This open access book discusses transnational trade union cooperation in Europe – its forms, focuses, conditions, and obstacles. It provides an overview of existing trade union cooperation and includes detailed analyses of two specific questions: the debates on statutory minimum wages and the Posting of Workers Directive. Drawing on empirical res...
This book focuses on the concepts, tools and techniques needed to successfully model ever-changing time-series data. It emphasizes the need for general models to account for the complexities of the modern world and how these can be applied to a range of issues facing Earth, from modelling volcanic eruptions, carbon dioxide emissions and global temp...
This book examines the economic, social, and psychological consequences of manufacturing plant closure at the individual level. Using an original data set of over 1,200 workers from Switzerland who lost their manufacturing jobs after the financial crisis of 2008, the author analyzes the determinants of reemployment, the sector of reemployment, and ...
This book examines the future of inequality, work and wages in the age of automation with a focus on developing countries. The authors argue that the rise of a global 'robot reserve army' has profound effects on labor markets and economic development, but, rather than causing mass unemployment, new technologies are more likely to lead to ...
Across the country, our children are beginning life from very different starting points. Some have aspirations and believe they can be achieved. For too many others, aspirations are tempered, if not dashed, by the sobering realities of everyday life. These different starting points place children on distinctly different trajectories of growth and d...
The main objective of this book is to develop a strategy and policy measures to enhance the formalization of the shadow economy in order to improve the competitiveness of the economy and contribute to economic growth; it explores these issues with special reference to Serbia. The size and development of the shadow economy in Serbia and other Centra...
This edited volume contains the selected papers presented at the scientific board meeting of the German Cluster of Excellence on "Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries", held in November 2014. The topical structure of the book is clustered in six sessions: Integrative Production Technology, Individualised Production, ...
This book brings together a range of ideas and theories to arrive at a deeper understanding of inequality in Latin America and its complex realities. To so, it addresses questions such as: What are the origins of inequality in Latin America? How can we create societies that are more equal in terms of income distribution, gender equality and opportu...
Economists have long sought to maximise economic growth, believing this to be their best contribution to improving human welfare. That approach is not sustainable in the face of ongoing issues such as global climate change, environmental damage, rising inequality and enduring poverty. Alternatives must be found.
This book addresses that challenge....
Asia's recent demographic transitions and rural - urban structural transformations are extraordinary and involve complexities that require in-depth study.The chapters within this volume examine those complexities using a range of traditional and nontraditional measures - such as multidimensional poverty, gaps, and polarization - to arrive at t...
Principles of Microeconomics is an adaptation of the textbook, Microeconomics: Markets, Methods, and Models by D. Curtis and I. Irvine, which provides concise yet complete coverage of introductory microeconomic theory, application and policy in a Canadian and global environment.
This adaptation employs methods that use equations sparingly and do...
Microeconomics: Markets, Methods, and Models by D.Curtis and I. Irvine provides concise yet complete coverage of introductory microeconomics theory, application and policy. The textbook begins with an explanation and development of the standard tools of analysis in the discipline and carries on to investigate the meaning of 'well-being' i...
Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple acc...
What is the future when more and more work can be done by intelligent machines instead of people, or only done by people in partnership with those machines? What happens to workers, and what happens to the companies that depend on their purchasing power? What's the future of business when technology-enabled networks and marketplaces are better...
This open book discusses how the involvement of citizens into scientific endeavors is expected to contribute to solve the big challenges of our time, such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities within and between societies, and the sustainability turn. The field of citizen science has been growing in recent decades. Ma...
This open book examines the comparative evolution of social protection in Australia and New Zealand from 1890 to the present day, focusing on the relationship between employment relations and social policy. Utilising longstanding and more recent developments in historical institutionalist methodology, Ramia investigates the relationship between the...
This open book describes and reviews the development of the quality control mechanisms and methodologies associated with IEA's extensive program of educational research. A group of renowned international researchers, directly involved in the design and execution of IEA's international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), describe the operatio...
What is the most pressing problem facing the American public today? Is it immigration reform, health care costs, the student debt crisis, stagnating wages, or a budget deficit reaching into the trillions? How about climate change or the threat of plastic pollution in the ocean? What about gun violence and gun rights? The problems facing the U.S. ar...