Incomplete Transition – Is there a “Mid-Transition Trap”?

The subject of this paper is the analysis of the classification of economic systems. The traditional classifications of capitalist, socialist centrally planned, and socialist market systems, and the newer classification of variants of capitalism into the Anglo-Saxon, European continental, and Asian models, are inadequate to explain new phenomena in a globalized economy. After the collapse of central planning, countries in transition became a category describing processes of deep socio-economic transformation. These transition countries aspired to meet the standards of developed European market economies, as well as governance standards regarding democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. A new classification of economic systems by Balcerowicz (2014) combines the traditional classification of economic systems with the characteristics of well-governed democratic societies in order to come up with a matrix that shows the interaction of economic system characteristics and governance outcomes.This paper builds on Balcerowicz’s classification by introducing and delineating the categories of state capitalism, crony capitalism, and state capture in order to provide a new classification of economic systems

Reproducing kernel Hilbert space based estimation of systems of ordinary differential equations

Non-linear systems of differential equations have attracted the interest in fields like system biology, ecology or biochemistry, due to their flexibility and their ability to describe dynamical systems. Despite the importance of such models in many branches of science they have not been the focus of systematic statistical analysis until recently. In this work we propose a general approach to estimate the parameters of systems of differential equations measured with noise. Our methodology is based on the maximization of the penalized likelihood where the system of differential equations is used as a penalty. To do so, we use a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space approach that allows to formulate the estimation problem as an unconstrained numeric maximization problem easy to solve. The proposed method is tested with synthetically simulated data and it is used to estimate the unobserved transcription factor CdaR in Steptomyes coelicolor using gene expression data of the genes it regulates.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Generalized information criterion for model selection in penalized graphical models

This paper introduces an estimator of the relative directed distance between an estimated model and the true model, based on the Kulback-Leibler divergence and is motivated by the generalized information criterion proposed by Konishi and Kitagawa. This estimator can be used to select model in penalized Gaussian copula graphical models. The use of this estimator is not feasible for high-dimensional cases. However, we derive an efficient way to compute this estimator which is feasible for the latter class of problems. Moreover, this estimator is, generally, appropriate for several penalties such as lasso, adaptive lasso and smoothly clipped absolute deviation penalty. Simulations show that the method performs similarly to KL oracle estimator and it also improves BIC performance in terms of support recovery of the graph. Specifically, we compare our method with Akaike information criterion, Bayesian information criterion and cross validation for band, sparse and dense network structures

Incomplete Transition – Is there a “Mid-Transition Trap”?

The subject of this paper is the analysis of the classification of economic systems. The traditional classifications of capitalist, socialist centrally planned, and socialist market systems, and the newer classification of variants of capitalism into the Anglo-Saxon, European continental, and Asian models, are inadequate to explain new phenomena in a globalized economy. After the collapse of central planning, countries in transition became a category describing processes of deep socio-economic transformation. These transition countries aspired to meet the standards of developed European market economies, as well as governance standards regarding democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. A new classification of economic systems by Balcerowicz (2014) combines the traditional classification of economic systems with the characteristics of well-governed democratic societies in order to come up with a matrix that shows the interaction of economic system characteristics and governance outcomes.This paper builds on Balcerowicz’s classification by introducing and delineating the categories of state capitalism, crony capitalism, and state capture in order to provide a new classification of economic systems. It uses these concepts to empirically analyze the transition countries, with special reference to states aspiring to EU membership and the new EU member states. The methodology used is analytical and empirical. The results find that the transition is incomplete, especially in terms of governance, leading to the hypothesis of a ‘mid-transition trap’, similar to the much discussed ‘middle-income trap’. The results should lead to further, more refined research

Europe’s future - the relevance of Keynes’s economic consequences of the peace

The purpose of this paper is to use the analysis and recommendations of The Economic Consequences of the Peace in order to illustrate how Keynes’s approach could be used for an inquiry into the nature of the current euro crisis. The euro crisis should not be separated from the crisis of the European Union itself, since it is almost impossible to assume that the effects of the demise of the euro area would not a be a direct cause of the unraveling of the European Union, the most vast, complex, and tenacious effort of economic and political integration in modern history. Certainly, the conclusions and remedies proposed by Keynes should not be overlooked and it is possible to draw some broad conclusions on how his approach would affect the considerations regarding possible remedies for the current crisis. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179065

Consistency of direct integral estimator for partially observed systems of ordinary differential equations

In this paper we use the sieve framework to prove consistency of the ‘direct integral estimator’ of parameters for partially observed systems of ordinary differential equations, which are commonly used for modeling dynamic processes

Possibilities of buses on alternative fuel in public urban transport in Belgrade

The accelerated development of transport and transport technology is significantly contributing to air pollution by motor vehicle emissions in large urban environments. The analysis of mass public transport in Belgrade, the transportation supply, the transport services delivered, the number of passengers transported, clearly concludes that by investing in its capacity, significant progress in the preservation of the city environment can be achieved. The paper analyzes the economic and environmental aspects of the modernization and renewal of the public bus subsystem as the major bearer of the transport supply through the use of alternative fuels, natural gas and biodiesel. Viešojo transporto alternatyvaus kuro taikymo galimybės Belgrade Santrauka. Didėjantys transporto ir transporto technologijų vystymosi tempai gerokai padidina oro užterštumą urbanizuotose teritorijose. Analizuojama viešojo transporto (autobusų) modernizacijos bei atkūrimo, naudojant alternatyvų kurą (natūralias dujas ir biodyzeliną), galimybe ekonominiais ir aplinkosaugos aspektais. Reikšminiai žodžiai: autobusas, natūralios dujos, biodyzelis, viešasis transportas, aplinkosauga. First published online: 21 Oct 201