After. Economics and politics of the post-pandemic world

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gr. W. Kolodko
Keyword(s):  
Developed Countries ◽  
Gradual Transition ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable ◽  
Two Sides

The coronavirus pandemic that has shaken the world will lay a long shadow for many years. It puts humanity in the face of incredible challenges that coincide with other negative mega-trends and unresolved economic, social and political problems. The enormous consequences and costs of the pandemic — human and social, economic and financial — will be known only ex post. While some lose nothing, others lose everything, sometimes even their lives. The heterogeneous, post-pandemic future — in which under the conditions of irreversible globalization various political and economic systems will interact with each other — will follow many paths, with the position of highly developed countries becoming relatively weaker. Tensions on the US—China line will increase, geopolitics and geoeconomics will change. The confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism will intensify, the synergy of the market and the state will be transformed. It will be particularly dangerous to turn two sides of the same counterfeit coin as an alternative: neoliberal capitalism versus populist capitalism. Chances for the better future may be created by a gradual transition to new pragmatism. It is a strategy of moderation in economic activities and a triple — economically, socially and ecologically — sustainable development based on the outline of an innovative, unorthodox and holistic economic theory. Pandemic is also an immense challenge for social sciences, not only for economics, because old manner of thinking will often occur to be useless for analyzing and explaining new situations.

scholarly journals Banking Responsibility and Liability for the Environment: What Are Banks Doing?

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony L.T. McCammon
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Development Bank ◽  
The Us ◽  
Development Institutions ◽  
The Face ◽  
African Development Bank ◽  
Multilateral Lending ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Bilateral Assistance ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

No-strings-attached lending is anathema to the serious commercial banker, who sees only a wafer-thin line between such ‘lending’ and the un-bank-like practice of giving (non-returnable) grants. Such doubts, indeed, are not confined to the banking industry. In the face of home grown problems of unemployment or health-care, for instance, democratically elected governments of donor countries are finding themselves under increasing pressure from their voters to cut back on bilateral assistance to hopelessly indebted taker-states. Multilateral lending and development institutions are facing an uncertain future, trapped in the vicious circle of bad debts that are all-too-steadily increasing, capital and funding quotas that are failing to materialize (eyes are currently on the US Congress), and borrowing that is becoming ever-more expensive. The African Development Bank is faltering; a Middle East Development Bank is in danger of being stillborn. The World Bank has recently been trying bravely to redress the balance: it has created a ‘multilateral debt facility’ for the most severely-indebted countries, and devised a numerical scale of national well-being that is more appropriate for the measurement of ecologically sustainable development than GNP per head of population. While these initiatives should not be belittled, good ideas are too often murdered by gangs of ugly facts.

Kostenkontrolle im Föderalismus

2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles B. Blankart ◽  
David Christoph Ehmke
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Logical Consequence ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Soft Budget Constraints ◽  
Private Ordering ◽  
Fiscal Autonomy ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
The Us ◽  
Asset Distribution

AbstractCredit is the backbone of capitalism because credit allows allocating resources efficiently to economic activities. For the case of distress, a bankruptcy regime is established which allows reviving viable but financially distressed businesses and to liquidate structurally distressed businesses in an orderly asset distribution procedure. Bankruptcy is ex ante of utmost importance because it incentivizes debtors and creditors to adjust credit costs and lending practice to expect ex post outcomes. Bankruptcy has, however, been abolished under socialism leading to systems of soft budget constraints which are lenient towards inefficient managements. Since the fall of socialism, mixed capitalist-socialist economies prevail in most countries of the world with bankruptcy procedures for private enterprises, but not for public entities, more importantly, even restructuring procedures are not available for these public establishments. Instead, debt brakes should do the job. However, debt brakes invite governments to externalize public debts and to shift them to lower entities - from the state to the local level - leading to “institutional incongruence”, i. e. the drifting apart of the circles of beneficiaries, decision makers, and taxpayers. Three models of institutional congruence are analyzed, ranging between vertical fiscal control and fiscal autonomy. The logical consequence of fiscal autonomy is then the establishment of restructuring procedures, which are presented along the procedures of Chapter 9 of the US Bankruptcy Act and private ordering procedures such like those of the Paris and the London Club.

The Eleventh Circuit Holds that Agreements in which Pharmaceutical Companies Pay Generic Companies Not to Compete May be Valid

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-184
Author(s):  
Amy Garrigues
Keyword(s):  
Pharmaceutical Companies ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Patent Holder ◽  
Trial Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The Us ◽  
Antitrust Laws ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Appeals Court ◽  
Two Sides

On September 15, 2003, the US. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that agreements between pharmaceutical and generic companies not to compete are not per se unlawful if these agreements do not expand the existing exclusionary right of a patent. The Valley DrugCo.v.Geneva Pharmaceuticals decision emphasizes that the nature of a patent gives the patent holder exclusive rights, and if an agreement merely confirms that exclusivity, then it is not per se unlawful. With this holding, the appeals court reversed the decision of the trial court, which held that agreements under which competitors are paid to stay out of the market are per se violations of the antitrust laws. An examination of the Valley Drugtrial and appeals court decisions sheds light on the two sides of an emerging legal debate concerning the validity of pay-not-to-compete agreements, and more broadly, on the appropriate balance between the seemingly competing interests of patent and antitrust laws.

Russian Banking System under Conditions of Global Crisis

2009 ◽  
pp. 4-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Gref ◽  
K. Yudaeva
Keyword(s):  
Banking System ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
Financial Sector ◽  
Banking Crises ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
Balance Sheets ◽  
Current Economic Crisis ◽  
Risk Appetite ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face

Problems in the financial sector were at the core of the current economic crisis. Therefore, economic recovery will only become sustainable after taking care of the major weaknesses in the financial sector. This conclusion is relevant both for the US and UK - the two countries where crisis has started, and for other economies which financial institutions turned out to be fragile in the face of the swings in the risk appetite. Russia is one of the countries where the crisis has revealed serious deficiency in the financial sector. Our study of 11 banking crises during the last 25-30 years shows that sustainable economic recovery and decrease in the dependence on commodity prices will be virtually impossible without cleaning of balance sheets and capitalization of the financial sector.

Too WEIRD, Too Fast: Preprints about COVID-19 in the Psychological Sciences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arathy Puthillam
Keyword(s):  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Psychological Studies

That American and European participants are overrepresented in psychological studies has been previously established. In addition, researchers also often tend to be similarly homogenous. This continues to be alarming, especially given that this research is being used to inform policies across the world. In the face of a global pandemic where behavioral scientists propose solutions, we ask who is conducting research and on what samples. Forty papers on COVID-19 published in PsyArxiV were analyzed; the nationalities of the authors and the samples they recruited were assessed. Findings suggest that an overwhelming majority of the samples recruited were from the US and the authors were based in US and German institutions. Next, men constituted a large proportion of primary and sole authors. The implications of these findings are discussed.

scholarly journals Analysis of 220 Years of Floodplain Population Dynamics in the US at Different Spatial Scales

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Firoza Akhter ◽  
Maurizio Mazzoleni ◽  
Luigia Brandimarte
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
Management Planning ◽  
The Us ◽  
Over Time

In this study, we explore the long-term trends of floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales in the contiguous United States (U.S.). We exploit different types of datasets from 1790–2010—i.e., decadal spatial distribution for the population density in the US, global floodplains dataset, large-scale data of flood occurrence and damage, and structural and nonstructural flood protection measures for the US. At the national level, we found that the population initially settled down within the floodplains and then spread across its territory over time. At the state level, we observed that flood damages and national protection measures might have contributed to a learning effect, which in turn, shaped the floodplain population dynamics over time. Finally, at the county level, other socio-economic factors such as local flood insurances, economic activities, and socio-political context may predominantly influence the dynamics. Our study shows that different influencing factors affect floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales. These facts are crucial for a reliable development and implementation of flood risk management planning.

Innovationsmotor Medientechnik – Von der Schreibmaschine zur «Mittleren Datentechnik» bei der Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (1950 bis 1969)

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-117
Author(s):  
Christian Henrich-Franke
Keyword(s):  
Data Processing ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Adverse Conditions ◽  
Family Enterprise ◽  
The Us ◽  
Innovative Products ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Media ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract The second half of the 20th century is commonly considered to be a time in which German companies lost their innovative strength, while promising new technologies presented an enormous potential for innovation in the US. The fact that German companies were quite successful in the production of medium data technology and had considerable influence on the development of electronic data processing was neglected by business and media historians alike until now. The article analyses the Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (Eiserfeld) as one of the most important producers of the predecessors to said medium data technologies in the 1950s and 1960s. Two transformation processes regarding the media – from mechanic to semiconductor and from semiconductor to all-electronic technology – are highlighted in particular. It poses the question of how and why a middling family enterprise such as Siemag was able to rise to being the leading provider for medium data processing office computers despite lacking expertise in the field of electrical engineering while also facing difficult location conditions. The article shows that Siemag successfully turned from its roots in heavy industry towards the production of innovative high technology devices. This development stems from the company’s strategic decisions. As long as their products were not mass-produced, a medium-sized family business like Siemag could hold its own on the market through clever decision-making which relied on flexible specialization, targeted license and patent cooperation as well as innovative products, even in the face of adverse conditions. Only in the second half of the 1960s, as profit margins dropped due to increasing sales figures and office machines had finally transformed into office computers, Siemag was forced to enter cooperation with Philips in order to broaden its spectrum and merge the production site in Eiserfeld into a larger business complex.

A great convergence: The American frontier and the origins of Japanese migration to Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Sidney Xu Lu
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
The Us ◽  
Two Sides

Abstract This article explains how the US westward expansion influenced and stimulated Japanese migration to Brazil. Emerging in the nineteenth century as expanding powers in East Asia and Latin America, respectively, both Meiji Japan and post-independence Brazil looked to the US westward expansion as a central reference for their own processes of settler colonialism. The convergence of Japan and Brazil in their imitation of US settler colonialism eventually brought the two sides together at the turn of the twentieth century to negotiate for the start of Japanese migration to Brazil. This article challenges the current understanding of Japanese migration to Brazil, conventionally regarded as a topic of Latin American ethnic studies, by placing it in the context of settler colonialism in both Japanese and Brazilian histories. The study also explores the shared experiences of East Asia and Latin America as they felt the global impact of the American westward expansion.

scholarly journals Adaptation of turnip mosaic potyvirus to a specific niche reduces its genetic and environmental robustness

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anamarija Butković ◽  
Rubén González ◽  
Inés Cobo ◽  
Santiago F Elena
Keyword(s):  
Mutation Rates ◽  
Permissive Temperature ◽  
Fitness Component ◽  
Temperature Conditions ◽  
Environmental Perturbations ◽  
Genetic Robustness ◽  
Congruence Theory ◽  
The Face ◽  
Environmental Robustness ◽  
Two Sides

Abstract Robustness is the preservation of the phenotype in the face of genetic and environmental perturbations. It has been argued that robustness must be an essential fitness component of RNA viruses owed to their small and compacted genomes, high mutation rates and living in ever-changing environmental conditions. Given that genetic robustness might hamper possible beneficial mutations, it has been suggested that genetic robustness can only evolve as a side-effect of the evolution of robustness mechanisms specific to cope with environmental perturbations, a theory known as plastogenetic congruence. However, empirical evidences from different viral systems are contradictory. To test how adaptation to a particular environment affects both environmental and genetic robustness, we have used two strains of turnip mosaic potyvirus (TuMV) that differ in their degree of adaptation to Arabidopsis thaliana at a permissive temperature. We show that the highly adapted strain is strongly sensitive to the effect of random mutations and to changes in temperature conditions. In contrast, the non-adapted strain shows more robustness against both the accumulation of random mutations and drastic changes in temperature conditions. Together, these results are consistent with the predictions of the plastogenetic congruence theory, suggesting that genetic and environmental robustnesses may be two sides of the same coin for TuMV.

Denaturalizing the Monroe Doctrine: The rise of Latin American legal anti-imperialism in the face of the modern US and hemispheric redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-555
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Scarfi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Elastic Behaviour ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Monroe Doctrine ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pan Americanism

AbstractThe Monroe Doctrine was originally formulated as a US foreign policy principle, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it began to be redefined in relation to both the hemispheric policy of Pan-Americanism and the interventionist policies of the US in Central America and the Caribbean. Although historians and social scientists have devoted a great deal of attention to Latin American anti-imperialist ideologies, there was a distinct legal tradition within the broader Latin American anti-imperialist traditions especially concerned with the nature and application of the Monroe Doctrine, which has been overlooked by international law scholars and the scholarship focusing on Latin America. In recent years, a new revisionist body of research has emerged exploring the complicity between the history of modern international law and imperialism, as well as Third World perspectives on international law, but this scholarship has begun only recently to explore legal anti-imperialist contributions and their legacy. The purpose of this article is to trace the rise of this Latin American anti-imperialist legal tradition, assessing its legal critique of the Monroe Doctrine and its implications for current debates about US exceptionalism and elastic behaviour in international law and organizations, especially since 2001.

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