Political Corruption in Contemporary Democracies: Newness, Scale and Varieties

A rise in corruption and in the exposure of corruption in recent decades is observable in contemporary democracies, especially on the European continent. Anti-corruption campaigns on the part of magistrates and others have increased in the past two decades, and as a consequence revelations about corruption have become more widespread. This has not just been at national level, but at the supranational and international levels, e.g. the EU. This article exposes this phenomenon in democratic countries and examines the possible remedies and solution adapted to highly develop societies.developed countries, democracy, corruption, solutions

Emerging Financial Markets and Early U.S. Growth

Studies of early U.S. growth traditionally have emphasized real-sector explanations for an acceleration that by many accounts became detectable between 1815 and 1840. Interestingly, the establishment of the nation's basic financial structure predated by three decades the canals, railroads, and widespread use of water and steam-powered machinery that are thought to have triggered modernization. We argue that this innovative and expanding financial system, by providing debt and equity financing to businesses and governments as new technologies emerged, was central to the nation's early growth and modernization. The analysis includes a set of multivariate time series models that relate measures of banking and equity market activity to measures of investment, imports and business incorporations from 1790 to 1850. The findings offer support for our hypothesis of finance-led' growth in the U.S. case. By implication, the interest today in improving financial systems as a means of fostering sustainable growth is not misplaced.

Emerging Financial Markets and Early U.S. Growth

Studies of early U.S. growth traditionally have emphasized real-sector explanations for an acceleration that by many accounts became detectable between 1815 and 1840. Interestingly, the establishment of the nation's basic financial structure predated by three decades the canals, railroads, and widespread use of water and steam-powered machinery that are thought to have triggered modernization. We argue that this innovative and expanding financial system, by providing debt and equity financing to businesses and governments as new technologies emerged, was central to the nation's early growth and modernization. The analysis includes a set of multivariate time series models that relate measures of banking and equity market activity to measures of investment, imports and business incorporations from 1790 to 1850. The findings offer support for our hypothesis of "finance-led" growth in the U.S. case. By implication, the interest today in improving financial systems as a means of fostering sustainable growth is not misplaced.

Financial Systems, Economic Growth, and Globalization

This paper brings together two strands of the economic literature -- that on the finance-growth nexus and that on capital market integration -- and explores key issues surrounding each strand through both institutional/country histories and formal quantitative analysis. We begin with studies of the Dutch Republic, England, the U.S., France, Germany and Japan that span three centuries, detailing how in each case the emergence of a financial system jump-started economic growth. Using a cross-country panel of seventeen countries covering the 1850-1997 period, we then uncover a robust correlation between financial factors and economic growth that is consistent with a leading role for finance, and show that these effects were strongest over the 80 years preceding the Great Depression. Next, we show that countries with more sophisticated financial systems engage in more trade and appear to be better integrated with other economies by identifying roles for both finance and trade in the convergence of interest rates that occurred among the Atlantic economies prior to 1914. Our results suggest that the growth and increasing globalization of these economies might indeed have been 'finance-led.'

Russia’s “conservative modernization”: how to silence the voices of the opposition

Under Dmitry Medvedev’s and now Vladimir Putin’s presidency, modernization was/is presented as a national imperative for the Russian government. It became a political slogan and a means by which to restore Russia’s power internally and externally. This campaign serves to push the agendas of some of Russia’s ruling elite within the larger ruling camp. This article tries to answer the following question: How do Russian elites understand modernization, both historically and within the current context? It concludes that Russian “political technologists”, who have been in power in the last 15 years, have become masters in the art of silencing the voices of those who take a critical view of the government’s policies

State diagrams for harmonically trapped bosons in optical lattices

We use quantum Monte Carlo simulations to obtain zero-temperature state diagrams for strongly correlated lattice bosons in one and two dimensions under the influence of a harmonic confining potential. Since harmonic traps generate a coexistence of superfluid and Mott insulating domains, we use local quantities such as the quantum fluctuations of the density and a local compressibility to identify the phases present in the inhomogeneous density profiles. We emphasize the use of the "characteristic density" to produce a state diagram that is relevant to experimental optical lattice systems, regardless of the number of bosons or trap curvature and of the validity of the local-density approximation. We show that the critical value of U/t at which Mott insulating domains appear in the trap depends on the filling in the system, and it is in general greater than the value in the homogeneous system. Recent experimental results by Spielman et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 120402 (2008)] are analyzed in the context of our two-dimensional state diagram, and shown to exhibit a value for the critical point in good agreement with simulations. We also study the effects of finite, but low (T<t/2), temperatures. We find that in two dimensions they have little influence on our zero-temperature results, while their effect is more pronounced in one dimension.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, published versio

Ahmadinejad, Hitler, Saddam and the Appeasement Analogy – a Knockout Argument

Belgium Herbarium image of Meise Botanic Garden

India’s Position Sandwiched Between Geopolitical Expediencies – Analysis

This article presents a view of India‟s contemporary geopolitical role in Asia, with special emphasis on New Delhi‟s relations with China and Russia and various other regional actors, including Iran and Pakistan. India‟s approach towards Afghanistan and aspects of Indo-US relations are also discussed in terms of Washington‟s current interests and policy direction in South Asia