Suchergebnisse

On June 3, 1960, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) announced an agreement with three other investors to invest the equivalent of £2.3 million in the Kilombero Sugar Company, Ltd., in Tanganyika, for a sugar production and refining project estimated to cost £3.2 million, production to begin in 1962. The investment was represented by the equivalent of £1.15 million in debentures bearing 7 percent interest and maturing by 1973; by, £500,000 in convertible income notes maturing by 1975 without fixed interest and bearing returns contingent on earnings; by, £650,000 in share capital; and by an option on ordinary shares. Additional financing for the project was to come from an issue of convertible preferred shares, totaling, £700,000, by the Standard Bank of South Africa and the Colonial Development Corporation, to be offered for sale to residents of Tanganyika.

In February 1958 the International Tin Council announced that as part of its efforts to cope with the world surplus of tin, the first control period would end on March 31, 1958, instead of on March 14. Total permissible exports were to remain at 27,000 tons. The Council subsequently decided to hold the rate of production to 23,000 tons for the period from April 1 to June 30, 1958, and then from July to September, and thus to continue to apply restrictions at a rate of about 40 percent. It was estimated in February 1958 that the reduction of exports would reduce the current supply of tin below the rate of current consumption. In May 1958 the market price of tin was just above the floor price of £730 per ton.

On December 24, 1954, Colombia purchased $25 million from the International Monetary Fund with Colombian pesos. The purchase, Colombia's first transaction with the Fund, was equivalent to 50 percent of Colombia's quota, and required a waiver under Article V, section 4, of the Fund's Articles of Agreement. Colombia under took the purchase with the understanding that its pesos would be repurchased from the Fund within a period of three of five years. The drawing was designed to meet payments difficulties of a temporary nature that had resulted in the development of commercial arrears, particularly with the United States; the difficulties were attributed to a sharp decline in the price of coffee and a slackening of demand for it, beginning about the middle of August 1954.

The thirty-fifth International Labor Conference was held in Geneva from June 4 to 28, 1952 under the presidency of Mr. de Segadas Vianna (Brazil), with Mr. J. B. Pons (Uruguay), Mr. V. V. Dravid (India) and Mr. G. P. Delaney (United States) as vice-presidents. The agenda was composed of nine items; 1) information and reports on the application of conventions and recommendations; 2) holidays with pay in agriculture; 3) objectives and standards of social security; 4) cooperation between public authorities and employers' and workers' organizations; 5) revision of the maternity protection convention of 1919; 6) protection of the health of workers in places of employment; 7) regulation of the employment of young persons in underground work in the coal mines; 8) the Director-General's report; and 9) financial and budgetary questions.

In accordance with a resolution adopted by the General Assembly November 17, 1947, and a resolution of the Economic and Social Council of March 1, 1948, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Lie) requested Carl J. Hambro (Norway) and Pierce Williams (United States) to prepare a report on the progress and prospect of repatriation, resettlement and immigration of displaced per- sons and refugees, for submission to the seventh session of ECOSOC. In describing the work of the Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organization in the field of repatriation and resettlement, the report pointed to the difficulty which the commission faced in making policy decisions since its constitution had not been ratified by the necessary number of governments to enable the permanent organization to come into existence.

What are the conditions for a well-functioning currency union? Since the 1960s', there has been a long stream of literature dedicated to this question. Through studying the historical fixed exchange rate regime of the Gold Standard (chapter 2) and the modern day euro area (chapters 3 and 4), this thesis aims to add to the understanding of the economics of currency unions. Chapter 2 "When Do Fixed Exchange Rate Work? Evidence from the Gold Standard" examines external adjustments within a currency union. In particular, my co-author Felix Ward and I look at the historical circumstances of a fixed exchange rate regime that worked smoothly – the 1880-1913 Gold Standard. External adjustment under the Gold Standard was associated with few if any, output costs. How did countries on the Gold Standard equilibrate so smoothly despite inflexible exchange rates that were pegged to gold? To answer this question, we build and estimate an open economy model of the Gold Standard. This allows us to quantitatively assess the relative importance of three prominent channels of external adjustment: flexible prices, international migration, and monetary policy. Our first finding is that the output resilience of Gold Standard members was primarily a consequence of flexible prices. When hit by a shock, quickly adjusting prices induced import- and export responses that stabilized output. Neither restrictions on migration, nor the elimination of countercyclical monetary policy would have given rise to substantially higher output-volatility. Our second finding is that price flexibility was predicated on a historical contingency: namely large primary sectors, whose flexibly priced products dominated the export booms that stabilized output during major external adjustments. Chapter 3 "Sovereign Default Risk and the Role of International Transfers" asks what is the impact of interregional risk sharing arrangements when countries are afflicted with sovereign default risk. This is of particular interest in the setup of currency unions, where countries give up the exchange rate as a tool for business cycle stabilization. I introduce a sovereign default model in which regional sovereign default risk affects private sector financing costs and the linkage between public and private sector financing costs can exacerbate economic downturns. In this context, the benefit of international risk sharing comes in two dimensions. First, it helps to smooth consumption – the traditional channel of insurance. More importantly, by ameliorating large recessions, international risk sharing reduces the asymmetric impact of productivity shocks and raises average output level. Quantitative analysis shows that most of the welfare benefits that are obtainable from the optimal risk sharing arrangement can be reaped by a standby facility that is easy to implement. This finding is of policy relevance because whenever interregional risk sharing schemes are discussed between sovereign nation states, the willingness to part with fiscal autonomy is often severely limited. In Chapter 4 "Sovereign Risk Spillover and Monetary Policy in a Currency Union", I investigate the pass-through of sovereign default risk to the private sector financing condition from a different angle. In particular, I use a two-region currency union model to examine how the spillover affects shock propagation and optimal monetary policy. On the one hand, an increase in a region's sovereign risk premium raises the regional private sector credit spread, depresses inflation and tax revenue and further worsens the fiscal position. On the other hand, it also triggers changes in the policy interest rate. The net impact depends on the maturity of the government debt. When calibrated to the euro area and taken into account the average long maturity of government debt, the impact of the sovereign risk spillover on shock propagation is negligible. This is also reflected in optimal monetary policy. For the euro area, optimal monetary policy is well approximated by a simple target criterion that describes the optimal relation between output and inflation as derived from a basic New Keynesian model without sovereign risk and credit spreads. This continues to be the case even when there are cross-regional differences in their exposure to sovereign default risks. If government debts are short-term, however, the spillover considerably affects shock transmission and optimal monetary policy requires a stronger immediate shock-response.

The trend in transfers of major conventional arms, as measured by the SIPRI trend-indicator value, is apparently changing from a downward trend since 1997 to a more or less stable trend for 2000-2002 to a slightly upward trend in 2003-2004. Financial data from national export reports show a more or less similar change. However, it is too early to judge if this is really a trend or only a matter of annual fluctuations. Russia established itself as the main supplier of major conventional weapons for the five-year period 2000-2004, replacing the USA which was the main supplier for many years. However, even Russian officials expect a decline in Russian sales in the near future since Russian equipment is mainly based on old technology and Russian military research and development is lagging far behind. Together, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the USA made up 81% of all deliveries in 2000-2004. The combined deliveries of all 25 EU states to non-EU states made up some 19% of all deliveries in 2000-2004, making the EU the third largest exporter. China and India were the two main recipients of major conventional weapons in 2004. China is almost completely dependent on Russia for its arms imports, but its relationship is changing from a recipient of complete weapons to a recipient of components and technology to be used in Chinese weapon platforms. There are indications that China is anxious to gain access to other than Russian technology, partly because that technology is becoming outdated. India is also a major Russian client, but here Russia faces strong competition from France, the UK and other European suppliers, as well as from Israel and most recently from the USA. EU-US relations became strained in 2004 over the issue of technology transfers. The USA has been reluctant to share technology with close European allies even in joint ventures such as the F-35 JSF combat aircraft. The EU's plans to lift its arms embargo against China further strained relations. The non-binding and loosely drafted embargo was established in 1989 in reaction to Chinese human rights abuses. Today, many EU governments consider the embargo outdated and a barrier to improving Chinese-EU relations. The embargo has not stopped several European countries from supplying military technology to China, and most EU member states have argued that lifting the embargo would not mean increases in arms sales. Many EU governments feel that there should still be clear and strong limitations on the arms trade with China, either by keeping the embargo or by improving the 1998 EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports. The USA strongly opposes lifting the embargo in order to prevent a Chinese military build-up and has threatened the EU with sanctions if the embargo is lifted. Public transparency in arms transfers increased again slightly, mainly in the EU where several countries improved their reporting and where 10 new EU members are now obliged to report under the EU Code of Conduct. At the international level, man-portable air defense systems and light artillery were added to the UN Register of Conventional Arms. Adapted from the source document.

ABSTRACT
International relations (IR) has been criticized for its poor response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Since the 1950s, IR, especially in its US form, was driven by immediate Cold War concerns of security and relations between great powers. Yet, this IR of the later twentieth century superseded a more materialist IR that had flourished in the first half of the century. Derwent Whittlesey's political geography, which was one aspect of this material international thought, had directly explored the relationship between global politics and the environment. This article explores Derwent Whittlesey's international environmental thought, showing how it emerged from a more environmentally determinist tradition, but came to understand the relationship between human society and the environment as fungible and complex. Prioritizing time and profound changes linked to the machine age, Whittlesey warned about the damage that human society inflicted on its habitat. Yet, despite his contacts with early IR scholars at Yale, Whittlesey and his work would come to be forgotten in IR. Consequently, his work represents a path not taken, and his marginalization helps to explain why IR was so ill-equipped to understand the new global politics of the Anthropocene.
Las Relaciones Internacionales (international relations, IR) han sido criticadas por su pobre respuesta ante los desafíos del Antropoceno. Desde la década de 1950, las IR, especialmente en su forma estadounidense, fueron impulsadas por inquietudes inmediatas de la Guerra Fría en cuanto a la seguridad y las relaciones entre las grandes potencias. Sin embargo, estas IR de finales del siglo XX reemplazaron a las IR más materialistas que habían prosperado en la primera mitad del siglo. La geografía política de Derwent Whittlesey, que era un aspecto de este pensamiento internacional pertinente, había explorado de manera directa la relación entre la política global y el medioambiente. Este artículo explora el pensamiento ambiental internacional de Derwent Whittlesey y explica cómo surgió de una tradición más determinista a nivel ambiental, pero llegó a comprender la relación entre la sociedad humana y el medioambiente como fungible y compleja. Al priorizar el tiempo y los cambios profundos vinculados a la era de las máquinas, Whittlesey advirtió sobre el daño que la sociedad humana infligió a su hábitat. Sin embargo, a pesar de sus contactos con los primeros académicos en IR en Yale, Whittlesey y su trabajo serían olvidados en el campo de las IR. En consecuencia, su trabajo representa un camino aún no recorrido y su marginación ayuda a explicar por qué las IR estaban tan mal preparadas para comprender la nueva política global del Antropoceno.
Les relations internationales (RI) ont été critiquées pour leur mauvaise réponse à l'anthropocène. Depuis les années 50, les RI, tout particulièrement dans leur forme américaine, ont été déterminées par les préoccupations immédiates de la guerre froide en matière de sécurités et de relations entre grandes puissances. Ces RI de la fin du vingtième siècle ont toutefois supplanté des RI plus matérialistes qui s'étaient développées durant la première moitié du siècle. La géographie politique de Derwent Whittlesey, qui constituait l'un des aspects de cette pensée internationale matérielle, avait directement exploré la relation entre politique mondiale et environnement. Cet article étudie la pensée environnementale internationale de Derwent Whittlesey en montrant comment elle a émergé d'une tradition plus déterministe sur le plan environnemental mais en est venue à comprendre la relation entre société humaine et environnement comme étant fongible et complexe. Priorisant le temps et les profonds changements liés à l'ère de la mécanisation, Whittlesey avait mis en garde contre les dommages que la société humaine infligeait à son habitat. Pourtant, malgré ses contacts avec les premiers chercheurs en RI à Yale, Whittlesey et son travail ont fini par être oubliés en RI. Par conséquent, son travail représente une voie qui n'est pas empruntée et sa marginalisation contribue à expliquer pourquoi les RI sont si mal équipées pour comprendre la nouvelle politique mondiale de l'anthropocène.