CURRENT ACCOUNT ADJUSTMENTS IN SELECTED TRANSITION COUNTRIES

The paper investigates sharp reductions seen in current account deficits in selected transition countries in the 1992- 2003 period. The analysis focuses on three important aspects of these current account reversals: a) to examine those factors that might have triggered the reversals and to provide some insights into the current account adjustment process; b) to reveal some characteristics of persistent current account deficits; and c) to investigate the direct impact of these reversals on economic growth in the region. Results suggest that restrictively defined reversals seem to be closely related to factors such as domestic savings, real export growth, international reserves and external indebtedness as well as with the budget and trade balances. While the role of exchange rate depreciation seems ambiguous, we found that the sharp current account reversals are systematically associated with a gradual GDP growth slowdown in the pre-reversal period and with robust GDP growth impetus afterwards. Indeed, less restrictively defined reversals show that reversals are associated with an increase of output by around 1.20 percentage points in the second year of recovery. Finally, the results suggest the significant possibility that persistent current account deficits, which on average last more than five years, are consumption-driven in the transition countries.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40199/3/wp813.pd

Navigating Central Path with Electrical Flows: from Flows to Matchings, and Back

We present an $\tilde{O}(m^{10/7})=\tilde{O}(m^{1.43})$-time algorithm for the maximum s-t flow and the minimum s-t cut problems in directed graphs with unit capacities. This is the first improvement over the sparse-graph case of the long-standing $O(m \min(\sqrt{m},n^{2/3}))$ time bound due to Even and Tarjan [EvenT75]. By well-known reductions, this also establishes an $\tilde{O}(m^{10/7})$-time algorithm for the maximum-cardinality bipartite matching problem. That, in turn, gives an improvement over the celebrated celebrated $O(m \sqrt{n})$ time bound of Hopcroft and Karp [HK73] whenever the input graph is sufficiently sparse

The Aporetic Ground of Revelation’s Authority in the Divine Comedy and Dante’s Demarcation and Defense of Philosophical Authority

I discuss Dante’s understanding that human existence is “ordered by two final goals” and how, for Dante, this understanding defines philosophy’s and revelation’s respective scopes of authority in guiding human conduct. Specifically, I show that, although Dante subordinates our earthly beatitude to spiritual beatitude in a way that seems to suggest the subordination of the authority of philosophy to that of revelation, he in fact limits philosophy’s scope to an arena in which its authority is not only legitimate but also crucial to the cultivation of the higher, spiritual beatitude of human activity

'But Following the Literal Sense, the Jews Refuse to Understand': Hermeneutic Conflicts in the Nicholas of Cusa's De Pace Fidei

In the midst of the De pace fidei’s imagined heavenly conference on the theme of the possibility of religious harmony, Nicholas of Cusa has Saint Peter acknowledge to the Persian interlocutor that it will be difficult to bring Jews to the acceptance of Christ’s divine nature because they refuse to accept the implicit meaning of their own history of revelation. What is peculiar about this line in the dialogue is not merely that it flies in the face of what Cusanus scholars tend to regard as an ecumenical spirit in Nicholas’ call to interreligious dialogue and mutual toleration. Rather, the statement reveals a peculiar hermeneutic principle at work in Nicholas’ understanding of the tension between truth and doctrine and the way that this tension informs human practice. Accordingly, by grappling with Nicholas’ portrayal of an imagined failure of Jews to practice interpretation correctly, I hope to shed light on Nicholas’ philosophy of religion in a way that neither ignores his anti-Judaism nor reduces the significance of his views to one of its most unpleasant manifestations

The Significance Of The Erosion Of The Prohibition Against Metabasis To The Success And Legacy Of The Copernican Revolution

Although one would not wish to classify Copernicus’ own intentions as belonging to the late-medieval and Renaissance tradition of nominalist philosophy, if we are to turn our consideration to what was responsible for the eventual success of the Copernican Revolution, we must also attend to other features of the dialectical context in relation to which the views of Copernicus and his followers were articulated, interpreted, and evaluated. Accordingly, this paper discusses the significance of the erosion of the Aristotelian prohibition against metabasis to the eventual success of the Copernican Revolutio