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The rebirth of competition and the extensive "exit" that has resulted are among the most important developments in Central Europe since the demise of Communism. This text examines why, how, and to what extent enterprises have reduced their size or left the market altogether during the first years of the transition from socialism to capitalism in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland

THIS PAPER EXPLORES THE INFLUENCE OF ECONOMIC, TECHNOLOGICAL, AND POLITICAL FACTORS UPON THE FIFTY AMERICAN STATES' POLICY RESPONSES TO THE PROBLEM OF HAZARDOUS WASTE REGULATION. THE RESEARCH ENDEAVORS TO INTEGRATE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY RESEARCH INTO THE MAINSTREAM COMPARATIVE STATE POLICY TRADITION. PREVIOUS COMPARATIVE STATE STUDIES SUGGEST THAT ECONOMIC RESOURCES ARE STRONGLY RELATED TO STATE POLICY OUTPUTS WHILE POLITICAL FACTORS (SUCH AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY STRENGTH, INTERPARTY COMPETITION, LEGISLATIVE PROFESSIONALISM, ETC.) ARE ONLY WEAKLY OR NEGATIVELY RELATED TO POLICY OUTPUTS. THIS STUDY, BY CONSTRAST, FINDS A MORE RESTRICTED ROLE BEING PLAYED BY ECONOMIC FACTORS. BOTH TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS (ESPECIALLY TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS RELATING TO THE SEVERITY OF THE PROBLEM) AND POLITICAL FACTORS (ESPECIALLY LEGISLATIVE PROFESSIONALISM AND CONSOLIDATION OF THE STATE ENVIRONMENTAL BUREAUCRACY) ARE STRONGLY RELATED TO PUBLIC POLICIES ENACTED FOR THE REGULATION OF HAZARDOUS WASTE. THUS, TECHNOLOGICAL FORCES AND STATE ADMINISTRATIVE-ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITIES DESERVE MORE ATTENTION IN FUTURE STUDIES OF STATE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ACTIVIES.

The article aims to investigate the processes of deconstruction of the institution of the welfare state under the influence of such new challenges as economic globalization and technological revolution. The study is based on the methodological tools of neo-institutionalism. Principal exogenous and endogenous reasons for the crisis of the welfare state institution are determined. Economic globalization and technological progress are designated as decisive factors conditioning the deconstruction of the welfare state. It is stated that irrespective of the welfare state model, nowadays they all are reformed towards the activation of a working-age person and the establishment of the state of social investments. Currently the configuration of the welfare state is specified by its commitment to stimulating competition and developing the self-initiative of citizens in terms of ensuring their own prosperity. It is highlighted that economic globalization and technological progress should not be considered exclusively from the standpoint of risks for the welfare state. These two factors are identified as stimuli for further evolution of the welfare state institution for the sake of its moving out of prolonged stagnation and preserving itself as a political institution, albeit in the upgraded model. Key words welfare state institution; deconstruction of the welfare state; economic globalization; platform economy; technological progress; Industry 4.0

[eng] Tax administration is central to the working of any tax system. This thesis focuses on the Spanish case and proves the existence of two kind of externalities that might arise in tax administration policies when decentralized. These are: inter-jurisdictional externalities due to the federal institutional design (competition vs. cooperation), and tax authority's endogenous reaction to external shocks (in terms of changes in tax enforcement) as a result of tax autonomy. The focus for the whole research line developed in this thesis is Spain, which provides a interesting federal framework for investigation. Indeed the regional governments of fifteen of the seventeen "common" regime autonomous communities have had the power to administer several wealth taxes since the mid-eighties and subsequent reforms, in 1997 and 2002, have conferred on them the normative power to make changes to certain statutory tax parameters (see Esteller, 2008, for further details on these reforms). The other two regions, the so-called "foral" autonomous communities (the Basque Country and Navarre), for historical reasons, administer almost all the taxes falling due within their territory – including VAT, personal income tax and corporate income tax – and they have the normative power to regulate most of them . This setting provides me with the opportunity to explore different types of externalities that might impact tax administration policies. In Chapter 2 the presence of horizontal competition in tax enforcement is examined in the context of the common regime autonomous communities. Chapter 3 presents an analysis of the potential room for cooperation derived from misreported tax returns in this federal context. Chapter 4 estimates the externality effect on tax enforcement caused by the costs of terrorism in the foral autonomous communities. The three central chapters of this thesis represent something of a novelty in the literature as they are the first empirical studies on externalities in tax administration policies. The whole research line shows that in a federal framework these policies are employed by tax authorities as strategic instruments, demonstrating that decentralizing tax administration gives regional governments additional degrees of tax autonomy. In particular, Chapters 2 and 4 show that tax enforcement policies can be used by tax authorities in order to counter the loss of revenues due to the potential mobility of tax bases. In both studies, tax administrations are found to lower the tax burden by cutting the tax audit rate in order to retain mobile tax bases, where the taxpayers' incentive to move is based solely on classic horizontal tax competition or, alternatively, on an external shock such as terrorism. In the context of horizontal tax competition presented in Chapter 2, the mutual strategic reaction of tax authorities generates inefficiency in the setting of enforcement policies. Although this problem is partially reduced by the subsequent decentralization of normative power, the further inefficiencies that arise open the door for future research in this field so as to identify means, other than harmonization, that might circumvent this issue. Chapter 4 allows us to conclude that part of the shock due to terrorism is internalized by the tax administration and, thus, further research is needed in order to disentangle the actual impact of terrorism in terms of economic costs for the region. Chapter 3 shows that potential cooperation in tax management is possible when tax administration is decentralized at a sub-central level although it is partially undermined by short-sighted incentives caused by administrative, transaction and financial costs.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore resilience strategies of Chinese street vendors in a shifted regulatory policy environment from a strength-based and entrepreneurial perspective.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon nine in-depth interviews and naturalistic observations in an urban village of Guangzhou, China, the study empirically investigates how unregulated sidewalk-based hawkers struggle to survive against socioeconomic adversities compared with regulated vendors' operations in a legitimate transitional market.FindingsMirroring a sub-group of rural-to-urban migrants, street vendors espouse subtle strategies centering on purposefulness, resourcefulness and hardiness, which are instantiated through family obligation, sales tactics, merchandising techniques, technology application, trading flexibility, moral sentiment and assistance network. As such, street entrepreneurs are both enacting and constructing resilience in response to specific challenging contexts including impoverishment, operating cost inflation, contingent loss, fierce competition, market uncertainty, intensive workloads, municipal inspection and arbitrary governance practice of village cooperative organization.Research limitations/implicationsNotwithstanding its limited generalizability, the result sheds light on crystallization of street vendors' resilience and informs social services and policy remedies.Originality/valueThe study provides a frame of reference to examine the interplay of resilience theory from psychology and entrepreneurship thesis from the field of business management by adding new evidence to the research on "entrepreneurial resilience" and potentially serves as a catalyst to enrich existing literature with an integrated perspective to comprehend the coping process of these necessity-driven micro-enterprise operators. The antagonistic understanding of informal economy is so predominating that it obscures structural oppression undermining social justice, whereas the spirit of self-reliance among street entrepreneurs is ought to be respected.

TRACES THE SOVIET DOCTRINE OF PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE FROM THE TIME OF LENIN TO THE PRESENT. EXAMINES THE NATURE OF THE POSTWAR, NUCLEAR WORLD WHICH PROMPTED THE SOVIET SEARCH FOR EAST-WEST DETENTE. IDENTIFIES THE PREREQUISITES FOR A CONTINUATION OF AN ERA OF PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE. DISCUSSES AREAS OF COMPETITION REMAINING BETWEEN THE TWO SYSTEMS.

The concentration of the Nigerian financial sector has long been recognised to be an important factor affecting the financial stability and welfare at an individual level in the economy. While various studies have been conducted to examine the sensitivity of this phenomenon to macro economy, little has been done to examine the effect of concentration on credit availability in Nigeria. In addition, no study has investigated the role of remittances on the relationship between bank concentration and availability of credit. Taking motivation from the Nigerian banking consolidation exercise, this article examined the effect of remittances and bank concentration on availability of credit in Nigeria. The author employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test approach for co-integration on Nigerian data for the period of 1986–2015. The results revealed that bank concentration constrains the development of financial sector in Nigeria and remittances improve the level of financial development (credit availability) in the long run but inhibit the availability of credit in the short run. The negative relationship occurs in the short run because of the regulatory framework governing international money transfers in Nigeria, which simply inhibits competition. In the long run, recipients who have received remittances from informal settings would need financial products and services in which those remittances would be banked and further improve the financial sector. It was concluded that since Nigerian financial sector remained underdeveloped, the sector could be driven by encouraging inflow of remittances into the country. Our findings also persist after batteries of robustness check.

Despite growing interest in evidence among parliamentarians and some emerging literature on evidence use in decision making in parliaments, there is still a notable gap in knowledge on the ecosystem of evidence in parliaments. This paper seeks to contribute to filling this gap by discussing the contribution of a loose regional network, the Network of African Parliamentary Committees on Health (NEAPACOH), to the evidence ecosystem in African parliaments. Although the network was not set up to strengthen evidence use, its mechanisms for realising its goal of strengthening parliamentary committees of health to effectively tackle health challenges in Africa provide an opportunity for understanding how such networks are contributing to strengthening the weak evidence ecosystem in African parliaments. The authors have been involved in the work of the network and therefore use this network for this study purposively. Data were gathered through document review and 34 in-depth interviews with parliamentarians, parliament staff and development partners. Results show that, in a context of weak institutional support and technical capacity to enable evidence use in African parliaments, the network's activities respond to some of the key barriers hindering parliamentarians from using evidence, including: limited access to evidence, complexity of evidence, weak capacity to understand evidence, and weak/lacking linkages with researchers/experts. Apart from generating demand, providing evidence, building capacity for increased evidence use, and linking MPs and researchers/experts, the network creates a sense of competition among countries by requiring countries to make commitments and report progress against the commitments annually, which provide impetus for action.

Chapter 1. The University Strategy Narrative -- Chapter 2. University Governance -- Chapter 3. What is Strategy? -- Chapter 4 Strategic Frameworks -- Chapter 5. Environment, Competition, Resources & Capabilities -- Chapter 6. Mission, Vision & Values -- Chapter 7. Objectives -- Chapter 8. Arenas, Vehicles, Differentiators, Staging & Economic Logic -- Chapter 9. Strategy -- Chapter 10. Organizational Structure -- Chapter 11. A New University -- Chapter 12. Some Final Thoughts.

This paper uses new data on agricultural policy interventions to examine the political economy of agricultural trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Historically, African governments have discriminated against agricultural producers in general (relative to producers in non-agricultural sectors), and against producers of export agriculture in particular. While more moderate in recent years, these patterns of discrimination persist. They do so even though farmers comprise a political majority. Rather than claiming the existence of a single best approach to the analysis of policy choice, the authors explore the impact of three factors: institutions, regional inequality, and tax revenue-generation. The authors find that agricultural taxation increases with the rural population share in the absence of electoral party competition; yet, the existence of party competition turns the lobbying disadvantage of the rural majority into political advantage. The authors also find that privileged cash crop regions are particular targets for redistributive taxation, unless the country's president comes from that region. In addition, governments of resource-rich countries, while continuing to tax export producers, reduce their taxation of food consumers.

Attempts to revise the view held by many political scientists that the formulation of election pledges is a peripheral aspect of parties' electoral appeals. Arguments are based on a reevaluation of the saliency theory of party competition & an analysis of the election programs published by the four main Dutch parties prior to the 1986, 1989, & 1994 parliamentary elections. It is demonstrated that parties formulate specific policy proposals in important policy areas. One of the research questions raised by this phenomenon concerns the conditions under which these election pledges are supported in the coalition agreements negotiated by the prospective coalition partners after the elections. It is concluded that the formulation of coalition agreements involves real policy negotiations in which the prospective coalition parties have a unique opportunity to impose their policy priorities on the government's policy agenda. 9 Tables, 24 References. Adapted from the source document.

PurposeThe goal of this paper is associated with the study of global processes which change the world order and are accompanied with the aggravation of economic competition and geopolitical confrontation, which cause large-scale migration, radicalization of ethnicity and the rise of ethnic separatism. These processes contribute to the aggravation of interethnic antagonisms in multicultural countries and regions; therefore, it is necessary to search for adequate models of interethnic relations management in a multicultural society.Design/methodology/approachThe methodological foundation of this research consists in activity, civilization, and transformation approaches, which allow understanding the specificity of global processes, the causes of the actualization of ethnic factor in the modern world and the search for new methods of interethnic relations management.FindingsThis paper presents an overview of models of interethnic relations management established in the western countries in the second half of the 20th century. The authors identify specific features of the assimilation and multiculturalism models for managing ethnic differences, their methods of regulation of interethnic relations in a multicultural environment. Their potential in solving the issues of adaptation of migrants and their integration in political and cultural space of the host society in the face of new global challenges and threats is assessed.Originality/valueThe authors of the paper justify the need for a new model of interethnic relations management which is able to forecast the global development trends and adequately respond to negative consequences of global processes.