Tahirih

Short story by Leah Kaminsky.This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria, and by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body

Distance Education: Methods of Education for Students in Remote Areas of China

This paper illustrates that distance education is a useful mechanism of education for students living in remote areas or those who desire a native English-speaking teacher to improve their own language skills. However, it will also show the ways in which distance education is not the perfect solution. This paper will overall find that distance education improves future economic opportunities, causes changes in teacher/student power dynamics, and does, to some extent, increase access to schooling for children living in rural, remote areas

Bank Lending and Contagion: Evidence from the Asian Crisis

This paper analyzes how the crisis in Asia spread during the second half of 1997. We cast our net wide and investigate several possible trade and financial linkages among the Asian economies. We construct a series of “contagion vulnerability indices,” which capture the various manifestations of exposure through trade and finance to the initial crisis country and contrast the predictions of this index to actual outcomes during the Asian crisis. We pay attention to the reversal in bank lending of Japanese and European banks, which were lending heavily to emerging Asia on the eve of the crisis. Daily interest rate and exchange rate data for Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand are used to assess whether the patterns of causality and interdependence changed as the crisis spread, as well as to answer question of whether interdependence among the Asian economies has changed as the result of the crisis

Toxicology of atmospheric degradation products of selected hydrochlorofluorocarbons

Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) is a liquid with a sharp biting odor. It has been proposed as the product of environmental degradation of the hydrochlorofluorocarbons HCFC-123, HCFC-124, HFC-134a, and HFC-125. Compounds HCFC-141b and HCFC-142b could yield mixed fluorochloroacetic acids, for which there is no available toxicologic data. The release of hydrochlorofluorocarbons into the environment could also give rise to HF, but the additional fluoride burden (1 to 3 ppb) in rainwater is trivial compared to levels in fluoridated drinking water (1 ppm), and would provide an insignificant risk to humans. Thus, in this paper only the toxocologic data on TFA is reviewed to assess the potential risks of environmental exposure

Varieties of Currency Crises

The plethora of currency crises around the world has fueled many theories on the causes of speculative attacks. The first-generation models focus on fiscal problems. The second-generation models emphasize countercyclical policies and self-fulfilling crises. In the 1990s, models pinpoint to financial excesses. With the crisis of Argentina in 2001, models of sovereign default have become popular again. While the theoretical literature has emphasized variety, the empirical literature has supported the one size fits all' models. This paper contributes to the empirical literature by assessing whether the crises of the last thirty years are of different varieties. Crises are found to be of six varieties. Four of those varieties are associated with domestic economic fragility. But crises can also be provoked by just adverse world market conditions, such as the reversal of international capital flows. The so-called sudden-stop phenomenon identifies the fifth variety of crises. Finally, a small number of crises occur in economies with immaculate fundamentals but this type of crises is not an emerging-market phenomenon.

International Capital Flows, Financial Stability and Growth

The explosion and dramatic reversal of capital flows to emerging markets in the 1990s have ignited a heated debate, with many arguing that globalization has gone too far and that international capital markets have become extremely erratic. In contrast, others have emphasized that globalization allows capital to move to its most attractive destination, fuelling higher growth. This paper re-examines the characteristics of international capital flows since 1970 and summarizes the findings of research of the 1990s on the behaviour of international investors as well as the short- and long-run effects of globalization on financial markets and growth.international capital flows, globalization, mutual funds, stock market prices, financial liberalization.