"In the general interest of peace" - British international lawyers and the Spanish civil war

The first section of this study examines the establishment of the international non-intervention agreement and of the London Committee and their combined neutralizing effect on the League of Nations in the light of a series of underlying factors, including the European powers´ leaning towards neutrality in the late interwar period. The second section reviews the core issues and different doctrinal positions present in the international legal debates triggered by the Spanish Civil War. It pays particular attention to the contributions of the first two British judges at the International Court of Justice, A. D. McNair (1946-1955) and H. Lauterpacht (1955-1960) to these debates. Their writings can be seen as respectively representative of the two stages through which British international lawyers went in the international legal debates on the Spanish Civil War. Upto early 1938, British International lawyers adopted a characteristically apologetic approach to the policy undertaken by the British Government on the advice of the British Foreign Office. The second stage, from early 1938 to the end of the Spanish Civil War in March 1939, was in turn informed by a “practitioner´s approach” to the analysis of the domestic cases brought before the British courts as a result of the hostilities. The article concludes with a brief analysis of the case for British “benevolent neutrality to the Nationalists”26 in the Spanish Civil War, reviewing the underlying motives which historians have highlighted as lurking behind the British-led non-intervention policy in the Spanish Civil War

General interest and contemporary administration

El concepto “Interés General” goza de una fuerte presencia en la cultura política de las sociedades democráticas modernas. No obstante, si bien el término puede ser entendido y aceptado con relativa facilidad por cualquier ciudadano de a pie, su definición resulta extraordinariamente compleja para el entorno de las ciencias políticas o de la teoría del derecho. Concretamente, nuestro ordenamiento hace continua referencia a esta figura sin ofrecernos una definición objetiva. El hecho de que el “Interés General” sea actualmente concebido como un principio jurídico indeterminado no constituiría un problema si no estuviéramos hablando de un elemento que desarrolla una clara función directiva en la actividad de toda administración democrática moderna. Este paradigma jurídico y social imposibilita cerrar el continuo debate sobre la coincidencia entre los fines últimos del Estado y el bienestar de la comunidad.The term "General Interest" has a strong presence in the political culture of modern democratic societies. But if the term can be understood and accepted very easily by any normal citizen, his definition is too complex for political science or theory of law. Specifically, our system makes continual reference to this figure without offering an objective definition. The fact that the "General Interest" is currently conceived as an undefined legal principle is a problem because we are talking about an element that directs the activity of modern democratic governance. This legal and social paradigm makes it impossible to close the ongoing debate about the overlap between the ultimate goals of the State and welfare of the community.Publicad

Time-varying risk, interest rates, and exchange rates in general equilibrium

Under mild assumptions, the data indicate that fluctuations in nominal interest rate differentials across currencies are primarily fluctuations in time-varying risk. This finding is an immediate implication of the fact that exchange rates are roughly random walks. If most fluctuations in interest differentials are thought to be driven by monetary policy, then the data call for a theory which explains how changes in monetary policy change risk. Here we propose such a theory based on a general equilibrium monetary model with an endogenous source of risk variation - a variable degree of asset market segmentation.Asset pricing

Researching Social Services of General Interest: an Analytical Framework Derived from Underlying Policy Systems

This paper discusses Social Services of General Interest, a political term of the European Union, which lies at the heart of the European Model of Society and Cohesion concepts. How and why is the organization and provision of services across Europe rooted in, and shaped by, the prevailing national constitutional components of social welfare and spatial planning systems? A high degree of interrelation between these two systems is confirmed and Social Services of General Interest are detected and conceptualized as a substantiation of components of both systems. In a concluding step, an analytical framework is introduced which enables us to research Social Services of General Interest from different angles for the purpose of deploying promising policy solutions

The benefits of interest rate targeting: a partial and a general equilibrium analysis

An argument that an interest rate peg is desirable because it mitigates the distortions that arise in a monetary economy, and that money growth should be procyclical in order to achieve the interest rate peg.Interest rates ; Monetary policy

A General Stochastic Volatility Model for the Pricing and Forecasting of Interest Rate Derivatives

We develop a tractable and flexible stochastic volatility multi-factor model of the term structure of interest rates. It features correlations between innovations to forward rates and volatilities, quasi-analytical prices of zero-coupon bond options and dynamics of the forward rate curve, under both the actual and risk-neutral measure, in terms of a finite-dimensional affine state vector. The model has a very good fit to an extensive panel data set of interest rates, swaptions and caps. In particular, the model matches the implied cap skews and the dynamics of implied volatilities. The model also performs well in forecasting interest rates and derivatives.