1.
Social stratification
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Social stratification is a societys categorization of people into socioeconomic strata, based upon their occupation and income, wealth and social status, or derived power. As such, stratification is the social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region. The upper-stratum, the middle-stratum, and the lower stratum, moreover, a social stratum can be formed upon the bases of kinship or caste, or both. Determining the structures of social stratification arises from inequalities of status among persons, therefore, generally, the greater the social complexity of a society, the more social strata exist, by way of social differentiation. Social stratification is a used in the social sciences to describe the relative social position of persons in a given social group, category. In modern Western societies, stratification is often classified into three major divisions of social class, upper class, middle class, and lower class. Each of these classes can be subdivided into smaller classes. Social strata may also be delineated on the basis of kinship ties or caste relations, the concept of social stratification is often used and interpreted differently within specific theories. So-called conflict theories, such as Marxism, point to the inaccessibility of resources, talcott Parsons, an American sociologist, asserted that stability and social order are regulated, in part, by universal values. Such values are not identical with consensus but can as well be an impetus for ardent social conflict as it has multiple times through history. Parsons never claimed that universal values, in and by themselves, indeed, the constitution of society is a much more complicated codification of emerging historical factors. Theorists such as Ralf Dahrendorf alternately note the tendency toward an enlarged middle-class in modern Western societies due to the necessity of a workforce in technological economies. Various social and political perspectives concerning globalization, such as dependency theory, four principles are posited to underlie social stratification. First, social stratification is socially defined as a property of a society rather than individuals in that society, second, social stratification is reproduced from generation to generation. Third, social stratification is universal but variable, fourth, social stratification involves not just quantitative inequality but qualitative beliefs and attitudes about social status. Although stratification is not limited to complex societies, all complex societies exhibit features of stratification, the term stratification system is sometimes used to refer to the complex social relationships and social structure that generate these observed inequalities. Social mobility is the movement of individuals, social groups or categories of people between the layers or strata in a stratification system and this movement can be intragenerational or intergenerational. Such mobility is used to classify different systems of social stratification
2.
Social status
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Social status is the position or rank of a person or group, within the society. Status can be determined in two ways, one can earn their social status by their own achievements, which is known as achieved status. Alternatively, one can be placed in the system by their inherited position. An embodied status is one that is generated by physical characteristics located within our physical selves, the status that is the most important for an individual at a given time is called master status. Ascribed statuses can also be defined as those that are fixed for an individual at birth, ascribed statuses that exist in all societies include those based upon sex, race, ethnic group and family background. For example, a born into a wealthy family characterized by traits such as popularity, talents. Therefore, they are given and taught many social roles as they are positioned into a family becoming equipped with all these traits. Achieved status means also what the individual acquires during his or her lifetime as a result of the exercise of knowledge, ability, Social status is used in many parts of the world. Hierarchy can be conveyed and detected through voice, Status refers to the relative rank that an individual holds, this includes attendant rights, duties, and lifestyle, in a social hierarchy based upon honor or prestige. Status has two different types that come along with it, achieved, and ascribed, the word status refers to social stratification on a vertical scale. In society, pariah status groups are regarded with disdain or treated as outcasts by the majority of the population, the term derives from the Paraiyar, members of which are treated as outcasts in Hindu society. In modern societies, occupation is thought of as the main determinant of status. Achieved status is when people are placed in the structure based on their individual merits or achievements. This status can be achieved through education, occupation, and marital status and their place within the stratification structure is determined by societys bar, which often judges them on success, success being financial, academic, political and so on. America most commonly uses this form of status with jobs, the higher you are in rank the better off you are and the more control you have over your co-workers. In pre-modern societies, status differentiation is widely varied, in some cases it can be quite rigid and class based, such as with the Indian caste system. In other cases, status exists without class and/or informally, as is true with some Hunter-Gatherer societies such as the Khoisan, in these cases, status is limited to specific personal relationships. For example, a Khoisan man is expected to take his wifes mother quite seriously, all societies have a form of social status
3.
Open system (systems theory)
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An open system is a system that has external interactions. Such interactions can take the form of information, energy, or material transfers into or out of the system boundary, an open system is contrasted with the concept of an isolated system which exchanges neither energy, matter, nor information with its environment. An open system is known as a constant volume system or a flow system. The concept of a system was formalized within a framework that enabled one to interrelate the theory of the organism, thermodynamics. This concept was expanded upon with the advent of information theory, today the concept has its applications in the natural and social sciences. In the natural sciences an open system is one whose border is permeable to energy and mass. In Thermodynamics a closed system, by contrast, is permeable to energy, open systems have a number of consequences. A closed system contains limited energies, one type of open system is the radiant energy system, which receives its energy from solar radiation – an energy source that can be regarded as inexhaustible for all practical purposes. In the social sciences an open system is a process that exchanges material, energy, people, capital, axelos argues that theorizing a closed system contributes to making it closed, and is thus a conservative approach. The Althusserian concept of overdetermination posits that there are multiple causes in every event. Structural functionalists such as Talcott Parsons and neofunctionalists such as Niklas Luhmann have incorporated system theory to describe society, nonlinear thermodynamics and social science modeling, fad cycles, cultural development and identificational slips. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol.54, Issue 4, ethical Implications Of The Interface Of Natural And Artificial Systems. Delicate Balance, Technics, Culture and Consequences, Conference Proceedings for the Institute of Electrical, OPEN SYSTEM, Pricipea Cybernetica Web,2007
4.
Achieved status
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Achieved status is a concept developed by the anthropologist Ralph Linton denoting a social position that a person can acquire on the basis of merit, it is a position that is earned or chosen. It is the opposite of ascribed status and it reflects personal skills, abilities, and efforts. Examples of achieved status are being an Olympic athlete, being a criminal, Status is important sociologically because it comes with a set of rights, obligations, behaviors, and duties that people occupying a certain position are expected or encouraged to perform. These expectations are referred to as roles, for instance, the role of a professor includes teaching students, answering their questions, being impartial, appropriately. Cultural capital is a concept, developed by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and they are desirable qualities that contribute to ones social status, any advantages a person has which give him/her a higher status in society. It may include high expectations, forms of knowledge, skill, parents provide children with cultural capital, the attitudes and knowledge that make the educational system a comfortable familiar place in which they can succeed easily. There are other types of capital as well, Social capital refers to membership in groups, relationships. It too can have a significant impact on achievement level, industrialization has led to a vast increase in the possible standard of living for the average person but also made this increase necessary. For the productivity of the worker to rise, he or she had to receive far more education. This successively made the average worker much less replaceable and therefore more powerful, hence, it became necessary to satisfy workers’ demands for a larger share. According to sociologist Rodney Stark, few Americans believe coming from a family or having political connections is necessary to get ahead. In contrast, many people in industrialized nations think these factors are necessary for advancement. Americans are more likely than the people in these nations to rate “hard work” as very important for getting ahead. While most nations value hard work, the Italians, for example, are more likely to rate it as very important than they are to think one needs political connections. People with an income will generally be a better example of moving up in the social stratification. This holds to be evident in most cases because those who accrue a lower income usually have the motivation to achieve a greater status through their own ambitions and those of higher income are typically the result of achieving status. In other cases the people of higher income may have acquired that position, or were ascribed the status. Those without the privilege of ascribing their status will generally have the motivation of achieving their own status
5.
Social inequality
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It is the differentiation preference of access of social goods in the society brought about by power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, and class. The social rights include labor market, the source of income, health care, and freedom of speech, education, political representation, and participation. Social inequality linked to Economic inequality, usually described on the basis of the distribution of income or wealth, is a frequently studied type of social inequality. However, social and natural resources other than purely economic resources are unevenly distributed in most societies. Many societies worldwide claim to be meritocracies – that is, that their societies exclusively distribute resources on the basis of merit, a modern representation of the sort of “meritocracy” Young feared may be seen in the series 3%. In many cases, social inequality is linked to racial inequality, ethnic inequality, and gender inequality, as well as other social statuses and these forms can be related to corruption. The most common metric for comparing social inequality in different nations is the Gini coefficient, Two nations may have identical Gini coefficients but dramatically different economic and/or quality of life, so the Gini coefficient must be contextualized for meaningful comparisons to be made. Social inequality is found in almost every society, in simple societies, those that have few social roles and statuses occupied by its members, social inequality may be very low. Anthropologists identify such highly egalitarian cultures as kinship-oriented, which appear to value social harmony more than wealth or status and these cultures are contrasted with materially oriented cultures in which status and wealth are prized and competition and conflict are common. Kinship-oriented cultures may actively work to prevent social hierarchies from developing because they believe that could lead to conflict, in todays world, most of our population lives in more complex than simple societies. As social complexity increases, inequality tends to increase along with a gap between the poorest and the most wealthy members of society. Social inequality can be classified into egalitarian societies, ranked society, egalitarian societies are those communities advocating for social equality through equal opportunities and rights hence no discrimination. People with special skills were not viewed as superior compared to the rest, the leaders do not have the power they only have influence. The norms and the beliefs the egalitarian society holds are for sharing equally, ranked society mostly is agricultural communities who hierarchically grouped from the chief who is viewed to have a status in the society. In this society, people are clustered regarding status and prestige and not by access to power, the chief is the most influential person followed by his family and relative, and those further related to him are less ranked. Stratified society is societies which horizontally ranked into the class, middle class. The classification is regarding wealth, power, and prestige, the upper class are mostly the leaders and are the most influential in the society. Its possible for a person in the society to move from one stratum to the other, the social status is also hereditable from one generation to the next
6.
Quantitative research
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In natural sciences and social sciences, quantitative research is the systematic empirical investigation of observable phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques. The objective of quantitative research is to develop and employ mathematical models, the process of measurement is central to quantitative research because it provides the fundamental connection between empirical observation and mathematical expression of quantitative relationships. Quantitative data is any data that is in numerical form such as statistics, percentages, the researcher analyzes the data with the help of statistics. The researcher is hoping the numbers will yield a result that can be generalized to some larger population. Qualitative research, on the hand, asks broad questions. The researcher looks for themes and describes the information in themes, research in mathematical sciences such as physics is also quantitative by definition, though this use of the term differs in context. In the social sciences, the term relates to empirical methods, qualitative research produces information only on the particular cases studied, and any more general conclusions are only hypotheses. Quantitative methods can be used to verify which of such hypotheses are true, a comprehensive analysis of 1274 articles published in the top two American sociology journals between 1935 and 2005 found that roughly two thirds of these articles used quantitative methods. Although a distinction is drawn between qualitative and quantitative aspects of scientific investigation, it has been argued that the two go hand in hand. For example, based on analysis of the history of science, qualitative research is often used to gain a general sense of phenomena and to form theories that can be tested using further quantitative research. For instance, in the social sciences qualitative research methods are used to gain better understanding of such things as intentionality. Positivism emphasized the use of the method through observation to empirically test hypotheses explaining and predicting what, where, why, how. Positivist scholars like Comte believed only scientific methods rather than previous spiritual explanations for human behavior could advance, statistical methods are used extensively within fields such as economics, social sciences and biology. Quantitative research using statistical methods starts with the collection of data, usually a big sample of data is collected – this would require verification, validation and recording before the analysis can take place. Software packages such as SPSS and R are typically used for this purpose, causal relationships are studied by manipulating factors thought to influence the phenomena of interest while controlling other variables relevant to the experimental outcomes. Quantitatively based opinion surveys are used in the media, with statistics such as the proportion of respondents in favor of a position commonly reported. In opinion surveys, respondents are asked a set of structured questions, in the field of climate science, researchers compile and compare statistics such as temperature or atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Empirical relationships and associations are also studied by using some form of general linear model, non-linear model
7.
Economic mobility
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Economic mobility is the ability of an individual, family or some other group to improve their economic status—usually measured in income. Economic mobility is often measured by movement between income quintiles, Economic mobility may be considered a type of social mobility, which is often measured in change in income. There are many different ideas in the literature as to what constitutes a good measure of mobility, each with their own advantages. Mobility may be between generations or within a person or groups lifetime and it may be absolute or relative. Inter-generational mobility compares a person’s income to that of her/his/their parents, intra-generational mobility, in contrast, refers to movement up or down over the course of a working career. Absolute mobility involves widespread economic growth and answers the question “To what extent do families improve their incomes over a generation. ”Relative mobility is specific to individuals or groups and it answers the question, how closely are the economic fortunes of children tied to that of their parents. Relative mobility is a game, absolute is not. Exchange mobility is the mobility that results from a reshuffling of incomes among the economic agents, for example, in the case of two agents, a change in income distribution might be ->. This is a case of pure exchange mobility, since they have simply exchanged incomes, more generally, for a set of incomes xi, any permutation of the xi will yield a pure exchange mobility. Measures of inequality will not change under pure exchange mobility, structural mobility is mobility that results from a change in the income distribution function without regard to the identity of the agents. For two agents, a change in income distribution might be -> and this case may involve some exchange mobility, depending on ones definition, but there is certainly some structural mobility since it does not involve a simple reshuffling of incomes. Growth mobility is mobility that results from an increase in total income, for two agents, a change in income distribution might be -> or perhaps ->. Growth mobility is certainly positive in these cases, since the sum of the incomes increases, how much economic mobility really exists has been studied. This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity, other research places the U. S. among the least economically mobile countries. Another 2007 study found significant upward absolute mobility from the late 1960s to 2007, however, in terms of relative mobility it stated, contrary to American beliefs about equality of opportunity, a child’s economic position is heavily influenced by that of his or her parents. 42% of children born to parents in the fifth of the income distribution remain in the bottom. Only half of the generation studied exceeded their parents economic standing by moving up one or more quintiles, moving between quintiles is more frequent in the middle quintiles than in the lowest and highest quintiles. Of those in one of the quintiles 2-4 in 1996, approximately 35% stayed in the same quintile, 39% of those who were born into the top quintile as children in 1968 are likely to stay there, and 23% end up in the fourth quintile
8.
Income
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Income is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. However, for households and individuals, income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents, in a given period of time. In the field of economics, the term may refer to the accumulation of both monetary and non-monetary consumption ability, with the former being used as a proxy for total income. Income per capita has been increasing steadily in almost every country, many factors contribute to people having a higher income such as education, globalisation and favorable political circumstances such as economic freedom and peace. Increase in income tends to lead to people choosing to work less hours. Developed countries have higher incomes as opposed to developing countries tending to have lower incomes, from labor services, as well as ownership of land and capital. In consumer theory income is another name for the budget constraint, the basic equation for this is Y = P x ⋅ x + P y ⋅ y This equation implies two things. First buying one unit of good x implies buying P x P y less units of good y. So, P x P y is the price of a unit of x as to the number of units given up in y. Second, if the price of x falls for a fixed Y, the usual hypothesis is that the quantity demanded of x would increase at the lower price, the law of demand. The generalization to more than two goods consists of modelling y as a composite good, the theoretical generalization to more than one period is a multi-period wealth and income constraint. For example, the person can gain more productive skills or acquire more productive income-earning assets to earn a higher income. In the multi-period case, something might happen to the economy beyond the control of the individual to reduce the flow of income. Changing measured income and its relation to consumption over time might be modeled accordingly, full income refers to the accumulation of both the monetary and the non-monetary consumption-ability of any given entity, such as a person or a household. According to what the economist Nicholas Barr describes as the definition of income, income may be defined as the. Sum of the value of rights exercised in consumption and the change in the value of the store of property rights. Since the consumption potential of non-monetary goods, such as leisure, cannot be measured, as such, however, it is criticized for being unreliable, i. e. failing to accurately reflect affluence of any given agent. It omits the utility a person may derive from non-monetary income and, on a macroeconomic level, according to Barr, in practice money income as a proportion of total income varies widely and unsystematically
9.
American Dream
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The American Dream is rooted in the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that all men are created equal with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The meaning of the American Dream has changed over the course of history, historically the Dream originated in the mystique regarding frontier life. As the Royal Governor of Virginia noted in 1774, the Americans for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled. He added that, if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a place farther west. The ethos today implies an opportunity for Americans to achieve prosperity through hard work, according to The Dream, this includes the opportunity for ones children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It is the opportunity to make choices without the prior restrictions that limited people according to their class, caste, religion, race. Immigrants to the United States sponsored ethnic newspapers in their own language, work hard, save a little, send the kids to college so they can do better than you did, and retire happily to a warmer climate has been the script we have all been handed. In the 19th century, many well-educated Germans fled the failed 1848 revolution and they welcomed the political freedoms in the New World, and the lack of a hierarchical or aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for individual aspirations. One of them explained, The German emigrant comes into a free from the despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes. Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases, No passport is demanded, no police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements. Fidelity and merit are the sources of honor here. The rich stand on the footing as the poor, the scholar is not a mug above the most humble mechanics. Wealth and possession of real estate confer not the least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has. Nor are there nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral power of the people, above all, there are no princes and corrupt courts representing the so-called divine right of birth. In such a country the talents, energy and perseverance of a person, have far greater opportunity to display than in monarchies. The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a thousand men looking for their fortune overnight—and a few did find it. Thus was born the California Dream of instant success, of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity, became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutters Mill
10.
Economic inequality
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Economic inequality is the difference found in various measures of economic well-being among individuals in a group, among groups in a population, or among countries. Economic inequality is sometimes called income inequality, wealth inequality, or the wealth gap, economists generally focus on economic disparity in three metrics, wealth, income, and consumption. The issue of inequality is relevant to notions of equity, equality of outcome. Economic inequality varies between societies, historical periods, economic structures and systems, the term can refer to cross-sectional distribution of income or wealth at any particular period, or to changes of income and wealth over longer periods of time. There are various numerical indices for measuring economic inequality, a widely used index is the Gini coefficient, but there are also many other methods. Some studies say economic inequality is a problem, for example too much inequality can be destructive. However, too much income equality is also destructive since it decreases the incentive for productivity, the first set of income distribution statistics for the United States covering the period from was published in 1952 by Simon Kuznets, Shares of Upper Income Groups in Income and Savings. It relied on US federal income tax returns and Kuznets’s own estimates of US national income, National Income, economists generally consider three metrics of economic dispersion, wealth, income, and consumption. A skilled professional may have low wealth and low income as student, low wealth and high earnings in the beginning of the career, peoples preferences determine whether they consume earnings immediately or defer consumption to the future. The distinction is important at the level of economy, There are economies with high income inequality. There are economies with low income inequality and high wealth inequality. There are different ways to measure income inequality and wealth inequality, Different choices lead to different results. g. Annual wages, including wages from part-time work or work during only part of the year, individual earnings inequality among all workers – Includes the self-employed. Individual earnings inequality among the entire working-age population – Includes those who are inactive, e. g. students, unemployed, early pensioners, household earnings inequality – Includes the earnings of all household members. Household market income inequality – Includes incomes from capital, savings, household disposable income inequality – Includes public cash transfers received and direct taxes paid. Household adjusted disposable income inequality – Includes publicly provided services, There are many challenges in comparing data between economies, or in a single economy in different years. Examples of challenges include, Data can be based on joint taxation of couples or individual taxation, the tax authorities generally only collect information on income that is potentially taxable. The precise definition of income varies from country to country
11.
Industrial Revolution
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The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and most of the important technological innovations were British, aided by these legal and cultural foundations, an entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution drove industrialisation in Britain, which would be emulated in countries around the world. A change in marrying patterns to getting married later made able to accumulate more human capital during their youth. The Industrial Revolution marks a turning point in history, almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth, mechanised textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium, and later in France. Since then industrialisation has spread throughout much of the world, the precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants. The term Industrial Revolution applied to change was becoming more common by the late 1830s. Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of an industrial revolution, however, although Engels wrote in the 1840s, his book was not translated into English until the late 1800s, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts, have argued that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some historians, the commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s the following gains had been made in important technologies, Textiles – mechanised cotton spinning powered by steam or water greatly increased the output of a worker, the power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over 40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50, large gains in productivity also occurred in spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as great as in cotton. Steam power – the efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel, the adaptation of stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them suitable for industrial uses. The high pressure engine had a power to weight ratio. Steam power underwent an expansion after 1800. Iron making – the substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered the fuel cost for pig iron, using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces, resulting in economies of scale. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first used in 1760 and it was later improved by making it double acting, which allowed higher furnace temperatures
12.
Employment
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Employees in some fields or sectors may receive gratuities, bonus payment or stock options. In some types of employment, employees may receive benefits in addition to payment, benefits can include health insurance, housing, disability insurance or use of a gym. Employment is typically governed by employment laws or regulations or legal contracts, employers must balance interests such as decreasing wage constraints with a maximization of labor productivity in order to achieve a profitable and productive employment relationship. The main ways for employers to workers and for people to find employers are via jobs listings in newspapers and online. Employers and job seekers also find each other via professional recruitment consultants which receive a commission from the employer to find, screen. However, a study has shown that such consultants may not be reliable when they fail to use established principles in selecting employees, a more traditional approach is with a Help Wanted sign in the establishment. Evaluating different employees can be quite laborious but setting up different techniques to analyze their skill to measure their talents within the field can be best through assessments, employer and potential employee commonly take the additional step of getting to know each other through the process of job interview. Training and development refers to the effort to equip a newly hired employee with necessary skills to perform at the job. An appropriate level of training and development helps to improve job satisfaction. There are many ways that employees are paid, including by hourly wages, by piecework, by yearly salary, in sales jobs and real estate positions, the employee may be paid a commission, a percentage of the value of the goods or services that they have sold. In some fields and professions, employees may be eligible for a bonus if they meet certain targets, employee benefits are various non-wage compensation provided to employee in addition to their wages or salaries. In some cases, such as with workers employed in remote or isolated regions, employee benefits can improve the relationship between employee and employer and lowers staff turnover. Organizational justice is a perception and judgement of employers treatment in the context of fairness or justice. The resulting actions to influence the relationship is also a part of organizational justice. Employees can organize into trade or labor unions, which represent the force to collectively bargain with the management of organizations about working. Usually, either an employee or employer may end the relationship at any time and this is referred to as at-will employment. The contract between the two parties specifies the responsibilities of each when ending the relationship and may include such as notice periods, severance pay. In some professions, notably teaching, civil servants, university professors, and some jobs, some employees may have tenure
13.
Social structure
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In the social sciences, social structure is the patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. On the macro scale, social structure is the system of stratification, social institutions, or. On the meso scale, it is the structure of social ties between individuals or organizations. On the micro scale, it can be the way norms shape the behavior of individuals within the social system, Social norms influence social structure through relations between the majority and the minority. These scales are not always kept separate, for example, recent scholarship by John Levi Martin has theorized that certain macro-scale structures are the emergent properties of micro-scale cultural institutions. Likewise, another recent study, in ethnography, describes how indigenous social structure in the Republic of Panama changed macro social structures and impeded a planned Panama Canal expansion. Since the 1920s, the term has been in use in social science. This approach has been important in the literature with the rise of various forms of structuralism. It is important in the study of organizations, because an organizations structure may determine its flexibility, capacity to change. Therefore, structure is an important issue for management, Social structure may be seen to influence important social systems including the economic system, legal system, political system, cultural system, and others. Family, religion, law, economy, and class are all social structures, the social system is the parent system of those various systems that are embedded in it. The early study of structures has informed the study of institutions, culture and agency, social interaction. Weber investigated and analyzed the institutions of society, market, bureaucracy. One of the earliest and most comprehensive accounts of social structure was provided by Karl Marx, who related political, cultural, Marx argued that the economic base substantially determined the cultural and political superstructure of a society. In this context, Durkheim distinguished two forms of structural relationship, mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity, the former describes structures that unite similar parts through a shared culture, the latter describes differentiated parts united through social exchange and material interdependence. Some follow Marx in trying to identify the dimensions of society that explain the other dimensions. Others follow Lévi-Strauss in seeking logical order in cultural structures, the notion of social structure is intimately related to a variety of central topics in social science, including the relation of structure and agency. The most influential attempts to combine the concept of structure with agency are Anthony Giddens theory of structuration
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Max Weber
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Karl Emil Maximilian Max Weber was a German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, political economist and the husband of Marianne Schnitger. His ideas profoundly influenced social theory and social research, Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of sociology. Unlike Durkheim, he did not believe in monocausality and rather proposed that for any outcome there can be multiple causes and he argued that it was in the basic tenets of Protestantism to boost capitalism. Thus, it can be said that the spirit of capitalism is inherent to Protestant religious values, against Marxs historical materialism, Weber emphasised the importance of cultural influences embedded in religion as a means for understanding the genesis of capitalism. In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity that successfully claims a monopoly of the use of physical force within a given territory. He was also the first to categorise social authority into distinct forms, which he labelled as charismatic, traditional and his analysis of bureaucracy emphasised that modern state institutions are increasingly based on rational-legal authority. Weber also made a variety of contributions in economic history, as well as economic theory. Webers analysis of modernity and rationalisation significantly influenced the theory associated with the Frankfurt School. After the First World War, Max Weber was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party and he also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament and served as advisor to the committee that drafted the ill-fated democratic Weimar Constitution of 1919. After contracting Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920, Karl Emil Maximilian Weber was born in 1864, in Erfurt, Province of Saxony, Prussia. Weber Sr. s involvement in public life immersed his home in politics and academia, as his salon welcomed many prominent scholars and public figures. The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who became a sociologist and economist. Before entering the university, he would read many other classical works, in 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. After a year of service, he transferred to the University of Berlin. Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a junior lawyer, in 1886 Weber passed the examination for Referendar, comparable to the bar association examination in the British and American legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of law and this work was used as part of a longer work On the History of Trading Companies in the Middle Ages, based on South-European Sources, published in the same year. Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law, having thus become a Privatdozent, Weber joined the University of Berlins faculty, lecturing and consulting for the government. In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in social policy
15.
Three-component theory of stratification
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Weber developed a multidimensional approach to social stratification that reflects the interplay among wealth, prestige and power. Weber argued that power can take a variety of forms, a person’s power can be shown in the social order through their status, in the economic order through their class, and in the political order through their party. Thus, class, status and party are each aspects of the distribution of power within a community, Class, status and party have not only a great deal of effect within their individual areas but also a great deal of influence over the other areas. This essay was shortly before World War I and was published posthumously in 1922 as part of Webers Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. It was translated into English in the 1940s as Class, Status, Party and has been re-translated as The distribution of power within the community, Classes, Stände, according to Weber, the ability to possess power derives from the individuals ability to control various social resources. These resources can be anything and everything, they might include land, capital, social respect, physical strength, and intellectual knowledge. The ability to exercise power takes a number of different forms, “Class, at its core, is an economic concept, it is the position of individuals in the market that determines their class position. And it is how one is situated in the marketplace that directly affects one’s life chances. ” and this was theorized by Weber on the basis of unequal access to material resources. For example, if someone possesses something that you want or need then this makes him more powerful than you. He is in a dominant position and you are in a position because he controls access to a desired social resource. A classic illustration here is the relationship between an employer and employee, if you respect someone or view him as your social superior, then he will potentially be able to exercise power over you. In this respect, social status is a social resource simply because he may have it while you may not, not all power, however entails social honor, The Typical American Boss, as well as the typical big speculator, deliberately relinquishes social honor. Quite generally, mere economic power, and especially naked money power, is by no means a recognized basis or social honor. Parties are associations that aim at securing “power within an organization for its leaders in order to attain ideal or material advantages for its active members. ”This form of power can be related to the way in which the State is organized in social systems. If you can influence this process of law creation then you will be in a powerful position. Thus, by your ability to influence a decision-making process you possess power, Social action is in direct relation to political or party power in combination with the class situation. The influence of laws is based on the action of members of the classes. It is also likened to the extent of the contrasts that have already evolved. ”, class-conscious action is most likely if, first, the connection between the causes and consequences of the class situation are transparent, or clear
16.
Dependent and independent variables
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In mathematical modelling and statistical modelling, there are dependent and independent variables. The models investigate how the former depend on the latter, the dependent variables represent the output or outcome whose variation is being studied. The independent variables represent inputs or causes, i. e. potential reasons for variation, models test or explain the effects that the independent variables have on the dependent variables. Sometimes, independent variables may be included for other reasons, such as for their potential confounding effect, in mathematics, a function is a rule for taking an input and providing an output. A symbol that stands for an input is called an independent variable, while a symbol that stands for an arbitrary output is called a dependent variable. The most common symbol for the input is x, and the most common symbol for the output is y and it is possible to have multiple independent variables and/or multiple dependent variables. For instance, in calculus, one often encounters functions of the form z = f. Functions with multiple outputs are often written as vector-valued functions. In Set Theory, a function between a set X and a set Y is a subset of the Cartesian product X × Y such that every element of X appears in a pair with exactly one element of Y. However, many advanced textbooks do not distinguish between dependent and independent variables, in an experiment, the dependent variable is the event expected to change when the independent variable is manipulated. In data mining tools, the variable is assigned a role as target variable, while a dependent variable may be assigned a role as regular variable. Known values for the target variable are provided for the data set and test data set. The target variable is used in supervised learning algorithms but not in non-supervised learning, in mathematical modelling, the dependent variable is studied to see if and how much it varies as the independent variables vary. In the simple stochastic linear model y i = a + b x i + e i the term y i is the i th value of the dependent variable and x i is i th value of the independent variable. The term e i is known as the error and contains the variability of the dependent variable not explained by the independent variable, with multiple independent variables, the expression is, y i = a + b x 1 + b x 2 +. + b x n + e i, where n is the number of independent variables, in simulation, the dependent variable is changed in response to changes in the independent variables. If the independent variable is referred to as an explanatory variable then the response variable is preferred by some authors for the dependent variable. Explained variable is preferred by some authors over dependent variable when the quantities treated as dependent variables may not be statistically dependent, if the dependent variable is referred to as an explained variable then the term predictor variable is preferred by some authors for the independent variable
17.
Mediation (statistics)
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Thus, the mediator variable serves to clarify the nature of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Mediation analyses are employed to understand a known relationship by exploring the underlying mechanism or process by one variable influences another variable through a mediator variable. Mediation analysis facilitates an understanding of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables when the variables appear to not have a definite connection. They are studied by means of definitions and have no existence apart. Baron and Kenny laid out several requirements that must be met to form a true mediation relationship and they are outlined below using a real-world example. See the diagram above for a representation of the overall mediating relationship to be explained. Step 1, Regress the dependent variable on the independent variable to confirm that the independent variable is a significant predictor of the dependent variable, If the mediator is not associated with the independent variable, then it couldn’t possibly mediate anything. Step 1 and step 2 use simple regression analysis, whereas step 3 uses multiple regression analysis, step 1, How you were parented predicts how confident you feel about parenting your own children. How you were parented → confidence in own parenting abilities, step 2, How you were parented predicts your feelings of competence and self-esteem. How you were parented → Feelings of competence and self-esteem, step 3, Your feelings of competence and self-esteem predict how confident you feel about parenting your own children, while controlling for how you were parented. Note, If step 1 does not yield a significant result, in the diagram shown above, the indirect effect is the product of path coefficients A and B. The direct effect is the coefficient C, the direct effect measures the extent to which the dependent variable changes when the independent variable increases by one unit and the mediator variable remains unaltered. In linear systems, the effect is equal to the sum of the direct and indirect effects. In nonlinear models, the effect is not generally equal to the sum of the direct and indirect effects. A mediator variable can either account for all or some of the relationship between two variables. The most likely event is that c becomes a weaker, yet still significant path with the inclusion of the mediation effect, Partial mediation Partial mediation maintains that the mediating variable accounts for some, but not all, of the relationship between the independent variable and dependent variable. The effect of an independent variable on the dependent variable can become nonsignificant when the mediator is introduced simply because a trivial amount of variance is explained. Thus, it is imperative to show a significant reduction in variance explained by the independent variable before asserting either full or partial mediation and it is possible to have statistically significant indirect effects in the absence of a total effect
18.
Social class
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Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and social historians. However, there is not a consensus on the best definition of the class, the precise measurements of what determines social class in society has varied over time. According to philosopher Karl Marx, class is determined entirely by ones relationship to the means of production, the term class is etymologically derived from the Latin classis, which was used by census takers to categorize citizens by wealth, in order to determine military service obligations. In the late 18th century, the class began to replace classifications such as estates, rank. Historically social class and behavior was sometimes laid down in law, definitions of social classes reflect a number of sociological perspectives, informed by anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology. The major perspectives historically have been Marxism and Structural functionalism, the common stratum model of class divides society into a simple hierarchy of working class, middle class and upper class. For Marx, class is a combination of objective and subjective factors, objectively, a class shares a common relationship to the means of production. Subjectively, the members will necessarily have some perception of their similarity, Class consciousness is not simply an awareness of ones own class interest but is also a set of shared views regarding how society should be organized legally, culturally, socially and politically. These class relations are reproduced through time and this is the fundamental economic structure of work and property, a state of inequality that is normalized and reproduced through cultural ideology. Marxists explain the history of civilized societies in terms of a war of classes between those who control production and those who produce the goods or services in society, in the Marxist view of capitalism, this is a conflict between capitalists and wage-workers. Furthermore, in countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, an industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers and sergeants who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. This would mark the beginning of a society in which human needs rather than profit would be motive for production. In a society with democratic control and production for use, there would be no class, no state and no need for financial and banking institutions and money. Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, that saw social class as emerging from an interplay between class, status and power. Weber believed that class position was determined by a relationship to the means of production. Weber derived many of his key concepts on social stratification by examining the structure of many countries. He noted that contrary to Marxs theories, stratification was based on more than simply ownership of capital, Weber pointed out that some members of the aristocracy lack economic wealth yet might nevertheless have political power. Likewise in Europe, many wealthy Jewish families in lack prestige and honor, Class, A persons economic position in a society
19.
Racism
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Racism is discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. Today, the use of the term racism does not easily fall under a single definition, the Holocaust is the classic example of institutionalized racism which led to the death of millions of people based on their race. Ethnicity is often used in a close to one traditionally attributed to race. Therefore, racism and racial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, according to a United Nations convention on racial discrimination, there is no distinction between the terms racial and ethnic discrimination. Racist ideology can become manifest in many aspects of social life, Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, in the 19th century, many scientists subscribed to the belief that the human population can be divided into races. The term racism is a noun describing the state of being racist, the origin of the root word race is not clear. Linguists generally agree that it came to the English language from Middle French, a recent proposal is that it derives from the Arabic ras, which means head, beginning, origin or the Hebrew rosh, which has a similar meaning. Early race theorists generally held that some races were inferior to others and these early theories guided pseudo-scientific research assumptions, the collective endeavors to adequately define and form hypotheses about racial differences are generally termed scientific racism. To date, there is evidence in human genome research indicating that race can be defined in such a way as to be useful in a genetic classification of humans. An entry in the Oxford English Dictionary defines racialism simply as An earlier term than racism, but now superseded by it. The revised Oxford English Dictionary cites the shortened term racism in a quote from the year,1903. It was first defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as he theory that human characteristics and abilities are determined by race. Additionally, the Oxford English Dictionary records racism as a synonym of racialism, as its history indicates, popular use of the word racism is relatively recent. The word came into usage in the Western world in the 1930s, when it was used to describe the social and political ideology of Nazism. It is commonly agreed that racism existed before the coinage of the word, garner summarizes different existing definitions of racism and identifies three common elements contained in those definitions of racism. First, a historical, hierarchical power relationship between groups, second, a set of ideas about racial differences, and, third, the UDHR was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. They are born equal in dignity and rights and all form a part of humanity
20.
Ageism
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Ageism is stereotyping and discriminating against individuals or groups on the basis of their age. This may be casual or systematic, the term was coined in 1969 by Robert Neil Butler to describe discrimination against seniors, and patterned on sexism and racism. Butler defined ageism as a combination of three connected elements, moreover, it has been pointed out that stigmatization does not only occur outside of the cohesively imagined group of the elderly but likewise takes place within the stigmatized group itself. It can also be passive and covert to drive the notion that the place is young, Ageism in common parlance and age studies usually refers to negative discriminatory practices against old people, people in their middle years, teenagers and children. There are several forms of age-related bias, adultism is a predisposition towards adults, which is seen as biased against children, youth, and all young people who are not addressed or viewed as adults. Jeunism is the discrimination against older people in favor of younger ones, adultcentricism is the exaggerated egocentrism of adults. Adultocracy is the convention which defines maturity and immaturity, placing adults in a dominant position over young people. Gerontocracy is a form of rule in which an entity is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population. Chronocentrism is primarily the belief that a state of humanity is superior to all previous and/or future times. Based on an analysis of ageism, a new definition of ageism was introduced by Iversen, Larsen. Ageism can be implicit or explicit and can be expressed on a micro-, meso- or macro-level, implicit ageism is the term used to refer to the implicit or subconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors one has about older or younger people. These may be a mixture of positive and negative thoughts and feelings, ageist stereotyping is a tool of cognition which involves categorizing into groups and attributing characteristics to these groups. Stereotypes are necessary for processing huge volumes of information which would otherwise overload a person, for example, age-based stereotypes prime one to draw very different conclusions when one sees an older and a younger adult with, say, back pain or a limp. One might well assume that the persons condition is temporary and treatable, following an accident, while the older persons condition is chronic. On average, this might be true, but plenty of people have accidents and recover quickly. Another example is when people are rude to children because of their high pitched voice, even if they are kind, a review of the research literature related to age stereotypes in the workplace was recently published in the Journal of Management. Contrary to common and more obvious forms of stereotyping, such as racism and sexism, ageism is more resistant to change. For instance, if a child believes in an ageist idea against the elderly, fewer people correct them, in other words, ageism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy
21.
Cultural capital
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In sociology, the term cultural capital refers to the social assets of a person that promote social mobility in a stratified society. As a social relation within a system of exchange, cultural capital includes the cultural knowledge that confer social status. In the sociological essay, “The Forms of Capital”, Pierre Bourdieu identifies three categories of capital, Economic capital, command of economic resources, Social capital, actual and potential resources linked to the possession of a durable network of institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition. Cultural capital, A persons education that provides advantage in achieving a higher social-status in society. Unlike property, cultural capital is not transmissible, but is acquired over time, as it is impressed upon the persons habitus, yet, whilst possessing a work of art the person can consume the art only with the proper conceptual and historical foundations of prior cultural-capital. As such, cultural capital is not transmitted in the sale of the work of art, except by coincidental and independent causation, institutionalized cultural capital comprises an institutions formal recognition of a persons cultural capital, usually academic credentials or professional qualifications. The cultural capital of a person is linked to his or her habitus and field, in that way, the legitimization of a type of cultural capital can be arbitrary and derived from symbolic capital. The habitus of a person is composed of the intellectual dispositions inculcated to him or her by family and the familial environment, the concept of cultural capital has received widespread attention all around the world, from theorists and researchers alike. It is mostly employed in relation to the system. Use of Bourdieus cultural capital can be broken up into a number of basic categories, first, are those who explore the theory as a possible means of explanation or employ it as the framework for their research. Second, are those who build on or expand Bourdieus theory, finally, there are those who attempt to disprove Bourdieus findings or to discount them in favour of an alternative theory. The majority of these deal with Bourdieus theory in relation to education. Those researchers and theorists who explore or employ Bourdieus theory use it in a way as it was articulated by Bourdieu. These works to portray the usefulness of Bourdieus concept in analysing inequality. The authors talk of the two fields that operate in the same geographic location and the types of capital that are legitimate. A number of works expand Bourdieus theory of capital in a beneficial manner. In fact, these authors can be seen to explore unarticulated areas of Bourdieus theory as opposed to constructing a new theory and they state that this is simply an elaboration of Bourdieus theory. Similarly, Dumais introduces the variable of gender to determine the ability of cultural capital to increase educational achievement, the author shows how gender and social class interact to produce different benefits from cultural capital
22.
Pierre Bourdieu
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Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, philosopher, and renowned public intellectual. Another notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations, Bourdieus best known book is Distinction, A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. The book was judged the sixth most important sociological work of the century by the International Sociological Association. In it, Bourdieu argues that judgments of taste are related to social position, in the process, he tried to reconcile the influences of both external social structures and subjective experience on the individual. Pierre Felix Bourdieu was born in Denguin, in southern France on 1 August 1930, to a postal worker, the household spoke Béarnese, a Gascon dialect. Bourdieu married Marie-Claire Brizard in 1962, the couple had three sons, Jérôme, Emmanuel, and Laurent, Bourdieu was educated at the lycée in Pau before moving to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. From there he gained entrance to the École Normale Supérieure, also in Paris, after getting his agrégation, Bourdieu worked as a lycée teacher at Moulins for a year before his being conscription into the French Army in 1955. His biographers write that he not to enter the Reserve Officers College like many of his fellow ENS graduates as he wished to stay with people from his own modest social background. Deployed to Algeria in October 1955 during its war of independence from France, after his year-long military service, Bourdieu stayed on as a lecturer in Algiers. The result was his first book, Sociologie de lAlgérie, which became a success in France and was published in America in 1962. He later drew heavily on this fieldwork in his 1972 book Outline of a Theory of Practice, in 1960 Bourdieu returned to the University of Paris before gaining a teaching position at the University of Lille, where he remained until 1964. From 1964 onwards Bourdieu held the position of Professor in the VIe section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, in 1968, Bourdieu took over the Centre de Sociologie Européenne, founded by Aron, which he directed until his death. In 1993 he was honored with the Médaille dor du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, in 1996 he received the Goffman Prize from the University of California, Berkeley and in 2001 the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Bourdieu died of cancer at the age of 71, Bourdieus work is influenced by much of traditional anthropology and sociology which he undertook to synthesize into his own theory. And of the need to develop social theory from social practice. The class-based nature of artistic taste had already firmly established by Arnold Hauser in The Social History of Art. However, Bourdieu critically diverged from Durkheim in emphasizing the role of the agent in enacting, through the embodiment of social structures. He furthermore emphasized that the reproduction of social structures does not operate according to a functionalist logic, maurice Merleau-Ponty and, through him, the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl played an essential part in the formulation of Bourdieus focus on the body, action, and practical dispositions
23.
Social capital
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It is generally seen as a form of capital that produces public goods for a common good. During the 1990s and 2000s the concept has become popular in a wide range of social science disciplines. The term social capital was in intermittent use from about 1890, in the first half of the 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville had observations about American life that seemed to outline and define social capital. He observed that Americans were prone to meeting at as many gatherings as possible to all possible issues of state, economics. The high levels of transparency caused greater participation from the people, the French writer highlighted also that the level of social participation in American society was directly linked to the equality of conditions. John Dewey used the term in his monograph entitled School and Society in 1900, jane Jacobs used the term early in the 1960s. Although she did not explicitly define the social capital, her usage referred to the value of networks. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu used the term in 1972 in his Outline of a Theory of Practice, and clarified the term some years later in contrast to cultural, economic, and symbolic capital. Sociologists James Coleman, and Barry Wellman & Scot Wortley adopted Glenn Lourys 1977 definition in developing and popularising the concept, john Dewey may have made the first direct mainstream use of social capital in The School and Society in 1899, though he did not offer a definition. The power of community governance has been stressed by many philosophers from antiquity to the 18th century, from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and Edmund Burke. This vision was criticised at the end of the 18th century, with the development of the idea of Homo Economicus. The debate of community versus modernization of society and individualism has been the most discussed topic among the fathers of sociology and they were convinced that industrialisation and urbanization were transforming social relationship in an irreversible way. They observed a breakdown of traditional bonds and the development of anomie. After Tönnies and Webers works, reflection on social links in modern society continued with interesting contributions in the 1950s and in the 1960s and they proposed themes similar to those of the founding fathers, with a more pessimistic emphasis on the development of society. All these reflections contributed remarkably to the development of the social concept in the following decades. He also transforms social capital from a resource possessed by individuals to an attribute of collectives, focusing on norms, mahyar Arefi identifies consensus building as a direct positive indicator of social capital. Consensus implies shared interest and agreement among various actors and stakeholders to induce collective action, collective action is thus an indicator of increased social capital. First, social capital is not equally available to all, in much the way that other forms of capital are differently available
24.
Cash
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In economics, cash is money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. In bookkeeping and finance, cash is current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-immediately. Cash is seen either as a reserve for payments, in case of a structural or incidental negative cash flow or as a way to avoid a downturn on financial markets, the English word cash is derived from the Kannada / Tamil / Malayalam / Telugu word kaasu meaning money. In Southern India the word kaasu/kasa is still used today to refer to money, later traders of Persian, Arab and European origins, who started trading with the Southern India princely states, used the modified version of the word. This form along with this meaning entered into Latin giving rise to such as capsa “money box” and case eventually passing into Middle French as caisse meaning “money in hand, coin. ”To cash. In a separate development, Venetian merchants started using paper bills, similar marked silver bars were in use in lands where the Venetian merchants had established representative offices. The Byzantine empire and several states in the Balkan area and Kievan Rus also used marked silver bars for large payments and its counterpart in gold was the Venetian ducat. Coin types would compete for markets, by conquering foreign markets, the issuing rulers would enjoy extra income from seigniorage. Successful coin types of high nobility would be copied by lower nobility for seigniorage, imitations were usually of a lower weight, undermining the popularity of the original. Colonial powers also sought to take market share from Spain by issuing trade coin equivalents of silver Spanish coins. In the early part of the 17th century, English East India Company coins were minted in England, in England over time the word ‘Cash’ was adopted from Sanskrit कर्ष karsa, a weight of gold or silver but akin to Old Persian
25.
Credit (finance)
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In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people. The resources provided may be financial, or they may consist of goods or services, Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment. Credit is extended by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, Credit does not necessarily require money. The credit concept can be applied in barter economies as well, based on the exchange of goods. However, in societies, credit is usually denominated by a unit of account. Bank issued credit makes up the largest proportion of credit in existence, the traditional view of banks as intermediaries between savers and borrower is incorrect. Modern banking is about credit creation, Credit is made up of two parts, the credit and its corresponding debt, which requires repayment with interest. The majority of the money in the UK economy is created as credit, when the debt is fully repaid, the credit and debt are cancelled, and the money disappears from the economy. Meanwhile, the debtor receives a cash balance, but also an equivalent negative liability to be repaid to the bank over the duration. Most of the credit created goes into the purchase of land and property, creating inflation in those markets, when a bank creates credit, it effectively owes the money to itself. If a bank issues too much bad credit, the bank will become insolvent, if it fails to do this it risks bankruptcy. In this instance, the bank uses sale of the collateral to reduce its liabilities, examples of secured credit include consumer mortgages used to buy houses, boats etc. and PCP credit agreements for automobile purchases. Movements of financial capital are normally dependent on credit or equity transfers. The global credit market is three times the size of global equity, Credit is in turn dependent on the reputation or creditworthiness of the entity which takes responsibility for the funds. Credit is also traded in financial markets, the purest form is the credit default swap market, which is essentially a traded market in credit insurance. There are many types of credit, including but not limited to bank credit, commerce, consumer credit, investment credit, international credit, public credit, in commercial trade, the term trade credit refers to the approval of delayed payment for purchased goods. Credit is sometimes not granted to a buyer who has financial instability or difficulty, companies frequently offer trade credit to their customers as part of the terms of a purchase agreement. Organizations that offer credit to their customers frequently employ a credit manager, Consumer debt can be defined as money, goods or services provided to an individual in the absence of immediate payment
26.
Assets
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In financial accounting, an asset is an economic resource. Anything tangible or intangible that can be owned or controlled to produce value, simply stated, assets represent value of ownership that can be converted into cash. The balance sheet of a firm records the value of the assets owned by that firm. It covers money and other valuables belonging to an individual or to a business, one can classify assets into two major asset classes, tangible assets and intangible assets. Tangible assets contain various subclasses, including current assets and fixed assets, current assets include inventory, while fixed assets include such items as buildings and equipment. Intangible assets are resources and rights that have a value to the firm because they give the firm some kind of advantage in the marketplace. Examples of intangible assets include goodwill, copyrights, trademarks, patents and computer programs, an asset is a resource controlled by the entity as a result of past events and from which future economic benefits are expected to flow to the entity. One of the most widely accepted accounting definitions of asset is the one used by the International Accounting Standards Board, employees are not considered assets like machinery is, even though they can generate future economic benefits. This is because an entity does not have sufficient control over its employees to satisfy the Frameworks definition of an asset, similarly, in economics an asset is any form in which wealth can be held. The accounting equation is the structure of the balance sheet. It relates assets, liabilities, and owners equity, Assets = Liabilities + Capital Liabilities = Assets − Capital Equity = Assets − Liabilities Assets are listed on the balance sheet. On a companys balance sheet certain divisions are required by generally accepted accounting principles, Assets can be divided into e. g. current assets and fixed assets, often with further subdivisions such as cash, receivables and inventory. Assets are formally controlled and managed within larger organizations via the use of asset tracking tools and these monitor the purchasing, upgrading, servicing, licensing, disposal etc. of both physical and non-physical assets. Current assets are cash and other assets expected to be converted to cash or consumed either in a year or in the operating cycle and these assets are continually turned over in the course of a business during normal business activity. There are 5 major items included into current assets, Cash and cash equivalents – it is the most liquid asset, which includes currency, deposit accounts, short-term investments – include securities bought and held for sale in the near future to generate income on short-term price differences. Receivables – usually reported as net of allowance for non-collectable accounts, inventory – trading these assets is a normal business of a company. The inventory value reported on the sheet is usually the historical cost or fair market value. This is known as the lower of cost or market rule, prepaid expenses – these are expenses paid in cash and recorded as assets before they are used or consumed
27.
Education
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Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has an effect on the way one thinks, feels. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy, in most regions education is compulsory up to a certain age. Etymologically, the education is derived from the Latin ēducātiō from ēducō which is related to the homonym ēdūcō from ē-. Education began in prehistory, as trained the young in the knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation, story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be learned through imitation. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom, plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, there, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BCE. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in CE476, after the Fall of Rome, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of literate scholarship in Western Europe. The church established cathedral schools in the Early Middle Ages as centres of advanced education, some of these establishments ultimately evolved into medieval universities and forebears of many of Europes modern universities. During the High Middle Ages, Chartres Cathedral operated the famous, founded in 1088, the University of Bologne is considered the first, and the oldest continually operating university. The Renaissance in Europe ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry and appreciation of ancient Greek, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. The European Age of Empires saw European ideas of education in philosophy, religion, arts, the Enlightenment saw the emergence of a more secular educational outlook in Europe. In most countries today, full-time education, whether at school or otherwise, is compulsory for all children up to a certain age, formal education occurs in a structured environment whose explicit purpose is teaching students. Usually, formal education takes place in a environment with classrooms of multiple students learning together with a trained, certified teacher of the subject. Most school systems are designed around a set of values or ideals that govern all educational choices in that system, such choices include curriculum, organizational models, design of the physical learning spaces, student-teacher interactions, methods of assessment, class size, educational activities, and more
28.
Great Gatsby curve
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The Great Gatsby curve is a chart plotting the relationship between inequality and intergenerational social immobility in several countries around the world. The curve was introduced in a 2012 speech by chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Alan Krueger, the name was coined by former Council of Economic Advisers staff economist Judd Cramer, for which he was given a bottle of wine as a reward. The curve plots intergenerational income elasticity—i. e, the name of the curve refers, somewhat ironically, to Jay Gatsby, the character in F. Scott Fitzgeralds novel The Great Gatsby. Jay shows a degree of mobility, rising from being a bootlegger. Journalist Robert Lenzner and lawyer Nripendra Chakravarthy call it a very frightening curve that requires policy attention. S. has seen in the last 25 years. However, some argue that the apparent connection may arise as an artifact of heterogeneous variance in ability across nations and it was shown that the manner in which the intergenerational income elasticity is defined, is by design associated with inequality. e. The curve is an artifact of diversity and his quote, Germans are richer on average than Greeks, and that difference in income tends to persist from generation to generation. When people look at the Great Gatsby curve, they omit this fact, but it is not obvious that the political divisions that divide people are the right ones for economic analysis. We combine the persistently rich Connecticut with the persistently poor Mississippi, a blog by M. S. at The Economist replied to Mankiws counter-argument as follows, The argument over the Great Gatsby curve is an argument about whether Americas economy is fair. Amazingly, he seems unaware that this is the case hes just made. Economist Paul Krugman has also countered Mankiws arguments in his column, carter Price of the WCEG suggests the line to serfdom as an alternative name on the grounds that it may better convey the meaning of the correlation. Economy of the United States Socio-economic mobility in the United States The Great Divergence List of countries by income equality and Gini coefficient
29.
Developed country
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Which criteria are to be used and which countries can be classified as being developed are subjects of debate. Developed countries have post-industrial economies, meaning the sector provides more wealth than the industrial sector. They are contrasted with developing countries, which are in the process of industrialization, or undeveloped countries, which are pre-industrial and almost entirely agrarian. As of 2015, advanced economies comprise 60. 8% of global GDP based on values and 42. 9% of global GDP based on purchasing-power parity according to the International Monetary Fund. In 2015, the ten largest advanced economies by GDP in both nominal and PPP terms were Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The term industrialized country may be ambiguous, as industrialization is an ongoing process that is hard to define. The first industrialized country was the United Kingdom, followed by Belgium, later it spread further to Germany, United States, France and other Western European countries. According to some such as Jeffrey Sachs, however, the current divide between the developed and developing world is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Economic criteria have tended to dominate discussions, one such criterion is income per capita, countries with high gross domestic product per capita would thus be described as developed countries. Another economic criterion is industrialization, countries in which the tertiary and quaternary sectors of industry dominate would thus be described as developed. More recently another measure, the Human Development Index, which combines an economic measure, national income, with other measures, indices for life expectancy and this criterion would define developed countries as those with a very high rating. According to the United Nations Statistics Division, There is no established convention for the designation of developed, the UN HDI is a statistical measure that gauges a countrys level of human development. While there is a correlation between having a high HDI score and a prosperous economy, the UN points out that the HDI accounts for more than income or productivity. Unlike GDP per capita or per capita income, the HDI takes into account how income is turned into education and health opportunities, since 1990, Norway, Japan, Canada and Iceland have had the highest HDI score. The top 47 countries have scores ranging from 0.793 in Barbados to 0.955 in Norway, many countries listed by IMF or CIA as advanced, possess an HDI over 0.788. Many countries possessing an HDI of 0.788 and over are also listed by IMF or CIA as advanced, thus, many advanced economies are characterized by an HDI score of 0.9 or higher. Since April 2016, the IMF classifies Macau as an advanced economy, the latest index was released on 14 December 2015 and covers the period up to 2014. The following are the 49 countries in the top quartile - having an HDI above 0.8, = Increase = No increase or decrease = Decrease The number in parentheses represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in 2014 report
30.
Denmark
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The term Danish Realm refers to the relationship between Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands and Greenland—three countries constituting the Kingdom of Denmark. The legal nature of the Kingdom of Denmark is fundamentally one of a sovereign state. The Faroe Islands and Greenland have been part of the Crown of Denmark since 1397 when the Kalmar Union was ratified, legal matters in The Danish Realm are subject to the Danish Constitution. Beginning in 1953, state law issues within The Danish Realm has been governed by The Unity of the Realm, a less formal name for The Unity of the Realm is the Commonwealth of the Realm. In 1978, The Unity of The Realm was for the first time referred to as rigsfællesskabet. The name caught on and since the 1990s, both The Unity of The Realm and The Danish Realm itself has increasingly been referred to as simply rigsfællesskabet in daily parlance. The Danish Constitution stipulates that the foreign and security interests for all parts of the Danish Realm are the responsibility of the Danish government, the Faroes received home rule in 1948 and Greenland did so in 1979. In 2005, the Faroes received a self-government arrangement, and in 2009 Greenland received self rule, the Danish Realms unique state of internal affairs is acted out in the principle of The Unity of the Realm. This principle is derived from Article 1 of the Danish Constitution which specifies that constitutional law applies equally to all areas of the Danish Realm, the Constitutional Act specifies that sovereignty is to continue to be exclusively with the authorities of the Realm. The language of Denmark is Danish, and the Danish state authorities are based in Denmark, the Kingdom of Denmarks parliament, with its 179 members, is located in the capital, Copenhagen. Two of the members are elected in each of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The Government ministries are located in Copenhagen, as is the highest court, in principle, the Danish Realm constitutes a unified sovereign state, with equal status between its constituent parts. Devolution differs from federalism in that the powers of the subnational authority ultimately reside in central government. The Self-Government Arrangements devolves political competence and responsibility from the Danish political authorities to the Faroese, the Faroese and Greenlandic authorities administer the tasks taken over from the state, enact legislation in these specific fields and have the economic responsibility for solving these tasks. The Danish government provides a grant to the Faroese and the Greenlandic authorities to cover the costs of these devolved areas. The 1948 Home Rule Act of the Faroe Islands sets out the terms of Faroese home rule, the Act states. the Faroe Islands shall constitute a self-governing community within the State of Denmark. It establishes the government of the Faroe Islands and the Faroese parliament. The Faroe Islands were previously administered as a Danish county, the Home Rule Act abolished the post of Amtmand and these powers were expanded in a 2005 Act, which named the Faroese home government as an equal partner with the Danish government
31.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
32.
Finland
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Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a sovereign state in Northern Europe. A peninsula with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west, the country has borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north. Estonia is south of the country across the Gulf of Finland, Finland is a Nordic country situated in the geographical region of Fennoscandia, which also includes Scandinavia. Finlands population is 5.5 million, and the majority of the population is concentrated in the southern region,88. 7% of the population is Finnish people who speak Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to the Scandinavian languages, the second major group are the Finland-Swedes. In terms of area, it is the eighth largest country in Europe, Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in the capital Helsinki, local governments in 311 municipalities, and an autonomous region, the Åland Islands. Over 1.4 million people live in the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, from the late 12th century, Finland was an integral part of Sweden, a legacy reflected in the prevalence of the Swedish language and its official status. In the spirit of the notion of Adolf Ivar Arwidsson, we are not Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, let us therefore be Finns, nevertheless, in 1809, Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1906, Finland became the nation in the world to give the right to vote to all adult citizens. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Finland declared itself independent, in 1918, the fledgling state was divided by civil war, with the Bolshevik-leaning Reds supported by the equally new Soviet Russia, fighting the Whites, supported by the German Empire. After a brief attempt to establish a kingdom, the became a republic. During World War II, the Soviet Union sought repeatedly to occupy Finland, with Finland losing parts of Karelia, Salla and Kuusamo, Petsamo and some islands, Finland joined the United Nations in 1955 and established an official policy of neutrality. The Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 gave the Soviet Union some leverage in Finnish domestic politics during the Cold War era, Finland was a relative latecomer to industrialization, remaining a largely agrarian country until the 1950s. It rapidly developed an advanced economy while building an extensive Nordic-style welfare state, resulting in widespread prosperity, however, Finnish GDP growth has been negative in 2012–2014, with a preceding nadir of −8% in 2009. Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life, a large majority of Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, though freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Finnish Constitution. The first known appearance of the name Finland is thought to be on three rune-stones. Two were found in the Swedish province of Uppland and have the inscription finlonti, the third was found in Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. It has the inscription finlandi and dates from the 13th century, the name can be assumed to be related to the tribe name Finns, which is mentioned first known time AD98. The name Suomi has uncertain origins, but a candidate for a source is the Proto-Baltic word *źemē, in addition to the close relatives of Finnish, this name is also used in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian
33.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
34.
Chile
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Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a South American country occupying a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas, and Easter Island in Oceania. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres of Antarctica, the arid Atacama Desert in northern Chile contains great mineral wealth, principally copper. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands, and features a string of volcanoes and lakes, the southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands. Spain conquered and colonized Chile in the century, replacing Inca rule in northern and central Chile. After declaring its independence from Spain in 1818, Chile emerged in the 1830s as a relatively stable authoritarian republic, in the 1960s and 1970s the country experienced severe left-right political polarization and turmoil. The regime, headed by Augusto Pinochet, ended in 1990 after it lost a referendum in 1988 and was succeeded by a coalition which ruled through four presidencies until 2010. Chile is today one of South Americas most stable and prosperous nations and it leads Latin American nations in rankings of human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, state of peace, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption. It also ranks high regionally in sustainability of the state, Chile is a founding member of the United Nations, the Union of South American Nations and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. There are various theories about the origin of the word Chile, another theory points to the similarity of the valley of the Aconcagua with that of the Casma Valley in Peru, where there was a town and valley named Chili. Another origin attributed to chilli is the onomatopoeic cheele-cheele—the Mapuche imitation of the warble of a locally known as trile. The Spanish conquistadors heard about this name from the Incas, ultimately, Almagro is credited with the universalization of the name Chile, after naming the Mapocho valley as such. The older spelling Chili was in use in English until at least 1900 before switching over to Chile, stone tool evidence indicates humans sporadically frequented the Monte Verde valley area as long as 18,500 years ago. About 10,000 years ago, migrating Native Americans settled in fertile valleys, settlement sites from very early human habitation include Monte Verde, Cueva del Milodon and the Pali Aike Craters lava tube. They fought against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his army, the result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river. The next Europeans to reach Chile were Diego de Almagro and his band of Spanish conquistadors, the Spanish encountered various cultures that supported themselves principally through slash-and-burn agriculture and hunting. The conquest of Chile began in earnest in 1540 and was carried out by Pedro de Valdivia, one of Francisco Pizarros lieutenants, who founded the city of Santiago on 12 February 1541. Although the Spanish did not find the gold and silver they sought, they recognized the agricultural potential of Chiles central valley
35.
Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
36.
Gordon Brown
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James Gordon Brown is a British politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Blair Government from 1997 to 2007, Brown was a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 2015, first for Dunfermline East and later for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. A doctoral graduate of the University of Edinburgh, Brown spent his career working as both a lecturer at a further education college and a television journalist. He entered Parliament in 1983 as the MP for Dunfermline East and he joined the Shadow Cabinet in 1989 as Shadow Secretary of State for Trade, and was later promoted to become Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1992. After Labours victory in 1997, he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 2007, Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister and Labour Leader and Brown was chosen to replace him in an uncontested election. Brown remained in office as Labour negotiated to form a government with the Liberal Democrats. On 10 May 2010, Brown announced he would stand down as leader of the Labour Party, Labours attempts to retain power failed and on 11 May, he officially resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by David Cameron, and as Leader of the Labour Party by Ed Miliband, later, Brown played a prominent role in the campaign surrounding the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, galvanising support behind maintaining the union. Brown was born at the Orchard Maternity Nursing Home in Giffnock, Renfrewshire and his father was John Ebenezer Brown, a minister of the Church of Scotland and a strong influence on Brown. He died in December 1998, aged 84 and his mother, Jessie Elizabeth Brown, known as Bunty, died on 19 September 2004, aged 86. She was the daughter of John Souter, a timber merchant, the family moved to Kirkcaldy – then the largest town in Fife, across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh – when Gordon was three. Brown was brought up there with his elder brother John and younger brother Andrew Brown in a manse, in common with many other notable Scots, he is therefore often referred to as a son of the manse. At age sixteen he wrote that he loathed and resented this ludicrous experiment on young lives and he was accepted by the University of Edinburgh to study history at the same early age of sixteen. During an end-of-term rugby union match at his old school, he received a kick to the head and this left him blind in his left eye, despite treatment including several operations and weeks spent lying in a darkened room. Later at Edinburgh, while playing tennis, he noticed the symptoms in his right eye. Brown underwent experimental surgery at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and his eye was saved. In his youth at the University of Edinburgh, Brown was involved in a relationship with Margarita. Margarita said about it, It was a solid and romantic story
37.
The Economist
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The Economist is an English-language weekly magazine-format newspaper owned by the Economist Group and edited at offices in London. Continuous publication began under its founder, James Wilson, in September 1843, in 2015 its average weekly circulation was a little over 1.5 million, about half of which were sold in the United States. The publication belongs to the Economist Group and it is 50% owned by the English branch of the Rothschild family and by the Agnelli family through its holding company Exor. The remaining 50% is held by investors including the editors. The Rothschilds and the Agnellis are represented on the board of directors, a board of trustees formally appoints the editor, who cannot be removed without its permission. Although The Economist has an emphasis and scope, about two-thirds of the 75 staff journalists are based in the London borough of Westminster. For the year to March 2016 the Economist Group declared operating profit of £61m, previous major shareholders include Pearson PLC. The Economist takes a stance of classical and economic liberalism which is supportive of free trade, globalisation, free immigration. The publication has described itself as a product of the Caledonian liberalism of Adam Smith and it targets highly educated readers and claims an audience containing many influential executives and policy-makers. The publications CEO described this recent global change, which was first noticed in the 1990s and accelerated in the beginning of the 21st century, on the contents page of each issue, The Economists mission statement is written in italics. The Economist was founded by the British businessman and banker James Wilson in 1843, to advance the repeal of the Corn Laws, articles relating to some practical, commercial, agricultural, or foreign topic of passing interest, such as foreign treaties. An article on the principles of political economy, applied to practical experience, covering the laws related to prices, wages, rent, exchange, revenue. Parliamentary reports, with focus on commerce, agriculture and free trade. Reports and accounts of popular movements advocating free trade, general news from the Court of St. Jamess, the Metropolis, the Provinces, Scotland, and Ireland. Law reports, confined chiefly to areas important to commerce, manufacturing, books, confined chiefly, but not so exclusively, to commerce, manufacturing, and agriculture, and including all treatises on political economy, finance, or taxation. A commercial gazette, with prices and statistics of the week, correspondence and inquiries from the news magazines readers. It has long respected as one of the most competent. Its logo was designed in 1959 by Reynolds Stone, in January 2012 The Economist launched a new weekly section devoted exclusively to China, the first new country section since the introduction of a section about the United States in 1942
38.
Thomas Piketty
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Thomas Piketty is a French economist whose work focuses on wealth and income inequality. Piketty is the author of the best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the book argues that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future. To address this problem Piketty proposes redistribution through a global tax on wealth. Piketty was born on 7 May 1971, in the Parisian suburb of Clichy, Piketty gained a C-stream Baccalauréat, and after taking scientific preparatory classes, he entered the École Normale Supérieure at the age of 18, where he studied mathematics and economics. After earning his PhD, Piketty taught from 1993 to 1995 as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1995, he joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research as a researcher, in 2006, Piketty became the first head of the Paris School of Economics, which he helped set up. He left after a few months to serve as an advisor to Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal during the French presidential campaign. Piketty resumed teaching at the EHESS and Paris School of Economics in 2007 and he is a columnist for the French newspaper Libération, and occasionally writes op-eds for Le Monde. Thomas Piketty was the partner of the politician Aurélie Filippetti, in 2009, she sued him for domestic violence. Thomas Piketty acknowledged the complaint and apologized, following which Aurélie Filipetti withdrew her complaint, in April 2012, Piketty co-authored along with 42 colleagues an open letter in support of then-PS candidate for the French presidency François Hollande. Hollande won the contest against the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in May of that year, Piketty was unimpressed by Hollandes tenure, later describing him as hopeless. In January 2015, he rejected the French Legion of Honour order, in June 2016, he resigned from his role in Labours Economic Advisory Committee, citing concerns over the weak campaign the party had run in the EU referendum. On 11 February 2017, it was announced that he had joined the socialist Benoit Hamons campaign team in the presidential run. He is in charge of EU matters, and more precisely and he is also in favour of a credible and bold basic income, which is one of Benoit Hamons key proposals, although their views on the matter are different. The call in which Piketty and other economic researchers argue for their version of the basic income has been criticised as not universal, Thomas Piketty joined the London School of Economics in 2015 as the distinguished Centennial Professor. Piketty continues his research as part of the LSE International Inequalities Institute and his economic research focusses mainly on wealth inequalities and the use of capital in 21st century. Piketty has long-standing ties to the London School of Economics and he completed his PhD studies at the university in the early 1990s, in addition to his research, Piketty also teaches post-graduate students at the LSE. His teaching and research approach is inter-disciplinary and he has involved in the teaching of the new MSc degree in Inequalities
39.
Correlation and dependence
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In statistics, dependence or association is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Familiar examples of dependent phenomena include the correlation between the physical statures of parents and their offspring, and the correlation between the demand for a product and its price, correlations are useful because they can indicate a predictive relationship that can be exploited in practice. For example, an electrical utility may produce less power on a day based on the correlation between electricity demand and weather. In this example there is a relationship, because extreme weather causes people to use more electricity for heating or cooling. However, in general, the presence of a correlation is not sufficient to infer the presence of a causal relationship, formally, random variables are dependent if they do not satisfy a mathematical property of probabilistic independence. In informal parlance, correlation is synonymous with dependence, however, when used in a technical sense, correlation refers to any of several specific types of relationship between mean values. There are several correlation coefficients, often denoted ρ or r, the most common of these is the Pearson correlation coefficient, which is sensitive only to a linear relationship between two variables. Other correlation coefficients have been developed to be more robust than the Pearson correlation – that is, mutual information can also be applied to measure dependence between two variables. It is obtained by dividing the covariance of the two variables by the product of their standard deviations, karl Pearson developed the coefficient from a similar but slightly different idea by Francis Galton. The Pearson correlation is defined only if both of the deviations are finite and nonzero. It is a corollary of the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality that the correlation cannot exceed 1 in absolute value, the correlation coefficient is symmetric, corr = corr. As it approaches zero there is less of a relationship, the closer the coefficient is to either −1 or 1, the stronger the correlation between the variables. If the variables are independent, Pearsons correlation coefficient is 0, for example, suppose the random variable X is symmetrically distributed about zero, and Y = X2. Then Y is completely determined by X, so that X and Y are perfectly dependent, however, in the special case when X and Y are jointly normal, uncorrelatedness is equivalent to independence. If we have a series of n measurements of X and Y written as xi, N, then the sample correlation coefficient can be used to estimate the population Pearson correlation r between X and Y. If x and y are results of measurements that contain measurement error, for the case of a linear model with a single independent variable, the coefficient of determination is the square of r, Pearsons product-moment coefficient. If, as the one variable increases, the other decreases, to illustrate the nature of rank correlation, and its difference from linear correlation, consider the following four pairs of numbers. As we go from each pair to the pair x increases
40.
Structural equation modeling
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Structural equation modeling includes a diverse set of mathematical models, computer algorithms, and statistical methods that fit networks of constructs to data. SEM includes confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, partial least squares path modeling, the concept should not be confused with the related concept of structural models in econometrics, nor with structural models in economics. Structural equation models are used to assess unobservable latent constructs. They often invoke a measurement model that defines latent variables using one or more observed variables, the links between constructs of a structural equation model may be estimated with independent regression equations or through more involved approaches such as those employed in LISREL. Use of SEM is commonly justified in the sciences because of its ability to impute relationships between unobserved constructs from observable variables. To provide an example, the concept of human intelligence cannot be measured directly as one could measure height or weight. Instead, psychologists develop a hypothesis of intelligence and write measurement instruments with items designed to measure according to their hypothesis. They would then use SEM to test their hypothesis using data gathered from people who took their intelligence test, with SEM, intelligence would be the latent variable and the test items would be the observed variables. A simplistic model suggesting that intelligence can predict academic performance is shown below, in SEM diagrams, latent variables are commonly shown as ovals and observed variables as rectangles. The below diagram shows how error influences each intelligence question and the SAT, ACT, and GPA scores, SEM provides numerical estimates for each of the parameters in the model to indicate the strength of the relationships. Thus, in addition to testing the theory, SEM therefore allows the researcher to diagnose which observed variables are good indicators of the latent variables. Various methods in structural equation modeling have been used in the sciences, business, education, use of SEM methods in analysis is controversial because SEM methods generally lack widely accepted goodness-of-fit statistics and most SEM software offers little latitude for error analysis. This puts SEM at a disadvantage with respect to systems of regression equation methods, Structural equation modeling, as the term is currently used in sociology, psychology, and other social sciences evolved from the earlier methods in genetic path modeling of Sewall Wright. Their modern forms came about with computer intensive implementations in the 1960s and 1970s, in particular, PLS-PA has been conflated with partial least squares regression PLSR, which is a substitute for ordinary least squares regression and has nothing to do with path analysis. PLS-PA has been promoted as a method that works with small datasets when other estimation approaches fail. Westland decisively showed this not to be true and developed an algorithm for sample sizes in SEM, of these, two-stage least squares was by far the most widely used method in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Systems of regression equation approaches were developed at the Cowles Commission from the 1950s on, Sewall Wright, and other statisticians attempted to promote path analysis methods at Cowles. Wright’s path analysis never gained a following among U. S. econometricians
41.
Independent variables
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In mathematical modelling and statistical modelling, there are dependent and independent variables. The models investigate how the former depend on the latter, the dependent variables represent the output or outcome whose variation is being studied. The independent variables represent inputs or causes, i. e. potential reasons for variation, models test or explain the effects that the independent variables have on the dependent variables. Sometimes, independent variables may be included for other reasons, such as for their potential confounding effect, in mathematics, a function is a rule for taking an input and providing an output. A symbol that stands for an input is called an independent variable, while a symbol that stands for an arbitrary output is called a dependent variable. The most common symbol for the input is x, and the most common symbol for the output is y and it is possible to have multiple independent variables and/or multiple dependent variables. For instance, in calculus, one often encounters functions of the form z = f. Functions with multiple outputs are often written as vector-valued functions. In Set Theory, a function between a set X and a set Y is a subset of the Cartesian product X × Y such that every element of X appears in a pair with exactly one element of Y. However, many advanced textbooks do not distinguish between dependent and independent variables, in an experiment, the dependent variable is the event expected to change when the independent variable is manipulated. In data mining tools, the variable is assigned a role as target variable, while a dependent variable may be assigned a role as regular variable. Known values for the target variable are provided for the data set and test data set. The target variable is used in supervised learning algorithms but not in non-supervised learning, in mathematical modelling, the dependent variable is studied to see if and how much it varies as the independent variables vary. In the simple stochastic linear model y i = a + b x i + e i the term y i is the i th value of the dependent variable and x i is i th value of the independent variable. The term e i is known as the error and contains the variability of the dependent variable not explained by the independent variable, with multiple independent variables, the expression is, y i = a + b x 1 + b x 2 +. + b x n + e i, where n is the number of independent variables, in simulation, the dependent variable is changed in response to changes in the independent variables. If the independent variable is referred to as an explanatory variable then the response variable is preferred by some authors for the dependent variable. Explained variable is preferred by some authors over dependent variable when the quantities treated as dependent variables may not be statistically dependent, if the dependent variable is referred to as an explained variable then the term predictor variable is preferred by some authors for the independent variable
