Suchergebnisse

The emergence of mega-regional trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) threatens to fragment global trade governance in fundamental ways. An important question, yet so far under-explored, is how the rising powers currently being excluded from the mega-regionals, such as China, view this new development in global economic governance. This article intends to fill this gap in the literature from a Chinese perspective. Specifically, this article addresses the following questions: why has China changed its initial suspicious attitude to a more neutral stance toward the TPP recently? What are the short-term and long-term effects of the TPP on China's economic growth and geopolitical influence? How will China deal with a myriad of challenges posed by the TPP going forward, be it in or outside the TPP? After the analysis of a range of relevant political, economic, and legal factors, I submit that the Chinese government has adopted what I call a 'tripartite strategy' toward the TPP. What remains to be seen is whether this tripartite strategy provides the best roadmap for China's further integration into the global economy.

In Albania, during the last decades entrepreneurship has been in focus. It is commonly agreed that developing entrepreneurship in the long term would be translated into sustainable economic development. Albanian economy, being an economy in transition greatly and urgently needs to invest into increasing the number of entrepreneurs in the country. Entrepreneurial intention is considered to be really important. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to observe the determinants of entrepreneurial intention in Albania. The target is university students. Many programs that foster entrepreneurship such as incubator centers, business plan competitions along with new educational practices have been developed. In addition, even though studies conducting in this field are few, Albanian education institutions have shown a willing to study the factors influencing entrepreneurship development. The reason is the belief that developing and supporting entrepreneurial activities among youth will positively influence the economy of the country in terms of economic growth.This study widely represents the Albanian students and shows the deteminants of entrepreneurial intention they have. Hopefully the findings of this study would be useful to the policy makers and the Albanian government to undertake effective policies focused on entrepreneurial activity; targeting economic development of the country.

Study the role of social capital on nurturing of agribusiness sustainability is still limited. Whereas, the indepth understanding toward the role of social capital in facilitating cooperation on relationships among institutions (actors) of agribusiness is very important and strategic for planning of agricultural development. This study is aimed to describe the role of social capital in facilitating cooperation on relationships among marketing institutions of corn in Tujuh Belas sub district, Bengkayang regency. The primary data were collected by observation, focus group discussion, and indepth interview to farmers and traders. The result of this study shows that the implementation of social capital element in farming activities or agribusiness in this location, generally based on effort of resources exchange among actors. On the relationships among the farmers, social capital is implemented by exchange of household labor (strict and sort term reciprocity). Meanwhile, in relationships between farmer and village trader and also between village trader and wholesaler, the social capital is implemented by exchange of economic resources. The exchange of resources is frequent implemented by trial risk, risk sharing, and applying flexibility in any type of transaction (non strict reciprocity in the sort term). This resources's exchange is understood as effort to nurture agribusiness sustainability in the long run.

In recent years, Cuba has been immersed in a process of profound change. Among
these changes, one that has been less addressed by specialists both inside and
outside the island is 'education reform', specifically at the
university level. The relevance of this study is to understand the current
university education policy as the one that has perhaps the most political
content, the analysis of which would help to understand the challenges in
political and ideological matters faced by the government of Cuba today.
Therefore, the present work makes a critical assessment of the Cuban educational
model based on values as a central focus of university policy and its relevance
in the transcendental process of change happening in Cuba today. For students of
public policy, the Cuban case encapsulates an important singularity that allows
the possibility of analysing short-term versus long-term assessments of public
problems (Ascher 2009). It also allows us to learn about social and policy
challenges in a country that has achieved universal mass, free and quality
education that has been able to extend itself beyond the capital
(Mészarós 2008). What happens next? A reflection on the role of
education in a changing society is one of the main purposes of this work.

Green economy has become one of the most fashionable terms in global environmental public policy discussions and forums. Despite this popularity, and its being selected as one of the organizing themes of the United Nations Rio+20 Conference in Brazil, June 2012, its prospects as an effective mobilization tool for global environmental sustainability scholarship and practice remain unclear. A major reason for this is that much like its precursor concepts such as environmental sustainability and sustainable development, green economy is a woolly concept, which lends itself to many interpretations. Hence, rather than resolve long-standing controversies, green economy merely reinvigorates existing debates over the visions, actors and policies best suited to secure a more sustainable future for all. In this review article, we aim to fill an important gap in scholarship by suggesting various ways in which green economy may be organized and synthesized as a concept, and especially in terms of its relationship with the idea of social and environmental justice. Accordingly, we offer a systemization of possible interpretations of green economy mapped onto a synthesis of existing typologies of environmental justice. This classification provides the context for future analysis of which, and how, various notions of green economy link with various conceptions of justice.

Despite being coined by international forums and promoted chiefly by international/supranational organisations and clubs, sustainable development is a concept that in essence rests on and is largely determined by the local level. The local level's primacy in terms of introducing the principles of sustainability is openly stipulated by Agenda 21, thus providing the impetus for local sustainable development strategies – Local Agenda 21. These community-specific, long-term visions of sustainable co-existence serve as an important strategic tool for overcoming challenges communities may face while maintaining the general idea of the future. As prime standardised artifacts, local sustainable development strategies represent an excellent insight into the capacity of an individual community to achieve a sustainable future and deal with potential challenges. In this paper, we analysed four such visions of a sustainable future for two city and two minor Slovenian municipalities in order to examine their capacity to develop into sustainable communities. By employing George and Kirkpatrick's (2006) framework for assessing sustainable development strategies, we identified useful and problematic aspects of the documents prepared by the city and town municipalities. The analysis showed that the transition period in Slovenia has left a significant impact on development planning and its consequences have yet to be fully resolved.

Military-first politics has been at the heart of the unexpected regime stability in North Korea under Kim Jong-il and his son Jong-un. This article analyzes Kim Jong-il's military-first politics as a strategic choice for regime survival, in which the locus of political power switched from the party to the military. At the same time, Kim Jong-il formulated a complex system of circumventing the possibility of the armed forces' political domination, including personalistic control using sticks and carrots, fortifying security and surveillance institutions, and compartmentalizing the security institutions for intra- and inter-organizational checks and balances to prevent the emergence of organized opposition to the regime. Although an effective short-term solution, military-first politics could never be a long-term strategy for building gangseongdaeguk (a powerful and prosperous nation). The current Kim Jong-un regime needs to conduct sweeping reforms to address dire economic difficulties, which might result in a departure from his father's legacy and downgrade the military's power. In this process, the current regime's (in)stability will depend on how it maintains a balance between revoking military-first politics and preserving the armed forces' allegiance.

AbstractIran's scientific impact has suffered hard from decades of imposed and self‐elected isolation from Western influences and international collaboration. Lately, however, the world has witnessed a remarkable increase in scientific publications from Iranian scientists in fields like nanotechnology; material science; and, perhaps most pronounced, chemistry. In this article, the factors behind this "publication boom" are discussed and examined together with an analysis of the coherence between the country's long‐term research strategies and short‐term needs in relation to present organic chemical research conducted at various Iranian universities and institutes. Organic chemistry is a keystone in important Iranian industrial sectors like the petroleum and agricultural industries, and also in the growing field of life science and pharmacology. The development of the petroleum industry and further refinement of raw oil into value‐added fine chemicals holds a key position in the reinforcement of the Iranian economy and labor market, thus motivating a governmental investment in chemical science and research. Taking an approach to find a reasonable balance with the impact from Western and Far Eastern scientific communities, Iran's own scientific roots and Islamic ideology could well be the success factor in becoming a worthy player on the international scientific arena.

This paper uses three methodologies to measure the economic impacts and contribution of low-skilled immigration in Thailand, namely, simulation of a macroeconomic model, a growth accounting method, and an econometric method. Both the macroeconomic simulation model and the growth accounting method confirm that immigrants have contributed around 0.75–1 percentage point of real GDP growth. The sector that benefited most was agriculture, where immigrant workers contributed more than 1.33 percent of the growth rate of agricultural production. Our econometric results also showed that a percentage increase of immigrant share (of the total labor force or M/L) also contributed to a reduction of overall labor productivity in the manufacturing sector (by about 0.88–1percent) and the service sector (by about 1.35 percent). In addition, the calculation of the Allen partial elasticity (AES) confirms that there is a high substitution effect between immigrants and natives, especially in the low-skilled sector. Our simulation shows that employing immigrants in the agricultural sector tends to reduce total employment by 0.67 percent and reduce wage rates by around 4.34 percent from the base case. Thailand needs to consider the short-term and long-term implications of bringing in immigrant labor.

Governmental Debt Guarantees (GDGs) are often used to encourage involvement by promoters and financial institutions in Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) projects. However, even after demonstrating the bankability of a project and reducing debt cost, the success of the project may be prevented by the lack of long-term commitment from shareholders. Equity contributions by promoters in the project company may be recovered from earnings on short-term construction activities. Based on lesson learned from early PPP projects with GDG, the hold-up problem for government in the view of transaction cost economic (TCE) theory may worsen if the designed contractual structure does not adequately manage opportunistic behaviours from promoters. This study empirically examined the effects of a structured GDG mechanism with particular complementary measures applied in joint projects to develop the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) stations. A GDG game model was then applied to bridge the theoretical gap based on the Taipei MRT experience. The analysis shows that requiring the promoter to provide sufficient equity and ensuring the commitment of the lender to provide the loan are the appropriate proactive measures. This study demonstrates its practical value for policy makers by combining case study, TCE and game theory in contractual issues.

This study was undertaken in Gaza, Palestine, in a cohort of babies born in 2011. Hair samples of newborns were analyzed for metal load by DRC-ICP-MS. We report specific level of contamination by teratogen/toxicants metals of newborn babies, environmentally unexposed, according to their phenotypes at birth: normal full term babies, birth defects or developmentally premature. The occurrence of birth defects was previously shown to be correlated in this cohort to documented exposure of parents to weapons containing metal contaminants, during attacks in 2009. We detect, in significantly higher amounts than in normal babies, different specific teratogen or toxicant elements, known weapons' components, characteristic for each of birth defect or premature babies. This is the first attempt to our knowledge to directly link a phenotype at birth with the in utero presence of specific teratogen and/or toxicant metals in a cohort with known episodes of acute exposure of parents to environmental contamination by these same metals, in this case delivered by weaponry The babies were conceived 20–25 months after the major known parental exposure; the specific link of newborn phenotypes to war-remnant metal contaminants, suggests that mothers' contamination persists in time, and that the exposure may have a long term effect.

This paper presents urbanization challenges in India and initiatives taken to address them. Urbanization in India is characterized by skewed urban growth between cities by large population influx creating distinct variation in core and periphery of cities in terms of urban form and services. Key challenges include growth of slums, inadequate management of solid waste, decrease in per capita water availability and unreliable water quality, inadequate sewage coverage and deteriorating ambient air. Although, these issues are not new or specific for India, what is new are the drivers and pressures behind these problems. The paper illustrates the challenges of Indian urbanization in the light of resource inefficiency, resistance to adopt upcoming technologies that do not have direct financial benefits, weak enforcement of laws, and inadequacy in regulatory framework. It also presents instances of active participation of non–formal and formal sectors in addressing sustainability challenges. There is also a recognition of the fact that city governments are faced with multiple sustainability agendas of climate adaptation. This presents a decisional challenge for planners and city administrations. Benefits incidental to a particular policy goal can help drive the implementation of the policy and sustain it in the long term, but only when the inherent risk trade–offs, if present, can be managed.

В статье определены стратегии развития государственных корпораций в России на современном этапе. Рассмотрены типы возможных стратегий долгосрочного и среднесрочного развития корпораций. Проведено различие между стратегиями частных и государственных корпораций, а также корпораций со смешанным капиталом. Предложены структура эталонной стратегии государственной корпорации и алгоритм ее разработки. В рамках блока мониторинга и контроля предложены критерии эффективности реализации той или иной стратегии. Сделан вывод о по-вышении роли государства в формировании стратегий государственных корпораций в рамках приоритетов поступательного развития национальной экономики в целом. ; The paper reviews the strategies of state-owned corporations' development in Russia at the present stage. The types of possible strategies for long-term and medium-term development of the corporations are considered. The author makes a distinction between the strategies of private and state-owned corporations, as well as corporations with mixed capital. The structure of the reference strategy of the state-owned corporation and the algorithm for its development are suggested. For monitoring and control the author proposes criteria assessing the effectiveness of one or another strategy implementation. It is concluded that the government plays an increasingly important part in development of state-owned corporations' strategies with a purpose of progressive advance of the national economy in general.

In recent years, the concept of 'strategic research' has played a prominent role in Danish public research policy. This thesis investigates how strategic research develops in a pharmaceutical company. Politicians and policy makers have tended to see science-industry collaboration as the main strategic tool for stimulating national growth and job creation. They have also anticipated that companies and politicians in the future will have an increasingly important role in specifying societal and industrial problems that can be solved through science-industry collaborations. Hence, strategic research is today closely associated with what is termed 'demand-driven innovation'. Science-industry collaboration has also attracted interest in industry, for instance, in pharmaceutical companies. However, here we find quite different ideas about strategic research and science-industry collaboration. Rather than representing a tool for providing short-term solutions, pharmaceutical companies have seen science-industry collaboration as a device for building long-term platforms of innovation. Arising from a curiosity concerning the differences between policy and corporate practices of strategic research, this thesis asks the following questions: What characterizes strategic research in a private company? Through which practices does strategic research (and science-industry collaboration) develop? What characterizes the management of strategic research?

View the Executive SummaryThis monograph examines terrorism and counterterrorism from the Russian perspective so as to assess prospects for cooperation with Russia in fighting terror. It concludes that, regardless of the state of political relations between Russia and the United States at any given time, longer-term systemic and conceptual obstacles to meaningful cooperation may well prevent any significant Russian contribution to U.S. counterterrorism efforts. This monograph details Russian definitions of terrorism and then looks at the Russian security "pyramid," which sets out the relevant authority structure. It examines the roles of coordinating bodies such as the Security Council and the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, before looking at the individual organs involved in counterterrorism operations, particularly the Federal Security Service and Ministry of the Interior. The monograph then explores the most important question for Russia in terms of terrorism, the North Caucasus, and finally explores the wider context of the relationship between Russia and the West, particularly the United States, looking at the lengthy list of tensions affecting that relationship even before Russia's seizure of Crimea, which took place after the monograph was completed. ; https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1488/thumbnail.jpg