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Energy demand is surging in the developing world, and international organizations play an important role in the funding of energy projects. However, there is virtually no empirical analysis of how different organizations choose their project portfolios. This article examines the energy funding of different international organizations, with a particular focus on the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA) and International Finance Corporation (IFC). We use data on 888 projects in 128 recipient countries funded by nine major international organizations during the years 2008-2011. Relative to other organizations, the IDA is found to invest less in fossil fuels and more in projects that improve energy access for the poorest people. The IFC emphasizes fossil fuels while downplaying the importance of energy access. Overall, fossil fuels now receive only a minority of energy funding. However, energy access is only emphasized in a tiny minority of projects. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis paper investigates the benefits of international cooperation under uncertainty about global warming through a stochastic dynamic game. We analyze the benefits of cooperation both for the case of symmetric and asymmetric players. It is shown that the players' combined expected payoffs decrease as climate uncertainty becomes larger, whether or not they cooperate. However, the benefits from cooperation increase with climate uncertainty. In other words, it is more important to cooperate when facing higher uncertainty. At the same time, more transfers will be needed to ensure stable cooperation among asymmetric players.

Abstract
We examine policies of transportation, vehicle technology, environment and trade by impact on air quality along North America's international borders where trade moves in trucks. Panel data analysis helps account for temporal variation in the implementation of different policies by start date and also enables comparisons between ports on the same border as well as between borders. Data on commercial trucks, private vehicles, border wait times and air pollution are utilized to compare pollution across time and space. We estimate Zellner's SUR model and Swamy's random coefficients model to capture heterogeneity in the impact of policies across ports. We find the impact of vehicle technology; trade, security and environmental policies vary across pollutants and ports. Econometric results show trade and security policy are statistically significant in reducing ozone and particulate pollution. Vehicle technology and fuel policy are statistically significant for reducing ozone pollution.

Les Etats en développement ont consenti de nombreuses dettes, surtout depuis le début des années 1980, à l'égard des créanciers publics. Ceuxci peuvent être soit des Etats soit des Institutions Financières Internationales. Cela étant, quelque soit ce débiteur public, ces dernières vont intervenir de manière plus ou moins directe, en devenant progressivement des interlocuteurs incontournables de toute tentative de renégociation, voire d'annulation de la dite dette. Cette omniprésence n'est pas sans susciter de nombreuses interrogations quant à son objet et sa nature. C'est particulièrement le cas de la nature politique des régimes des Etats endettés. En effet, la démocratisation de ces Etats est devenue, de manière discutable, à la fois un moyen et une finalité de l'intervention des Institutions Financières, comme le montre l'Initiative Pour les Pays Pauvres Très Endettés. Dès lors, la question est de savoir si l'annulation totale est envisageable ou une chimère?

This paper attempts to provide a cross-cultural theoretical framework for the understanding of wife abuse among Chinese immigrants in the U.S. It proposes that a distinct explanation of spouse assault for Chinese families may be appropriate because of unique cultural circumstances of Chinese families in the U.S., and the prevalence of "out-of-town brides" who are abused. It examines the legal and social aspects of international marriages, gender inequality and exploitation of women in the male-dominated Chinese society, as well as legal, social-psychological, and cultural factors that appear to be associated with wife abuse in the American Chinese community. The paper includes information and data collected from local newspapers and magazines, interviews with several "out-of-town brides," examination of case files maintained by a social service agency, and personal working experiences with spouses of Chinese male alcoholics.

This article explores the nature of international technology transfer and the operation of the market for know-how. It begins by examining the relationship between codification and transfer costs and then analyzes various imperfections in the market for know-how. The special properties of know-how are shown to confound various aspects of the exchange process when arms-length contracting is involved. The internalization of the exchange process within multinational firms serves to bypass many of these difficulties, and explains why the multinational firm is of such importance. Several forms of regulation of technology imports and exports are examined. It is discovered that the process is insufficiently well understood to permit the design of effective regulation that, moreover, appears unlikely to eliminate inefficiency. An efficiency focus is maintained throughout since I feel no qualification to pontificate on complex and confused distributional issues.

"This book explores buffer states' agency beyond being highly interactive spaces for the competing strategic and security interests of larger powers. Analysing twenty-one political events the author offers a new conceptual framework for the buffer state, which emphasizes strategic utility and agency of the buffer state. Applying this to the case study of Nepal as a buffer state between India and China, he offers a systematic analysis of Sino-Indian interests in the wider region, and Nepal's interactions with and reactions to them, and argues that the buffer state in contemporary International Relations is characterized by intense competitive overtures from its contending neighboring states. However, it is not just a spectator but an active participant that consistently assesses and reassesses its geopolitical position in between much larger competing powers. This reading offers a new understanding of the buffer state as a highly dynamic political space wherein the levels of influence and strategies of bigger powers can be examined. Aimed at a multidisciplinary audience, this book will be of particular interest to scholars, practitioners and students of international relations, security studies, strategic studies, and Asian Studies"--

"This book explores buffer states' agency beyond being highly interactive spaces for the competing strategic and security interests of larger powers. Analysing twenty-one political events the author offers a new conceptual framework for the buffer state, which emphasizes strategic utility and agency of the buffer state. Applying this to the case study of Nepal as a buffer state between India and China, he offers a systematic analysis of Sino-Indian interests in the wider region, and Nepal's interactions with and reactions to them, and argues that the buffer state in contemporary International Relations is characterized by intense competitive overtures from its contending neighboring states. However, it is not just a spectator but an active participant that consistently assesses and reassesses its geopolitical position in between much larger competing powers. This reading offers a new understanding of the buffer state as a highly dynamic political space wherein the levels of influence and strategies of bigger powers can be examined. Aimed at a multidisciplinary audience, this book will be of particular interest to scholars, practitioners and students of international relations, security studies, strategic studies, and Asian Studies"--

IR's turn towards historical sociology is yet to overcome its ahistoricism. This lack of world-historical perspective, particularly conspicuous in relation to the non-European world, and arguably IR's emergence as a discipline, can be traced back to the theoretically fateful negligence of `the international' by the classical (historical) sociology on which the contemporary critiques of the mainstream IR theory tend to draw. This article develops this argument within the context of a theoretical reappraisal of the traditional approaches to the problematique of the premodern state in Iran and proposes an alternative theoretical framework that is critically drawn on Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development as an internationally augmented historical materialism. Thus it argues that central to the premodern state-formation in Iran were the nomadic geopolitical pressure upon, and rule over, the agrarian Iranian society which gave rise to a synergetic nomadic-sedentary relationship mediated by, and crystallized in, the military-administrative institution of uymaq. This underlay the continuous formation, disintegration and re-production of successive states characterized by centralized patrimonial arbitrary rule.