Suchergebnisse

Одним из самых ярких событий 2014 г. стали выборы в Квебеке. В 2014 г. вновь не оправдались надежды на устойчивый подъем в экономике. В экономических отношениях с США возникли некоторые серьезные конфликты. Канада расширяет круг партнеров, с которыми ведутся переговоры о снижении барьеров для торговли и инвестиций. Официальная Оттава активно поддержала процесс смены власти на Украине и заняла весьма жесткие позиции по санкциям в отношении России в связи с «украинским кризисом». ; The outcome of the 2014 election in Quebec was crucially important for the future of the whole country. Canada's economic growth lacked stability, although it outpaced that of the most OECD countries. The Canadian government is concerned about some troubling «irritants» in its economic relationship with the USA and is trying to diversify the external trade and investment beyond the North American borders. Canada's relations with Russia have worsened considerably, as Ottawa has taken the hard line on sanctions related to Russia's «responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine».

International audience ; This article examines the role of coffee in the agriculture of southwest Ethiopian highlands, a context characterized by recent huge private coffee estate developments, coffee certification projects and smallholdings. The analysis shows that smallholder farmers prioritize staple crops, and allocate land and labor to coffee only once food production objectives have been reached. It also underscores the diversity of the local peasantry, often treated as a homogeneous group in development projects designed to boost farmers' income through coffee production. Based on this analysis, the article evaluates the effects of recent coffee-oriented development policies: state forest concessions for coffee investment, and two coffee certification projects (UTZ-Certified and Fair-Trade=Organic). Because they omit the differentiated farmers' strategies, these certification initiatives fail to improve local populations' livelihoods and accelerate incipient socioeconomic inequalities. Moreover, when applied to big private plantations, they participate in farmers' dispossession from critical forest resources essential to households' food self-sufficiency.

The implementation of European policies on environmental protection is enforcing some substantial modifications in the processing methods and technologies traditionally adopted in the alumina industry and, in particular, in the management of the alumina residue produced. The article analyses the evolution of the alumina production and the residue disposal practices in Western Europe. Some critical aspects regarding the legal implementation of the EU Directive on the landfill of waste are highlighted and discussed. With reference to the requirements established for the landfill of non-hazardous waste, a key point is represented by the possibility of reducing the deposit protection measures if the collection and treatment of leachate is not necessary. The flexibility introduced by the Directive is not incorporated into the Italian law; this fact may represent a major issue in the prospect of disposal conversion from wet to dry methods for companies operating in Italy, as it may endanger the economic sustainability of the plants' upgrade, as well as the opportunity to attract outside investments.

Trabajo presentado al 2013 Eu-SPRI Forum Conference, the 2013 ISSI Conference and the 2013 IPTS Workshop on 'Harnessing the Powers of Patent Data'. ; This paper analyses country-specific determinants of knowledge flows with a view to uncover the role of cross-organizational interactions. Using a sample of some 600,000 patents from the EU27 member states in the period 1990–2007, we take backward citations as dependent variable and find that technological sophistication and research size have a positive effect on knowledge flows. While a national bias towards applied research and development has a negative impact, individual public–private cooperation has a moderating effect due to the generation of scientific knowledge by public institutions. The present study contributes to the debate concerning the direction of R&D investments and provides empirical support to policies aimed at the enhancement of public–private cooperation. ; The research was carried out with funding from project GV/2012/018 of the Valencian Regional Government. ; Peer reviewed

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) were introduced in England just over ten years ago, and their adoption in over 180 locations all over the country owes a great deal to their potential ability to raise private funds to invest in the development of business areas. However, much of the academic literature on BIDs has been critical of what it sees as an expansion of corporate control of urban spaces and the weakening of elected local government, often on the evidence of a long-running North American debate. On the basis of ten case studies of English BIDs, in this paper I address the evolution of those organisations as private stakeholder-led instruments for the governance and management of business areas in England. I discuss whether and to what extent English BIDs constitute private government of urban areas, and the attendant issues of accountability and spatial inequalities in the distribution of public services and investment. I conclude by examining the implications of its findings for the future of urban governance.

Background: Timber insurance is a form of risk management that can be used to protect forest owners from the effects of various types of disaster. Methods: A recent court ruling on a legal case in the United States is used to illustrate reasons for the lack of uptake of timber insurance and its effects on those dependent on forestry for their livelihood. Operational aspects of the timber insurance market are described and compared with markets for insurance of real estate and agricultural crops. The scope and implementation of timber insurance in several countries are reviewed, and some practical guidance is offered to those intending to develop a timber insurance programme to encourage investment in the growth of planted forests. Results: Salient features of the forest insurance market are described and the markets in a number of countries are reviewed. Conclusions: The development of timber insurance market requires some form of intervention by government or landowner associations.

Precious metals (gold, silver, and platinum) have become an important part of investment portfolios for individuals as well as for institutions. A key question is whether investors should actively trade these metals to time the market or whether they should take a buy-and-hold strategy. This paper examines the weak-form efficiency of precious metals markets with this question in mind, using the automatic portmanteau and variance ratio tests. It is found that return predictability of these markets has been changing over time, depending on prevailing economic and political conditions. The return predictability of gold and silver markets have been showing a downward trend, implying that the degree of the weak-form efficiency of these markets have been gradually improving. In particular, the gold market has been highly efficient recently, showing the highest degree of market efficiency among the three precious metals markets. The overall evidence suggest an buy-and-hold strategy, but profit opportunities may arise from time to time depending on prevailing economic or political conditions.

Recently there has been a great deal of interest in applying the concept of resilience to pastoral systems and to development programs in pastoral systems. This paper addresses pastoralism and its resilience in Africa south of the Sahara, with a primary focus on the Horn of Africa and some contrast to West African examples. It begins with an overview of the realities of contemporary pastoralism in this area that highlights social, economic, and political challenges and opportunities. It then focuses on the concept of resilience and its applications in the specific context of pastoral production systems. After discussing the general appeal of resilience for analyzing these systems, the paper illustrates specific elements of pastoralism that enhance or constrain household‐level resilience. Empirical ; PR ; IFPRI1; E Building Resilience; E.1 Policies, institutions and investments for resilient social systems; 2020; CRP2; CRP4 ; DGO; A4NH; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM); CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)

Agriculture, including fisheries and forestry, accounted for 36.4 percent of Myanmar's GDP in 2010-2011. Approximately 69 percent of the total population of 59.78 million (2010-2011) lives in rural areas and 61.2 percent of the total labor force is employed by the agricul-ture sector (MOAI 2012). The government has designated the agriculture sector as a main pillar of the economy and is dedicating vari-ous efforts and investments to achieve greater progress in the sector. Rice is the primary crop, followed by maize, pulses, and oil seeds. Over 90 percent of the total rice sown in Myanmar1 is done so by farmers' reusing their seeds. Hybrid varieties of maize are grown more widely in part due to domestic hybrid production and imports. In recent years, there has also been an increase in the production of fruits and vegetables due to demand from China as well as the emergence of supermarkets in the country which has also increased the utilization of quality seeds and seedlings. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; ReSAKSS Asia ; DSGD

The German debt brake is often regarded as a great success story and has
therefore served as a role model for the Euro area and it?s Fiscal Compact.
In this paper we fundamentally criticise the debt brake. Firstly, we show
that it suffers from serious shortcomings and that its success is far from
certain even from a mainstream point of view. Secondly, we show that, from a
Post-Keynesian perspective, the debt brake completely neglects the
requirements for fiscal policies of member countries in a currency union like
the Euro area. It will prevent fiscal policy from contributing to the
necessary rebalancing in the Euro area. Thirdly, we show that alternative
scenarios, which could avoid the deflationary pressures of the German Debt
Brake on domestic demand and contribute to internally rebalancing the Euro
area, are extremely unlikely as they would have to rely on unrealistic shifts
in the functional income distribution and/or investment and savings behaviour
in Germany.

World economic crisis has affected the whole world including Serbia. Among
various strategies used for improving this difficult situation, Serbian
Government primarily focuses on attracting foreign investments. One of the
possible future investors could be, among other countries, the People?s
Republic of China. At present, Serbian Government is trying to help Chinese
investors in Serbia, but there is still a need for better understanding of
how Chinese businessmen work, negotiate and make deals. The main goal of this
paper is to present similarities and differences in business culture in China
and Serbia in order to define possibilities for mutual cooperation. The
methodology of this paper is based on cultural dimensions research made by
Hofstede. His national dimensions of culture can be used for explanation of
specific types of business culture in China and Serbia. The data from this
research will show similari?ties and differences in business culture in these
two countries, and also some suggestions are made with regard to improving
mutual understanding and doing business.

This year we have managed to implement a joint international project aimed at including the best Carpathian wooden tserkvas of the Polish-Ukrainian borderland in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Each of the 16 objects has its own problems which are illustrated on the example of the Tserkva of the Holy Trinity. Its rich history, the urban context, the environment and the period of the building erection, its design and equipment, cultural and religious backgrounds are the basis of today's work on the UNESCO object. Legal, state and local regulations create some opportunities for its preservation and best use. A very important element of the church maintenance is monitoring which should be provided by heritage protection authorities. All mentioned steps should provide, in particular, the popularization of the object, development of tourism and growth of the attractiveness of town or village. Each church can be a place of stimulating investment and development of the local economy, as well as basis for creating projects regionally significant.

Protection and prevention with regard to the accidents at work have become important aspects of Quality control, which evolved in the direction - from being mere technological - to a system which considers all production performance aspects linked to the quality of goods and services. The physical and psychological security of the workers represent an essential element of human resources to ensure the quality and qualification of a Company. The purpose of this paper is the application to work-accidents in 14 states of EU of the concentration that is typically used for the study of income, through the discrete function of Lorenz and the corresponding Gini Index. This method opens the need to obtain more sure elements for the analysis among companies of different sizes and would also allow an accurate comparison of the international situation facing to clarify why manufacturing and transport sectors in Italy show more relative work-accidents changes than variations of the active population. It also follows a framework of great utility for personal choices and investments abroad.

We examine the relationship between education and social protection policies across OECD countries and thereby contribute to the growing political and academic discussion on how social investment and social protection are interrelated. We focus on how government policy in two policy domains (education, social protection) affects social stratification. The paper is based on a principal methodological innovation, which lies in disaggregating the ways in which policy-makers influence stratification into two distinct dimensions: one is concerned with how much the state intervenes in the provision of education/social protection and how much it leaves to individual, family and market, and the second is concerned with the bias towards equality or stratification found in the state system itself. We find that countries can be grouped into a distinct number of education–social protection typologies, which differ from traditional clusterings and could indicate the need for multi-faceted pan-European education policies that take into account the longstanding differences in stratification as opposed to one-size-fits-all policy initiatives.