bundesliga. By examining data from the website Betfair they were able to identify specific referees whose matches brought in a significantly higher number of bets than other referees, possibly suggesting improper behaviour. They point out the often low salaries that referees receive as an incentive to participate in match-fixing as well as the short term contracts many are on which makes them uncertain about their financial future. Seen in economic terms, match-fixing may be less of a moral failure and more of a rational financial decision for sports professionals. As match-fixing by team officials is especially hard to detect, this kind of analysis using large data sets may be the best chance we have to identify cheating in team sports right now.
One area of life that is greatly influenced by economics but you might not think of as a typical economics topic is sports and match betting. Gambling on sporting events is a huge international multimillion dollar industry covering gambling from traditional betting events like dog or horse races to modern betting outfits that let you place bets on everything from how many goals will be scored in a given match to which players will be picked for a draft. As betting on sports events is essentially an exercise in modelling and probability, we can use the lens of economics to understand more about how match betting works.
Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria
The Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria combines tradition with an orientation towards the future. It is a young and dynamic public institution that keeps strong connections within its socio-economic context while looking for internationalization. Located on the Messina Strait, at the heart of the Mediterranean Area, it aims to be an internationally reputed European research University and to provide high-quality education for both domestic and international students. Its strength lies in its integrated range of disciplines that result in interesting opportunities for interdisciplinarity in research and teaching. Research and teaching specializations evindently in the Ph.D. programs. Many scientists from all over the world are linked to researches carried out at the Università Mediterranea, which commits itself towards emphasizing the advancement of young scientists and the further development of its range of degree's programs by seizing the opportunities offered by the Bologna System.
Looking for a job in economics? Check out our job listings. On first view, economics and ethics appear incompatible Economics is based primarily on the view of people as rational actors, who will make predictable decisions to optimise their own well being. Rational choice theory states that an agent can be said to be acting rationally if they have rational preferences and they choose the option which is preferential to them compared to the alternatives. Under this understanding, the key factor that economics attempts to optimise is preference satisfaction. Inherent in this approach is the assumption that human well being is served best by allowing people to choose whatever will satisfy their individual preferences best. However, there are clearly limitations to this view. Someone might have preferences which are detrimental to their well being, such as a belief that a pseudoscientific treatment will improve their health and a preference towards that treatment over conventional medicine when they fall ill. A totally free market for healthcare with no restrictions on misleading advertising and no requirement to base treatments on evidence might satisfy individual preferences, but it would be hard to argue that it would benefit human well being when it would cause more people to become sick and die. On the other hand, economists might argue that preference satisfaction is valuable not because it promotes human well being, but because it is a method for optimising the efficient sharing of resources. Under this view, ethics is not within the realm of economics, as the two are totally different frameworks for approaching the world. Market forces require companies to consider ethical values The problem of differentiating economics from ethics in this way is that ethical concerns do have a marked impact on economical issues. It may be most efficient, for example, for a business to employ children. Children cost less in wages than adults and they can perform tasks such as squeezing into small spaces which adults cannot. However, most people would recoil at the use of child labour in this way. Any company which sells a product or service to customers but which makes use of child labour could expect to lose support and to be the target of public scrutiny. Therefore, it is in the interest of the business to behave ethically, at least to a degree that customers can accept. If customers' preferences include not buying into a supply chain which uses child labour, then businesses need to consider the ethical views of the public and produce their goods in a way that does not violate those preferences. You could say that this is simply another case of satisfaction of individual preferences – but you could also describe this as people in business adjusting their behaviour so as not to violate moral norms which are held by others in their society, which is basically the social contract theory of ethics laid out by Thomas Hobbes. In this way, economics does hew to an ethical framework, even if that framework is understood primarily in terms of preference satisfaction. What is economics for? Is it descriptive or prescriptive? Within economics, approaches to the subject can be divided into two fields: positive economics and normative economics. Positive economics seeks to examine the economy in a given country, area, or international region, and to see that economy as it is. The aim is to collect data and form an accurate picture of the world. Eventually, with enough data, economists can make predictions about what effects an action such as raising interest rates could have on an economy. Positive economics seeks to understand the economy as it exists and to accurately predict what outcomes will arise from various forms of intervention. Hence it describes how the economy is, with no stance taken on how the economy should be. Normative economics, by contrast, looks at how the economy should be and what actions should be taken. It is the enacting of moral principles into economic actions, so for example, if one holds the principle that “All people should be compensated fairly for their labour” then one should support policies that advance that principle, such as instituting a minimum wage. This is where values come into play: should the economy be manipulated in such a way as to promote fairness, growth, equality, standard of living, life expectancy, or something else? A positive theory of economics can tell you how to achieve these aims, but in order to decide what aims to pursue, you need normative economics. A fuzzy line Many economists consider themselves data collectors and analysts rather than politicians or philosophers, so they would identify more with the framework of descriptive positive economics than that of prescriptive normative economics. However, this emphasis on data and objectivity has a tendency to lead people to believe that they are being objective when in fact their values are coming in to play. As any scientist or journalist can tell you, what questions you ask when searching for facts has as much bearing on the conclusion you eventually reach as the facts themselves. In studying positive economics, economists necessarily make judgements about what topics to examine, which forms a kind of normative approach about which issues are most important. In this way, the distinction between positive and normative economics is not as clear as you might think, and plenty of economists are working with prescriptive and therefore moral values even if they are not aware of it. And when values come into play, then ethics must necessarily follow. Ethics, economics, and psychology Finally, it is important to consider the role of psychology in both economics and ethics. With economic theories based primarily on the assumption of individual rationality, assuming that people will make the choices which will maximise their utility. However, evidence from psychology makes it abundantly clear that this assumption does not hold – from the innocent person who confesses to a crime under intense questioning, to the person who develops a destructive gambling habit, to the person who goes along with a social group even if they disagree (as most of us do from time to time), there are no shortage of examples of human behaviour where people do not act rationally and maximize their utility. So the assumption of rationality on behalf of economic subjects can in fact be seen as prescriptive. An economist does not, in fact, describe the world as it is, because they assume that individuals are making rational economic decisions, which is not always true. By basing their systems of understanding on the assumption of rationality, economists discuss how a rational actor “ought” to act. This provides another arena for discussing the role of ethics in economics: examining the choices that people ought to make based on their situation, finances, and psychological state as well as their individual preferences. Although at first blush, then, it may appear that ethics has little to do with economics, once you dig down into the details of the practice of economics it becomes clear that ethical concerns impact the subject in a number of ways. Even when economists are unaware of the fact, they are already operating within an ethical framework.
Can economics ever be ethical? This might sound like a strange question to an economist who focuses on collecting data, analysing it, and using that data to make predictions. What ethical considerations could be raised here? What do abstract theories of ethics have to do with cold, hard economic facts? Today we'll look at some of the ways that economics interacts with the topic of ethics.
4 Ways Economists Can Market Their Research Projects
If you're looking for an event to attend this year, check out our conference listings. That doesn’t mean you have to act like a sleazy used car salesman. All you really need is a bit of networking; identify some opportunities to make connections and be socially active in your community. Here are just a few ideas to get you started. Hold a seminar at a university Colleges and universities often host seminars, which make for one of the most ideal settings in which to present your research to an engaged audience. Seminar audiences tend to be genuinely interested in and enthusiastic about the subject matter being discussed, which means you’re much more likely to get a positive response—and for your research to gets some great word of mouth promotion. Remember to keep your audience and the ultimate purpose of the seminar in mind when developing your presentation. You’re not necessarily sharing every single piece of data you’ve gathered, only the information and conclusions that are most relevant to the point you’re making. This may go without saying, but you also need to make sure your presentation is interesting to watch and listen to - even if the subject matter is already something your audience wants to hear about. Simply reading from a piece of paper isn’t very engaging, no matter what it is you’re saying. Step things up and supply your audience members with supplementary visual aids and other materials that they can take home, organized inside of professionally printed presentation folders. If you’re unsure where to find the right packaging, Company Folders, Inc. comes strongly recommended for their extensive selection. This makes it easy to find a style that will stand out in a crowd - and make your presentation that much more distinctive. Speak at a conference You can present your research at a conference in much the same way you would a seminar. A conference can be academia-related, but many conferences are tailored more towards industry professionals, such as entrepreneurs or CFOs. This makes conferences particularly useful when the results of your research are relevant to people outside of the academic sphere. Economics-related conferences are also much more social occasions than many academic seminars, which makes them excellent opportunities for networking. After your presentation is over, spend some time mingling and answering questions from your audience members. Be sure to have business cards at the ready so that you can form some new contacts; you may also wish to encourage listeners to join a mailing list or contact you via phone with any additional questions. Create a blog Blogging is a great way to reach people who can’t necessarily meet with you in person. You don’t need to dump your entire body of research into a single post; take a look at your research, break it up into several different points, and write posts that illustrate those points with facts and supporting details. Remember that if you truly want to get involved in the “blogosphere,” you shouldn’t simply post blog posts and hope people come and find them on their own. Try to become active in the online economics community. Comment on other blog posts similar to your own and offer to exchange guest posts with bloggers you respect. On top of attracting more traffic, this shows the community that you’re interested in having a conversation, not simply self-promoting your own research. Obtain coverage in a publication Getting a newspaper, magazine, or other publication to cover your research in a story isn’t something you can just go out and do whenever you want - but there are things you can do to make the research more attractive and accessible to reporters. A good method to start with is creating a press release. This gives members of the media a general sense of your research project and the value it provides. If you’re working with a university, you may have access to a press officer who can help you out with this. Make sure you provide them with any interesting details or anecdotes related to your research, even things that might not make it into an academic paper. Personal details such as your state of mind while you were researching or your impetus for researching the subject in the first place can help give your story a more personal touch. Keep in mind that not every publication is equally reputable. If a reporter contacts you, make sure you do a good amount of research into the types of articles that they publish. It’s also a good idea to ask to see a preview of the piece before it is published, so that you can offer corrections to any factual errors. A research project is only useful when people know about it. In that sense, promoting your research is almost as important as the research itself. That said, if you don’t feel up to the task yourself, consider consulting with a publicist or media expert. If you're currently looking for a PhD, check out our list of open PhD positions.
It’s not uncommon for those in field of economics research to feel a little hesitant about the idea of “marketing” themselves. After all, you’re not really selling a product—you’re sharing valuable knowledge so that other people can benefit from it. But if you want others to take notice of that knowledge in the first place, you’ll need to take some steps towards promoting your work.
How to Find and Avoid Predatory Publishers
Predatory publishers have been known to be a problem in academia for some time, but this new investigation sheds light on just how many of these dubious companies exist and the extent to which they are promoting junk science and extracting money from unsuspecting researchers. Open access publishing – that is, a system whereby authors pay a fee to a journal to make their research publicly available for anyone to read, for free – has become more and more common in the last years. There are advantages to such an open access system for researchers, students and the public. However, there are also potential problems in the publication process which are magnified by open access. While there are many well-respected open access journals (like PLoS One, for example), some open access journals are damaging to authors and to the publishing system and should be avoided. Download the Conference Monkey Directory - 6 Month Conference List What are predatory publishers? Unfortunately, with the rise of open access publishing, there has also been a rise in exploitative low-quality journals which charge large fees to authors to publish their work but do not provide a rigorous review and publication process. Known as predatory publishers, these organisations accept almost any paper that is submitted to them, but do not provide adequate editorial oversight to ensure that the information presented is accurate and peer-reviewed. They also commonly hide the fact that they will be charging fees until after a paper is accepted, at which point the author is confronted with a large cost demand. Therefore, publications in these predatory journals are not respected, and authors can end up paying thousands of Euros for a worthless publication. Given the intense pressure on researchers to publish their work regularly for career advancement, it is important to be able to identify these predatory journals so that they cannot exploit newer early-career researchers or researchers from developing countries. How prevalent are predatory publishers? According to the Guardian investigation, more than 175,000 articles have been published by just five of the largest predatory publishers, including the well-known and poorly-regarded Omics and Waset publishers. Most of these articles have not been peer-reviewed or even properly edited, with no attempts made to authenticate the contents of the articles. In several cases, joke articles or computer-generated nonsense articles were accepted without review or revision. The problem with these non peer-reviewed scam journals is two-fold: firstly, researchers are being tricked out of thousands of dollars in publication fees which they think is securing them a publication in a legitimate journal only to find their publication is essentially worthless. Secondly, the practice threatens to de-legitimise science as a whole, by publishing junk claims in journals which appear on the surface to be on an equal footing with respected peer-reviewed journals. When readers cannot distinguish between high quality science which has been reviewed by experts and found to be accurate and meaningless junk which has not passed any sort of editing process, then faith in scientific publishing as a whole breaks down. How can you identify predatory publishers? You want to avoid predatory publishers at all costs. You definitely don't want to go through all the work of preparing and submitting a manuscript, just to find out that the publishers wants to charge a ridiculous fee to publish your work. There are some ways that you can spot a predatory publisher though: first, ignore any emails that you receive which are inviting you to submit work to a particular journal. Once you have published work in a reputable journal, your email address and research area will be public. Predatory publishers will comb the web for this information and use it to email you, inviting you to submit work to their journal. Often times, you will be invited to submit to journals which have little or nothing to do with your actual research. Also, it is very rare to be invited to submit work to a journal – especially if you are a junior researcher – and it if were to happen, you would receive a personal email from the editor of the journal, not a generic form email. If you receive emails inviting you to submit work to a journal, just delete them and move on. Don't waste your time taking these offers seriously. In order to avoid such publishers, researchers also need to be aware of typical tactics used. Any journals which solicit manuscripts by mass-mailing researchers should be avoided; reputable journals generally do not solicit authors to publish with them. If you receive an email inviting you to submit your work to a journal which you are not familiar with, it is extremely likely that it is from a predatory publisher. Other methods to check the reputability of a journal is to search for it online. Unprofessional websites with spelling and grammar errors are indicative of an untrustworthy journal. Also check the email addresses provided for the editors and board of the journal. These email addresses should be from academic institutions – if the email addresses are from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc. then the journal is unlikely to be respectable. One can also check the physical address of the journal – in which city and country it is based. A final warning sign of a predatory publisher is an extremely rapid review and publication process. Submitting, reviewing, and revising a paper is a long process that typically takes somewhere between several months up to more than a year. If a journal promises to have your findings published within weeks, it is unlikely that this would be enough time for the paper to be reviewed correctly. The lack of proper peer-review process is the surest sign that a journal is not to be trusted. The Beall List One invaluable tool to avoid untrustworthy journals is the list of predatory open access publishers compiled by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian from the University of Colorado Denver. He identifies predatory publishers based on criteria such as a lack of transparency in publishing operations, an editorial board with an insufficient number of members, and an attempt to hide or obscure the fees which authors are expected to pay until after acceptance. He lists the full findings of his investigations on his website. While there is some debate over whether these criteria are the best way to identify predatory publishers, almost all researchers agree that Beall's list is an excellent resource to start from. When in doubt about a publisher, you can begin by checking whether it appears on Beall's list, and if it is, proceed with extreme caution. When in doubt about the reputation of a journal, it's best to contact other researchers in your field to gauge their knowledge. Don't be too quick to choose a journal for your work; and remember to research publishers thoroughly before committing. That way you can be sure you're not taken in by these disreputable publishers. (Editor's note: Beall's list has since been discontinued. It does, though, still exist in an archived form, and remains a useful resource) Download the Conference Monkey Directory - 6 Month Conference List
A recent investigation by British newspaper The Guardian and several German publishers has highlighted the vast number of “predatory publishers” who are operating in academia and are publishing fake science for profit. These publishers invite researchers to publish their work in a journal and then charge exorbitant fees.
An early step: the introduction of coinage In order to have a concept of economics, first, there must be a concept of money as an object in and of itself, with money existing independently of trading through barter. During the 6th century BC, precious metals were used in bars or bullion for trade, measured by weight. Most scholars agree that the Lyndians, a people from an area called Anatolia which is now Turkey, were the earliest to use coins. They first minted coins around 600 BC, although these early coins were of such high value that they would be used for saving and to pay for rare large expenditures rather than everyday expenses. As trade between peoples promoted the concept of the coin, it was adopted by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and from there the idea spread throughout Europe and beyond. The coin was easily transportable and became one of the earliest pieces of shared understanding between different cultures, allowing trade between unknown parties on a scale which had been impossible before. The beginning of modern economics: trade between nations The widespread adoption of coinage facilitated trade at an unprecedented level during the ancient Greek and Roman eras. Large-scale trade between nations arguably began with the empire of Alexander the Great in 300 BC, who ruled Macedonia and expanded his reach through Asia and Africa to create one of the largest empires in this period of history. This empire created a shared economic and cultural understanding between nations that were hundreds of miles away from each other. Following this period, the Greeks remained in Central Asia from 250 BC to 10CE, opening up a trade route between the East and West known as the Silk Road. Along this established route, people could trade goods more easily and smoothly than ever before, which allowed them access to new resources and ideas. The route was named for the precious silks that were exported from China to the Roman Empire in addition to jade, bird feathers, spices, tea, and what would have been new and exotic fruits and vegetables like carrots and pomegranates. In exchange, the Romans provided the Chinese with a great number of horses, as well as other items like gold, olive oil, and grapes. This long-standing trade relationship facilitated a cultural exchange between nations as well, marking the starting point of globalisation. A revolutionary change: the industrial revolution The next major development in the history of economics was the industrial revolution of the late 1700s to early 1800s. During this period, a transition was underway in the West to move away from hand production methods such as weaving or picking fruits by hand and towards automated production using machines to perform repetitive tasks. This changed occurred firstly and primarily in the area of textiles, but automation soon spread to other areas of production too and technological developments were used to increase the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of production. In economic terms, the industrial revolution allowed greater production for lower effort, which over time raised the standard of living so that more people could afford first more essential goods, then eventually more luxury goods. The economies of scale made these goods more affordable and for the first time mass-produced goods were available to the masses as well as to the elite. The GDP per capita began to grow rapidly for the first time, signalling the most significant change to daily lives since humans first began relying on agriculture to produce their food. However, the turn towards automation was not uniformly positive in its effects across the board. Economic historians have argued that the workers on the lowest rung of the social ladder actually saw a reduction in their living standards as they suffered from the harms of industrialisation like pollution and long working hours without seeing the benefits: in affordable goods and services. The twentieth century: population boom During the 20th century, the growth following the industrial revolution continued and the global population exploded from 1.65 billion people at the start of the century to 6 billion people by the end. This was due to factors like improving medicine and healthcare that lowered mortality rates, particularly lowering child mortality and the likelihood of mothers dying during birth, and the wider availability of resources and goods thanks to economic forces. The population began to urbanise, congregating in smaller and denser city areas than the traditional rural way of living, due to jobs being located primarily in cities. This urbanisation made it easier to share resources and provide services like clean running water, heating, electricity, and education, and made distributing foods and other goods more efficient. All of this allowed people to live for longer and to have more children, resulting in the population boom. In turn, this growing population provided a plentiful and cheap source of labour, allowing companies to produce more and to earn more. The two world wars in the twentieth century were economic drivers as well, obliging countries to increase their production of weapons and military goods and causing women to join the workforce in record high numbers. Over this century, GDP per capita grew by five times. This was particularly spurred by the development of shipping containers that were cheap to manufacture, standardised, and reusable. The standardisation of shipping containers made transporting goods in large quantities over the ocean cheaper and easier than ever before, pushing international trade to new heights. The modern era: crises and environmentalism At the turn of the twenty-first century, the Great Recession was a period of economic decline across the world. It was the most severe economic decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and was spurred on by a failure to regulate financial markets. Corporations and financial firms took on considerable risks and lent excessively to individuals who were unlikely to be able to pay the full amounts back, resulting in skyrocketing household debt and the bursting of a housing bubble. This period saw the global financial crisis of 2008 as well as the subprime mortgage crisis, both of which threw economics markets into disarray. Economics has not only been tied to crises in the twenty-first century, however. A growing awareness of climate change has spurred on a popular interest in environmentalism, to which economics has contributed. One of the most realistic and broadly popular proposals for combating climate change is the introduction at either a national or an international level of a carbon tax, in which a fee must be paid when carbon-based fuels (i.e. fossil fuels) are burned. This tax would reduce the use of fossil fuels over the long term by making them more expensive and therefore less appealing than using renewable sources of energy. Carbon taxes of various kinds have been implemented in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Chile, Sweden, and other nations and have been debated in many more. Conclusion In many ways, the history of economics is the history of society, showing how resources were valued, traded, and consolidated across periods of time. Despite its reputation for abstractness as a subject, economics has had a formative impact on life in our society for thousands of years, and will likely only become more relevant in a future of increased globalisation.
Although it is generally thought of mainly as a theoretical academic subject, economics has been a driving force in society for thousands of years. The exchange of money and the way that financial systems interact has lead to some of the most profound changes to the everyday lives of human beings across the planet. To illustrate how the practice of economics has changed the world, today we'll look at the role of economics in Western history from the 6th century BC era up to the present day.
Why study at University of Tampere, Finland?
Many undergraduate students praise the fact that their professors are approachable and the classes project-oriented. UTA also encourage students to branch out into other classes in order to experience a more balanced education. Through this practical learning environment, the university bolsters students for life after graduation, giving them the necessary experience and flexibility to hold down a job. Programs offered at University of Tampere As part of the Faculty of Management and Business, there are only a small number of economics programs on offer. For undergraduates, those who opt for business studies will study economics topics as part of that course, including core courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics and field courses in in public economics, labour and personnel economics, behavioural economics, monetary and financial economics, and regional economics. Masters students can opt for the master's degree in economics or the double degree program Public Economics and Public Finance. This double degree is taught jointly between the University of Tampere are other Europeans universities: the University of Rennes in France, University of Fribourg in Switzerland, the Università degli Studi del Piamonte Orientale ”Amedeo Avogadro” in Italy, and Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. ➲ Subscribe to find your ideal Master's program in Europe Doctoral students can study economics as part of a joint economics program offered by economics units across Finland, in a coruse called the Finnish Doctoral Programme in Economics. Research at The University of Tampere The research work in economics at University of Tampere is divided into two main topics: public economics, such as taxation, social services, and environmental policy; and labour economics, including the study of labour market policy and migration. Current major research projects are in work inequality and competition in healthcare. Other departments at the University of Tampere faculty also engage in interesting research, including alternative care, classical, medieval and early modern history, Russian and Chinese media and even theatre. But most fascinating is their policy of “open science,” meaning an open approach to scientific publications, the allocation of research data, and the research process. They believe this improves the quality of scientific knowledge, increases opportunities for new scientific knowledge to be implemented, encourages researchers around the globe to cooperate with each other, and expands the impact scientific findings have on us. Basically, they encourage globalization not only in the classroom, but even in their faculty’s scientific endeavours. Tuition fees and cost of living at the University of Tampere Universities in Finland are, incredibly enough, free to attend if you are an EU citizen or you already reside in Finland. This idea may be shocking to those from countries like the US where higher education is to expensive, but this comes from the Finnish ethos to education. Even for students who come from outside the EU, the University of Tampere is relatively affordable in terms of fees. Bachelor's and master's student will pay between €8,000 and €12,00 per year, and doctoral students pay no tuition fees at all. As for living costs, Tampere is not the cheapest place to live in Europe but the costs are manageable. In terms of accommodation, if you make use of student accommodations you are looking between €200 and €900 per month, depending on whether you opt for a shared room, a single room, a small apartment or a family apartment. Other costs are around €250 a month for food. Up to €80 per month for travel, and a few hundred Euros for personal spending depending on your interests. In total, you can expect to pay between €750 and €1000 per month in living costs. Student life in Tampere The city of Tampere was voted the most desirable place to live in Finland for the sixth consecutive year, even above the capital of Helsinki. So it’s no wonder thousands of students flock here for their higher education. 40,000 out of 220,000 of city inhabitants are students and the population is very diverse, with students coming from about 80 different countries. Undoubtedly the most beautiful aspect of Tampere has to be the nature. With the Tammerkoski channels gushing through the city, the 200 lakes around the outskirts, and the immense greenery, Tampere is the premier destination for a student who not only has their head in the books but their feet in the earth. Not only can you fish in and bike around the lakes, but you can also swim in ice—an eccentric past-time for local Finns. This is what is known as “avantouinti,” or more literally ‘dipping yourself in a frozen lake’. The health benefits are immense, and include anti-ageing, the lowering of blood pressure and improved blood circulation. It also helps to balance the emotions and hormones. Fortunately, due to Tampere’s prestige as the sauna capital of the world (with over 35 public saunas dispersed in and around the city), there are also plenty of places to heat yourself up. Besides the impressive nature Tampere has to offer, there many other activities for college students that have more to do with modern civilization. The Moomin Museum is dedicated to the books of Tove Jansson, a Finnish author, painter, and illustrator, and creator of the Moomin books. The series of books follow the family of Moomins. The protagonist is Moomintroll, who lives in a Moominhouse with his Moominpappa and Moominmamma, and who goes on different Moominadventures. Okay, I may have made that last word up. But if you’d like to Moomin through the Moominmuseum, even if you’re not already familiar with Moomining, now’s your chance to Moominlearn about Moominmoomins. If you’re into more conventional museums, however, you might find the Vapriiki Museum to be of interest. Not only does it house a dozen exhibitions every year, its also home to the Doll Museum, the Finnish Ice Hockey Museum, the Finnish Museum of Games, the Natural History Museum, the Postal Museum and more. There is also the opportunity to revisit your childhood at Särkänniemi, an amusement park that also contains an aquarium and planetarium. With six massive roller coasters and over a million visitors each month, it’s essentially the Disney Land of Finland and has been voted as the best amusement park in the country. Challenges for international students at University of Tampere The only downside students at the University of Tampere have complained about is the division between local and international students. International masters’ programs, for instance, are not offered to locals, and because of this students from abroad cannot become as involved in university life. However, a tutor is appointed to every incoming international student, but not just for academic guidance. They are also there to: ensure you are able to contact your faculty; support you with any student housing issues; and even help you open a bank account, if you so need. Another issue to consider is the weather. Tampere is located far north so the weather can be biting, and the daylight can be extremely limited, or excessive. The shortest day in Tampere is on December 22nd, and is only 5 hours and 20 minutes long. In contrast, the summer’s longest day is 19 hours and 30 minutes. If you already struggle with adhering to a regular sleep schedule, this may not be the place for you. ➲ Discover all study programs in Finland
Finland is known around the globe for its progressive higher education culture that aims to cultivate a humane and globally-minded ‘next generation’. This is emphasis is especially present in the University of Tampere (UTA). UTA prides itself on providing a friendly environment for students to connect with their professors and even the administration, even as undergraduates.<o:p></o:p>
This public research university was only recently founded, but came from the merging of two famous institutions, the former University of Lisbon and the Technical University of Lisbon, each with its own storied history. There has been some kind of university existing in Lisbon since the 13th century, so it is a city with a long academic pedigree. Economics at the University of Lisbon The university is divided into three colleges for research: the Food, Farming and Forestry College, Mind-Brain College, and the College of Chemistry. Each of the colleges individually contributes to advancing different areas necessary for our continued existence. The Farming and Forestry College, for instance, applies a holistic approach to its scientific advancements, and can be held accountable for producing public policy geared towards dealing with the issues of food and agroforestry on a national and international level. The Mind-Brain College aims to link the concept of mind and brain together. And the College of Chemistry is focused on finding the most economical approach for implementing the university’s human capabilities and materials in conjunction with learning. The university's Lisbon School of Economics and Management offers courses at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels, in addition to other postgraduate courses and an MBA. Many of these courses are taught in English so they are ideal for foreign students, and there are also courses taught in Portuguese if you have a flair for languages. ➲ Subscribe to find your ideal Master's program in Europe Research specialities at the University of Lisbon Much of the research at the Lisbon School of Economics and Management has a focus on social good and international development. For example, there are currently projects at the school to investigate resilient farming systems to create sustainable food production in west and north Africa, as well as a scheme for the promotion of gender balance within research, and one for using citizen sceience to assess groundwater levels and encourage sustainable water management. PhD students are encouraged in the areas of the intersection of development studies and economics, as well as in the area of applied mathematics. The school specifically states that in terms of future employment, it aims to provide its PhD students with the skills to go into international careers in economics. ➲ Subscribe to find your ideal PhD program in Europe Tuition fees at the University of Lisbon The cost of tuition at the University of Lisbon is relatively low, especially compared to studying in the US. Tuition fees are generally in the region of around €1000 to €1200 per year, though some courses are more expensive and cost up to €3000 per year. The good news is that foreign students do not have to pay massively higher rates than Portuguese students, so the option of studying in Portugal is open to all. There are studentships and fellowships available to help cover the costs of studying, many of which are quite generous. For example, a grant for a student to study in Portugal can be up to €1,600 per month, which is enough to live on comfortably and have enough money to cover accommodation, fees, and going out to eat and drink and enjoy the city. Facilities at the University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon also provides many amenities for you to divulge in and improve your overall experience at the university. If you want to get fit, there are multiple indoor and outdoor gyms, a pool, sports courses and opportunities to involve yourself in championships. If you’re not into exercise, there are also incredible arts programs to partake in, in theatre, dance, and cinema. And if you are planning on living in Portugal after graduating, the university’s language program prepares you to converse fluently in Portuguese. The university also has four museums: the Alfredo Bensaúde Exhibition Museum, the Decius Tadeu Museum, the Medicine Museum, and the National Museum of Natural History and Science. Yes, you heard right: they are home to Portugal’s center for natural history, where the university has actually integrated the Astronomical Observatory of Lisbon and the Lisbon Botanical Garden. Living costs in Lisbon Lisbon has a thriving nightlife and restaurant scene, and the cost of luxuries like eating out or drinking is low. This makes it a great city for students who want to have fun but need to stick to a budget. Beer, for instance, is only 2 euros in most of the city's numerous bars, and at many restaurants you can eat exceptionally well for around 10 to 20 euros per person. The down side is that accommodation can be expensive, especially if you want to live in a trendy or busy area. A one bedroom apartment on the outskirts of the city costs around €650 per month, while a one bedroom apartment in the heart of the city can run up to €900 per month. Of course, if this is too expensive for you then there are also other options like sharing a flat with other students, which can drop rent down to around €400 per month. The university also has 19 residences for students, most commonly used by undergraduates. Foreign students who wish to study in university accommodation must apply via the International Relations office of their school once they have been accepted to their course of study. Cultural experiences in Lisbon Lisbon is a favourite holiday destination for tourists from across Europe and beyond, due to its sunny weather, excellent food, and charming culture. Temperatures average around 30 degrees in the summer, and even in the depths of winter the city remains warm and comfortable. The city has charming features such as Tram 28 — a 1930s tram that winds through all the nooks and crannies of the city. In the age of modern trams it continues to navigate the hills and other difficult parts of this ancient city. From this route you can admire the beauty not only of the local area but also the unique landscape the city is planted in—including the seven hills that form a circle around the centre. Other local highlights include the Jerónimos Monastery and the Tower of Belém. Together, these form a world heritage UNESCO site. The Jerónimos Monastery provides incomparable views—you’ll feel as if you’re fairytale. And the Tower of Belém incites an equally inspiring feeling you could only experience gazing upon a beautifully-crafted hunk of stone plopped on the seashore. Finally, the city sits right on the Atlantic ocean, so sea lovers will be delighted. Swimming in the ocean is not for the faint of heart as even in the country's warm weather it can be punishingly cold. However, there are beaches nearby to the city including the famous white sand Carcavelos beach where you can lounge on the sand and soak up the sun. The rest of Portugal is also easy to explore by train, with highlights including the beautiful city of Porto where port wine is made, which is well worth a visit for a journey which takes less than 3 hours by train. ➲ Discover all study programs in Portugal
In the heart of sunny Portugal, the city of Lisbon is famed for its food, its architecture, and its history. But it also hosts some exceptional academic institutions, including the University of Lisbon, also known as ULisboa. With a population of 50,000 students (1,000 being international) and 4,000 lecturers, the university is nearly a city in itself. <o:p></o:p>