Abstract This paper analyses the effects of ageing on the international capital market. The first part applies a simple model and distinguishes between the cases of a small open economy and a closed economy to explore the separate effects of ageing, the design of pension schemes and government policy on savings, labour supply and the interest rate. The second part of the paper analyses cross-border capital flows and spillover effects caused by international differences in ageing patterns, pension schemes and policy reactions. The final part is devoted to the quantitative effects found by various recent simulation studies.
This working paper offers an international legal perspective on the diverse and conflicting international reactions in response to Kosovo's Declaration of Independence on 17 February 2008. Considering the failure of the UN Security Council in conjuring up a common position, whether a condemnation or approval of Kosovo's desire to become an independent and sovereign member of the international community, each State was left to decide, on its own terms, how to react. The Council's failure is the upshot to what may be defined as the 'politics of recognition', ie, a diversity of differing and conflicting reactions of third States in response to the Kosovo Declaration, which reproduce the main positions in the original dispute rather than settling it. Against this background, the aim of this paper is three-fold. First, it seeks to explain the emergence of these politics. Secondly, it examines the complex nature of the disagreement that lies behind the diverse reactions, which includes a consideration of the reasons behind the different positions of recognising and objecting States as well as an interpretation of why so many States have chosen to remain silent. Thirdly, the paper reflects on the unfortunate implications of these politics. While by no means discarding the inherent international legal dimensions to the original dispute between Pristina and Belgrade, and a role for the International Court of Justice, the paper expresses hesitation about the capacity of international law and the Court to settle the disagreement about international law that is now developing. Furthermore, an exclusive focus on international law detracts attention from the need to continue to approach realities on the ground with a view to establishing a sustainable peace in the Balkan region.
Human rights have long secured their place on the international agenda and most actors, states, non-governmental organisations or even multinational companies can no longer afford to ignore the demands put forward by international human rights mechanisms. In spite of the efforts to promote and implement human rights on a global scale, defending human rights on a local scale has remained at a high risk level in many countries. Colombia is considered to be one of the most dangerous countries in the world for human rights defenders (HRDs) and they are constantly subject to threats of political violence because of the nature of the work that they do. Peace Brigades International is an international nongovernmental organisation that offers international accompaniment to HRDs. International accompaniment serves two main purposes; to protect the working space of the HRDs so that they are able to carry out their work of defending human rights - and more importantly - to protect the lives of the HRDs. To date, PBI has been successful in protecting the lives of all HRDs the organisation has accompanied. This research aims to identify the mechanisms by which PBI protects the lives of the PBI field volunteers and the HRDs accompanied by them, and how these mechanisms work. The result show that the reason behind the organisation's effective protection is a range of mechanisms which include the physical accompaniment itself, the national support network, the international support network, deterrence, face to face contact with the armed actors and PBI risk analysis. Additionally, even though the state is responsible for some of the human rights violations, it still offers some kind of protection to PBI. This is due to the naming and shaming mechanism used by PBI to pressure the state into adhering to their human rights obligations, something which seems to be linked to the state's dependency on maintaining a human rights façade to obtain important trade advantages and receive military aid from the US.
This thesis reviews the law that governs Australia's international, natural disaster response arrangements An international response to a disaster occurs when aid is sent to, or received by, a state that has been affected by the disaster event. From Australia's perspective this means there is an international disaster response if Australia sends disaster relief to an affected state or if Australia, affected by a disaster, receives assistance from another state or internationally based nongovernment or inter-government organisation. To conduct this review of Australia's legal position, relevant international law is identified and it is demonstrated that, although there are theoretical scenarios that could justify the provision of international assistance without the consent of the affected state, for all practical purposes the consent of the affected state is a necessary pre-condition for the delivery of international disaster assistance. This means that Australia will not send aid without the consent of a disaster-affected State, and Australia need not receive assistance unless that is consented to by the Commonwealth government. After reviewing the international law of general application between states, particular bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements that Australia has entered are reviewed and their impact upon Australia's legal position on sending or receiving disaster assistance is identified. Having identified international law that impacts upon Australia, relevant Australian domestic law is considered. This analysis identifies the basis of Commonwealth legislative power in the area of disaster response and identifies legislation from Canada and the United States that can serve as examples for Australian legislative action. Australian law and policy is then benchmarked against the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' Guidelines for the Domestic Facilitation and Regulation of International Disaster Relief and Initial Recovery Assistance (2007). The process of reviewing and benchmarking Australia's law and policies shows that the legal and policy arrangements that are in place do not adequately address foreseeable legal issues that will arise in the event of a catastrophic natural disaster in Australia, or where Australia wishes to provide natural disaster relief assistance to another state. It is the recommendation of this thesis that the Commonwealth should pass a comprehensive counter-disaster Act to formalise and strengthen Australia's ability to respond to a catastrophic natural disaster both in Australia and overseas. A model Act, based on Canadian, American and Australian state and territory legislation, is developed. The model Act identifies the essential features that should be incorporated into Commonwealth legislation. This thesis identifies the law and policy applicable in Australia as at 6 February 2009. On 7 February 2009 bushfires swept through Victoria killing 173 people and destroying at least 2000 homes. At the same time floods in Queensland and New South Wales did significantly more property damage. This was followed by cyclone Hamish off the Queensland coast. During the cyclone a cargo ship, the Pacific Adventurer, lost several containers of fertiliser and 230 litres of fuel, causing a widespread environmental emergency. There is to be a Royal Commission into the Victorian fires and there will, inevitably, be 'lessons learned' reports from the other events. Whether or not these reports will lead to recommendations regarding Australia's emergency arrangements remains to be seen, but the outcomes from the inquiries into these events may well impact upon the findings in this thesis. Accordingly this thesis identifies the position at February 2009, but this will inform any subsequent recommendations for change arising out of the 2009 natural disasters.
What are the main causes of international terrorism? The lessons from the surge of academic research that followed 9/11 remain elusive. The careful investigation of the relative roles of economic and political conditions did little to change the fact that existing econometric estimates diverge in size, sign and significance. In this paper we present a new rationale (the escalation effect) stressing domestic political instability as the main reason for international terrorism. Econometric evidence from a panel of more than 130 countries (yearly from 1968 to 2003) shows this to be a much more promising avenue for future research than the available alternatives.
This study compares social studies textbooks used in elementary schools of Canada, China, Mexico, Taiwan, and the U.S. in terms of how multicultural education is integrated into the curriculum. Based on Banks' framework of multicultural curriculum reform, the researchers examined the dimensions of content integration, knowledge construction, and prejudice reduction to assess the level of multicultural education represented in each textbook. The results were interpreted in the cultural, historical, and political contexts of each society.
We impute a global social welfare function that is consistent with the burden sharing in the Kyoto Protocol and in two proposals for a post-Kyoto treaty. The Kyoto Protocol favored the EU. The Frankel proposal for a post-Kyoto treaty continues the favorable treatment of the EU, while the EU proposal puts more weight on the wellbeing of other OECD countries at the expense of its own residents. Ignoring income differences, the EU proposal for a post-Kyoto treaty favors developing countries. However, if income differences are taken into account, the EU proposal is not at all generous to developing countries.
This paper examines the impact of policymakers' horizon on the sustainability of international cooperation. We describe a prisoners' dilemma game between two infinitely-lived countries run by policymakers. We show that re-election incentives can act as a discipline device, making it easier to sustain cooperation between policymakers with finite but potentially renewable mandates than between infinitely-lived policymakers. We also show that, when voting suffers from a recency bias, policymakers may have incentives to "collude" to get re-elected and term limits may help international cooperation. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published
This thesis investigates the problem of analysing religion in the study of international relations (IR), answering the need to build an IR framework that accommodates coexisting evidence for secularisation (the decreasing influence of religion) and sacralisation (the increasing influence of religion) in world politics. Part One lays a conceptual foundation, presenting three arguments. Firstly, three discourses of religion are inscribed across the general discourse of IR: the secular, sacral and integrated discourses. Second, together the discourses comprise the religious structure of IR. This construction encourages a situative approach (asking 'where is religion?') rather than a normative one (which asks 'what is religion?'). Third, the religious structure and the situative question combine to form the dynamics of religion model, a heuristic framework that meets the present need in IR to accommodate and differentiate secular, integrated and sacral elements of religion. Part Two operationalises the model via a study of religion in international development, occurring at three levels. At the level of discourse, 'orthodox' and 'critical' schools of development are situated within a religious structure, revealing the pervasive nature of religion throughout development theory. At the institutional level, the model is applied to analyse how religion entered the operational sphere of the World Bank Group (WBG). This application differentiates secular, integrated and sacral interests at work within and upon the WBG in the 1980s and 1990s, highlighting in new ways the ubiquity of religion in the development sphere. At the policy level, the model is applied to critically compare three 'faith and development' partnerships initiated by the WBG in the period 1998-2005. The model is then applied to a partnership between the WBG and the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD), an initiative that began as an integrated vision of religion and development but gradually disintegrated. These studies highlight the significant ...
The use of different currencies in the invoicing of international trade transactions plays a major role in the international transmission of economic fluctuations. Existing studies argue that an exporter's invoicing choice reflects structural aspects of its industry, such as market share and the price sensitivity of demand, as well as the hedging of marginal costs (due, for instance, to the use of imported inputs) and macroeconomic volatility. We use a new, highly disaggregated data set to assess the roles of the various invoicing determinants. Our findings support the factors identified in the literature and document a new feature: a link between shipment size and invoicing. Specifically, larger transactions are more likely to be invoiced in the importer's currency. We offer a theoretical explanation for the empirical link between transaction size and invoicing by allowing invoicing to be set through bargaining between exporters and importers, a feature absent from existing models despite its empirical relevance.
What are the main causes of international terrorism? The lessons from the surge of academic research that followed 9/11 remain elusive. The careful investigation of the relative roles of economic and political conditions did little to change the fact that existing econometric estimates diverge in size, sign and significance. In this paper we present a new rationale (the escalation effect) stressing domestic political instability as the main reason for international terrorism. Econometric evidence from a panel of more than 130 countries (yearly from 1968 to 2003) shows this to be a much more promising avenue for future research than the available alternatives.
What are the main causes of international terrorism? The lessons from the surge of academic research that followed 9/11 remain elusive. The careful investigation of the relative roles of economic and political conditions did little to change the fact that existing econometric estimates diverge in size, sign and significance. In this paper we present a new rationale (the escalation effect) stressing domestic political instability as the main reason for international terrorism. Econometric evidence from a panel of more than 130 countries (yearly from 1968 to 2003) shows this to be a much more promising avenue for future research than the available alternatives.
What do China's dramatic transformations over the last 30 years imply for development studies and practice? China has lifted a record number of people out of poverty, and has had sustained levels of economic growth close to ten per cent per annum, albeit at well-documented environmental and social costs. China now appears to be developing effective responses to the global financial crisis, and fairly recently China's global role has seen an enormous surge. It is making these transformations with institutions that continue to surprise international observers, while China experts usually merely emphasise the pragmatic nature of its post-1978 reforms. The "rise of China", thus, is challenging our perspectives and practices in international development. While China's experience has largely remained outside the mainstream development debate, an increasing number of studies and essays have started to articulate the lessons from China's development path for the international development community, and particularly for Africa. This paper reflects on the different interpretations of these lessons, as well as the process of lesson learning, which so far has been strongly supply-driven. It further discusses China's new global economic and political role, and the position of China's aid as "soft power" within the new global structures. These new trends make it essential to reflect on how we understand development and globalisation. To do so we need better mutual understanding and particularly a better understanding of how and why China achieved what it did over the last 30 years, and its remaining challenges. This essay is a modest attempt to promote this.
This paper presents three examples of political-religious fundamentalism: political Islam, communal fascism based on Hindu fundamentalism in India, and the Christian-fundamentalist right in the Bush administration in the US. It presents a political analysis of these movements, calling the readers' attention to the history and socio-political context to bring about an understanding of these phenomena as products of certain social and historical developments.
"Harvey Mansfield's most recent book is about "manliness." I want to talk about honor. Honor is, at least in some of its aspects, related to manliness, perhaps even a child of manliness, as Professor Mansfield indicates in his book. But honor operates more on the surface of political life. It is more insistent on being seen or recognized in public and it varies, according to the different "publics" of different eras or different political regimes."(.)
