Mackenzie Ishmael Chibambo, Joseph Jinja Divala, Lemeez Fick
Educational inequality in the Sub-Saharan Africa has faced significant challenges since the colonial era. While many African countries have sought to increase access to quality education since independence around the early 1990s, the majority of these countries have very little to show when it comes to achieving epistemological access in education in which matters of quality, equality and justice are embedded notions. Of course, issues of inequalities in Africa just like in many developing countries worldwide are not new as they are foregrounded in the history of colonial exploitation, systemic marginalization, and imbalanced development priorities. More specifically so, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi have served as unique examples in illustrating how the proponents of colonialism and apartheid had used education to enforce racial and class dominance through manipulation of the curriculum, educators, and all policies that guided socio-economic life. There these very historical inequalities that continue to influence present day social, economic, educational and political conditions of many countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa. This study therefore sought to explain and understand how colonial-era-like policies have continued to shape socioeconomic and educational conditions of modern African countries and how these policies and practices have recreated and sustained power-relations and inequalities among the peoples. Theoretically, the paper is guided by Epistemic Injustices as advanced by Mirander Fricker and Gaile Pohlhaus due to its ability to illuminate power-relations, domination and exploitation. Methodologically, the paper utilised qualitative research design especially document analysis since these events are naturally historical, and that over the years, research scholars have done several studies leading education reforms, policy and curriculum reforms all of which are in the public domain.
We prove a multiplicity result for non-constant weak solutions $u \in H^1(Ω)$ for the quasilinear elliptic equation \[ \begin{cases} \displaystyle-\text{div}(A(x,u)\nabla u) + \frac{1}{2} D_sA(x,u)\nabla u \cdot \nabla u = g(x,u) - λu & \text{in } Ω\\ A(x,u)\nabla u \cdot η= 0 & \text{on } \partial Ω\end{cases} \] where $λ\in \mathbb{R}$, $ Ω$ is a bounded lipschitz domain, $ η$ is the outward normal to the boundary $ \partial Ω$, and $g(x,u)$ is a Carathéodory function that satisfies a general subcritical (and superlinear) growth condition. We also prove that any weak solution is bounded under a stronger growth assumption.
This study presents a computational and theoretical framework inspired by thermodynamic principles to analyze the dynamics of economic inflation within adiabatic and non-adiabatic systems. In a framework referred to as developmental symmetry, inflation is formulated as a scalar field evolving through continuity equations, drawing an analogy with the Raychaudhuri equation in gravitational dynamics. The results show that adiabatic systems fail to reach equilibrium, while non-adiabatic systems can evolve toward stable states over time. The model successfully reproduces observed inflationary regimes-from hyperinflation to stable low-inflation phases-with characteristic transition periods of about a decade. These results indicate that production continuity and controlled monetary flow are crucial for achieving stability in complex economic systems, linking thermodynamic balance to macroeconomic equilibrium.
Segregation is a growing concern around the world. One of its main manifestations is the creation of ghettos, whose inhabitants have difficult access to well-paid jobs, which are often located far from their homes. In order to study this phenomenon, we propose an extension of Schelling's model of segregation to take into account the existence of economic exchanges. To approximate a geographical model of the city, we consider a small-world network with a defined real estate market. The evolution of the system has also been studied, finding that economic exchanges follow exponential laws and relocations are approximated by power laws. In addition to this, we consider the existence of delays in the actions of the agents, which mainly affect the happiness of those with fewer economic resources. Besides, the size of the economic exchange plays a crucial role in overall segregation. Despite its simplicity, we find that our model reproduces real-world situations such as the separation between favoured and handicapped economic areas, the importance of economic contacts between them to improve the distribution of wealth, and the existence of efficient and cheap transport to break the poverty cycles typical of disadvantaged zones.
W. A. Rojas C., A. Zamora V., L. F. Quijano W.
et al.
This paper presents an application of geometrothermodynamics (GTD) to the economic analysis of Bogotá's sports sector through the Satellite Account of Sport (CSDB). By establishing an analogy between thermodynamic systems and economic structures, we develop a mathematical framework where monetary flows behave analogously to energy, while economic entropy, temperature, and heat capacity acquire well-defined economic interpretations. The study focuses on two contrasting sectors: gambling and betting $\mathbb{S}_{15}$, and recreational and sports activities $\mathbb{S}_{16}$, analyzing data from 2018-2023. Our results demonstrate that $\mathbb{S}_{15}$ exhibits lower economic entropy than $\mathbb{S}_{16}$ , indicating a higher degree of organization and regulatory structure in the gambling sector compared to the more heterogeneous recreational sports sector. The heat capacity function reveals critical points that may signal phase transitions in economic dynamics, while Ricci and Kretschmann curvature scalars identify potential crisis points in the sectoral organization. Furthermore, the cross-income elasticity analysis shows distinct resource flow patterns between sectors, suggesting that gambling activities may serve as an economic driver for recreational sports. This thermodynamic approach provides a quantitative tool for analyzing resource redistribution policies and anticipating critical transitions in sectoral economics. The findings suggest that econophysics and statistical thermodynamics constitute powerful frameworks for understanding the sectoral dynamics of Bogotá's sports economy, with significant potential for developing prospective analysis tools in public policy design.
Abstract This chapter presents the age structure of service for women from depositional evidence. It captures not just the ‘snapshot’ ages of female servants at the time of their testimony, but also recalled and past experiences of service related by female witnesses. In doing so, the chapter draws out experiences of service from across the life cycle. Service could be carried out at any point in a woman's working life. By grounding this demographic evidence within individual life-stories, this chapter shows that service was not only a ‘life-cycle’ occupation for women between youth and marriage. It was undertaken by young and old between the ages of 7 and 60. Rather than reading service as empowering, or providing opportunity, I show that it could be a contingent and sometimes coercive form of labour. Their labour wasn’t as free or boundless in choice as the ‘girl power’ argument of north-west European modern economic growth supposes.
This study presents a novel approach to modelling economic agents as analogous to spin states in physics, particularly the Ising model. By associating economic activity with spin orientations (up for inactivity, down for activity), the study delves into optimizing market dynamics using concepts from statistical mechanics. Utilizing Monte Carlo simulations, the aim is to maximize surplus by allowing the market to evolve freely toward equilibrium. The introduction of temperature represents the frequency of economic activities, which is crucial for optimizing consumer and producer surplus. The government's role as a temperature regulator (raising temperature to stimulate economic activity) is explored. Results from simulations and policy interventions, such as introducing a "magnetic field," are discussed, showcasing complexities in optimizing economic systems while avoiding undue control that may destabilize markets. The study provides insights into bridging concepts from physics and economics, paving the way for a deeper understanding of economic dynamics and policy interventions.
Software engineering agents (swe-agents), as key innovations in intelligent software engineering, are poised in the industry's end-of-programming debate to transcend from assistance to primary roles. we argue the importance of swe-agents' economic viability to their transcendence -- defined as their capacity to maintain efficient operations in constrained environments -- and propose its exploration via software engineering economics experimentation.we introduce ghissuemarket sandbox, a controlled virtual environment for swe-agents' economic experimentation, simulating the environment of an envisioned peer-to-peer multiagent system for github issues outsourcing auctions. in this controlled setting, autonomous swe-agents auction and bid on github issues, leveraging real-time communication, a built-in retrieval-augmented generation (rag) interface for effective decision-making, and instant cryptocurrency micropayments. we open-source our software artifacts, discuss our sandbox engineering decisions, and advocate towards swe-agents' economic exploration -- an emerging field we intend to pursue under the term intelligent software engineering economics (isee).
We present an agent-based simulator for economic systems with heterogeneous households, firms, central bank, and government agents. These agents interact to define production, consumption, and monetary flow. Each agent type has distinct objectives, such as households seeking utility from consumption and the central bank targeting inflation and production. We define this multi-agent economic system using an OpenAI Gym-style environment, enabling agents to optimize their objectives through reinforcement learning. Standard multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) schemes, like independent learning, enable agents to learn concurrently but do not address whether the resulting strategies are at equilibrium. This study integrates the Policy Space Response Oracle (PSRO) algorithm, which has shown superior performance over independent MARL in games with homogeneous agents, with economic agent-based modeling. We use PSRO to develop agent policies approximating Nash equilibria of the empirical economic game, thereby linking to economic equilibria. Our results demonstrate that PSRO strategies achieve lower regret values than independent MARL strategies in our economic system with four agent types. This work aims to bridge artificial intelligence, economics, and empirical game theory towards future research.
Miguel Lara Castro, Yessica Bautista Bautista, Rosa María Woo García
et al.
La fotocatálisis es una reacción química inducida por la absorción de un material sólido, o fotocatalizador. La excitación del sólido desencadena dos reacciones que conducen a la formación casi instantánea de radicales hidroxilos y aniones superóxido (llamadas especies reactivas de oxígeno; ROS). Los ROS producen daño oxidativo en diversos microorganismos incluyendo al virus SARS-CoV2, favoreciendo la desintegración de la conformación proteica de la cápside, cambios en la permeabilidad y daños de la membrana del virión que finalmente conduce a rotura del ADN, sin la oportunidad de reparación. Incluso, la reacción fotocatalítica causa la degradación oxidativa contra materiales peligrosos orgánicos y/o inorgánicos en el aire para convertirlos en sustancias no dañinas como agua o dióxido de carbono.
Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform, Economic history and conditions
Recent studies have found evidence of a negative association between economic complexity and inequality at the country level. Moreover, evidence suggests that sophisticated economies tend to outsource products that are less desirable (e.g. in terms of wage and inequality effects), and instead focus on complex products requiring networks of skilled labor and more inclusive institutions. Yet the negative association between economic complexity and inequality on a coarse scale could hide important dynamics at a fine-grained level. Complex economic activities are difficult to develop and tend to concentrate spatially, leading to 'winner-take-most' effects that spur regional inequality in countries. Large, complex cities tend to attract both high- and low-skills activities and workers, and are also associated with higher levels of hierarchies, competition, and skill premiums. As a result, the association between complexity and inequality reverses at regional scales; in other words, more complex regions tend to be more unequal. Ideas from polarization theories, institutional changes, and urban scaling literature can help to understand this paradox, while new methods from economic complexity and relatedness can help identify inclusive growth constraints and opportunities.
Niels C. M. Martens, Miguel Ángel Carretero Sahuquillo, Erhard Scholz
et al.
Editorial of a special issue on dark matter & modified gravity, distributed across the journals Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Published version of the open access editorial (in SHPS) available here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.08.015. The six papers are collected here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/studies-in-history-and-philosophy-of-science-part-b-studies-in-history-and-philosophy-of-modern-physics/special-issue/10CR71RJLWM.
This paper presents a robust economic model predictive control (EMPC) formulation with zone tracking for discrete-time uncertain nonlinear systems. The proposed design ensures that the zone tracking objective is achieved in finite steps and at the same time optimizes the economic performance. In the proposed design, instead of tracking the original target zone, a robust control invariant set within the target zone is determined and is used as the actual zone tracked in the proposed EMPC. This approach ensures that the zone tracking objective is achieved within finite steps and once the zone tracking objective is achieved (the system state enters the robust control invariant set), the system state does not come out of the target zone anymore. To optimize the economic performance within the zone in the presence of disturbances, we introduce the notion of risk factor in the controller design. An algorithm to determine the economic zone to be tracked is provided. The risk factor determines the conservativeness of the controller and provides a way to tune the EMPC for better economic performance. A nonlinear chemical example is presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed formulation.
This article analyzes the growing interbranch conflicts inherent to the design of US trade policymaking and the search for a balance of power between the legislative and the executive branches amidst recurrent debates on the merits of globalization. To do so, it traces the origins of these institutional battles and maps out these conflicts across different instruments of the trade policy apparatus. Additionally, it explores the drivers of executive-legislative contention and assesses its complex relations with partisan polarization. The conclusions are two-fold. First, since 1974, under the dual imperative of economic leadership and democratic governance, trade institutions have undergone a bifurcated development where both trade-liberalizing and protective measures developed in both executive and legislative branches. The 1974 Trade Act has played a structuring role in the bicephalous transformation of US trade policymaking, heralding a long legacy of interbranch conflicts amidst stormy debates over globalization and the role that the United States should play in the world economy. Second, in a context of hyperpolarization, institutional mechanisms and legislative reforms can only go so far as to preserve a balance of power necessary to address the tensions between democratic governance and international competitiveness. Beyond the US case, this means that efforts to curtail protectionism cannot be confined to policy recommendations and technocratic solutions, but must address the political and ideological roots of the current globalization fatigue.
Economic history and conditions, Economics as a science
Celem opracowania jest spojrzenie na kontrolę podatkową i kontrolę celno-skarbową przez pryzmat rozwiązań związanych z zapobieganiem, przeciwdziałaniem i zwalczaniem COVID-19, innych chorób zakaźnych oraz wywołanych nimi sytuacjami kryzysowymi. Kluczową kwestią jest zbadanie, czy dopuszczalne jest prowadzenie kontroli podatkowych lub kontroli celno-skarbowych w oparciu o regulacje prawne COVID-19 i wydawania na ich podstawie rozstrzygnięć kończących kontrole w rozumieniu przepisów prawa podatkowego, czy wręcz przeciwnie – organy podatkowe powinny zawiesić na czas pandemii czynności kontrolne na podstawie obowiązującego prawa, wybranego orzecznictwa i poglądów doktryny. Realizowana przez organy podatkowe kontrola podatkowa i celno-skarbowa należy do jednych z najistotniejszych instytucji prawa podatkowego. Wynika to między innymi z faktu, że jednym z podstawowych zadań państwa jest czuwanie nad wywiązywaniem się podatnika z obowiązku ponoszenia ciężarów i świadczeń podatkowych oraz kontrolowania jego prawidłowego wykonania. W ten sposób organy administracji podatkowej ujawniają i eliminują wszelkie nieprawidłowości w zakresie wywiązywania się podatnika z ciążących na nim zobowiązań podatkowych. Kontrola służy organom podatkowym do sprawdzenia i ocenienia, czy podatnicy wykonują swoje obowiązki prawidłowo, a co w konsekwencji pozwala wykrywać nieprawidłowości i zapobiegać niekorzystnym zjawiskom.
ABSTRACT
The objective of this paper is to look at the tax, customs and fiscal inspection through the prism of solutions associated with counteracting, preventing and combating COVID-19, other infectious diseases and the subsequent crisis situations. It is important to determine whether it is acceptable to conduct tax, customs and fiscal inspections based on the COVID-19 related legal regulations, and to issue decisions terminating inspections within the meaning of the tax law or, on the contrary, the tax authorities should suspend inspections during the pandemic on the basis of applicable law, selected case law and the doctrine. The tax, customs and fiscal inspection carried out by the tax authorities is one of the most important tax law institutions. This is due to the fact that one of the basic tasks of the state is to make sure that taxpayers properly fulfil their tax obligations. In this way the tax administration authorities reveal and eliminate any irregularities in meeting tax obligations by taxpayers. The inspection is used by the tax authorities to check and evaluate whether taxpayers perform their duties properly, which in turn allows them to detect irregularities and prevent unfavourable phenomena.
Economic history and conditions, Social sciences (General)
Th e term ‘emerging markets’ refl ects to those countries that are undergoing structural and economic transformation and have the chance of becoming an advanced economy. However many research focus on this group, these countries are heterogeneous and face with diff erent challenges. In the article, aft er an extensive defi nition of ‘emerging markets’ the recent economic, especially macroeconomic and fi nancial trends are presented. Th e Global Financial Crisis was a turning point, but the path of recovery was far from uniform. As a novelty I present a new categorization in order to present the economic developments of the last decade.
Economic theory. Demography, Economic history and conditions
Pese a la desilusión democrática de 1986-1989 y pese a la derrota de 1995 respecto a la propuesta de Ley de Educación Superior los estudiantes organizados orientaron sus esfuerzos para visibilizar reclamos en diferentes coyunturas respecto a políticas que afectaron a la comunidad educativa a nivel nacional. Particularmente en la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, los jóvenes universitarios tuvieron un rol protagónico. Proponemos dos temporalidades para presentar demandas estudiantiles respecto a la coyuntura nacional y a los conflictos entre diversas fuerzas universitarias, teniendo en cuenta periodos eleccionarios.
Latin America. Spanish America, Economic history and conditions