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AbstractThis study explores the impact of intellectual capital (IC) on solvency risk and examines the moderating effect of the board of directors. This study used fixed‐effect analysis and hierarchical regression models to test the research hypotheses. The results reveal that IC composition significantly impacts insurers' solvency risk. Additionally, independent directors of life insurers have a positive impact on solvency, and non‐life insurers' board size has a positive impact on solvency. Moreover, we find that the board of directors has a moderating effect on IC and solvency risks in life insurance. Fundamentally, the results provide valuable implications for insurers in improving their solvency and supervision bases for the competent authorities.

1. Introduction -- 2. Why should we care? -- 3. Causes of the current food insecurity and potential solutions : poverty -- 4. Causes of the current food insecurity and potential solutions : human overpopulation -- 5. Causes of the current food insecurity and potential solutions : lack of farmland and expansion of the biofuel industry -- 6. Uneven food distribution and distorted agricultural trade : an overlooked factor -- 7. Prospects for further agricultural trade reform -- 8. Agricultural policies in the EU and the US and their impact on international agricultural trade -- 9. Conclusion.

"Most scholars attribute systemic causes of food insecurity to poverty, human overpopulation, lack of farmland, and expansion of biofuel programs. However, as Chen argues here, another significant factor has been overlooked. The current food insecurity is not absolute food shortage, since global food production still exceeds the need of the entire world population, but a problem of how to secure access to resources. Distorted agricultural trade undermines world food distribution, and uneven distribution impedes people's access to food, particularly in poor developing countries. Examining EU and US agricultural policies and World Trade Organization negotiations in agriculture, the author argues how they affect the international agricultural trade, claiming that current food insecurity is the result of inequitable food distribution and trade practices. The international trade regime is advised to reconcile trade rules with the consideration of food security issues. Several other enforceable solutions to reduce world hunger and malnutrition are also advanced, including national capacity building, the improvement of governance, and strategic development of biofuel programs. This book will be of great interest to agricultural trade professionals and consultant policy makers in the EU, US and developing countries. Students and researchers with a concentration on international trade, agriculture economics, global governance and international law will benefit greatly from this study."--Page 4 of cover

As the peak of the development of Chinese landscape painting, the Song Dynasty not only had its own innovation in brush and ink techniques, but also had a profound impact on the inheritance of subsequent generations. Under the influence of different social development and economic condition artists of the Northern Song (960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279) used various brush and ink techniques, the study of which allows to expand the understanding of the processes of evolution of landscape painting in China as a whole.

Space design should be combined with local spiritual culture and material culture, but also deeply influenced by the symbol system. In this article the author tries to explore the influence of the characteristics of semiotics on space design and meaning transmission using the symbolic theory of the two axes of de Saussure.

"Degrowth" may often be associated with the left, but can also have conservative—even ecofascist—implications. What do proponents and critics mean by "degrowth"? How do these differences play out ideologically? Ying Chen writes that, for radicals, the answer is to place the economic system at the center of the degrowth narrative, thus naming the system that must be replaced with a more just and equitable socialist society.

AbstractEcological imperialism refers to the historical and contemporary exercise of power by the North over the South that leads to ecologically destructive consequences of which the South is usually the victim. Using this power, wealthy countries in the Global North are capable of steering mainstream discourse on global environmental issues in directions that benefit and privilege themselves at the expense of the Global South. Analysis should thus be applied not only to ecological imperialism in the pure economic sense, but also to the uneven power relations in the political and ideological arena that serve to reproduce ecological imperialism in an overarching sense. This article, inspired by the concept of ecological imperialism developed in the Marxian tradition, explores how researchers and global institutions in the Global North frame the narratives of climate change culpability through selective presentation of emission statistics that tends to minimize the accountability of the North while inflating that of the Global South. Such narratives also contain the Malthusian perception that economic development and population growth in the Global South, above all, should be taken as major threats to climate change solutions. This type of reasoning again serves to justify and maintain the current hierarchical global system and reinforce ecological imperialism.

The hukou system is typically treated as an institutional base for rural-urban chasm in the literature regarding internal migration in China. However, these works rarely separate hukou's social impacts from those caused by the changes in the economic system itself. With a review of historical policy documents, data on migration from rural to urban sectors, agricultural output and industrial output growth, I argue that hukou is in fact a rather neutral and passive legislation in the sense that it can perform opposite functions depending on the particular economic system it is operating under. This paper calls for bringing the concept of economic system back to the center of the discussion regarding development models.JEL Classification: O15, D63

The potential trade-off between environmental protection and employment stability has been a concern in the literature. However, in the case of China, the employment issue has not been adequately addressed despite government's big push on investing in renewable energy since 2007. This essay addresses the employment issue through estimating the relative employment impacts of renewable energy investments versus spending within the traditional fossil fuel sectors based on input-output modeling with China-specific data of sector and sub-sector weighting techniques. I find that spending within three segments of the renewable energy sectors—solar, wind and bioenergy, will produce in combination about twice as many jobs per dollar of expenditure than an equal amount of spending on fossil fuels. I also find that, more than 70% of jobs from renewable energy sectors are created in the informal economy. This raises questions about the quality of the jobs created through renewable energy investments.