RI, Brown Univ., Diss., Dep. of Economics--Providence, 2003. / Kopie, ersch. im Verl. UMI, Ann Arbor, Mich. - Enth.

Zugl.: Marburg, Univ., Diss., 2007

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2007

The panel discussion first focuses on the obvious gap between a relatively optimistic perspective on musical globalisation, mainly in view of non-Western popular musics, as a main trend in today’s ethnomusicology and the description of intercultural musical encounter as a difficult, lengthy and self-challenging process as suggested by Hans Zender and most examples from contemporary art music. Gerd Grupe emphasizes that non-Western popular musics include both forms that even out cultural differences by following Western commercial standards and, contrarily, forms that are highly dependent on local lingual or musical codes and thus cannot be transferred to an international realm. To illustrate the »existential« approach of art music composers, Zender quotes the case of Giacinto Scelsi whose music has received a profound influence from Tibetan music. Zender emphasizes that Scelsi has created – after a long period of crisis – a »Third Way« that can be understood from neither a purely European, nor a purely Tibetan perspective. The discussion then centres on the question of which influence Western concepts of history and the dynamics of »progress« have exerted on different traditional and contemporary forms of the world’s musics and to what extent the post-colonial polarisation of a »dynamic« Western culture and »static« non-Western cultures is still virulent in the discussion of these musics today. While Christian Utz emphasizes that many non-Western traditions that were deemed to have been preserved unchanged for many centuries for example the Japanese court music gagaku – have in fact changed considerably over the centuries and have been highly influenced by political and social changes, Peter Revers traces the idea of »making history« back to Friedrich Schlegel and describes it as very influential on the dynamics of Western music history. Andreas Dorschel raises the question, if early 20th century »national« schools and in particular the music of Béla Bartók and Leoš Janá􀃿ek can be seen as forerunners of trends in non-Western contemporary music that accentuate cultural difference. Christian Utz remarks that despite the fact that the music of Bartók has been a very important model for Asian composers in the process of creating a music independent of Romanticist symphonic clichés, elements of (neo-)nationalism in Bartók’s concept of music make it hard to see it as a model for a new music free of nationalist bias. Responding to a question from the audience, Andreas Dorschel summarizes that turning to music or art of other cultures might indeed be a signal for »weak« moments within a culture, but in turn this »weakness« proves the inner strength to challenge one’s own culture’s fundamental principles whereas discrimination and xenophobia are based on a very different kind of inner weakness where one is merely unable or unwilling to confront the Other.

This thesis shows that consumers' behaviour has a decisive impact on the innovative behaviour of firms and on the development of industry. As a framework, an evolutionary simulation model is chosen, and market interactions are modelled according to a search theoretic approach.

Business School, Diss.--Jönköping, 2007. / Enth. 4 Beitr.

Univ., Diss.--Göteborg, 2007. / Enth. 4 Beitr.

This paper examines the long-term relationship between primary energy consumption and other key macroeconomic variables, including real GDP, labour force, capital stock and technology, using a panel dataset for 64 countries over the period 1965-2009. Deploying panel error correction models, we find that there is a positive relationship running from physical capital, GDP, and population to primary energy consumption. We observe however a negative relationship between total factor productivity and primary energy usage. Significant differences arise in the magnitude of the cointegration coefficients, when we allow for differences in geopolitics and wealth levels. We also argue that inference on the basis of a single model without taking model uncertainty into account can lead to biased conclusions. Consequently, we address this problem by applying simple model averaging techniques to the estimated panel cointegration models. We find that tackling the uncertainty associated with selecting a single model with model averaging techniques leads to a more accurate representation of the link between energy consumption and the other macroeconomic variables, and to a significantly increased out-of-sample forecast performance. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Zugl.: Regensburg, Univ., Diss., 2006

School of Economics, Diss.--Stockholm, 2007. / Enth. 3 Beitr.