Financing Regional Development Through Development Banks
A combination of various sources of financing is a necessary prerequisite to finance any development as well as regional development. Sources of financing can be monitored and evaluated from the aspects of suitability (cost aspect), availability and abundance. Ultimate users of funds give advantage to financial sources whose availability and abundance is at the maximum level, and costs are at their minimum. For the most part, development bank funds meet the above mentioned requirements, since the main function of these banks is to finance certain activities under special (more favourable) conditions. The significance, justification and evaluation of this form of financial resources in the regional development segment are becoming more and more prominent. The subject of this paper is the amount and conditions of development bank loans in the area of Osijek-Baranja and Vukovar-Srijem Counties.
Gender Pay Gap in the European Union Labor Market
The participation of women in the European Union labor market has been increasing over recent years, putting an end to the notion that women are a marginal part of the labor force. However, such increased integration of women into paid work has neither ended the traditional gender divide between jobs nor it translated into gender equality in terms of economic opportunity and economic participation in the labor market. The purpose of the paper is to briefly discuss the gender pay gap in the EU labor market. The paper defines gender pay gap and provides a brief theoretical overview of the underlying causes of such pay asymmetry between men and women. Statistics provided for EU 25 reveal that the current policy attempts to reduce such a gender asymmetry still lack improvement in practice. The paper concludes with selected policy suggestions aiming to make a progress in the issue of the gender equality in pay.
Detection of Fractures Based on Directional Filtering in Image Logging
According to the feature of the direction of fractures in image logging, a method of fracture detection in image logging based on directional filtering is presented in this paper. The fracture image is filtered by the corresponding filter based on the local direction of fractures, which enhances the fracture traces in the direction of fractures in image logging. The final fracture traces are extracted by the combination of the results of both directional filtering and the threshold segmentation. Experimental results show this method effectively detect the fractures in image logging.