There is an official enthusiasm about the eastern enlargement of the EU. A select group of advanced transition countries (the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Hungary and Poland) may enter the EU in the future. Nonetheless, the cost of the eastern (to a large extent agricultural) enlargement is not fully understood. That holds true both for the applicant countries and the EU. The actual costs could be assessed following the end of the seventh Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) that was supposed to prepare the EU for the coming decades. At the same time, the IGC was expected to set the final terms of entry. No matter how settled, the eastern enlargement will be very costly, the EU will have to ‘pay’ for the cohesion and agriculture, while the applicant countries will have to implement acquis communautaire. The accepted countries could not expect to be fully absorbed into the EU before 2015! An arrangement such as the European Economic Space (full membership minus agriculture, minus labour mobility and minus regional funds) may be a more workable solution for the transition countries, and for the EU. Full membership may be necessary in the end as the foundation of European integration is the preservation of peace and liberty in Europe. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The modified new growth theory yields the growth trajectories and gross fixed capital formations of the US, Germany, Japan, Korea and China analytically in closed form. Growth is driven by the gap in relevant knowledge compared with the state of the art. Excellent quantitative agreement is obtained with only two fundamental economic parameters: the ‘maximum sustainable growth rate’ 0.16 p.a. corresponds to the generation gap of 25 years. It is not by chance that it is equal to the physical lifetime of our capital stock. The ‘skill parameter’ measures the overall ability of a country to achieve optimal growth. For the first time there is a good explanation for the long postwar periods of nearly linear growth as well as for the dynamic structural unemployment of Germany, and a fairly reliable prediction of the world's changing resource balance which might result from the development of China. Adam Smith's 1776 prediction is verified, that there can be no sustainable solution to the employment problem within the paradigm of the industrial society. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Language is not only the servant of the law but also its master. Language constitutes a pattern of recognition that sets the frame for legal discussions. It is normally not as precise as we are made to believe. From language to writing again changes the pattern of recognition. Writing is a time machine, it is characterized by inertia, and rigidity. It pretends to offer a context free language, and thus tends to give abstract rules a superior meaning. We have to be aware of this when interpreting written texts which should not be taken more seriously than oral words. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This essay examines the spectacles of the Roman amphitheatre—gladiatorial combat, displays involving animals, and the execution of criminals—as an example of orchestrated violence integral to the functioning of society, and tries to account for their spectator-appeal. The evidence of literary, epigraphic, and artistic sources from the Roman Empire suggests a range of important factors: the ubiquity of violent crime in Antiquity, and of its corollary, public punishment; the social status of gladiators and the expertise required of them; the view of Nature as a spectacle provided for mankind; the loss of inhibition among spectators through crowd-identity and emotional stimuli; the provision of spectacles as a function of patronage; the role of spectacle in the Roman economy; and the ‘imperial imperative’ whereby the dominant power has to assert its physical and moral superiority in order to sustain its ideology and control its subject peoples. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The study of the distribution of matter in the Universe is at the forefront of modern astronomy, and stimulates numerous research programmes both in theory, observation and experiment. The distribution of galaxies has a cell-like structure resulting from the alternation of sheets and voids with the topological properties of a ‘sponge’. The large diameter of the voids (150 million light-years) and the high degree of isotropy of the microwave background radiation define the reference frame for the theoretical models for the formation of the large-scale structure. The essential ingredients of these models are: the clustering of matter under the gravitational attraction, the initial matter fluctuations which left their imprint into the cosmic microwave background radiation and a large amount of dark matter filling the voids and walls of galaxies. Measurement of the statistical properties of the large-scale structure, and determination of the scale at which it becomes homogeneous provide direct tests of the Big Bang model. Major advances are expected by the end of the century from the largest telescopes and their sophisticated instruments. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

East and Central Europe was separated from the West by the Iron Curtain, but its opening has not immediately remedied the feeling of separation, but rather induced a feeling of cultural foreignness and inferiority, amplified by relative poverty. But the world's future lies in indigence and the East can teach the West how to be somewhat poorer without losing the joy of living. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.