Civic argumentation in the economic domain: Examining upper high school students’ arguments on socio-economic problems in a performance test by applying a domain-specific analytical framework

Civic argumentation refers to societal problems that may affect various scientific disciplines. Societal problems are complex and their possible solutions controversial. Making informed and reasoned decisions on these problems requires domain-specific content knowledge and domain-specific argumentation skills. This study addresses argumentation on societal problems in the economic domain. It examines 159 high school students’ written arguments on two socio-economic problems in a performance test by applying a domain-specific analytical framework with quality criteria for argument structure and content and by using qualitative content analysis, cluster analysis and variance analysis. Our findings show that students’ argument structure did not substantially vary between the two test tasks, but their argument content did. Students tended to generate arguments with justifications that supported their own position, but seldom with justifications that qualified it. Of all arguments, a quarter were fully accurate, about half referred to scientific concepts and half included multiple perspectives. We identified three distinctive argument profiles regarding structure and content of argument quality. Moreover, the argument profile is a distinctive factor for students’ content knowledge. Our study gives insights into students’ written argumentation skills and content knowledge on socio-economic problems and offers a promising analytical framework for future research in this domain.

Performance Study of N-grams in the Analysis of Sentiments

In this work, a study investigation was carried out using n-grams to classify sentiments with different machine learning and deep learning methods. We used this approach, which combines existing techniques, with the problem of predicting sequence tags to understand the advantages and problems confronted with using unigrams, bigrams and trigrams to analyse economic texts. Our study aims to fill the gap by evaluating the performance of these n-grams features on different texts in the economic domain using nine sentiment analysis techniques and found more insights. We show that by comparing the performance of these features on different datasets and using multiple learning techniques, we extracted useful intelligence. The evaluation involves assessing the precision, recall, f1-score and accuracy of the function output of the several machine learning algorithms proposed. The methods were tested using Amazon, IMDB, Reuters, and Yelp economic review datasets and our comprehensive experiment shows the effectiveness of n-grams in the analysis of sentiments.

What's wrong with the coastal waters of Spelman Strait, Indonesia: Sustainable reef fisheries management is required

Reef fish in Spelman strait, Indonesia, is one of the fishery resources of considerable economic value. Unfortunately, there is still the use of unfriendly resources equipment (destructive fishing) that cause potential social problems. In this study, all components of the EAFM (Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management) composed of 6 domains, namely (1) fish stocks, (2) environment and ecosystem, (3) fishing techniques, (4) culture, (5) social, and (6) institutional are analyzed combining with MDS (Multidimensional Scaling). The main aim of this research is to find out the root solution for managing coral reefs in the coastal waters of Spelman Strait. The sustainability status review in the fishery resource domain, the environment and ecosystem domain, the fishery technique domain, the social domain, and the economic domain were respectively were 87.69, 88.17, 51.22, 51.61, and 72.67 which were in the category sustainable. Meanwhile, the sustainability status review in the institutional domain was 42.15, which was in the category of less sustainable. Institutions are the primary base for reef fishery protection in the Spelman Strait.

Explaining People’s Worry Levels During the Covid-19 Pandemic: An Analysis of Socio-Economic and Cultural Dimensions

This paper examines the influence of socio-economic and cultural dimensions (measured at the country level) on what concerns people the most about the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on secondary data, the study considers the opinion of more than 24,000 individuals living in 30 different countries, with national samples weighted to match each country’s general population older than 18years of age. A set of linear Bayesian regressions was applied to 10 different types of worries reported for economic, health, and safety domains. Results demonstrate that socio-economic variables and cultural dimensions complement each other in explaining people’s concerns about the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. An overall view of the analysis also reveals that cultural dimensions exceed socio-economic variables in explaining peoples’ worries about health and safety domains. Socio-economic variables are slightly more effective in explaining the worries of the economic domain. Among the cultural dimensions, long-term orientation and uncertainty avoidance are the best in explaining people’s worries. The higher the score in long-term orientation, the lower the worry levels expressed by the respondents. Likewise, low scores on uncertainty avoidance generate lower levels of worries due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Finally, health worries produce a positive outcome because they explain a significant reduction in the fatality rate.

The Material Constitution: There is no Alternative … or is There?

This chapter examines how the material constitution of economic liberalism was entrenched after Maastricht, with Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the neo-liberal drift. In the domain of political economy, the deepening and widening of post-war trends was most evident, the logic of the market being brought to bear on macroeconomic policy with a near-complete political abdication to ordoliberal and neo-liberal demands. The chapter also discusses the dramatic geographical extension of these trends via the process of enlargement of the Union. And, yet, in the socio-economic domain, certain discontinuities could also be identified, and the chapter discusses the opposition to the Maastricht settlement and its political orthodoxy that started to bubble below the surface. It concludes with a discussion of the growing social fractures that developed after Maastricht, albeit without being channelled into a significant political countermovement.</Online Only>

CONSTITUIÇÃO ECONÔMICA BRASILEIRA E COVID-19: A REINSERÇÃO DOS VALORES SOCIAIS DA ANÁLISE JURÍDICA DA ECONOMIA PARA ENFRENTAMENTO DA CRISE

Opportunized by the socioeconomic crisis caused by the pandemic of COVID-19, this article aims to reflect on the relationship between Law and Economy according to the design of the 1988 Federal Constitution. Execution takes place by the deductive method, focuses on the literature review on the topic and historical background anduses an appropriate bibliography. From the analysis it will be inferred the economic model conferred to the Brazilian State in the adopted capitalist system and from there establishing its role in the economic domain, which will allow to find the fundamentals of social justice that the economic legal order advocates for the achievement of economic policies and facing the effects of the aforementioned socioeconomic crisis, as well as demonstrating the unfeasibility of implementing the capitalist market system and the Economic Analysis of Law.

Transformational Approach to Analytical Value-at-Risk for near Normal Distributions

In this paper, we extend the parametric approach of VaR estimation that is based upon the application of two transforms, one for handling skewness and other for kurtosis. These transformations restore normality to data when applied in succession. The transforms are well defined and offer an alternative to VaR models based on the variance–covariance approach. We demonstrate the application of the technique using three pairs of uncorrelated but negatively skewed and fat-tailed stock return distributions, one pair each from recent periods in US and international market, and one from the stressed period of US economic history. Furthermore, we extend the analysis to economic domain by calculating expected shortfalls and risk capital under different estimation methods. For the sake of completion, we compare the estimation results of normal and transformation methods to non-parametric historical simulation.

Two Dimensions of Social Exclusion: Economic Deprivation and Dynamics of Loneliness During Later Life in Europe

We contribute to the discussion on social exclusion interrelationships by examining the relationship between material conditions and loneliness, as one potential marker of connections between the social and economic domain. Our analysis focuses on a sample of individuals aged 50+ in the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). In its 5th wave, the survey was extended to include specific items related to economic and social deprivation. We use this extended information on material conditions and examine how it correlates with the level and dynamics of a composite loneliness measure at the time of wave 5 and between wave 5 and 6 of the survey (undertaken in 2013 and 2015, respectively). In order to isolate the effect of material deprivation on loneliness, regression analyses include an extensive set of control variables. The analyses show a strong and significant relationship between material deprivation, and both the level of loneliness and deterioration in the loneliness status.