Public services throughout Europe have undergone dramatic restructuring processes in recent years in connection with liberalization and privatization. While evaluations of the successes of public services have focused on prices and efficiency, much less attention has been paid to the impacts of liberalization and privatization on employment, labor relations, and working conditions. This book addresses this gap by illustrating the ways in which liberalization has contributed to increasing private and foreign ownership of public services, the decentralization of labor relations has amplified pressure on wages, and decreasing employment numbers and increasing workloads have improved productivity partly at the cost of service quality. Examining diverse public-service sectors including network industries, public transportation, and hospitals, and using international case studies, Privatization of Public Services covers a wide range of aspects of service provision, with particular emphasis on companies and workers. The result is a unique picture of the changes created by the liberalization processes in Europe.

Contents:
H.J. Müller, M.A. Elliott, C.S. Herrmann, A. Mecklinger, An Introduction to Neural Binding of Space and Time: Spatial and Temporal Mechanisms of Feature-object Binding. L. Chen, Perceptual Organization: To Reverse Back the Inverted (Upside Down) Question of Feature Binding. S.S. Markovic, V. Gvozdenovic, Symmetry, Complexity and Perceptual Economy: Effects of Minimum and Maximum Simplicity Conditions. M.A. Peterson, J. Hyun Kim, On What is Bound in Figures and Grounds. A. Aksentijevic, M. A. Elliott, P.J. Barber, Dynamics of Perceptual Grouping: Similarities in the Organization of Visual and Auditory Groups. G.C. Baylis, G.L. Gore, P.D. Rodriguez, R.J. Shisler, Visual Extinction and Awareness: The Importance of Binding Dorsal and Ventral Pathways. G.W. Humphreys, A Multi-stage Account of Binding in Vision. G. Davis, What is Binding For? The Functions and Neuropsychology of Within- Versus Between-Objects. R.D.S. Raizada, S. Grossberg, Context-sensitive Binding by the Laminar circuits of V1 and V2: A Unified Model of Perceptual Grouping, Attention, and Orientation Contrast. K.R. Cave, Selection Can be Performed Effectively Without Temporal Binding, But Could be Even More Effective With it. J.E. Hummel, Complementary Solutions to the Binding Problem in Vision: Implications For Shape Perception and Object Recognition. R. Eckhorn, A. Bruns, M. Saam, A. Gail, A. Gabriel, H.J. Brinksmeyer, Flexible Cortical Gamma-band Correlations Suggest Neural Principles of Visual Processing. S. Panzeri, H.D.R. Golledge, F. Zheng, M. Tovée, M.P. Young, Objective Assessment of the Functional Role of Spike Train Correlations Using Information Measures. A. Giersch, The Effects of Lorazepam on Visual Integration Processes: How Useful for Neuroscientists? S.P. Johnson, Visual Development in Human Infants: Binding Features, Surfaces and Objects. M.M. Müller, T. Gruber, Induced Gamma-band Responses in the Human EEG are Related to Attentional Information Processing. C.S. Herrmann, A. Mecklinger, Gamma Activity in Human EEG is Related to High-speed Memory Comparisons During Object Selective Attention. D. Strüber, C. Basar-Eroglu, M. Miener, M. Stadler, EEG Gamma-band Response During the Perception of Necker Cube Reversals. H.H. Herzog, C. Koch, M. Fahle, Switching Binding State. A. Parton, N. Donnelly, M. Usher, The Effects of Temporal Synchrony on the Perceived Organisation of Elements in Spatially Symmetric and Asymmetric Grids. M.A. Elliott, H.J. Müller, Effects of Stimulus Synchrony on Mechanisms of Perceptual Organization. H.G. Geissler, R. Kompass, Temporal Constraints on Binding? Evidence from Quantal State Transitions in Preception.

John Maynard Keynes expected that around the year 2030 people would only work 15 hours a week. In the mid-1960s, Jean Fourastie still anticipated the introduction of the 30-hour week in the year 2000, when productivity would continue to grow at an established pace. Productivity growth slowed down somewhat in the 1970s and 1980s, but rebounded in the 1990s with the spread of new information and communication technologies. The knowledge economy, however, did not bring about a jobless future or a world without work, as some scholars had predicted. With few exceptions, work hours of full-time employees have hardly fallen in the advanced capitalist countries in the last three decades, while in a number of countries they have actually increased since the 1980s. This book takes the persistence of long work hours as starting point to investigate the relationship between capitalism and work time. It does so by discussing major theoretical schools and their explanations for the length and distribution of work hours, as well as tracing major changes in production and reproduction systems, and analyzing their consequences for work hours. Furthermore, this volume explores the struggle for shorter work hours, starting from the introduction of the ten-hour work day in the nineteenth century to the introduction of the 35-hour week in France and Germany at the end of the twentieth century. However, the book also shows how neoliberalism has eroded collective work time regulations and resulted in an increase and polarization of work hours since the 1980s. Finally, the book argues that shorter work hours not only means more free time for workers, but also reduces inequality and improves human and ecological sustainability.

Public services throughout Europe have undergone dramatic restructuring processes in recent years in connection with liberalization and privatization. While evaluations of the successes of public services have focused on prices and efficiency, much less attention has been paid to the impacts of liberalization and privatization on employment, labor relations, and working conditions. This book addresses this gap by illustrating the ways in which liberalization has contributed to increasing private and foreign ownership of public services, the decentralization of labor relations has amplified pressure on wages, and decreasing employment numbers and increasing workloads have improved productivity partly at the cost of service quality. Examining diverse public-service sectors including network industries, public transportation, and hospitals, and using international case studies, Privatization of Public Services covers a wide range of aspects of service provision, with particular emphasis on companies and workers. The result is a unique picture of the changes created by the liberalization processes in Europe.

Some of the central problems to be solved by the brain, such as figure-ground coding and object recognition, concern the binding of separately coded feature elements into coherent object representations. The binding problem has recently been approached by a variety of disciplines, notably psychophysics, and experimental psychology, electrophysiology, neurophysiology and computational modelling. This special issue brings together a collection of papers principally from psychology and computational modelling. These papers address issues in Gestalt formation, the relation of grouping and binding processes to visual attention, the role of temporal factors for grouping and binding, the neuronal correlates of binding mechanisms, the development of binding operations in infants and the breakdown of these processes following brain injury.

This book presents a comprehensive overview and critical analysis of the processes of liberalization and privatization, and their consequences for economic performance, social cohesion and political democracy in the European Union. It examines the main drivers and the various theoretical rationales for privatisation in the context of different schools of thinking.
It argues on the basis of broad empirical evidence that privatisation in Europe, particularly the ongoing privatization of social services, undermines the basic elements of the different social models that have developed in Europe. These arguments are supported by a number of in-depth case studies, with specific focus on health care, education and finance. The authors of this volume advance from this critique and explore the basic requirements for a progressive public sector and its role for economic, social and democratic development.
This book will be indispensable reading for all interested in Economic Policy, Public Sector Economics, European Integration and Political Science.

John M. Keynes expected that around the year 2030 people would only work fifteen hours a week. In the mid-1960s, Jean Fourastie still anticipated the introduction of the thirty-five hour week in the year 2000 when productivity would continue to grow at the established pace. Productivity growth slowed down somewhat in the 1970s and 80s, but rebounded in the 1990s with the spread of new information and communication technologies. The knowledge economy, however, did not bring about a jobless future or a world without work as some scholars had predicted. With few exceptions, work hours of full-time employees have hardly fallen in the advanced capitalist countries in the last three decades, while in a number of countries they have actually increased since the 1980s.

This book takes the persistence of long work hours as starting point to investigate the relationship between capitalism and work time. It does so by discussing major theoretical schools and their explanations for the length and distribution of work hours, as well as tracing major changes in production and reproduction systems, and analyzing their consequences for work hours.

Furthermore, this volume explores the struggle for shorter work hours starting from the introduction of the ten-hour work day in the 19th century to the introduction of the thirty-five hour week in France and Germany at the end of the 20th century. However, the book also shows how neoliberalism has eroded collective work time regulations and resulted in an increase and polarization of work hours since the 1980s. Finally, the book argues that shorter work hours not only means more free-time for workers, but also reduces inequality and improves human and ecological sustainability. "

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ De Dinumeramentis, Et Reversalibus Feudi Vulgo Lehen-Reversen. Resp. Christoph Hermann Schweder Gabriel Schweder, Christoph Hermann Schweder Reisius, 1703

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Beytrag Zur Geschichte Rulands Vom Jahre 1727 - 1744: Mit Charten Christoph Hermann von Manstein

In recent years activists around the globe have challenged the commodification of water, education, health care, and other essential goods, while academics have warned from unintended effects when everything can be bought and sold. But what is commodification? And what is the problem with commodification? In The Critique of Commodification, Christoph Hermann argues that commodification entails production for profit rather than social needs, and that production for profit has a number of harmful effects, including the exclusion of those who cannot pay, the marginalization of those whose collective purchasing power is not large enough, and the focus on highly profitable forms of production over more socially beneficial and ecologically sustainable alternatives. Drawing upon and extending the work of Marx, Polyani, and Luxemburg, Hermann goes beyond the standard moral critiques of markets and adopts a materialist approach to emphasize the dispossession of public resources and to highlight how goods and services are altered when sold on markets for profit. Tracing the intellectual history of the term commodification, this book not only criticizes commodification, but also proposes a new model for production that focuses on needs rather than profits.