Introduction

Efforts to work against the practice of impunity for major international crimes and violations of fundamental human rights and to develop international guidelines against the practice are discussed

International Crimes: Jus Cogens and Obligatio Erga Omnes

There are both gaps and weaknesses in the various sources of International Criminal Law in norms and enforcement modalities. A comprehensive international codification would solve these problems, but this is not forthcoming

How natural is a small \bar\theta in left-right SUSY models ?

In the world without an axion the smallness of $\bar\theta$ may be achieved due to a spontaneously broken discrete left-right symmetry. We analyze the radiatively induced \bar\theta in the context of generic left-right symmetric SUSY models without assuming flavor degeneracy in the squark sector. Left-right symmetry allows to keep \bar\theta within its present bound only if the inter-generational mass splitting in the squark sector at the scale of the left-right symmetry breaking is smaller than 0.5%. We also consider the naturalness of m_u=0 solution to the strong CP problem in the context of horizontal flavor symmetries. A strong bound on the combination of the horizontal charges in the Up quark sector is found in this case.Comment: 12 pages, latex, 1 figure, references adde

A Constraint-based Approach for Generating Transformation Patterns

Undoing operations is an indispensable feature for many collaborative applications, mainly collaborative editors. It provides the ability to restore a correct state of shared data after erroneous operations. In particular, selective undo allows to undo any operation and is based on rearranging operations in the history thanks to the Operational Transformation (OT) approach. OT is an optimistic replication technique allowing for updating the shared data concurrently while maintaining convergence. It is a challenging task how to meaningfully combine OT and undo approaches. Indeed, undoing operations that are received and executed out-of-order at different sites leads to divergence cases. Even though various undo solutions have been proposed over the recent years, they are either limited or erroneous. In this paper, we propose a constraint-based approach to address the undo problem. We use Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) theory to devise correct and undoable transformation patterns (w.r.t OT and undo properties) which considerably simplifies the design of collaborative objects.Comment: In Proceedings FOCLASA 2015, arXiv:1512.0694

The volatility trap: why do big savers invest relatively little?

The more a country saves, the less it invests as a share of saving. We build a “store-or-sow” model of growth with precautionary saving and investment to study the nonlinear relationship between investment and saving. We contend that income volatility is an important variable for explaining saving and investment dynamics. Our results indicate that as permanent volatility increases, both investment and saving increase until a threshold at which point investment plummets while precautionary saving surges. In contrast, with larger volatility of temporary shocks, investment falls and precautionary saving gradually increases. Faced with high permanent volatility, big savers invest relatively little.volatility, precautionary saving, buffer-stock, investment

Latent separability and price variation in the estimation of demand System

The aim of this paper is to overcome the problems caused by insufficient price variation in estimating a large demand system. For that, we propose a new form of Stone-Lewbel (SL) cross section prices developed under latent separability that explore individual specific variation in the composition of the bundles of exclusive goods. The estimation of demand system under latent separability needs the choice of at least one exclusive good per group. We estimate Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QAIDS) under weak and latent separability using traditional aggregate price indices and SL prices. Our empirical analysis is based on fifteen non durable goods of a Tunisian Family Expenditure Survey Data. The results show greater differences among effects price and estimates of price elasticities obtained under weak separability and latent separability using both traditional price indices and SL prices. We obtain higher precision of estimates of own price elasticities using SL prices under latent separability.Latent separability, Weak separability, Demand system, Exclusive goods, Price variation, SL prices

On the topology of the inverse limit of a branched covering over a Riemann surface

We introduce the Plaque Topology on the inverse limit of a branched covering self-map of a Riemann surface of a finite degree greater than one. We present the notions of regular and irregular points in the setting of this Plaque Inverse Limit and study its local topological properties at the irregular points. We construct certain Boolean Algebra and certain sigma-lattice, derived from it, and use them to compute local topological invariants of the Plaque Inverse Limit. Finally, we obtain several results interrelating the dynamics of the forward iterations of the self-map and the topology of the Plaque Inverse Limit.Comment: 25 page

Public Debt Dynamics and Debt Feedback

We study the dynamics of U.S. public debt in a parsimonious VAR. We find that including debt feedback ensures the stationarity of debt while standard VARs excluding debt may imply an explosive debt path. We also find that the response of debt to inflation or interest shocks is not robust and depends on the policy regime. The recent past suggests that a positive shock to inflation increases debt while the same to interest rate decreases it. Positive shocks to growth and primary surplus unambiguously reduce debt.debt, fiscal policy, growth, VAR, generalized impulse responses