Transformation before the 'Transition' (Employment and Wage Setting in Hungarian Firms 1986-89)

The paper addresses the question why Hungarian state enterprises cut employment by two-digit percentages in the last years of state socialism. It argues that job destruction was a result of changing incentives and liberties (harder budget constraint, stronger insider power, loosening political restrictions on downsizing) rather than of market-related shocks. Changing the inherited combination of output, employment, and wages could be in the interest of workers, managers, or both parties. The implications for wages and profits were hard to predict but the concievable scenarios of adjustment unanimously implied lower employment. The hypotheses are tested against data on output, employment, wages and profits from a panel of 2666 firms observed in 1986 and 1989.

‘Music is my AK-47’: performing resistance in Belfast's rebel music scene

This article examines how some Irish republicans have used ‘rebel songs’ as a means to resist the hegemonic power of the British state, and how militant republicanism is invoked musically, through sonic and physical references to gunfire. It explores how the use of rebel songs has changed, the inherent tensions within today's scene, and how republicans attempt to co‐opt other conflicts as a means to strengthen their claim as resistance fighters. The article also analyses more nuanced resistances within the rebel music scene, exploring how competing republican factions use the same music to express opposing political positions, and why some musicians ultimately leave the scene on account of the musical and political restrictions placed upon them. In so doing, the article connects with ongoing attempts to rethink, remap, and develop new approaches to resistance within anthropology, while contributing to the developing subfield of ‘ethnomusicology in times of trouble’

GLOBALIZAREA SISTEMULUI DE TRANSPORT

The relationship between globalization and the volume transport is complex due to manycauses. Globalization enables transport carrier to operate in any part of the global network,without any legislative or political restrictions from the state, wherever the carrier wants tooperate

The Political Economy of Financial Regulation: Evidence from U.S. State Usury Laws in the 19th Century

We investigate the causes and consequences of financial regulation by studying the political economy of U.S. state usury laws in the 19th century. We find evidence that usury laws were binding and enforced and that lending activity was affected by rate ceilings. Exploiting the heterogeneity across states and time in regulation, enforcement, and market conditions, we find that regulation tightens when it is less costly and when it coexists with other economic and political restrictions that exclude certain groups. Furthermore, the same determinants of financial regulation that favor one group (and restrict others) are associated with higher (lower) future economic growth rates. The evidence suggests regulation is the outcome of private interests using the coercive power of the state to extract rents from other groups, highlighting the endogeneity of financial development and growth.

Restrictions on the Rights of Landowners and Entrepreneurs in Turkestan in the Early Years of Soviet Rule

The article analyzes the policy of persecution and restrictions imposed on Turkestan's landowners and entrepreneurs in the early years of Soviet rule. It contains information on the means of production owned by the owners, the confiscation of land and other property in favor of the state, the political restrictions on the business community

Gandhi and Socrates

Gandhi composed his ‘translation’ of Plato's Apology while he was in South Africa. Gandhi was responding to political restrictions against the Indian community and was also influenced by John Ruskin's Unto This Last. Interestingly, the translation was banned by the British authorities in India. This article explores the background to Gandhi's translation and examines the role of Plato's work in the development of his idea of satyagraha

Scenarios for an Energy Policy Concept of the German Government

In this working paper we demonstrate how challenging greenhouse gas reduction targets of up to 95% until 2050 can be achieved in the German electricity sector. In the analysis, we focus on the main requirements to reach such challenging targets. To account for interdependencies between the electricity market and the rest of the economy, different models were used to account for feedback loops with all other sectors. We include scenarios with different runtimes and retrofit costs for existing nuclear plants to determine the effects of a prolongation of nuclear power plants in Germany. Key findings for the electricity sector include the importance of a European-wide coordinated electricity grid extension and the exploitation of regional comparative cost effects for renewable sites. Due to political restrictions, nuclear energy will not be available in Germany in 2050. However, the nuclear life time extension has a positive impact on end consumer electricity prices as well as economic growth in the medium term, if retrofit costs do not exceed certain limits.Roadmap 2050; GHG reduction; renewable energies; carbon capture and storage; power plant fleet optimization

Environmental justice in agricultural systems. An evaluation of success factors and barriers by the example of the Philippine farmer network MASIPAG

A twofold challenge arises from the normative aim of environmental justice to the management of agricultural systems: (1) the improvement of food security and livelihood of the rural poor today; (2) the sustenance and enhancement of the long-term productivity and resilience of agricultural systems to future generations. The paper analyzes the success factors and barriers of the Philippine farmer network MASIPAG in simultaneously realizing both objectives - based philosophically on Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” (1971), conceptually on specific determinants of the relationship between the objectives, and empirically on the results of a comprehensive evaluation of the MASIPAG network.environmental justice, ecosystem services, agriculture, agrobiodiversity, Philippines

The relationship between intra- and intergenerational ecological justice. Determinants of goal conflicts and synergies in sustainability policy

The guiding principle of sustainability is widely accepted in today´s international policies. The principle contains two seperate objectives of justice with regard to the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services: (1) global justice between different people of the present generation ("intragenerational justice"); and (2) justice between people of different generations ("intergenerational justice"). Three hypotheses about the relationship between these objectives are logically possible and are, in fact, held in the political and scientific discourse on sustainable development: independency, facilitation and rivalry. Applying the method of qualitative content analysis we evaluate political documents and the scientific literature on sustainable development by systematically revealing the lines of reasoning and determinants underlying the different hypotheses. These determinants are the quantity and quality of ecosystem services, population development, substitutability of ecosystem services by humanmade goods and services, technological progress, institutions and political restrictionssustainable development, ecosystem services, intragenerational justice, intergenerational justice, ecological justice, sustainability research

Why Brennan and Buchanan are wrong (after all)

In their book The Power to Tax, Brennan and Buchanan have pointed to a central weakness of the traditional theory of public finance and especially of the theory of optimal taxation: This approach overlooked the problem of governmental power and the tendency of this power to be abused. It was important to demonstrate how grossly misleading the optimal taxation theory appears to be once the problem of power is considered. Nevertheless, Brennan and Buchanan's suggestions for constitutional rules are no less misleading, after all. Technically speaking, the public-policy implications of their approach are only valid under extremely unrealistic assumptions. What is worse: Shifting these assumptions somewhat closer to reality does not just reduce the extent to which the public-policy implications of their approach are true but rather turns them completely upside down. Hence, Barry Weingast's (1993, p. 287) fundamental trade off, according to which a 'government strong enough to protect property rights is also strong enough to confiscate the wealth of its citizens', remains unsolved. --public choice,optimal taxation,Leviathan theory,elasticity of tax bases,constitutional economics