Search results

The paper aims to present an analysis of today's key themes in the field of public futures studies.

Compares publicly available research results on futures activities in countries including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, The Netherlands, Quebec, Sweden, the UK.

The paper shows that there are striking similarities between countries in terms of themes and topics for public futures study and also that the themes are relatively stable over time. However, specific topics are determined by the challenges of the day: the themes are abiding, the subjects are changing.

The paper offers an interesting approach of the state's changing roles and priorities across the world. To help readers go further, links to web sites of the most relevant futures studies institutions are provided.

This paper seeks to present the key actors in Germany in the field of public forecasting and futures studies.

Taking into account the highly decentralized nature of German institutions, and the reforms carried out since the reunification, it analyses the contributions of the main economic institutes and foundations of the country. It gives a detailed account of their methods, means, topics of research, and impact on public debate, together with up‐to‐date links to the main web sites.

The dominant approach tends to be economic forecasting, carried out by major institutes that rely on academic logic. Societal futures studies are not so well served and are less recognized.

Provides an insight into the state of futures research in Germany and its characteristics.

The objective of the paper is to explain the motives for and against accelerated displacement of people from some countries to others. The evolving consequences of such shifts are highlighted.

In a soft‐system analysis, the paper cites specialists in mass migration and the various attitudes inherent in different nations' experience, economic policy, and culture.

The study finds that migration has increased in absolute, yet not in relative numbers. It explains the reasons for this.

The thrust of this paper gives a markedly different interpretation of the nature of the world's migratory movements today as opposed to the view prevailing until late in the twentieth century.

To examine the survivability, in France, of what may be one of the world's oldest state planning bodies.

This is a straightforward account of what is happening to centralized planning in a democratic state.

France's current government found the agency unneeded.

If the State Planning Agency in Paris is eliminated, France will have no centralized office for strategic planning.

The chronicle records the abolition of an entity recognized by government during the previous 60 years as being essential to its functioning.

In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research question in an empirical analysis at the aggregate level, we examine a global sample of 73 countries between 1981 and 2010, studying a broad set of drivers to investigate their interaction and influence on income inequality. Within this broad approach, we are interested in the heterogeneity of income inequality determinants across world regions and along the income distribution. Our findings indicate the existence of a small set of systematic drivers across the global sample of countries. Declining labour income shares and increasing imports from high-income countries significantly contribute to increasing income inequality, while taxation and imports from low-income countries exert countervailing effects. Our study reveals the region-specific impacts of technological change, financial globalisation, domestic financial deepening and public social spending. Most importantly, we do not find systematic evidence of education’s equalising effect across high- and low-income countries. Our results are largely robust to changing the underlying sources of income Ginis, but looking at different segments of income distribution reveals heterogeneous effects.

The object of this research is the reconstruction of the existing legal response by European Union states to the phenomenon of immigration. It seeks to analyse the process of conferral of protection.

One main dimension is selected and discussed: the case law of the national courts. The study focuses on the legal status of immigrants resulting from the intervention of these national courts.

The research shows that although the courts have conferred an increasing protection on immigrants, this has not challenged the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the states to decide, according to their discretionary prerogatives, which immigrants are allowed to enter and stay in their territories. Notwithstanding the differences in the general constitutional and legal structures, the research also shows that the courts of the three countries considered – France, Germany and Spain – have progressively moved towards converging solutions in protecting immigrants.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the different legal orders analysed.