Suchergebnisse

This article deals with the European integration policy of the Holy See from the 1950s until the resignation of Benedict XVI at the beginning of 2013. The goal of the study is to describe the integration policies of individual popes in the context of political science theories. In the first half of the study we will briefly introduce the major typologies of political science for the study of integration policies of political parties. From the list of the existing approaches, we choose the typology of Petr Kaniok as the most appropriate for this study. In the second half of the study, individual popes are classified according to the framework of Kaniok's typology. The goal of the study is not only to investigate the major moves in the integration policy of the Holy See, but also to utilize a theoretical approach traditionally used for the study of political parties on the issue of the Holy See. Adapted from the source document.

The ambition of the paper is to analyze the major characteristics of the Chinese energy policy towards the most important producers of natural gas in Chinas neighborhood. The analytical perspectives of a strategic approach to energy security and state-centric realism are used to work with case studies of Sino-Russian and Sino-Turkmen relations from the energy security perspective. The paper concludes that Chinas energy policy towards the given producers in Russia and Turkmenistan comes significantly close to the selected analytical perspectives and that natural gas has become an important part of the strategic considerations of the Chinese political leadership. This conclusion, however, applies more to Turkmenistan and less to Russia, as in the case of the Sino-Russian relations, both parties fail to achieve a mutual complementarity, and economic thinking prevails over Beijing's strategic interests. Adapted from the source document.

According to quite a number of scholars, even non-Austrian, some theories of Austrian school of economic thought do provide an increasingly relevant material to explain recent boom-and-bust economic cycles as well as financial crises. However, I argue, this development is not adequately reflected by a corresponding growth of Austrian influence within the economic orthodoxy. Quite to the contrary, many orthodox scholars have taken over rigidly Keynesian positions since the financial crisis culminated in 2008 and 2009. In my article I maintain that Austrians themselves have contributed significantly to such a situation by not preventing three major tactical mistakes, related to the domain of sociology of economics, from occurring. Firstly, they have not formed a really unified and thus influential group of scholars; instead, they have been divided into a few streams, sometimes with highly contradictory stances. Secondly, many Austrians have made bold predictions, especially with regard to possible enormous inflation stemming from the unprecedented provision of liquidity to the financial system during and in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, which have not been fulfilled at all. Thirdly, a critical number of Austrian school's economists do not effectively communicate with the rest of the profession and even, it seems, fail to adequately comprehend the orthodox analytical tools and theories. Adapted from the source document.

In the text finite mixtures of lognormal distributions are used for the modelling of net annual income per capita and equivalized income of the Czech households (in CZK) in 2004-2010. The development of distribution of number of members of households is analysed and the characteristics of standardized units according to EU and OECD methodologies are given. Data from the survey EU-SILC organized by the Czech Statistical Office from 2005-2011 (dealing with incomes from 2004-2010) are used for the analysis. Models (with incomplete data) with two to four artificial components are used in order to fit the distribution of incomes; the development of their characteristics is shown. All estimates in the text are maximum likelihood estimates, EM algorithm in the program R is used for the optimalization. Models are compared with the use of Akaike criterion. Adapted from the source document.

The conventional view of the sustainability of social development is based on the works of the Roman Club, particularly the book "The Limits to Growth" by Donella Meadows and her colleagues (1972). In their opinion, the human population and economy are depleting the wealth of the Earth and pollutants and wastes are burdening the environment. However, the concern that mineral resources will be depleted is unsubstantiated. Environmental economics argues that a higher number of people and a higher income make resources scarcer on a short-term basis. For investors and entrepreneurs, higher prices represent an opportunity and an incentive to search for solutions. Many of them will not succeed in this search and they will bear the costs on their own. However, in a free society, the solutions are eventually found. And in the long run, we are better off thanks to the new discoveries than if the original problems had never occurred. Adapted from the source document.