Catching Up and EU Accession - Conditions for Fast Real Convergence in the Candidate Countries

This is a report about the fifth workshop from the seminar series of IIASAs Economic Transition and Integration Project entitled "The Process of EU Accession: Preparation by Learning and Exchange". The workshop was held in Bratislava on 7-9 February 2002. The first two sections summarize the opening of the workshop and two introductory presentations dealing with economic policies of Slovakia on its way to the EU accession and the historical perspectives of growth, integration and recommended policies for catching-up in transition countries. The next section presents an outline of recent developments in the accession process in ten individual candidate countries. The fourth section concentrates on the analysis of factors determining savings and investments in accession countries and the role of banking intermediation, as illustrated on the case of Hungary. The fifth section is dedicated to questions of competitiveness - to the alternative ways of its measurement and policies that support exports and/or the ability of domestic producers to substitute imports, stressing that policies on the company and industry level are more important than national policies. The sixth section deals with the problems of macroeconomic financial convergence and the requirements on national performance for becoming a member of the European Monetary Union. Its first paper discusses alternative policies of central banks from Eastern and Central Europe for a smooth monetary integration of their countries with the euro-zone. Its second paper tests the empirical evidence on the speed of economic convergence in various transition countries. Its third paper analyses the aspects of the so-called nominal and real convergence and the potential scope of alternative monetary policies in accession countries in order to retain their external balance. The seventh section presents the summary of three presentations that dealt with international institutions. The first one is dealing with the policies and the support for catching up provided by the World Bank. The second paper describes the experiences of Ireland, Latvia and Estonia in preparing the national development plans and in the usage of structural and cohesion funds provided by the European Commission. The third paper concentrates on the problems of domestic agricultural policies and the EU Transfers, as based on the comparison of Slovakia with some other EU candidate countries and with the EU incumbents. The next two sections discuss the questions associated with the R&D, foreign direct investment, human capital and their spillovers. In the first of them the lessons from the Irish experience are summarized and compared with the present situation in accession countries. The paper, that follows next, analyses the data on education, compares the EU candidate countries with some less developed EU member countries and draws conclusion about policies for the human capital development and their association with growth. The last (tenth) section is based the on the comparative analysis of the empirical evidence from transition countries on the indicators of human development and the policies for a more comprehensive convergence of these countries to the levels of present EU member states

EU Structural Support: Its Macroeconomic and Distributional Effects and Social Environment

This is a report about the fourth workshop from the seminar series of IIASA's Economic Transition and Integration Project entitled "The Process of EU Accession: Preparation by Learning and Exchange". The workshop was held in Prague on 9-11 November, 2000. The first section summarizes recent developments in the accession process in the individual candidate countries. The second is devoted to the establishment of regional institutions for managing the structural support funds of the EU. The next section deals with the organization of planning, monitoring and evaluation of EU financed programs as experienced and perceived in the current member states and the candidate countries. The fourth section is devoted to the essence and realization of the principles of EU programs, while the fifth analyzes the macroeconomic effects of past and future such programs. Section 6 deals with the impact of EU funds on national and regional convergence, while section 7 with the issue of program selection. Finally, section 8 is devoted to the special problems of the two heavy weight sectors in EU programs: agriculture, as well as transport and infrastructure

Chaos and Complexity of quantum motion

The problem of characterizing complexity of quantum dynamics - in particular of locally interacting chains of quantum particles - will be reviewed and discussed from several different perspectives: (i) stability of motion against external perturbations and decoherence, (ii) efficiency of quantum simulation in terms of classical computation and entanglement production in operator spaces, (iii) quantum transport, relaxation to equilibrium and quantum mixing, and (iv) computation of quantum dynamical entropies. Discussions of all these criteria will be confronted with the established criteria of integrability or quantum chaos, and sometimes quite surprising conclusions are found. Some conjectures and interesting open problems in ergodic theory of the quantum many problem are suggested.Comment: 45 pages, 22 figures, final version, at press in J. Phys. A, special issue on Quantum Informatio

Jamming transition in a homogeneous one-dimensional system: the Bus Route Model

We present a driven diffusive model which we call the Bus Route Model. The model is defined on a one-dimensional lattice, with each lattice site having two binary variables, one of which is conserved (``buses'') and one of which is non-conserved (``passengers''). The buses are driven in a preferred direction and are slowed down by the presence of passengers who arrive with rate lambda. We study the model by simulation, heuristic argument and a mean-field theory. All these approaches provide strong evidence of a transition between an inhomogeneous ``jammed'' phase (where the buses bunch together) and a homogeneous phase as the bus density is increased. However, we argue that a strict phase transition is present only in the limit lambda -> 0. For small lambda, we argue that the transition is replaced by an abrupt crossover which is exponentially sharp in 1/lambda. We also study the coarsening of gaps between buses in the jammed regime. An alternative interpretation of the model is given in which the spaces between ``buses'' and the buses themselves are interchanged. This describes a system of particles whose mobility decreases the longer they have been stationary and could provide a model for, say, the flow of a gelling or sticky material along a pipe.Comment: 17 pages Revtex, 20 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Critical phenomena and universal dynamics in one-dimensional driven diffusive systems with two species of particles

Recent work on stochastic interacting particle systems with two particle species (or single-species systems with kinematic constraints) has demonstrated the existence of spontaneous symmetry breaking, long-range order and phase coexistence in nonequilibrium steady states, even if translational invariance is not broken by defects or open boundaries. If both particle species are conserved, the temporal behaviour is largely unexplored, but first results of current work on the transition from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale yield exact coupled nonlinear hydrodynamic equations and indicate the emergence of novel types of shock waves which are collective excitations stabilized by the flow of microscopic fluctuations. We review the basic stationary and dynamic properties of these systems, highlighting the role of conservation laws and kinetic constraints for the hydrodynamic behaviour, the microscopic origin of domain wall (shock) stability and the coarsening dynamics of domains during phase separation.Comment: 72 pages, 6 figures, 201 references (topical review for J. Phys. A: Math. Gen.

Three isoflavanones with cannabinoid-like moieties from Desmodium canum

Three further derivatives of 5,7,2',4'-tetrahydroxy-6-methyl isoflavanone have been isolated from the root extract of Desmodium canum and assigned the structures 2,3-dihydro-5,7-dihydroxy-6-methyl-3-(1a,2,3,3a,8b,8c-hexahydro-6-hydroxy-1,1,3a-trimethyl-,6,9-trimethyl 1H-4-oxabenzo[f]cyclobut[c,d]inden-7-yl)-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one (1) 2,3-dihydro-5,7-dihydroxy-6-methyl-3-(6a,7,8,10a-tetrahydro-3-hydroxy-6,6,9-trimethyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-2-yl)-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one (2) 2,3-dihydro-5,7-dihydroxy-6-methyl-3-(3-hydroxy-6,6,9-trimethyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-2-yl) 4H-1-benzopyran-4-one (3). The three compounds and the previously isolated chromene 4 all derive from the geranylated precursor 5 by a series of cannabinoid-like oxidative rearrangements. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved