The Kharkiv text of Ukrainian literature is examined for the first time from the point of view of a cross‑cultural analysis of the iconic work by H. Kvitka‑Osnovʹyanenko The Foundation of Kharkiv. The expediency for introducing this concept into academic circulation is argued for because of the traditional covering of Kharkiv and Sloboda Ukraine in literature, culture, and history. Substantiated are the conditions and specifics of the integral text about the city and the formation of identity under the influence of frontier psychology. Emphasized are the differences between the creation of national stereotypes and the birth of an independent worldview, and postcolonial experience.

Does science have outer limits? Where are the boundaries of the universe, and what lies beyond them? What will the end of science entail?

The paper discusses Bayesian productivity analysis of 27 EU Member States, USA, Japan and Switzerland. Bayesian Stochastic Frontier Analysis and a two-stage structural decomposition of output growth are used to trace sources of output growth. This allows us to separate the impacts of capital accumulation, labour growth, technical progress and technical efficiency change on economic development. Since estimates of the growth components are conditioned upon model parameterisation and the underlying assumptions, a number of possible specifications are considered. The best model for decomposing output growth is chosen based on the highest marginal data density, which is calculated using adjusted harmonic mean estimator.

The main aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies on technical efficiency of Polish dairy farms. We have distinguished several types of subsidies and provided an analysis to find out which types are most likely to engender systematic differences in technical efficiency. A balanced panel of microeconomic data on Polish dairy farms over an eight-year period (between 2004 and 2011), taken from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), is used. The translog production function is estimated by employing the Bayesian approach. The empirical results show that the elasticity of production with respect to livestock is the highest, whereas with respect to feed is the lowest. The mean technical efficiency in the covered period is 83%. The research reveals the negative effect of subsidies on technical efficiency.

The subject of many controversies has been both the understanding of the limits of scientific knowledge and the indication of the “boundary” conditions of orders placed for it. In some cases, we are in favor of widening these boundaries in such a way that they can also include religious and quasi-religious beliefs, while in others we are in favor of narrowing them so that knowledge and faith can be clearly distinguished. In these considerations, I cite examples of positions on both issues that have in the past met with both relatively wide acceptance and serious reservations. It is worth taking a closer look at them, because it turns out that in science nothing is decided once and for all, and what seemed to belong to the past sometimes comes back with even greater force. I show this on two examples of contemporary positions on the issue of understanding the limits of scientific knowledge.

An Arpadian age (10th–11th c.) burial ground was unearthed on the plateau of Oberleiserberg along with features and findings from several other periods. It was first discovered during the excavation led by Herbert Mitscha-Märheim and Ernst Nischer-Falkenhof in the 1920s and 30s. In the 1970s and 80s the site was archaeologically investigated by Herwig Friesinger and his team. During these archaeological campaigns 71 additional graves were found. The multidisciplinary analyses of the medieval findings and features as well as the human remains unearthed on Oberleiserberg are part of the international project Frontier, Contact Zone or No Man’s Land — The Morava- Thaya Region from the Early to the High Medieval Ages (I 1911 G21, led by Stefan Eichert and Jiří Macháček funded by FWF (Austrian Science Fund) and GAČR (Czech Science Foundation). The early and high medieval findings indicate contact of the entombed population with nonnative peoples, possibly reaching as far as the Baltic Sea. Anthropological analysis of the excavated skeletons shows us more about the everyday life of the people buried here and together with isotopic analysis of the human remains, conclusions about their living conditions are possible.

The present contribution considers the Pannonian ‘inner fortifications’ in the context of the development of the infrastructure and urban fabric of selected sites on the Lower Danube. Using Sándor Sopronis’ thesis, which postulates that a multiple defensive system gradually expanded in Pannonia after the time of the Tetrarchy, as a starting point, this study concentrates on the inner fortifications founded in the middle third of the 4th century AD in the hinterland of the Limes (Környe, Tác / Gorsium, Keszthely-Fenékpuszta and Alsóheténypuszta) which, together with towns such as Sopianae, Mursa, Cibalae, Sirmium und Bassianae, constituted an inner line of defence. Whether they functioned in a civil or purely military context is a subject that has been, and still is, much debated. However, they appear to have played a significant role in the storage, distribution, and perhaps production, of the annona. A similar situation can be observed on the Lower Danube, in the provinces of Dacia Ripensis, Moesia Prima and Scythia. Here too a series of castra and towns, which took on similar functions in the course of the 4th century AD, are found some 30 to 50 km from the frontier. This area however saw a further development well into the late 6th century AD: several sites continued to play a central role as the sees of bishoprics in the Early Byzantine Period. The examples of Abritus and Tropaeum Traiani, which both possess elements that are strikingly similar to the Pannonian establishments, are used here to gain insights into the processes at work and to discuss the structural parallels comparatively.

The paper considers the modeling and estimation of the stochastic frontier model where the error components are assumed to be correlated and the inefficiency error is assumed to be autocorrelated. The multivariate Farlie-Gumble-Morgenstern (FGM) and normal copula are used to capture both the contemporaneous and the temporal dependence between, and among, the noise and the inefficiency components. The intractable multiple integrals that appear in the likelihood function of the model are evaluated using the Halton sequence based Monte Carlo (MC) simulation technique. The consistency and the asymptotic efficiency of the resulting simulated maximum likelihood (SML) estimators of the present model parameters are established. Finally, the application of model using the SML method to the real life US airline data shows significant noise-inefficiency dependence and temporal dependence of inefficiency.

The study of colonial discourse in belles‑lettres fiction in the context of the “great time” (M. Bakhtin) allows us to trace its connections with the historical and cultural past, with today’s realities and find a connection with future events. Particularly interesting in this regard is the Russian colonial discourse, which claims a special place in history that distinguishes it from the colonial discourses of other empires. The poem by the poet Pavel Vasiliev, who was repressed in 1937, reflects imperial ideologemes relating to the Asian frontier – the Kazakh‑Russian transboundary. The colonial discourse in the poem is built on the opposition ‘COSSACKS – KAZAKHS’, which is an implementation of the opposition ‘OWN – OTHER’. In the conditions of the frontier the image of the OTHER is transformed into the image of the ENEMY. The Cossacks, the defenders of the imperial borders, brutally suppress the revolt of the Kazakhs working in salt mining. They act under the slogan‑ideologems of defending the fatherland, the tsar, and Orthodoxy. The description of this suppression is distinguished in the poem by naturalistic details, which are not of the author’s imagination, but an image of information heard from others. The author conveys the attitude of the Cossacks to the murder of unarmed women, children, old people, as a revelry, fun, using the technique of the “carnivalization” of a terrible, awful event. The author shows sympathy and pity for the victims of the massacre and presents the Cossacks as ruthless killers and robbers.

The paper investigates Bayesian approach to estimate generalized true random-effects models (GTRE). The analysis shows that under suitably defined priors for transient and persistent inefficiency terms the posterior characteristics of such models are well approximated using simple Gibbs sampling. No model re-parameterization is required. The proposed modification not only allows us to make more reasonable (less informative) assumptions as regards prior transient and persistent inefficiency distribution but also appears to be more reliable in handling especially noisy datasets. Empirical application furthers the research into stochastic frontier analysis using GTRE models by examining the relationship between inefficiency terms in GTRE, true random-effects, generalized stochastic frontier and a standard stochastic frontier model.

The number 1 aim of the paper is to note theoretical explanations of three facts: the remarkably rapid acceleration of the rate of growth of the per capita domestic product (GDP) in a small part of the world economy in the early 19th century, a strong stability of the per capita GDP growth rates in countries of that part since then, and a very strong divergence in the per capita GDP growth among the less developed countries. The number 2 aim is to note the probable implications of these explanations for the likely rate of global economic growth during this and next centuries.