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"The study of Latin American and Caribbean international relations has a long evolution both within the development of international relations as a general academic undertaking and in terms of the particular characteristics that distinguish the approaches taken by scholars in the field. This handbook provides a thorough multidisciplinary reference guide to the literature on the various elements of the international relations of Latin America and the Caribbean. Citing over 1600 sources that date from the nineteenth century to the present, with emphasis on recent decades, the volume's analytic essays trace the evolution of research in terms of concepts, issues, and themes. The Handbook is a companion volume to Atkins' Latin America and the Caribbean in the International System, Fourth Edition, but also serves as an invaluable stand-alone reference volume for students, scholars, researchers, journalists, and practitioners, both official and private."--Provided by publisher.

Crop modelling has the potential to contribute to global food and nutrition security. This paper briefly examines the history of crop modelling by international crop research centres of the CGIAR (formerly Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research but now known simply as CGIAR), whose primary focus is on less developed countries. Basic principles of crop modelling building up to a Genotype × Environment × Management × Socioeconomic (G × E × M × S) paradigm, are explained. Modelling has contributed to better understanding of crop performance and yield gaps, better prediction of pest and insect outbreaks, and improving the efficiency of crop management including irrigation systems and optimization of planting dates. New developments include, for example, use of remote sensed data and mobile phone technology linked to crop management decision support models, data sharing in the new era of big data, and the use of genomic selection and crop simulation models linked to environmental data to help make crop breeding decisions. Socio-economic applications include foresight analysis of agricultural systems under global change scenarios, and the consequences of potential food system shocks are also described. These approaches are discussed in this paper which also calls for closer collaboration among disciplines in order to better serve the crop research and development communities by providing model based recommendations ranging from policy development at the level of governmental agencies to direct crop management support for resource poor farmers. ; IFPRI3; HarvestChoice ; EPTD ; PR ; CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture (Big Data); CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT); CGIAR Research Program on Rice (GRiSP)

This paper appraises current economic methodologies used in analyzing the social rate of time preference and discounting, abatement costs, and value of life estimates as they relate to climate change. It makes a case for choosing an appropriate rate of time preference when assessing climate policies, including both positive and normative considerations. Furthermore, the paper argues that the currently estimated disparity in the cost of greenhouse gas abatement between developed countries and developing countries may be inaccurate. Integrating discount rates, abatement costs, and value of life estimates highlights important and contrasting implications of international climate policy for developing and high‐income countries. The context of the paper is the forthcoming Second Assessment Report of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"The role of civilian police in peace operations has expanded greatly since the early 1990s and has culminated in international policemen assuming responsibility for law and order in Kosovo and East Timor. Civilian police still struggle with shortfalls in quality and quantity, with inadequate planning and deployment delays. More importantly, their operational effectiveness remains dependent on political support from their domestic authorities, the UN and local political leadership in the conflict area. Despite these challenges, as this paper maps out, civilian police play a critical role in reforming local police forces and at times enforcing the law themselves"--Page 4 of cover.

"In 1997, officially 950.000 persons from the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) lived in the European Union. This amounted to a share of 0.2% of the total population, only. This migration, however, was unevenly spread across European Union countries: 527.000 citizens of the CEECs lived in Germany, 103 000 in Austria. In terms of share of population Austria was the most strongly affected country before Germany (Brücker, 1999). Although the economic consequences of this migration are still disputed, their political impact has been highly visible in terms of changes in migration policies in both countries, and to a large degree these experiences of early transition influence discussions on the accession of the CEECs in the European Union. Undoubtedly the question most often asked concerning enlargement is: how many migrants will come? A series of economic studies has recently addressed this issue concentrating on the socalled 'gravity equations' i.e. by focusing (almost) exclusively on per capita GDP differentials as the driving force behind international migration. In this paper we confront this gravity approach both with theory and empirical data in an effort to assess a) the quality of existing estimates of 'potential migration' and b) the possibility of predicting international migration in general. To this end we shortly describe the results of previous studies, which attempt to assess the migration potential from Central and Eastern Europe, and confront them with migration theory in section 2. Section 3 analyses two examples of migration: East-West migration in Germany after unification and intra EU migration in the period 1983-91 and estimates models of migration. Section 4 looks at how well the estimated models would have predicted migration between East and West Germany and between Spain and Germany after 1992, respectively. Section 5 concludes the paper." (excerpt)