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Article
Publication date: 9 January 2024

Sébastien Charles

The aim of this article is to assess the macroeconomic consequences of some specific aspects of financialization (i.e. share buy-back) using a hybrid post-Keynesian model of…

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this article is to assess the macroeconomic consequences of some specific aspects of financialization (i.e. share buy-back) using a hybrid post-Keynesian model of growth and distribution based on Kaldorian and Kaleckian characteristics.

Design/methodology/approach

The study follows a post-Keynesian approach and deals with financialization issues by implementing several numerical simulations.

Findings

The numerical simulations reveal the negative real impacts of massive share repurchases on the rate of accumulation because they immediately siphon off revenues directly intended for investment projects. Moreover, the negative effect of share buy-backs is reinforced especially when firms' investment decisions are more sensitive to a variation in retained earnings. Next, this macro-model also reproduces several well-known figures of the Kaleckian tradition and the paradox of costs.

Research limitations/implications

The present article can be considered as a starting point for further theoretical extensions and requires empirical validation.

Originality/value

The Kaldor-Kalecki macro-model could be useful for policymakers who are interested in containing some of the negative excesses of financialization.

Details

Journal of Economic Studies, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3585

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 October 2008

Sébastien Charles and Ilyess El Karouni

This paper attempts to show that Chinese post‐socialist transformation has involved a deep change in growth regime.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper attempts to show that Chinese post‐socialist transformation has involved a deep change in growth regime.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors begin by detailing the institutional background of the study: the Chinese post‐socialist transformation. They compare growth regimes both in Maoist and post Maoist eras. Therefore, by using official data, the paper deals with the difficulties and challenges of the current growth regime.

Findings

The new growth regime could be particularly difficult to manage regarding China's dependence on external demand in a context of low domestic demand. In particular, the main difficulty to which this growth regime could be confronted with concerns the occurrence of an external contraction in the US. The authors then try to assess why such an event may appear by providing a list of external risks to emphasize the economic vulnerability of China.

Practical implications

This paper is essentially intended for Chinese policy‐makers who wish to adopt a more balanced growth strategy in the long‐run.

Originality/value

The paper develops an alternative view on the macroeconomic situation of China. In particular, it insists on its vulnerability through external demand.

Details

International Journal of Development Issues, vol. 7 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1446-8956

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 April 2017

Damien Brun, Susan M. Ferreira, Charles Gouin-Vallerand and Sébastien George

Smart eyewear, such as augmented or virtual reality headset, allows the projection of virtual content through a display worn on the user’s head. This paper aims to present a…

Abstract

Purpose

Smart eyewear, such as augmented or virtual reality headset, allows the projection of virtual content through a display worn on the user’s head. This paper aims to present a mobile platform, named “CARTON”, which transforms a smartphone into smart eyewear, following a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach. This platform is composed of three main components: a blueprint to build the hardware prototype with very simple materials and regular tools; a software development kit (SDK) to help with the development of new applications (e.g. augmented reality app); and, finally, a second SDK (ControlWear) to interact with mobile applications through a Smartwatch.

Design/methodology/approach

User experiments were conducted, in which participants were asked to create, by themselves, the CARTON’s hardware part and perform usability tests with their own creation. A second round of experimentation was conducted to evaluate three different interaction modalities.

Findings

Qualitative user feedback and quantitative results prove that CARTON is functional and feasible to anyone, without specific skills. The results also showed that ControlWear had the most positive results, compared with the other interaction modalities, and that user interaction preference would vary depending on the task.

Originality/value

The authors describe a novel way to create a smart eyewear available for a wide audience around the world. By providing everything open-source and open-hardware, they intend to solve the reachability of technologies related to smart eyewear and aim to accelerate research around it.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 August 2017

Yassine Bouteraa and Ismail Ben Abdallah

The idea is to exploit the natural stability and performance of the human arm during movement, execution and manipulation. The purpose of this paper is to remotely control a…

Abstract

Purpose

The idea is to exploit the natural stability and performance of the human arm during movement, execution and manipulation. The purpose of this paper is to remotely control a handling robot with a low cost but effective solution.

Design/methodology/approach

The developed approach is based on three different techniques to be able to ensure movement and pattern recognition of the operator’s arm as well as an effective control of the object manipulation task. In the first, the methodology works on the kinect-based gesture recognition of the operator’s arm. However, using only the vision-based approach for hand posture recognition cannot be the suitable solution mainly when the hand is occluded in such situations. The proposed approach supports the vision-based system by an electromyography (EMG)-based biofeedback system for posture recognition. Moreover, the novel approach appends to the vision system-based gesture control and the EMG-based posture recognition a force feedback to inform operator of the real grasping state.

Findings

The main finding is to have a robust method able to gesture-based control a robot manipulator during movement, manipulation and grasp. The proposed approach uses a real-time gesture control technique based on a kinect camera that can provide the exact position of each joint of the operator’s arm. The developed solution integrates also an EMG biofeedback and a force feedback in its control loop. In addition, the authors propose a high-friendly human-machine-interface (HMI) which allows user to control in real time a robotic arm. Robust trajectory tracking challenge has been solved by the implementation of the sliding mode controller. A fuzzy logic controller has been implemented to manage the grasping task based on the EMG signal. Experimental results have shown a high efficiency of the proposed approach.

Research limitations/implications

There are some constraints when applying the proposed method, such as the sensibility of the desired trajectory generated by the human arm even in case of random and unwanted movements. This can damage the manipulated object during the teleoperation process. In this case, such operator skills are highly required.

Practical implications

The developed control approach can be used in all applications, which require real-time human robot cooperation.

Originality/value

The main advantage of the developed approach is that it benefits at the same time of three various techniques: EMG biofeedback, vision-based system and haptic feedback. In such situation, using only vision-based approaches mainly for the hand postures recognition is not effective. Therefore, the recognition should be based on the biofeedback naturally generated by the muscles responsible of each posture. Moreover, the use of force sensor in closed-loop control scheme without operator intervention is ineffective in the special cases in which the manipulated objects vary in a wide range with different metallic characteristics. Therefore, the use of human-in-the-loop technique can imitate the natural human postures in the grasping task.

Details

Industrial Robot: An International Journal, vol. 44 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 September 2019

Maria Gravari-Barbas and Sébastien Jacquot

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mechanisms involved in the progressive integration of marginal and peripheral urban areas, located close to established tourist…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mechanisms involved in the progressive integration of marginal and peripheral urban areas, located close to established tourist destinations, into the visited tourism perimeter, and the interplay of the supporting public and private actors. It focusses on the intertwining processes of commercial gentrification, heritagization and aestheticization of former “ordinary” or marginal areas as tools for and indications of their tourism development. It explores how the metropolitan tourism geography is progressively redesigned.

Design/methodology/approach

Following a comprehensive literature analysis, the Saint-Ouen flea market was selected as the object of study. The methodology is based on extensive in situ observations, a systematic analysis of the press and a corpus of tourist guides and several in-depth interviews with local public and private stakeholders.

Findings

This paper shows that combined public (Parisian urban and tourism stakeholders) and private interests led to the integration in the tourism perimeter of a space that was once on the margins of the tourism and metropolitan area. It highlights the mechanisms of this integration and the link between touristification, gentrification, aestheticization and artification. It was found that private investors and political decision makers regard Saint-Ouen flea market as a major opportunity for tourism and real estate development, which leads to some contradictions regarding heritage protection. Finally, it shows that market traders opposed the evolution of a commercial place into a place of symbolic consumption. At another level, it shows the stakes of tourism diversification in a metropolitan tourism destination that is characterized by overtourism.

Research limitations/implications

More studies are needed to identify not only the potential of flea markets to diversify tourist areas and practices, but also any potential resistance. The consequences on metropolitan tourism can be the subject of additional investigations: can this tourism diversification reduce overtourism in the centre, or is it only a diversification that functions as an additional driver of attractiveness? This research opens new perspectives on the modes of diversification (spatial and experiential) of metropolitan tourism as well as on the role that commercial changes play in these evolutions. It also makes it possible to question the modes of engagement of investors and traders in tourism.

Originality/value

This is an in-depth analysis of the case of Saint-Ouen flea market. The issues raised herein are applicable to similar peripheral urban areas, flea markets especially, that are rarely studied on the tourism-aestheticization-gentrification nexus. The analysis also shows the diversification of places and imaginaries of metropolitan tourism.

Details

International Journal of Tourism Cities, vol. 5 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-5607

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 1 November 2018

Marie-Cécile Cervellon and Stephen Brown

Abstract

Details

Revolutionary Nostalgia: Retromania, Neo-Burlesque and Consumer Culture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-343-2

Abstract

Details

Documents on and from the History of Economic Thought and Methodology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84663-909-8

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1992

John Conway O'Brien

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balanceeconomics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary toman′s finding the good life and society enduring…

1170

Abstract

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 19 no. 3/4/5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1947

ALFRED LOEWENBERG

The following list is a first attempt to catalogue and describe systematically the British Museum's extensive holdings of early opera librettos and related plays. The great…

Abstract

The following list is a first attempt to catalogue and describe systematically the British Museum's extensive holdings of early opera librettos and related plays. The great importance of these unpretentious booklets as supplementary and, more often than not, even primary sources for the history and bibliography of dramatic music, besides or instead of the scores, was already clearly recognized in the eighteenth century by Dr. Burney and other scholars. But it is only since 1914, the year in which O. G. T. Sonneck's Library of Congress Catalogue of opera librettos printed before 1800 appeared, that their documentary value could to any greater extent be put to general use in international musicological research. A similar bibliography of the British Museum librettos, while naturally duplicating many Washington entries, would produce a great number of additional tides, not a few of them otherwise unrecorded; it would provide the musical scholar with the key to a collection unequalled elsewhere in Europe, which owing to the peculiar nature of the material is not easily accessible by means of the General Catalogue.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 2 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2002

Susan Morris, Rowdy Yates and Jane Wilson

This article focuses on self‐reported child neglect and abuse in residential drug treatment drawing on data from clients in Scotland collected 1996‐1999. The authors' findings…

Abstract

This article focuses on self‐reported child neglect and abuse in residential drug treatment drawing on data from clients in Scotland collected 1996‐1999. The authors' findings suggest that the prevalence of childhood abuse histories are higher in female drug users than male drug users but argues that diversity of abuse experiences in drug users negate broad treatment plans for those traumatised by such experiences.

Details

Drugs and Alcohol Today, vol. 2 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1745-9265

Keywords

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