Formal Links Research Articles

N. M. Karamzin’s notes to D. I. Fonvisin’s letter — a reply in the debate about language

The discussion about language plays a crucial role in Russian literature of the early 19th century. It begins with Nikolay Karamzin’s essay Why Are There Few Talented Authors in Russia? (1802) and Alexander Shishkov’s book Discourse on the Old and New Style in Russian Language (1803), which criticizes Karamzin. The traditional view is that Karamzin refrains from answering Shishkov. The present paper presents an alternative hypothesis, arguing that Karamzin does react, but indirectly. Karamzin’s reply takes the form of comments on Denis Fonvizin’s letter addressed to Osip Kozodavlev, where Fonvizin discusses his work on the Dictionary of the Russian Academy. In October 1803 Karamzin publishes this letter in Vestnik Evropy, the magazine he edits since 1802. In this letter Fonvizin discusses borrowings from foreign languages in Russian; Karamzin follows suit. The question of borrowings is central in Shishkov’s book. Karamzin takes a moderate course, recommending that a borrowing should be discarded if the same meaning is expressed by an existing Russian word. However, his general opinion is that borrowings are useful, as they help express notions that Russian still lacks. This attitude is contrary to Shishkov’s intent to rid Russian of any borrowings. This disagreement reflects the difference between two views on language as such. Karamzin sees language as means of expressing notions, which can be international; thus notions may be borrowed as well as words, and along with them if needed. For Shishkov, words come before notions; each word is viewed as a complex of meanings together with its formal and semantic links to other lexical units. These features are specific for any culture, so, in Shishkov’s view, changing this structure by adding borrowings means destroying the language rather than enriching it.

The anchoring policy perspective on policy change: mechanisms, applications and analytical challenges

ABSTRACT How functional relationships between policies influence policy design and policy change has received relatively limited attention within public policy scholarship despite the importance of policy coordination. This article contributes to addressing this gap by introducing the Anchoring Policies Perspective (APP), a framework for analysing interactions between policies in functional policy hierarchies. The APP examines how formal links between anchoring policies (AP) and functionally subordinate policies (SP) generate anchoring effects, whereby the provisions codified in APs generate alignment pressures that channel the design of SPs towards the norms and goals of the AP. In the article, we examine the analytical contribution of the APP by analysing the distinguishing characteristics of APs, the mechanisms through which APs influence SP introduction and design, and political strategies for managing situations where resistance occurs to the alignment of SPs with their APs. Examples from environmental and energy policy are used to illustrate key features of the AP-SP relationship, following which the APP’s contribution to public policy scholarship is discussed. We conclude by arguing that the APP has the potential to bring important new insights to the analysis of policy change while building connections with established theories of policy change to develop the APP framework further.

The Sacred Building and the City: Decoding the Formal Interface between Public Space and Community

The reflection on sacred places continues to assume significant relevance today in urban space production. The public value of sacred buildings has consolidated over time an aggregating sense of community, representing spaces for meeting and sharing. Their historical relevance as spaces for meditation represents for mankind places of personal reflection, while they have always played an important role in the city and in its symbolic and spatial structure. Thus, starting from the hypothesis that the sacred space is affirmed as an interface, because it welcomes the individual and serves the community, we examine the architectural features that enhance this ambivalence, exposing transition systems between private and collective spaces, seeking to systematize essential composition matrices for new urban spaces for public use. Assuming Lisbon as a framework, this article proposes a comparative reading between two paradigmatic buildings—Sagrado Coração de Jesus Church and the New Mosque of Lisbon—with similar goals according to the relationship between architecture, place sacrality, and the urban public space. Methodologically, drawing is used as an interpretative tool and, through formal decomposition, this article tries to demonstrate that these buildings are the result of a reflection deeply determined by the value of the place’s identity in the city’s public space system. According to these case studies, sacred buildings are conceived based on formal and spatial links that are rooted in Lisbon’s urban layout. It is sacred buildings that are at the origin of urban places for public use. Each one of these buildings share an idea of architecture with an urban and public role which integrates the objects with the shape of the city and contradicts the tendency for the dissociation between urban elements. In a way, they can be considered paradigmatic examples of architecture with an urban vocation.

Analyzing the Use of Formal Links through Classroom Interaction at Islamic Boarding School

This study deals with the kinds of formal links used in classroom interaction at the Islamic Boarding School by an English teacher and female students in class XI. It aims to describe the kinds of formal links used in classroom interaction, to find out the most frequent kinds of formal links used in classroom interaction, and to find out the extent the students use formal links effectively in classroom interaction at the Islamic Boarding School. This research was carried out by using descriptive qualitative. The researcher used an observation checklist, interview, and audio recording. The data of transcription were classified into seven kinds of formal links. They were verb forms, parallelism, referring expression, repetition, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction. The researcher observed the English teacher and twenty-two female students in class XI at the Islamic Boarding School. From the English teacher and twenty-two female students in class XI at the Islamic Boarding School who had been observed, the researcher discovered numbers of utterances and percentages. Their total utterances were classified into seven kinds of formal links. The most frequent kind used in classroom interaction was verb forms. Most of the students effectively used formal links in their classroom interaction. On the other hand, some students faced difficulties in using formal links correctly and effectively in classroom interactions.

A Formal Foundation for Comparative Study of the Late Persianate

Abstract This article addresses poetic form as a foundation bridging the literary contexts of Arabic and Persian that exists beyond the bounds of Euro-American influence. We find the originally Arabic science of ʿarūḍ, prosody, used in these two contexts to retool premodern poetic form for the modern era. Questions of form encourage us to think about how modernist poets writing in Persian and Arabic approach their poetry as a craft that emerges not out of engagements with Western literature but rather from a shared poetic past. By tracing formal links across Arabic and Persian, this article argues that paying attention to the premodern tradition of prosodic science they share helps us both to understand the early development of modernist poetry in each language and to avoid explanations informed mostly by literary critical frameworks used to study Western literatures.

Linking whole-body angular momentum and step placement during perturbed human walking.

Human locomotion is remarkably robust to environmental disturbances. Previous studies have thoroughly investigated how perturbations influence body dynamics and what recovery strategies are used to regain balance. Fewer studies have attempted to establish formal links between balance and the recovery strategies that are executed to regain stability. We hypothesized that there would be a strong relationship between the magnitude of imbalance and recovery strategy during perturbed walking. To test this hypothesis, we applied transient ground surface translations that varied in magnitude, direction and onset time while 11 healthy participants walked on a treadmill. We measured stability using integrated whole-body angular momentum (iWBAM) and recovery strategy using step placement. We found the strongest relationships between iWBAM and step placement in the frontal plane for earlier perturbation onset times in the perturbed step (R2=0.52, 0.50) and later perturbation onset times in the recovery step (R2=0.18, 0.25), while correlations were very weak in the sagittal plane (all R2≤0.13). These findings suggest that iWBAM influences step placement, particularly in the frontal plane, and that this influence is sensitive to perturbation onset time. Lastly, this investigation is accompanied by an open-source dataset to facilitate research on balance and recovery strategies in response to multifactorial ground surface perturbations, including 96 perturbation conditions spanning all combinations of three magnitudes, eight directions and four gait cycle onset times.

“THE SERMON ΟΝ LAW AND GRACE”: A MODEL OF REFUTATIONAL - PROBATIVE ARGUMENTATION

The author of the paper analyzed the models of refutational and probative argumentation in an outstanding piece of Kyivan Rus’ literature of the 11th century — “The Sermon on Law and Grace” by metropolitan Hilarion of Kyiv. Although certain aspects of the work have already been properly analyzed, the formal rhetorical principles of polemical argumentation in “The Sermon on Law and Grace” remain little studied. The construction of the argument itself and compositional regularities of its structural organization still need due consideration. Throughout the entire reflection, moving from one topic to another, the author of “The Sermon…” maintains the same principle of literary presentation — dialectical oratio. This model is based on a special dialectical reasoning rooted in the principle of antinomies and originated in ancient judicial rhetoric. In “The Sermon on Law and Grace”, the dialectical oratio is built according to the ‘refutation + proof’ scheme. That is, the author initially refutes something and then proves something. Τhis rhetorical tendency is used throughout the work. Hilarion constantly tries to expose and devalue something characterized as outdated, related to Old Testament, Jewish or pagan, and glorify the new, evangelical, and Christian. However, denying one thing and affirming the other do not exhaust the author’s goal. Such dialectical unity of the negative and the affirmative in characterization of one object not only goes back to the traditions of ancient judicial rhetoric but also reflects the Eastern Christian theological tradition. Something similar can be seen in the treatises by Dionysius the Areopagite. In the works “On Mystical Theology”, “On Divine Names”, and “On the Heavenly Hierarchy”, Dionysius the Areopagite derives a complex antinomic system of symbolic designations of the Divine Essence, qualifying a part of them as apophatic (dissimilar) and the other part as kataphatic (similar). Perhaps, the reasoning model of refutatio + probatio in ancient rhetoric, the apophatic-cataphatic principle of determining the names of God in the “Corpus Areopagiticum”, and refutational-probative argumentation in “The Sermon on Law and Grace” are formal links of a general rhetorical oratory chain. However, this issue requires a more thorough study based on a wide range of literary material, including ancient, biblical, medieval, etc.

Explaining black-box classifiers: Properties and functions

Explaining black-box classification models is a hot topic in AI, with the overall goal of improving trust in decisions made by such models. Several works have been done and diverse functions have been proposed. However, their formal properties and links have not been sufficiently studied. This paper presents four contributions: The first consists of investigating global explanations of black-box classifiers. We provide a formal and unifying framework in which such explanations are defined from the whole feature space. The framework is based on two concepts, which are seen as two types of global explanations: arguments in favour of (or pro) predictions and arguments against (or con) predictions. The second contribution consists of defining various types of local explanations (abductive explanations, counterfactuals, contrastive explanations) from the whole feature space, investigating their properties, links and differences, and showing how they relate to global explanations. The third contribution consists of analysing and defining explanation functions that generate (global, local) abductive explanations from incomplete information (i.e., from a subset of the feature space). We start by proposing two desirable properties that an explainer would satisfy, namely success and coherence. The former ensures the existence of explanations while the latter ensures their correctness. We show that in the incomplete case, the two properties cannot be satisfied together. The fourth contribution consists of proposing two functions that generate abductive explanations and which satisfy coherence at the expense of success.

LEXICAL COMPLEX IN KHMER: «UNNECESSARY VERBOSITY» OR ELABORATION OF MEANING?

Complexity of language units in Mon- Khmer and other Asian languages of isolating profile is their prominent feature. The article deals with a specific type of Khmer complex units that is lexical complex, in particular verbal lexical complex which has an exceptionally high frequency in Khmer text. In linguistic literature dealing with isolating languages of Asia, including Khmer, this type of complex units is not recognized due to the fact that they do not look different from complex words and serial verb constructions being also sequences of verbs without any means of subordination or coordination. A most characteristic feature of Khmer is chains consisting of several verbs. Their presence in discourse is often seen as unnecessary verbosity, having nothing to do with expression of meaning. Russian linguist D. I. Yelovkov was the first to introduce the concept of lexical complex in Khmer. According to him, a lexical complex consists of two or more lexemes which make up a structural and semantic unity of a special kind [Еловков 2006, с. 106]. He singled out several types of lexical complexes and described their functional potential in detail. It was a real breakthrough in Khmer studies. This article defines the verbal lexical complex as a unit comprised of several verbs with a unified semantic structure without formal links but connected on the semantic level. Two specific types of semantic derivation by means of lexical complexes are analyzed: polysemantic lexical complexes and lexical complexes that eliminate word ambiguity. Data from Modern Khmer, Middle Khmer and Old Khmer is used. Polysemantic lexical complex derivatives are used to characterize different aspects of one single action. Analysis presented in the article allows us to draw the conclusion that the Khmer lexical complex is a well-structured and effective nomination unit which allows the speaker to accurately, concisely and in a smart way express meanings in the amount required. Lexical complex is a language unit which has no analogues in languages of other typological profile.

The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist by Donna T. Haverty-Stacke

Reviewed by: The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist by Donna T. Haverty-Stacke James P. McCartin The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist. By Donna T. Haverty-Stacke. (New York: New York University Press. 2020. Pp. 312. $50.00. ISBN: 9781479802180.) This is a well-researched and nicely written account of a compelling and largely overlooked figure. It was in the 1930s, not long after Dorothy Day entered the Catholic Church, that Grace Holmes Carlson, then about thirty years old, found her way out the door. Where Day discerned a path from radical politics to the Catholic Church, Carlson did the opposite. Still, each continued to labor mightily to reconcile spiritual and political convictions which seemed, at times, to conflict. Ultimately, Carlson’s sojourn from Catholicism, which began before she became a founding member and national leader of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1938, concluded upon her return to the Church in 1952. Part of what makes Carlson so interesting is that, while her return spelled an end both to her SWP membership and to her second shot at a vice presidential candidacy on the Party’s national ticket, she never so much as hinted at renouncing her erstwhile comrades or her radical political commitments. An enduring vision of human [End Page 219] dignity, whose dual sources Donna T. Haverty-Stacke effectively locates both within the young Carlson’s working-class family and within the parishes and church-affiliated educational institutions of her youth, supplied what Carlson would call the “unified philosophy of life” (p. 35) which undergirded her spiritual and political values—and ultimately imparted a continuity to the long arc of her biographical narrative. It should come as no surprise that Carlson, a key Party leader and a sometime candidate for public office, found it untenable to maintain formal links both to the Church and to the SWP. Given the mutual antagonism between Catholicism and Marxism in this era, the pairing was remarkably difficult to square during the height of her involvement in the 1930s and 1940s—the more so since the very idea of a “radical Catholicism” simply failed to compute for many U.S. Catholics prior to the 1960s. Still, Haverty-Stacke spotlights a vital early twentieth-century network of radical Catholics and their fellow travelers in Carlson’s native City of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Notably, it was women religious who, as schoolteachers and professors, sowed seeds that later grew into Carlson’s full-fledged socialist and feminist critiques. And after her return to the Church, it was religious sisters who provided precious moral support, as well as gainful employment as a college instructor and administrator, that sustained her over the final four decades of her life. In spotlighting these elements of Carlson’s story, Haverty-Stacke highlights how educational institutions sponsored and led by women religious nourished multiple generations of twentieth-century Catholic women in their left-leaning political commitments and feminist consciousness, even if few alumnae (or their instructors) ever reached Carlson’s level of engagement. Haverty-Stacke underscores that, though her return to Catholicism was an act of central importance in her subject’s 85-year life, Carlson’s “story was more complex than just coming full circle” (p. 182). In the early 1960s, she spearheaded the founding of an innovative Catholic women’s junior college geared toward expanding higher education access to members of the working-class. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she focused particularly on mentoring young women, imparting her signature “hybrid Catholic Marxist approach” (p. 193) when it came to feminism and an array of other topics. Predictably, she opposed the War in Vietnam and the rise of the nuclear arms race, but she also critiqued fellow radical Catholics such as Daniel Berrigan for the direct-action protest tactics, which she pegged as sure to turn off the working-class due to their “mistaken, individualistic, petit bourgeois approach to social problems” (p. 191). Thanks to Haverty-Stacke, a new generation now has easy access to Carlson’s important story and to the insights she developed in the crucible of radical Catholicism across the span of the twentieth century. [End Page 220] James...

Entrepreneurial networks, geographical proximity, and their relationship to firm growth: a study of 241 small high-tech firms

Start-up firms in high-tech sectors normally engage in networking to overcome their lack of resources, knowledge, and competence constraints. A newly established firm’s network can provide a source of social capital, which may enhance its growth prospects. In this study, 241 new technology-based firms (NTBFs) in Sweden are studied during their early formative years to investigate how entrepreneurial networks and the geographical proximity to actors in these networks affect the early performance of these firms in terms of growth. Three underlying factors are identified in the analysis: geographical proximity and professional and consultative networks. This study finds that professional networks have a positive and significant effect on NTBFs’ growth, which indicate that utilizing these networks benefit the growth of both young and growing firms. NTBFs in initial stages can acquire business opportunities by constructing professional networks. In addition, several formal links positively affect growth, such as regional business partners, incubator networks, and links to universities.

A Discourse Analysis of Formal Links Used in English Texts in National High School Entrance Exams

Language is a magical key that human beings hold in their hands to open the door of communication. To succeed in communication, formal links are one of the aspects of language that need to be known and used in discourse in addition to the contextual factors (Cook, 1992). Hence, systematic exposure to them is essential for satisfactory language acquisition, and assessment should be in line with this as well. Consequently, this study aimed to reveal whether a national exam English as a foreign language (EFL) learners take include these links. Based on this purpose, English texts taking place in the last five years’ national high school exams (LGS) held in Turkey annually were analyzed by the discourse analytical framework of formal links suggested by Cook (1992) as a part of the qualitative design. The analysis indicated that the types of formal links included in majority of the exams were found to be verb forms, parallelism, referring expressions, repetition, ellipsis, and conjunction. Moreover, outnumbering uses of referring expressions and the infrequency of substitution were revealed. In the light of these findings, high school EFL teachers and the material developers in the ministry were suggested to include different types of formal links in their lessons/materials more frequently so that students could internalize such aspects of language at early stages of their EFL learning process and be one step closer to a balanced acquisition process.

Scaling up sustainability through new product categories and certification: Two cases from India

IntroductionThe Indian food system faces a nexus of challenges in supply, demand and market linkages in the face of environmental and human development needs. The current agri-food system demands large-scale sustainable innovations, facilitated by an action-oriented approach by the rising number of actors in the agricultural space. These actors include public, private, non-profit and research institutions. They increase the scope for innovations to emerge and scale up through refocused investments and novel collaborations. Such successes in India, furthermore, can provide models of promising innovation pathways for many other countries in the Global South. Yet few case studies are available on successful innovations that have gone beyond the longstanding technology-led approach.Methods (case study methods)This article presents two cases of other pathways. The first is an example of a differentiated new product category: the “pesticide-free” food product category and dedicated value chain established by Safe Harvest Private Limited. The second is an example of self-regulation through a certification standard: the Trustea code created within the Indian domestic tea industry.ResultsBoth are driving sustainability at scale in Indian agri-food systems in two very different contexts, with the private sector leading the way.DiscussionThey offer insights on the roles of end users, trust, informal and formal links and actions, government endorsement, innovation bundling, and partnership.

Sustainable Statistical Capacity-Building for Africa: The Biostatistics Case

Several major global challenges, including climate change and water scarcity, warrant a scientific approach to generating solutions. Developing high quality and robust capacity in (bio)statistics is key to ensuring sound scientific solutions to these challenges, so collaboration between academic and research institutes should be high on university agendas. To strengthen capacity in the developing world, South–North partnerships should be a priority. The ideas and examples of statistical capacity-building presented in this article are the result of several monthly online discussions between a mixedgroup of authors having international experience and formal links with Hasselt University in Belgium. The discussion focuses on statistical capacity-building through education (teaching), research, and societal impact. We have adopted an example-based approach, and in view of the background of the authors, the examples refer mainly to biostatistical capacity-building. Although many universities worldwide have already initiated university collaborations for development, we hope and believe that our ideas and concrete examples can serve as inspiration to further strengthen South–North partnerships on statistical capacity-building.

Triple Helix interactions in a rural context: The case study of a regional business incubator

This study explores the relationships within university-industry-government interactions, with specific reference to the business incubator of Penela, Portugal. It describes the formal, informal and human resource links between the sample of thirteen firms based in the incubator and universities, as well as the relations between Penela Town Council and the incubator. The impact of all these linkages on the development of the biotechnology and agricultural sectors is considered. The results confirm that the dynamics of the relations between the Triple Helix actors led to the emergence of the Penela Incubator. The latter operates as a mechanism of knowledge/technology transfer and stimulates cooperation between the university and industry, which is characterized by mostly informal links. In addition, the research revealed that these interactions had a positive impact on the development of the region, resulting in the creation of companies and the introduction of innovative products.

Computer Vision and Internet Meme Genealogy: An Evaluation of Image Feature Matching as a Technique for Pattern Detection

ABSTRACT Internet memes are a fundamental aspect of digital culture. Despite being individual expressions, they vastly transcend the individual level as windows into and vehicles for wide-stretching social, cultural, and political narratives. Empirical research into meme culture is thriving, yet particularly compartmentalized. In the humanities and social sciences, most efforts involve in-depth linguistic and visual analyses of mostly handpicked examples of memes, begging the question on the origins and meanings of those particular expressions. In technical disciplines, such as computer science, efforts are focused on the large-scale identification and classification of meme images, as well as patterns of “viral” spread at scale. This contribution aims to bridge the chasm between depth and scale by introducing a three-step approach suitable for “computational grounded theoretical” studies in which (1) an automated procedure establishes formal links between meme images drawn from a large-scale corpus paving the way for (2) network analysis to infer patterns of relatedness and spread, and (3) practically classifying visually related images in file folders for the purpose of further local, hermeneutic analysis. The procedure is demonstrated and evaluated on two datasets: an artificially constructed, structured dataset and a naturally harvested unstructured dataset. Future horizons and domains of application are discussed.

Integrated Health and Social Services for People With Chronic Mental Health Problems: People Are More Important Than Processes. Insights From a Multiple Case Study in Swedish Psychiatry.

Three mental health organizations, one merged with, one formally cooperating with, and one without formal links to social services were analyzed through the experience of staff, patients and relatives in order to elucidate what approaches best promoted service coordination. Seventeen staff and eight patients or relatives, recruited from the three organizations, participated in semi-structured interviews, guided by pre-selected categories derived from previous research about coordination and care processes. Directed content analysis was used to identify and categorize meaning units. Both staff and patients raised the same concerns. Organized collaboration between psychiatric care and social services addressed only some of patients' challenges. More important was patient access to financial and social assistance. The organizational arrangements were not referred to, whereas case management was seen as crucial. In many instances relatives have to act as case managers. Service integration in mental health has to include, in addition to social services, other authorities like social insurance and employment agencies. A case manager knowledgeable about all welfare services is best positioned to promote that “extended integration”. Relatives often have to take this responsibility to support this fragile group of patients. This observed importance of case management is supported by previous research in mental health and primary care. The role of relatives should be acknowledged and supported by those services.

Molecular-Based Description of the Osmotic Second Virial Coefficients of Electrolytes: Rigorous Formal Links to Solute-Solvent Interaction Asymmetry, Virial Expansion Paths, and Experimental Evidence.

We introduce a molecular-based route to the evaluation of the osmotic second virial coefficients of dissociative solutes in dilute binary solutions, according to a general molecular thermodynamic solvation formalism of electrolyte solutions. We discuss the underlying solvation fundamentals and derive rigorous expressions leading to (i) the functional relationship among the osmotic second virial coefficients and the limiting composition behavior of the non-Coulombic contribution to the Kirkwood-Buff integral of the solute-solute interactions, the corresponding composition slope of the mean activity coefficient of the electrolyte solute, and a precisely defined solute-solvent intermolecular interaction asymmetry that characterizes unambiguously the solution non-ideality; (ii) the self-consistent calculation of the osmotic second virial coefficients of electrolytes as defined by the composition expansion along different thermodynamic paths and/or composition variables; (iii) the microstructural interpretation of Hill's isobaric-isothermal osmotic second virial coefficient in terms of Kirkwood-Buff correlation function integrals and its relationships to other osmotic coefficients from composition expansions along alternative thermodynamic paths; and (iv) the identification of drawbacks in the implementation of previous methods, originally intended for non-electrolyte systems, to systems involving dissociative solutes. The proposed formalism provides the fundamentally based foundations to the determination of the osmotic second virial coefficients of any type of electrolyte solute, whose thermodynamic expressions converge naturally to the non-electrolyte ones by setting to unity the solute stoichiometric coefficient ν. Following the formal results, we illustrate the formalism with the calculation of a variety of osmotic second virial coefficients involving a wide selection of aqueous solutions at ambient conditions and comprising a wide range of anion-cation type combinations characterized by 2 ≤ ν ≤ 6. Finally, we interpret the behavior of the resulting osmotic virial coefficients in terms of the solute-solvent intermolecular interaction asymmetry, discuss the experimental data requirements for the accurate evaluation of the osmotic second virial coefficients, and provide some observations as well as their modeling implications.

Strong Equivalence and Program Structure in Arguing Essential Equivalence between Logic Programs

AbstractAnswer set programming is a prominent declarative programming paradigm used in formulating combinatorial search problems and implementing different knowledge representation formalisms. Frequently, several related and yet substantially different answer set programs exist for a given problem. Sometimes these encodings may display significantly different performance. Uncovering precise formal links between these programs is often important and yet far from trivial. This paper presents formal results carefully relating a number of interesting program rewritings. It also provides the proof of correctness of system projector concerned with automatic program rewritings for the sake of efficiency.

International sourcing and the productivity of SMEs in transition countries: Formal and informal ‘region effects’ and the communist footprint

We study how SMEs in transition countries can boost productivity by sourcing inputs from regions with which they share formal institutional links (the European Union) or informal links (the former communist bloc). Additionally, we discuss how the length of the communist footprint may modify these productivity gains. Using a sample of SMEs located in Eastern Europe, we find a positive relation between firm productivity and inputs from regions with formal and informal institutional links. We also find that this positive relation is weaker for firms with longer communist footprints that source inputs from EU countries.