The spatial extent of agglomeration economies across the wage earnings distribution

We investigate the spatial extent of agglomeration economies across the wage earnings distribution using economic mass (total employment) in four distance bands around each individual’s establishment in a quantile regression framework. We control for observable and unobservable individual and establishment characteristics. Remaining endogeneity in the model is assessed with a set of instrumental variables. Results indicate a positive effect of economic mass on wage earnings up to 25 km away from the establishment. The spatial extent of agglomeration economies is similar across the wage earnings distribution. However, increases in economic mass shift the wage earnings distribution in a nonsymmetric way.     

SOCIAL CHANGE BY COMPROMISE?

The article raises the question of how a person argues for social change by compromise. The study is about the leading theorist of the reformist Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP), Ernst Wigforss, and how he argues for a compromise in the relations between capital and labour. My hypothesis is that social change is argued as necessary, possible, and desirable. The guiding idea for the analysis is to use Quentin Skinner’s understanding of political thought and its expression as a political manoeuvre bounded by a historically given context. However, the latter needs to be specified as an analytical concept, as well as audience and interest. Despite his efforts Wigforss failed to create an agreement about new relations between capital and labour. His problem situation and his efforts to work through the problem mirror a general political problem, the possibilities of reformism to convert the existing society on crucial issues. More specifically, however, in his effort to redefine what the interest of each party should be, Wigforss had to consider the character of the object of conflict he was addressing, as this determined what the interest of each party was, and the sort of compromise that might be reached.     

An example of the establishment of the Bronze Age cultural landscape in SW Scandinavia

In the Lake Hullsjön area, Västergötland, SW Sweden, the increase in the deposits of artifacts, the erection of monumental graves, and the intensification and expansion of cultivation and grazing, is discussed in terms of cultural landscape changes at the Neolithic/Bronze Age transition c. 2500–1500 B.C. The expansion included an intensified use of low‐lying clayey areas and caused an increase in soil erosion, as indicated by the sediment stratigraphy.     

Neuplatonismus und politik 1

According to a widely accepted view, the dialect used in Archaic Greek choral lyric is predominantly Doric and is strictly correlated with this genre. This article reconsiders the linguistic data as well as earlier attempts to dispute this scholarly consensus (which included interventions by Antoine Meillet, Carlo Pavese, and Natan Grinbaum), and puts forward an alternative theory of the nature and the origins of the distinctive idiom used in choral lyric. It argues that choral lyric preserves an ancient poetic language which predates the Homeric epic and in most likelihood arose in the (Proto-)Aeolic realm. This account, on the one hand, makes it possible to correlate the history of cult-embedded lyric with the history of narrative epic, which is generally held to include an Aeolic phase. On the other hand, it explains the progressive Ionization of the language of choral lyric by the rise of the Ionic poetic language during the 6th-5th c. BCE.     

EMPLOYERS AND SICKNESS INSURANCE

The Swedish Employers' Confederation (SAF) had already applied in the 1910s a strategy that companies should not compete with social benefits on the labour market. So SAF welcomed the introduction of national sickness insurance in 1955. The system included deductibles, which were seen as necessary in sickness insurance. Before the reform salaried employees had received sick pay from the employer and their compensation was 100%. Their organizations succeeded, in spite of SAF resistance, in getting supplementary contractual sick pay leading to elimination of deductibles. This paved the way for other organizations to negotiate solutions that gave full compensation for loss of earnings while sick. Consequently sickness rates became very high. Up to 1990 SAF was unable to stop the elimination of deductibles. The economic crisis around 1990 made it possible for politicians to introduce deductibles and statutory sick pay. This was in accordance with SAF's views. Increase in long‐term illness from 1997 led to a weakening of SAF's position. According to the unions, long‐term illness was due to bad work environments and measures should be taken to give employers incentives to improve working conditions. Supported by the unions, the social democratic government introduced increased financing responsibility for employers 2005.