Human capital accumulation and long‐term income growth projections for European regions

We propose an econometric framework to construct projections for per capita income growth and human capital for European regions. Using Bayesian methods, our approach accounts for model uncertainty in terms of the choice of explanatory variables, the nature of spatial spillovers, as well as the potential endogeneity between output growth and human capital accumulation. This method allows us to assess the potential contribution of future educational attainment to economic growth and income convergence among European regions over the next decades. Our findings suggest that income convergence dynamics and human capital act as important drivers of income growth for the decades to come.     

Water availability and landuse during the Upper and Epipaleolithic in southwestern Syria

Paleolithic research often assumes that environmental conditions played a major role in shaping human evolution. To study this relationship we present a spatially explicit approach based on the assumption that the distribution of water within the landscape is an essential component of local environmental conditions. Here, we analyze the relation of wetness and human landuse patterns from the Upper Paleolithic (UP) and Epipaleolithic (EP) of Western Syria. In particular the spatially explicit character of the approach enables the detection of a significant change in landuse patterns during the UP and EP accompanied by a significant shift in the wetness characteristics of the preferentially used areas. These results are discussed against the background of published data on climatic conditions in order to identify both a possible time frame and triggers for this change in landuse. While we conclude an increased influence of natural conditions on the spatial behavior for the UP, we suggest an additional influence of cultural circumstances in shaping EP spatial behavior. For the region studied we argue that the bounded pattern observed during the UP changes to a spatially flexible pattern during the Late Natufian.     

A LINEAR PROGRAMMING APPROACH TO SOLVING INFEASIBLE RAS PROBLEMS

ABSTRACT The RAS procedure is widely used to update national and regional input-output tables and international trade tables and to construct regional tables from national ones. Special problems, however, have been encountered when the procedure is used to adjust interregional trade tables. In this paper, the special properties of interregional trade tables that increase the likelihood of nonconvergence of the RAS procedure are discussed, and two linear programming methods of solving infeasible RAS problems are provided. First, a closed linear programming approach, which enables exogenous information to override the purely mechanical solution of infeasible RAS problems, is presented. Finally, the open linear programming approach is applied successfully to adjust U.S. interregional trade data that had previously failed to converge using the RAS procedure.     

Prediction of Bike-sharing Trip Counts: Comparing Parametric Spatial Regression Models to a Geographically Weighted XGBoost Algorithm

Regression models are commonly applied in the analysis of transportation data. This research aims at broadening the range of methods used for this task by modeling the spatial distribution of bike-sharing trips in Cologne, Germany, applying both parametric regression models and a modified machine learning approach while incorporating measures to account for spatial autocorrelation. Independent variables included in the models consist of land use types, elements of the transport system and sociodemographic characteristics. Out of several regression models with different underlying distributions, a Tweedie generalized additive model is chosen by its values for AIC, RMSE, and sMAPE to be compared to an XGBoost model. To consider spatial relationships, spatial splines are included in the Tweedie model, while the estimations of the XGBoost model are modified using a geographically weighted regression. Both methods entail certain advantages: while XGBoost leads to far better values regarding RMSE and sMAPE and therefore to a better model fit, the Tweedie model allows an easier interpretation of the influence of the independent variables including spatial effects.     

Varieties of nationalism in the political discourses of Habsburg Austria

Nationalism in the Habsburg Empire is traditionally viewed through an ethnic lens. Despite a growing literature on ‘national indifference’ that studies nationalism in Habsburg central Europe from a constructivist perspective and advances our knowledge concerning variations in national identifications, the nationalism implied in these works remains largely limited to an exclusionary ethnic type. This reductionist view of central European nationalism mirrors the traditional dichotomy of ethnic ‘Eastern’ versus civic ‘Western’ nationalism. In order to avoid this reduction, this article approaches nationalism as a thin-centred ideology and explores varieties of nationalism in Habsburg Austria during the long 19th century. Although certain ideational paths made ethno-nationalism appear, retrospectively, as a quasi-natural feature of central Europe, the findings show that there developed rival discursive traditions of nationalism and competing representations of nation.     

The social mind: disentangling affective and cognitive routes to understanding others

ABSTRACT

To flexibly adjust behaviour to that of other people around us requires some representation of their overt actions, but also of the driving forces behind them, that is, their goals, intentions, and emotions. Socio-affective and -cognitive functions enable such representations via creating vicarious affective states in the observer (empathy) or by accumulating abstract, propositional knowledge of another person’s mental state (Theory of Mind). While the empathic sharing of another’s emotions is implemented by those neural networks that also process first-hand emotion, Theory of Mind activates a widespread network that seems to process information independent of its specific modality or content. Crucially, these two routes can function independently as individual differences in the respective capacities and network activations are unrelated and selective impairments in one or the other function occur in psychopathology. However, they may co-activate and co-operate in complex social situations, determining how prosocially interactive behaviour unfolds.