Changes in Intra-industry Competitiveness of the New Member States (EU-10) Economies During the Crisis, the Years 2009-2011

This paper aims to present the main results of our analysis of changes in the trade flows of the examined countries in the initial years after the accession (2003-2008), and subsequently during the crisis (2009-2011). It especially focuses on presenting the main tendencies in intra-industry trade development in mutual trade among the new member states and with the EU-15 countries, and the main changes in a vertical and horizontal intra-industry specialization.Kryzys gospodarczy wywołany głównie czynnikami zewnętrznymi, nie pozwolił na utrzymanie tendencji wzmacniających siłę gospodarek krajów UE-10, będących efektem rzetelnie przeprowadzonych reform strukturalnych w okresie przedakcesyjnym. W artkule podjęto więc następujący problem badawczy: jak w czasie kryzysu postępowały zmiany konkurencyjności wewnątrzgałęziowej gospodarek nowych państw członkowskich (UE-10) oraz w jakim stopniu zakłócone zostały pozytywne procesy dostosowawcze, jakie dokonały się w strukturach ich gospodarkach przed i po akcesji do UE, odzwierciedlające stopień przygotowań do ich pełnej integracji z jednolitym rynkiem UE. W artykule przedstawiono najważniejsze wyniki analizy zmian strumieni handlu analizowanych krajów w pierwszych latach po akcesji (w latach 2003-2008) oraz w okresie kryzysu (2009-2011). Szczególna uwaga została wrócona na wskazanie najważniejszych tendencji w rozwoju handlu wewnątrzgałęziowego nowych państw członkowskich w handlu wzajemnym oraz w handlu z państwami UE-15, a także głównych zmian pionowej i poziomej specjalizacji wewnątrzgałęziowej

Globalisation and Social Spending

We provide evidence indicating that countries with well-developed social security systems do not necessarily face a trade-off between social spending and competitiveness. On average, countries that spend a lot on social needs score well in the competitiveness league. We investigate the importance of a reverse causality from competitiveness to social spending, and find that this is weak. We also present some possible explanations for our empirical finding. Finally, we interpret our findings in the framework of a theoretical model in which risk affects the size of the social sector and in which social spending affects the production function of the private sector.economic integration, globalisation, terms-of-trade variability, international trade

Is Inflation Always and Everywhere a Monetary Phenomenon?

Using a sample of about 160 countries over the last thirty years we test for the quantity theory relationship between money and inflation. When analysing the full sample of countries we find a strong positive relation between the long-run inflation and money growth rate. The relation is not, however, proportional. The strong link between inflation and money growth is almost wholly due to the presence of high (or hyper-) inflation countries in the sample. The relationship between inflation and money growth for low inflation countries (on average less than 10% per annum over the last 30 years) is weak. We find that the long-run average inflation and country-specific factors have a significant influence on the strength of the relationship. We also confirm the neutrality of the money growth the long-run.inflation, money, quantity theory of money

Increased Capital Mobility - A Challenge for National Macroeconomic Policies

The increased mobility of capital of the last few decades creates new challenges for the macroeconomic policies of the nation-states. In this paper we analyse some of these challenges. Contrary to what is often alleged, increased capital mobility does not necessarily increase the need for co-ordination of monetary and fiscal policies. The reason is that this increased mobility of capital has led many nations to move towards greater exchange rate flexibility. And the latter reduces the need to co-operate in the monetary field. The effect on the need for fiscal policy co-ordination crucially depends on how spillovers of fiscal policies from one country to the other are changed. To the extent that capital market integration and trade integration go together we do not know how the net spillovers of fiscal policies are affected. Increased capital mobility creates many other challenges. We analyse several of these. We argue that while increased capital mobility puts more pressure on countries to move away form pegged exchange rates towards either more flexibility or more rigidity of the exchange rates, it also increases the temptation to escape this hard choice by reimposing capital controls. We argue, however, that one particular form of capital controls, i.e. the Tobin tax, is unlikely to succeed in giving countries a “Third Way” option.economic integration, globalisation, capital flows, capital controls, Tobin tax

An antisocial activity commited in a territory of the Norhern Bohemian brown-coal field with the intention of a former Most region

Import 29/09/2010V předložené práci je zpracován přehled protispolečenských činností, které jsou páchány na území Severočeské hnědouhelné pánve se zaměřením na bývalý okres Most. V následujících kapitolách jsou vytyčena nejčastější porušení ustanovení jak trestního zákona a zákona o přestupcích, tak i zákona o hornické činnosti. Následně jsou uvedena bezpečnostní rizika kriminality na důlních provozech, ke kterým zde dochází nejčastěji. Dále je zpracována analýza kriminality páchané v popisované lokalitě za období let 2005 až 2009, její porovnání s nápadem trestné činnosti v celém okrese Most. Na závěr práce je zařazeno opatření a návrh eliminace kriminality v této oblasti.The Bachelor thesis hereby submitted contains a review of antisocial activities comitted within the North-Bohemian lignite basin, focusing on the former Most region. In the following chapters are stated of the most frequent violations of the provisions of both the Criminal Law and law on misdemeanors, and the law on mining activity. Subsequently, given the security risks of crime in the mining operations, which occur most often. There is also an analysis of crime committed in the area described during the period of 2005 to 2009 and compared with the idea of crime in the whole of the Most region. In conclusion, this thesis includes in the proposal and measures to eliminate crime in this area.Prezenční542 - Institut hornického inženýrství a bezpečnostivelmi dobř

The Eingang in Early Beethoven

A brief historical and theoretical consideration of the late-18th- and early-19th-c. Eingang--a short, cadenza-like flourish for the soloist to announce a solo section in a concerto--together with an examination of Beethoven\u27s use of the convention. Musical examples from Beethoven show both implied and written-out examples. Beethoven tended to write out such passages in his later works

Frances Taylor Patterson

Most biographical details for Frances Taylor Patterson unfortunately are unknown, but she holds an important position in early American cinema history through her efforts on behalf of pedagogy. Specifically, Patterson was one of the earliest university lecturers on motion pictures. After the very first lecturer, Victor Freeburg, left for military service in 1917, Patterson took over his course on Photoplay Composition at Columbia University in New York and taught it over several decades. There has been some suggestion, as yet unconfirmed, that Patterson was Freeburg’s graduate student. She had gotten a Bachelor’s degree from Trinity College in Connecticut in 1914 and may have come to New York to pursue further studies

The Sopranos

“In its original run on HBO, The Sopranos mattered, and it matters still,” Dana Polan asserts early in this analysis of the hit show, in which he sets out to clarify the impact and importance of the series in both its cultural and media-industry contexts. A renowned film and TV scholar, Polan combines a close and extended reading of the show itself—and of select episodes and scenes—with broader attention to the social landscape with which it is in dialogue. For Polan, The Sopranos is a work of playful irony that complicates simplistic attempts to grasp its meanings and values. The show seductively beckons the viewer into an amoral universe, hinting at ways to make sense of its ethically complicated situations, only to challenge the viewer’s complacent grasp of things

The end of politics: democracy, bureaucracy, and utopia after lenin

The thesis is an attempt to offer a reconsideration of Lenin’s book The State and Revolution. The argument is that commentators have failed to appreciate the centrality of its concepts to Lenin’s mature theory of politics„ and to the body of ideas that subsequently became Leninisms. It further argues that an understanding of the present Soviet regime, and others of a similar nature, is aided by a realisation that the themes of The State and Revolution are present in the institutional arrangements of those societies. The Introduction takes as starting point recent events in Poland, and suggests that an understanding of those events may be gained by an investigation of the discourse on political forms that Marxism offers. Chapter one presents the origins of the text, its theses in summary form, and the reception given to the text by subsequent commentators. These are divided into those taking a "historical” and those taking a ‘political’ approach. Suggestions are made of the inadequacy of both approaches, reasons for such inadequacies are proposed, and an attempt is made to offer an alternative approach based upon hermeneutics, in particular Gadamer’s concept of ‘effective-history’. Chapter two examines the way Lenin conceptualised the problems of state and politics in post-revolutionary society, and the measures he proposed for the solution of these problems. It is argued that the libertarian arrangements suggested in the text in fact provide a cultural and institutional foundation for an authoritarian state. Chapter three attempts to investigate further the assumptions on the phenomena of bureaucracy and democracy that underlie the text. Its debilitating effect on subsequent theorists of the contemporary state is suggested, and an interpretation of Weber’s thoughts on the issues is provided as a means of discovering the weakness of such theories. Chapter four attempts to examine more closely the elements of Lenin s thought and culture that made the concepts of The State and Revolution both possible and necessary. This leads to an attempt elaborate the theory of political motivation that is an unspoken assumption in Lenin’s writings, and criticises that theory as reducing politics to an ontological impossibility. It is suggested that this is a necessary assumption for Lenin"s commune-state to function. Chapter Five offers an interpretation of Sartre’s ‘Critique of Dialectical Reason’ in order to establish the paradoxical absurdity and inevitability of Lenin"s thesis. Sartre’s sociology of revolution is emphasised for its understanding of the relationship between politics and time, and Lenin"s text is then finally assessed as an attempt to provide the constitutional arrangements for a society outside of time