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Accession to the European Union is one of the most powerful foreign policy tools exercised within the European arena and enlargement negotiations have been a major stimulus to reform in Central and Eastern Europe. Conditionality has evolved as over time into a dynamic instrument used to ensure that new members are sufficiently prepared to take on the responsibilities of EU membership, whilst also satisfying existing member states that new members will not prove too burdensome. This paper aims to examine some of the lessons learnt from the first stage of the Fifth Enlargement and the stricter use of conditionality mechanisms for Romania, Bulgaria and beyond.

The article is based on interviews with EU officials involved in the enlargement process.

The article finds that the use of conditionality in the 2004 enlargement has had a far from uniform effect on candidates and policy areas and that the commission has learnt much from this experience. The integration of Bulgaria and Romania will offer more significant challenges and conditionality has evolved as a mechanism to address these.

The article offersboth an empirical as well as theoretical evaluation of the use of conditionality in the context of the EU enlargement process.

There is ample empirical evidence to show that larger banks are more efficient than smaller banks in developed countries. However, there is very little empirical evidence to show that in small developing economies, such as Vietnam, bank size is associated with increased risk, especially credit risk. This paper aim to provide empirical evidence to fill in this gap. This paper employs a slack-based directional distance function using the intermediation approach in measuring the inefficiency of banks in Vietnam during the period 2006–2015. Non-performing loans are used as an undesirable output to capture credit risk. The results show that small banks are more efficient than large banks at the mean level and across the entire distributions of inefficiency of the two groups. Input waste, output shortage and risk surplus of big banks are nearly three times higher than those of small banks. The results are robust under constant and variable returns to scale for production technologies. The study’s empirical results contribute to the ongoing debate on the merits of enlarging bank size in a small transitional economy and suggest that policy makers should pay attention to the risk and inefficiency of large banks to enhance the performance of Vietnam's banking system as a whole.

This paper uses the non-radial slack-based directional technology distance function developed by Färe and Grosskopf (2010) to estimate the efficiency of banks using the data envelopment analysis technique. Data for 44 commercial banks are used.

The empirical results of the paper contribute to the ongoing debate on the merits of enlarging bank size in a small transitional economy and suggest that policy makers should pay attention to the risk and inefficiency of large banks to improve the performance of Vietnam's banking system as a whole.

This paper extends the extant literature by examining whether efficiency is associated with size in a typical transitional developing economy. The classic Cournot model, the structure-conduct-performance and the efficiency structure hypotheses state that larger banks are more efficient than smaller banks (Bikker and Bos, 2008). Empirical studies of Berger (2003), Mester (2005), Wheelock and Wilson (2012) lend support to the statement in developed countries. However, not much empirical literature focuses on small developing economies such as Vietnam to show that bank size is associated with increased risk, especially credit risk. The study’s empirical results show that size enlargement is not positively associated with risk-adjusted efficiency. Input waste, output shortage and risk surplus of big banks are nearly three times higher than those of small banks. The results are robust under constant and variable returns to scale for production technologies.

The purpose of this paper is research the relationship between size of government and FDI inflows of the host country, and provide a strategies.

Adopting the fixed effect model of panel data, this paper uses related observations from 81 countries between 2002 and 2006 to analyze the impacts of government size (measured by score of government size) on FDI inflows.

The results show that the enlargement of government size has a positive effect on FDI inflows, and the effect is much more significant in developing countries.

There is no previous research concerning the impacts of size of government on FDI inflows. Through the investigation, the paper finds the relation between government size and FDI inflows and provides much valuable information.

The absorption of the New Member States (NMS) after the 2004 enlargement and their integration into Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is perhaps the most important challenge facing the European Union (EU). The article seeks to address the issues.

The article is based upon observations of contemporary events within Hungary and relates the political process with issues of fiscal governance.

The NMS of the EU, unlike Great Britain and Denmark will not have an “opt‐out” – the right to remain outside EMU. Indeed, the NMS have declared that they want to join the monetary system as soon as is feasible. This is the next major step in the integration process for Hungary. In particular, the article observes that there has been an electoral business cycle which overrides Hungary's longer term commitment to qualify for EMU and provides an insight into the process of achieving EMU membership in one NMS.

The article discusses how Hungary has elaborated its strategy for entry into EMU, but the target date has been changed mainly because of the problems of significant budget deficits. This inability to maintain consistent progress towards entry indicates that there are issues of fiscal governance which need to be resolved.

For firms that depend on personalized management as a key element of their competitive advantage, maintaining personalized management in the face of sustained growth presents a particular challenge. The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms in the Germanic Mittelstand have endeavored to “scale up” personalization.

Different ways of scaling up personalization are explained with examples.

The concept of personalization need not just concern customers, in contrast to conventional treatments of personalization. Mittelstand firms illustrate the scaling up of personalization to target stakeholder groups other than just customers.

In recent years, personalization has come to refer to the customization of products to the preferences of individual customers. In contrast, a neglected but important topic is personalization of and within firms. Personalization refers to imbuing a firm with the personal qualities of individual personalities indissociable from management of the company.

Methods for scaling up personalization need to be truly scalable to be effective. Methods that only enable a one-time enlargement in the scope of the personalized business are liable to fail in the longer run.

By examining personalization as an important characteristic of small to medium-sized firms that they wish to maintain as they grow larger, this study highlights a little noticed dimension of Mittelstand growth strategies – and endeavors to bring personality back into research on “personalization.”

This paper aims to investigate the influence of different post-annealing cooling conditions, i.e. furnace cooling (heat treatment (HT) 1 – slow cooling) and air cooling (HT 2 – fast cooling), on the microstructure and mechanical properties of selective laser melting (SLM) built austenitic 316L stainless steel (SS).

Three sets of 316L SS samples were fabricated using a machine standard scanning strategy. Each set consists of three tensile samples and a cubic sample for microstructural investigations. Two sets were subsequently subjected to annealing HT with different cooling conditions, i.e. HT 1 and HT 2, whereas one set was used in the as-built (AB) condition. The standard metallographic techniques of X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and electron back-scattered diffraction were used to investigate the microstructural variations induced by different cooling conditions. The resultant changes in mechanical properties were also investigated.

The phase change of SLM fabricated 316L was observed to be independent of the investigated cooling conditions and all samples consist of austenite phase only. Both HT 1 and HT 2 lead to dissolved characteristic melt pools of SLM. Noticeable increase in grain size of HT 1 and HT 2 samples was also observed. Compared with AB samples, the grain size of HT 1 and HT 2 was increased by 12.5% and 50%, respectively. A decreased hardness and strength, along with an increased ductility was also observed for HT 2 samples compared with HT 1 and AB samples.

From previous studies, it has been noticed that most investigations on HT of SLM fabricated 316L were mainly focused on the HT temperature or holding time. However, the post-HT cooling rate is also an equally important factor in deciding the microstructure and mechanical properties of heat-treated components. Therefore, this paper investigates the influence of different post-annealing cooling conditions on microstructure and mechanical properties of SLM fabricated 316L components. This study provides a foundation for considering the post-HT cooling rate as an influential parameter that controls the properties of heat-treated SLM components.

The British Library Lending Division holds material on both microfiche and roll microfilm. Most of the roll microfilm is 35 mm. The Lending Division prefers to purchase negative microforms. Both diazo‐based and silver image stock is purchased. Microforms are entered in the Lending Division's catalogues and indexes in the same way as conventional literature, with a note to indicate that the item is in microform. The new building at Boston Spa includes provision for a microform store, and cabinets which will be on mobile bases have been especially designed to hold either microfiche or microfilm in one run. Standard published catalogues and bibliographies are used to identify the fact that a particular title has been published in microform; identifying individual items in a series or reel can be difficult. The Lending Division duplicates film and lends the duplicate, a process which is more labour intensive for roll film than for fiche. The need to observe the British Copyright Act 1957 sometimes makes it impossible to provide a service in the most economical way. Conditions imposed by suppliers can govern the format that can be issued. The Division has in recent years purchased a number of special collections on microform.

The purpose of this study is to explore the heat transfer enhancement in copper–water nanofluid flowing in a diagonally vented rectangular enclosure with four discrete heaters mounted centrally on the sidewalls and a square-shaped embedded heated block in the influence of a static magnetic field.

Four discrete heaters are mounted centrally on each sidewall of the rectangular enclosure that embraces a heated square block. A static transverse magnetic field is acting on the vertical walls. The Navier–Stokes equations of motion and the energy equation are modified by incorporating Lorentz force and basic physical properties of nanofluid. The derived momentum and energy equations are tackled numerically using the successive over-relaxation technique associating with the Gauss–Seidel iteration technique. The effects of physical parameters connected to dynamics of flow and heat convection are explored from streamlines and isotherms graphs and discussed numerically in terms of Nusselt number.

The effect of the embedded heated square block size and its location in the enclosure, nanoparticles volume fraction and the intensity of the magnetic field on flow and heat transfer are computed. Compared with the case when no heated block is embedded in the enclosure, in free convection at Ra = 106, the average local Nusselt number on the wall-mounted heaters is attenuated by 8.25%, 11.24% and 12.75% when the enclosure embraced a heated square block of side length 10% of H, 20% of H and 30% of H, respectively. An increase in Hartmann number suppresses the heat convection.

The enhancement in the convective heat is greater when the buoyancy effect dominates the viscous effects. Placing the embedded heated block near the inlet vent, the lower temperature zone has reduced while the embedded heated block is at the central location of the enclosure, the high-temperature zone has expanded. The external magnetic field can be used as a non-invasive controlling device.

The numerically simulated results for heat convection of water-based copper nanofluid agreed qualitatively with the existing experimental results.

The models could be used in designing a target-oriented heat exchanger.

The paper includes a comparative study for three locations of the embedded heated square. The optimal results for the centrally located heated block are also performed for three different sizes of the embedded block. The numerically simulated results are compared with the published numerical and experimental studies.

At the moment there appears to be a lively interest in the significance of microrecords; the Symposium at Hatfield a short time ago, and now the present meeting. I wonder, however, if librarians in general fully appreciate the pros and cons of the subject and intend to do something about the various problems common to many libraries today, problems that might well be answered by adopting one or other of the forms of microtext. Commercial establishments accepted microfilming some years ago, and, I understand, so have some bookmakers and football pool promoters. Or are we to give lip‐service only, waiting for someone else to go ahead to establish this new form of reading material (that is, new to library practice) just as we have done for certain fundamental problems that are the main concern of librarians—acquisition, cataloguing, classification, binding and storage, interlibrary loans?

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the economic impacts of China’s hukou system and propose the possible direction for future reform.

The study develops a framework to incorporate the hukou system into the economic growth model. Using prefecture city-level panel data covering 241 cities over the period 2004–2016 and applying the fixed effects and instrumental variable regression techniques, the authors investigated empirically the impacts of the hukou system on city economic growth.

The study provides three main findings. First, the city sector conditionally benefits from labour mobility deregulation that allows migrants to work in cities. Second, the hukou system has different impacts on economic growth among cities with different sizes and administrative levels. Third, to offset the costs of providing exclusive public services to the migrants, the big or high-administrative-level cities can use their high-valued hukou to attract the high-skilled migrants, but the small- or low-administrative-level cities do not have this advantage.

This study suggests that the key for further hukou system reform is how to deal with the hukou–welfare binding relationship.

The authors developed a theoretical framework and conducted an empirical analysis on the direct relationship between the hukou system and economic growth to reveal the mechanism of how does the hukou system influence the city economic growth and answer the question of why is the hukou system reform so hard in China. The framework also sheds some lights on explaining the success and failure of the hukou system reforms in the past 40 years.