The impact of capital flows on domestic investment in transition economies

During the 1990s most transition economies undertook a series of market reforms, including opening their capital accounts. This paper uses static and dynamic panel techniques to assess the effect of FDI, foreign loans and portfolio flows on domestic investment. In this partial adjustment setup, capital flows can have contemporaneous and long-term effects on investment. For countries with less developed financial markets and weaker institutions, our estimates for the FDI coefficient are larger than one, suggesting FDI stimulates investment in other sectors of the economy ("spillover" effects). Over the longer term, each dollar of FDI generates at least one additional dollar of local investment. In transition countries with stronger governance indicators, long-term loans raise domestic investment and FDI produces small spillover effects in the long run. Limited portfolio flows into the transition economies have no effect on capital formation in either group. JEL Classification: F21, F30, P33capital inflows, domestic investment, international financial integration, Transition Economies

Long-term growth prospects for the Russian economy

This paper provides an assessment of Russia’s long-term growth prospects. In particular, it addresses the question of the medium- and long-term sustainability of the country’s currently high growth rates. Starting from the notion that Russia’s fast economic expansion in recent years has benefited from a number of singular factors such as the unprecedented rise in oil prices, the paper presents new evidence on Russia’s oil price dependency using a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) framework. The findings indicate that the positive impact of rising oil prices on Russia’s GDP growth has increased in recent years, but tends to be buffered by an appreciation of the real effective exchange rate which is stimulating imports. Additionally, there is empirical confirmation that growth in the service sector – a symptom usually associated with the Dutch disease phenomenon – is mainly a result of the transition process. Finally, the paper provides an overview of the relevant factors that are likely to affect Russia’s growth performance in the future. JEL Classification: O43, O 47, O51, O11, O14.Russia, economic growth.

The conformal change of the metric of an almost Hermitian manifold applied to the antiholomorphic curvature tensor

summary:By using the technique of decomposition of a Hermitian vector space under the action of a unitary group, Ganchev [2] obtained a tensor which he named the Weyl component of the antiholomorphic curvature tensor. We show that the same tensor can be obtained by direct application of the conformal change of the metric to the antiholomorphic curvature tensor. Also, we find some other conformally curvature tensors and examine some relations between them

A Theory of Interpretation for Customary International Law

Customary international law (CIL), alongside treaties and general principles, is one of the three primary sources of international law. Historically, rules of CIL are some of the oldest rules of international law, forming the foundations of the system. While scholarship has dealt extensively with questions surrounding the creation and identification of customary rules, less attention has been paid to their interpretation. At the same time, a survey of the practice of domestic and international courts shows that courts frequently engage in the interpretation of customary rules separate from their identification. The existence of this practice calls for a deeper engagement with the question of CIL interpretation.The question of CIL interpretation is a question about how we determine the scope and content of customary rules. The main claim of this thesis is that customary rules can be subject to interpretation, and that interpretation is a specific and separate operation in the continued existence of customary rules, different from their identification. Furthermore, interpretation performs two crucial functions in the continuous existence of customary rules, and accounting for interpretation is both theoretically relevant and practically necessary. In particular, interpretation performs a concretizing function – whereby the scope and content of general customary rules is delineated and made specific, and an evolutive function – whereby older customary rules are updated in light of new factual or legal developments. The two functions that interpretation performs are not mutually exclusive.Accounting for interpretation enables us to better understand the way customary rules function, and the way they are applied in the practice of international law. This thesis offers a theory of interpretation for customary international law that engages with both the doctrinal and the practical aspects of this practice, and provides a systematic account of the role of interpretation in the continued existence of customary rules

Attitudes of girls and boys towards compulsory physical education in a selected government secondary school

This study investigated the attitudes of 175 lower secondary school students towards compulsory physical education and how these attitudes differed by year level and sex. The students were selected from a metropolitan government secondary school. A modified version of the Wear Attitude Inventory was used as the research instrument. A two-way ANOVA was applied to analyse the data for the following sub-groups: Year 8 females, Year 8 males, Year 9 females, Year 9 males, Year 10 females, and Year 10 males. The ANOVA compared the mean scores on the Wear Attitude Inventory for each sub-group. The results indicated that although both girls and boys held positive attitudes towards compulsory physical education, boys\u27 attitudes were more positive than girls. Also, as the year level increased, attitudes towards compulsory physical education were less positive for both boys and girls collectively. However, the data revealed that girls\u27 attitudes towards compulsory physical education tended to become less positive as the year level increased with the reverse being true for boys. That is, boys\u27 attitudes towards physical education tended to become more positive as the year level increased, but girls attitudes did not