\u3ci\u3eFrom Economic Crisis to Reform: IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe\u3c/i\u3e by Grigore Pop-Eleches (Book Review)

Grigore Pop-Eleches’s book on the interaction of international and domestic determinants of IMF-style reforms in developing countries makes a significant contribution to international and comparative political economy literature. His effort to capture the dynamics of the contentious and complex relationship between the IMF and developing countries/emerging markets inLatin AmericaandEastern Europerepresents mid-range theorizing at its best. The author combines insights from international and comparative political economy literatures to pursue complementary questions. From the international effect perspective: what role do economic crises play in the initiation and implementation of IMF-backed economic reform? Is the IMF impartial in its policy and financial support for countries in need? In what ways do IMF lending patterns reflect the changing demands of international financial markets, as well as the shifting priorities of advanced industrialized democracies (p.2)

Effects of EU Accession on the Politics of Privatization - The Steel Sector in Comparative Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the European Union (EU) accession process on the restructuring and privatization of the steel sector of the four largest steel producers in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), namely Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia. The outcome to date for these countries\u27 steel mills has been relatively uniform in that they have been integrated into the global production networks of some of the largest multinational steel enterprises. The pressures which brought this outcome about, however, were far from uniform. The variability in the modes of convergence is highlighted by the surprising timing of the sales to strategic foreign investors. The countries in the forefront of the EU accession process, i.e., the Czech Republic and Poland, actually privatized their largest steel producers to strategic foreign investors after Romania and Slovakia. Moreover, in the case of the Czech Republic and Poland, the steel sector represented an important impediment to the closure of the competition chapter of the accession negotiations. The case of the steel sector thus poses three puzzles. The first is that the outcomes in the four countries converged despite these countries\u27 very different legacies. The second puzzle is that the convergence took place in all four of them late in the transition process. The third, related, puzzle is that Poland and the Czech Republic actually sold their largest steel producers to foreign investors after Slovakia and Romania

Transnational Capitalism in East Central Europe\u27s Heavy Industry: From Flagship Enterprises to Subsidiaries

Focusing on the steel industry during the post-communist transition from 1989 through 2009, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee traces the transformation of flagship state enterprises in the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia into the subsidiaries of large, international corporations. By analyzing this transformation at the three levels of enterprise, sector, and national-international nexus, she identifies the players—from international investors and European Union members to national labor unions and local industry managers—in the political economy of reform. Even in the midst of the transition to a capitalist, democratic system, Sznajder Lee finds, the state plays a key role in mediating between domestic vested interests and external pressures from international financial markets and institutions, on the one hand, and regional institutions on the other. Whereas state power may be employed to require domestic firms to operate as capitalists in the international market, it may also be used to shield enterprises from market pressures in order to promote the political and personal preferences of the elite.This book has broad implications for the political economy of reform because it illuminates the political determinants of privatization and the resources used to resist it. In addition, Sznajder Lee sheds new light on why some countries are more likely than others to be subject to external constraints, such as IMF conditionality, and how some allegedly pro-market reformers manage to maintain public ownership over certain industry sectors.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1234/thumbnail.jp

The State‐Led Transition to Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World‐Systems, and Social Structural Explanations of Poland’s Economic Success

Neoliberals argue that rapid liberalization and privatization can transform postcommunist economies into Western-style capitalist systems. Organizational sociologists argue that these policies produce a unique variety of capitalism, while world-systems theorists argue that they lead to underdevelopment. This article advances a social structural alternative in a crucial case. Poland’s relative economic success resulted from prolonged state ownership and an interventionist state employing various industrial policy tools that facilitated efficiency-enhancing market-oriented restructuring before ushering in beneficial foreign direct investment. The resulting capitalist system closely resembles the typical pattern found in most late industrializers

Von der Avantgarde zu den Verlierern des Postkommunismus: Gewerkschaften im Prozess der Restrukturierung der Stahlindustrie in Mittel- und Osteuropa

"Der Beitrag analysiert die Gründe für die Schwächung der Gewerkschaften in Mittel- und Osteuropa auf betrieblicher Ebene. Am Beispiel der Stahlindustrie in Polen, Rumänien und der Slowakei zeigt er, dass die Gewerkschaften Legitimität und Unterstützung bei den Belegschaften aufgrund ihrer Verwicklung in die Restrukturierung der Unternehmen verloren haben, und zwar aus je unterschiedlichen Gründen. In der Slowakei und Rumänien haben sich die betrieblichen Gewerkschaftsvertreter zusammen mit Regierungsangehörigen an den Betrieben privatwirtschaftlich bereichert und die Unternehmen so in den Bankrott geführt, während in Polen die Gewerkschaften versucht haben, die Profitabilität der Unternehmen zu erhalten, auf Kosten der Arbeitsplätze. Der neoliberale Kurs der polnischen Gewerkschaftsvertreter als quasi Ko-Eigentümer schwächt ihr gewerkschaftliches Mandat." (Autorenreferat)"The article analyses the reasons for union weakness in Central and Eastern Europe at the micro level. Examination of the steel industry in Poland, Romania, and Slovakia shows how in all three countries, the unions at company level have lost legitimacy and support with the rank and file due to their activities during restructuring, albeit for opposite reasons. In Slovakia and Romania, the fragmented unions, together with state officials, were involved in rent-seeking, leading the companies into bankruptcy. In contrast, in Poland unions tried to make the companies profitable at the expense of employment. The neoliberal course of Polish union representatives as quasi co-owners weakened their mandate." (author's abstract

Von der Avantgarde zu den Verlierern des Postkommunismus: Gewerkschaften im Prozess der Restrukturierung der Stahlindustrie in Mittel- und Osteuropa

Der Beitrag analysiert die Gründe für die Schwächung der Gewerkschaften in Mittel- und Osteuropa auf betrieblicher Ebene. Am Beispiel der Stahlindustrie in Polen, Rumänien und der Slowakei zeigt er, dass die Gewerkschaften Legitimität und Unterstützung bei den Belegschaften aufgrund ihrer Verwicklung in die Restrukturierung der Unternehmen verloren haben, und zwar aus je unterschiedlichen Gründen. In der Slowakei und Rumänien haben sich die betrieblichen Gewerkschaftsvertreter zusammen mit Regierungsangehörigen an den Betrieben privatwirtschaftlich bereichert und die Unternehmen so in den Bankrott geführt, während in Polen die Gewerkschaften versucht haben, die Profitabilität der Unternehmen zu erhalten, auf Kosten der Arbeitsplätze. Der neoliberale Kurs der polnischen Gewerkschaftsvertreter als quasi Ko-Eigentümer schwächt ihr gewerkschaftliches Mandat

Between Apprehension and Support: Social Dialogue, Democracy, and Industrial Restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe

This article explores the attitudes of trade union organizations to restructuring and privatization of their enterprises to strategic foreign investors in Central and Eastern Europe\u27s biggest steel producers: Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia. Contrary to advocates of insulating technocratic decision-makers from social partners, this article argues that higher quality of democracy and concomitant social dialogue carried out at the level of the sector with union organizations that are autonomous of the government in power (as was the case in the Czech Republic and Poland), are associated with greater restructuring and with support for privatization to strategic foreign investors. In these circumstances, the unions actually pressure reluctant governments to accelerate the privatization process. By contrast, politically motivated capture of individual enterprise-level unions and splitting them from sectoral-level organizations, as occurred in countries with lower quality of democracy (Romania and Slovakia), weakens the autonomous sectoral-level organizations, which are generally supportive of restructuring. Conversely, captured unions remain far more resistant to reform than their counterparts belonging to autonomous sectoral organizations. Thus, higher quality of democracy and concomitant vibrant social dialogue safeguard industrial restructuring

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Measurement of the Splitting Function in &ITpp &ITand Pb-Pb Collisions at root&ITsNN&IT=5.02 TeV

Data from heavy ion collisions suggest that the evolution of a parton shower is modified by interactions with the color charges in the dense partonic medium created in these collisions, but it is not known where in the shower evolution the modifications occur. The momentum ratio of the two leading partons, resolved as subjets, provides information about the parton shower evolution. This substructure observable, known as the splitting function, reflects the process of a parton splitting into two other partons and has been measured for jets with transverse momentum between 140 and 500 GeV, in pp and PbPb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair. In central PbPb collisions, the splitting function indicates a more unbalanced momentum ratio, compared to peripheral PbPb and pp collisions.. The measurements are compared to various predictions from event generators and analytical calculations.Peer reviewe

Measurement of the top quark forward-backward production asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic moments in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric (d̂ t) and chromomagnetic (μ̂ t) moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable AFB(1) is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate t t ¯ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for t t ¯ final states. The values found for the parameters are AFB(1)=0.048−0.087+0.095(stat)−0.029+0.020(syst),μ̂t=−0.024−0.009+0.013(stat)−0.011+0.016(syst), and a limit is placed on the magnitude of | d̂ t| < 0.03 at 95% confidence level. [Figure not available: see fulltext.