The Other Bulgaria is a term deeply embedded in the Bulgarian socio-political discourse in relation to outward migratory flows, which have seen a 10% decrease of the country’s population between 1992 and 2012 alone (OECD, 2012). This phenomenon is contextualised in wider European processes of intensified integration, leading to the EU’s first and second wave of Eastern enlargement. However, such cosmopolitan trends have always been in tension with nationalist sentiments, the latter becoming more prominent in the last few years.

Chair: Tim Vlandas, St Antony’s College

Clara Durodié works with boards of directors in the financial services sector and advises them on the strategic adoption of AI for business growth. She also works with AI startups and government authorities and advises them on responsible AI design and ethical adoption.

In this presentation she will talk about some of her recent research on the policy impact of enterprise AI adoption, which is detailed in her upcoming book Edge of Progress: How AI is Transforming Financial Services.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most transformative forces of our time, and is bound to alter the fabric of society. It presents a great opportunity to increase prosperity and growth, which Europe must strive to achieve. Over the last decade, major advances were realised due to the availability of vast amounts of digital data, powerful computing architectures, and advances in AI techniques such as machine learning. Major AI-enabled developments in autonomous vehicles, healthcare, home/service robots, education, or cybersecurity are improving the quality of our lives every day.

Abstract:

Large-scale refugee repatriation is sometimes considered a threat to stability and sustainable development because of the burden it could impose on receiving communities. Yet the empirical evidence on the impacts of refugee return is limited. Using longitudinal data from Burundi collected in 2011 and 2015, this paper explores the consequences of repatriation for stayee households (i.e. those who never left the country during the conflict). Burundi experienced large-scale repatriation during the 2000s, with the returning refugees unevenly spread across the country.

Conventional wisdom holds that landed elites oppose democratization. Landlords' political and economic influence may weaken with development, while commercial, financial and industrial elites grow stronger. Yet economic growth doesn't just alter the balance of forces; to the extent that landowners no longer need to control agricultural labor, it can actually change their political preferences. This occurs when landowners can substitute technology for labor.