DESTRUCTION AND REALLOCATION OF SKILLS FOLLOWING LARGE COMPANY CLOSURES

This paper analyzes what happens to redundant skills and workers when large companies close down and whether their skills are destroyed or reallocated. The analysis is based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative data of the closure of four companies. Getting a job in a skill‐related industry or moving to a spinoff firm leads to skill reallocation. Thus, the result depends on regional idiosyncrasies such as industry structure and urbanization. If local policy makers and the owners exert a coordinated effort, it is possible to create success stories of less skill destruction in urban as well as peripheral regions.     

Uniform Pricing Versus Mill Pricing

This paper analyzes the coexistence of different pricing strategies. The purpose is to discuss how firms that are limited to uniform pricing affect the outcome of price competition among mill–price–setting firms. Price competition among (three) firms that are restricted to mill pricing is analyzed within the classic Hotelling framework and uniform–price–setting firms are considered as first movers. If uniform–price–setting firms deliver any good, they effectively separate mill–price–setting firms from each other. Finally, it is shown that price competition among first movers strengthens the effects of cross–type price competition.     

First results of metallographic analysis and absolute dating of iron finds from Nowe Brzesko,site 26, Proszowice District

This paper presents the results of analyses of metal artefacts discovered at a multiphase site in Nowe Brzesko, Małopolskie Voivodeship, Poland. Fieldwalking prospection led to the discovery of steely iron objects, ploughed out on the site among other numerous archeological finds. A prospecting sondage yielded more corroded metal artefacts, identified mainly as agricultural tools (e.g. sickles, scythes). These chronologically nondistinctive artefacts could be assigned to the third to fourth century AD using radiocarbon dating, complemented by metallurgical analysis. The results open up new research perspectives on the economy and society of the Przeworsk culture in the Late Roman period.     

A Defense Renaissance? The Canadian Conservative Government and the Military

Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper campaigned in 2006 that, if elected, his government would make major improvements to Canada’s military. Emphasizing the decline that had befallen the once proud institution under the Liberals, Harper spoke of the spending increases and new capabilities that would result if his party emerged victorious in the upcoming vote. Seven years later, and two years after the prime minister was finally rewarded with a majority government, it seems like an opportune time to examine the Harper defense record. The article will show that defense spending has increased and a string of new equipment projects have been announced. However, the article will also reveal that the spending increases are almost certainly over, while few of the capital programs are actually progressing. Thus, the Harper defense record is ambiguous, and does not constitute the dramatic change that was promised.     

A Balancing Act: Domestic Pressures and International Systemic Constraints in the Foreign Policies of the Great Powers, 1848-1851

During the revolutions of 1848 and their aftermath, the governmentsof France, Austria and Prussia, respectively, were exposed toextraordinary pressure from a variety of nationalist movementswith fundamentally different agendas. They had difficult choicesto make as to whether they let their foreign policies be determinedby domestic concerns or heed the rules of the internationalsystem—it was hardly possible to do both. As a resultthey performed a ‘balancing act’ on a tight rope:a wrong step could cause their fall, either because they wouldbe overthrown by their own people, or they would risk war withother Great Powers. Those not affected by a revolution in 1848,i.e. conservative Russia and progressive Britain, had to opteither for backing countries with political tendencies similarto their own, or for simply upholding the balance of power andinternational rules. The author concludes that the ‘primacyof foreign policy’—within this context more preciselythe primacy of the international system's rules and the balanceof power—helps to understand the actual foreign policiesof four of the five Great Powers during the European crisisof 1848–51. Austria's government, the one country tryingto overthrow the balance of power and change the nature of thesystem, was effectively checked. The rules of the post-1815international system were still an efficacious tool for discipliningstates.     

Adult and juvenile aurochs, Bos primigenius Boj. from the maglemosian site of ulkestrup lyng Øst,Denmark

Bones of adult and juvenile aurochs (Bos primigenius Boj.) from the refuse of a Mesolithic settlement, Ulkestrup Lyng Øst (c. 6090 BC), are examined. The problem of estimating the ontogenetic age of the younger animals is dealt with in order to establish the time of the year at which they were killed and thereby the possible season of hunting.The age-determination is mainly based on tooth-wear, which is discussed in its relationship to physiological changes in the stomach, that are correlated with the dietary changes from milk to solid food. The subfossil mandibles are compared with modern material from domestic calves and with other Danish subfossil calves' mandibles.     

Climate as resource and challenge: international cooperation in the UNESCO Arid Zone Programme

ABSTRACT

Perceptions of climatic challenges have changed significantly during the twentieth century. In recent decades, the question of global climate change received more attention than regional climatic challenges and the problems of arid regions. Historians have shown that persistent misconceptions and a lack of understanding of arid zones rooted in misguided colonial ideologies were propagated by United Nations (UN) initiatives such as the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Arid Zone Programme. Alarmist narratives of progressive desertification proliferated and put the blame on destructive local practices such as deforestation and overgrazing. This article investigates UNESCO’s interests in natural resources (section 1) and takes a closer look at the development and scientific elements of the Arid Zone Programme (sections 2 and 3). It argues that the Arid Zone Programme offered an effective framework that helped develop and spread new interdisciplinary research approaches to improve knowledge about arid zones. The myth of progressing desertification and misguided colonial expertise characterized much of its political rhetoric, but not its scientific work, which reflected balanced and more critical appraisals of out-dated colonial expertise. In its conclusion, the article suggests that broader contexts need to be taken into account to understand a resurgence of alarmist narratives of desertification such as shifting interests in climatology from local climatic issues to the global atmospheric circulation and a neglect of the climatology of arid zones.