Educating Children with Autism

The Object Management Group's (OMG) Model Driven Architecture (MDA) strategy envisages a world where models play a more direct role in software production, being amenable to manipulation and transformation by machine. Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is wider in scope than MDA. MDE combines process and analysis with architecture. This article sets out a framework for model driven engineering, which can be used as a point of reference for activity in this area. It proposes an organisation of the modelling 'space' and how to locate models in that space. It discusses different kinds of mappings between models. It explains why process and architecture are tightly connected. It discusses the importance and nature of tools. It identifies the need for defining families of languages and transformations, and for developing techniques for generating/configuring tools from such definitions. It concludes with a call to align metamodelling with formal language engineering techniques.

Model Driven Engineering

Cognitive engineering

This paper explores whether the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on productivity growth is dependent on absorptive capacity using recently developed threshold regression techniques. In manufacturing sectors where technology-exploiting multinationals are prevalent, the results point to the presence of nonlinear threshold effects: the productivity benefit from FDI increases with absorptive capacity until some threshold level beyond which it becomes less pronounced. But there is also a minimum absorptive capacity threshold level below which productivity spillovers from FDI are negligible or even negative. On the contrary, no evidence of productivity spillovers is found in sectors where FDI appears to be motivated by technology-sourcing considerations.

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Absorptive capacity and productivity spillovers From FDI: a threshold regression analysis

Rodriguez-Pose A. and Fratesi U. (2004) Between development and social policies: the impact of European Structural Funds in Objective 1 regions, Reg. Studies 38, 97–113. European regional support has grown in parallel with European integration. The funds targeted at achieving greater economic and social cohesion and reducing disparities within the European Union (EU) have more than doubled in relative terms since the end of the 1980s, making development policies the second most important policy area in the EU. The majority of the development funds have been earmarked for Objective 1 regions, i.e. regions where GDP per capita is below the 75% threshold of the EU average. However, the European development policies have come under increasing criticism based on two facts: the lack of upward mobility of assisted regions; and the absence of regional convergence. This paper assesses, using cross-sectional and panel data analyses, the failure so far of European development policies to fulfil their objective of de...

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Between Development and Social Policies: The Impact of European Structural Funds in Objective 1 Regions

This paper offers empirical evidence of firm failurerates as well as the mean of the distribution ofrealized growth rates, distinguishing between thesample of non-failing firms and the sample of allfirms, failing and non-failing. Attention is directedat identifying a set of characteristics, in particularthe size and age of firms, systematically related tothe patterns of firm growth and exit, using a panel ofSpanish manufacturing firms. The two maincontributions of the paper are the use ofnonparametric techniques and the analysis of issuesignored in other studies like theregression-to-the-mean bias and the measurement oflearning effects. We find evidence that failure ratesand the mean growth rate of successful firms declinewith size and age. When failing firms are integrated,there are no significant differences in the meangrowth rate across the age and size of firms.Regression-to-the-mean does not prove to be asubstantial factor behind the negative relationshipbetween size and growth of surviving firms.

Firms' Growth, Size and Age: A Nonparametric Approach

Accessibility to Mobile Interfaces for Older People

Subsidies or loans? Evaluating the impact of R&D support programmes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that the pursuit of a high search engine relevance ranking for a webpage is not necessarily incompatible with the pursuit of web accessibilityDesign/methodology/approach – The research described arose from an investigation into the observed phenomenon that pages from accessible websites regularly appear near the top of search engine (such as Google) results, without any deliberate effort having been made through the application of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to achieve this The reasons for this phenomenon appear to be found in the numerous similarities and overlapping characteristics between SEO factors and web accessibility guidelines Context is provided through a review of sources including accessibility standards and relevant SEO studies and the relationship between SEO and web accessibility is described The particular overlapping factors between the two are identified and the precise nature of the overlaps is explained in greater detai

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Overlapping factors in search engine optimization and web accessibility

The objective of this paper is to analyse the effects of international R&D cooperation on firms’ economic performance. Our approach, based on a complete data set with information about Spanish participants in research joint ventures supported by the EU Framework Programme during the period 1995–2005, establishes a recursive model structure to capture the relationship between R&D cooperation, knowledge generation and economic results, which are measured by labour productivity. In the analysis we take into account that the participation in this specific type of cooperative projects implies a selection process that includes both the self-selection by participants to join the consortia and the selection of projects by the European Commission to award the public aid. Empirical analysis has confirmed that: (1) R&D cooperation has a positive impact on the technological capacity of firms, captured through intangible fixed assets and (2) the technological capacity of firms is positively related to their productivity.

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Lourdes Moreno

Papers

Firms' Growth, Size and Age: A Nonparametric Approach

Accessibility to Mobile Interfaces for Older People

Subsidies or loans? Evaluating the impact of R&D support programmes

Overlapping factors in search engine optimization and web accessibility

Measuring the economic impact of research joint ventures supported by the EU Framework Programme