Engagement with Stakeholders in the Trading System. Recommendation from the Report of the High-Level Board of Experts on the Future of Global Trade Governance. Bertelsmann Policy Brief 2018

The Bertelsmann Stiftung has called into life a High-Level Board of Experts on the Future of Global Trade Governance. Composed of eminent experts and seasoned trade diplomats, it elaborated a number of recommendations to increase the effectiveness and salience of the WTO. The entirety of these recommendations and underlying analysis of the changing political economy of international production and trade can be found in the Board’s report “Revitalizing Multilateral Governance at the WTO”, authored by Prof Bernard Hoekman. This briefing is part of a series of six, each of which details one specific recommendation from the report. The full report can be accessed under https://www.bertelsmannstiftung. de/fileadmin/files/BSt/Publikationen/ GrauePublikationen/MT_Report_Revitalizing_ Multilateral_Governance_at_the_WTO.pd

ELFE : an Electron Laboratory for Europe

This paper presents a brief overview of the physics with the 15-30~GeV continuous beam electron facility proposed by the European community of nuclear physicists to study the quark and gluon structure of hadrons.Comment: need qcdparis.sty, psfig and 8 eps figures : exclusive_hard_1.eps exclusive_hard_2.eps exclusive_hard_3.eps hard_bw.eps gpm_slac.eps inclusif1.eps inclusif2.eps machine.ep

Policymaking, Comitology and the Balance of power in the European Union

Using simple game theory, this paper analyzes the working properties of the different procedures laid down in the comitology decision, i.e., the European Council's decision on procedures for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission. Furthermore, it addresses the question of how the balance of power is determined by this decision

Psychoanalysis and God: A Comparative Analysis of Jacques Lacan and John of the Cross

The author makes the case that Lacan and John of the Cross, taken together, reveal the full spectrum of the human journey toward God. Lacan s psychoanalytic theory is a valuable resource for understanding the earlier stages of the comprehensive spiritual development of the human person. By contrasting Lacan s thought with the spiritual theology of John of the Cross, the author finds that both of them coordinate their understanding of human psychology in terms of the tripartite division of the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real

Why are Eastern Europe's banks not failing when everbody else's are?

While the South East Asian financial crisis spread to Russia and Brazil, the transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe seem to be largely unaffected by international financial contagion. The lack of recent banking crises in Central and Eastern Europe is the more surprising considering that most economies have experienced severe banking sector problems in the recent past, that large bad loan ratios are still prevalent, that banking regulation and supervision are only slowly improving, and that stabilizing policies, such as capital and exchange rate controls, have slowly been eliminated. We focus on real, financial and external fundamentals compiled from the IMF's International Financial Statistics, from the World Bank's World Debt Tables, and from the BIS' Consolidated International Banking Statistics. We use univariate tests to see whether there are systematic differences between transition economies and other economies during the months leading up to a crisis, and in the months right after a banking crisis. Our results indicate that economic fundamentals during periods before and after a crisis month are generally different than non-crisis months. Also, changes in economic fundamentals are significantly different in transition economies than in other emerging economies. In particular, our results indicate that the transition economies' recent insulation from international contagion may result from a general lack of overly optimistic credit expansions. Similarly, speculative asset bubbles do not appear to have real repercussions, mainly because asset markets are underdeveloped. Because of a lack of speculative financing in transition economies, the real repercussions seem to be significantly smaller in CEECs than in other emerging economies. Thus, other risks, particularly the larger interest rate and maturity risks are less likely to materialize. As real credit is expanding more rapidly, and as asset markets become more developed, transition economies may become more similar to other emerging economies, which could lead to less insulation from international contagion in the future if adequate regulation and supervision are not implemented. --Transition economies,Central and Eastern Europe,emerging economies,banking crisis,univariate tests

Higher-order Projected Power Iterations for Scalable Multi-Matching

The matching of multiple objects (e.g. shapes or images) is a fundamental problem in vision and graphics. In order to robustly handle ambiguities, noise and repetitive patterns in challenging real-world settings, it is essential to take geometric consistency between points into account. Computationally, the multi-matching problem is difficult. It can be phrased as simultaneously solving multiple (NP-hard) quadratic assignment problems (QAPs) that are coupled via cycle-consistency constraints. The main limitations of existing multi-matching methods are that they either ignore geometric consistency and thus have limited robustness, or they are restricted to small-scale problems due to their (relatively) high computational cost. We address these shortcomings by introducing a Higher-order Projected Power Iteration method, which is (i) efficient and scales to tens of thousands of points, (ii) straightforward to implement, (iii) able to incorporate geometric consistency, (iv) guarantees cycle-consistent multi-matchings, and (iv) comes with theoretical convergence guarantees. Experimentally we show that our approach is superior to existing methods

Desperate vs. Deadbeat: Can We Quantify the Effect of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005?

For decades, personal bankruptcies increased in the U.S., either reflecting growing economic distress of families or a declining stigma associated with filing for bankruptcy. In a nod to the latter argument, the U.S. Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Prevention Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), after bankruptcies had grown to record high rates. The assumption was that with the new law many if not most bankruptcies would eventually disappear since they supposedly were the result of a “bankruptcy of convenience”. �The U.S. bankruptcy rate fell indeed sharply after the law went into effect, but increased quickly again afterwards. By the end of 2007, the U.S. bankruptcy rate exceeded all levels recorded during the 1980s, and approached the levels prevalent during the early 1990s. But it remains unclear how much of these changes resulted from BAPCPA and what was attributable to other factors. � In this Working Paper, the authors establish a benchmark level of the U.S. bankruptcy rates after 2005 that likely would have been observed if the law had not changed. They then compare the actual U.S. bankruptcy rate to the benchmark for 2007 to provide a sense of the effectiveness of BAPCPA.

Christian Bernard, Oboe

Six Metamorphoses after Ovid / Benjamin Britten; Alla Gitana (vocalise etude) / Paul Dukas; Sonata for Oboe and Piano / Henri Dutilleux; Oboe Quartet in F major, K. 370/386b / W. A. Mozar