The Puzzling Underuse of Arbitration in Post-Communism: A Law and Economics Analysis

The paper attempts to explain the failure of postcommunist traders exemplified by Balkan traders to make use of arbitration courts by means of the rational choice of forum approach offered by the law and economics movement. Conjectures about traders? behaviour derived by combining this approach with the constraints set by institutional features of Balkan countries, in particular Bulgaria and Croatia, are confronted with experience. As it turns out the successes yielded by the rational choice of forum approach are very limited. This may be a dissapointment to its most fervent advocates, but is nevertheless useful, because it suggests a more flexible approach. -- In dem Aufsatz wird der Versuch unternommen, die geringe Neigung der Kaufleute der postkommunistischen Länder, ihre Streitigkeiten durch Schiedsgerichte entscheiden zu lassen, mit Hilfe eines theoretischen Instrumentariums zu erklären, das der ökonomischen Analyse des Rechts entstammt. Diese hat sich mit der Frage befasst, unter welchen Umständen Konfliktparteien ein bestimmtes Forum für die Konfliktaustragung gegenüber anderen vorziehen. Die Anwendung dieser Ansätze auf die institutionellen Gegebenheiten bestimmter Balkanländer, insbesondere Bulgarien und Kroatien, führt zu Hypothesen, die einer empirischen Überprüfung zugänglich sind, dabei aber nicht sonderlich gut abschneiden. Dieses Ergebnis legt eine Erweiterung des Forschungsansatzes nahe.Schiedsspruch,Verfahrensdauer,Parteilichkeit,Berufungsverfahren,Rechtsfortbildung,arbitration awards,court congestion,favoritism,appeals process,lawmaking

Death or survival. Post-communist bankruptcy law in action. A survey

The paper discusses some major lessons to be learnt from the application of bankruptcy law in a post-communist environment. Its focus is on East Central Europe because elsewhere bankruptcy law is of rather limited practical relevance. The incentives and the selection of trustees turn out to be key issues if the loss of value typically occuring during bankruptcy procedures is to be contained within reasonable limits. Reorganization is a realistic option only if management has sufficient incentives to file bankruptcy in time. Post-communist legislation has tried to achieve this mostly by threat of punishment. This approach has proved inefficient. The paper also criticizes the tendency of post-communist legislation to deemphasize individual remedies against defaulting debtors. -- Der Aufsatz analysiert Erfahrungen mit der Anwendung eines Konkursrechts in postkommunistischen Wirtschaftsordnungen. Der Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung liegt in Ostmitteleuro-pa, weil in den weiter östlich gelegenen postkommunistischen Ländern die praktische Bedeu-tung des Konkursrechts sehr begrenzt ist. Die Anreize, die der Konkursverwalter hat, und das Verfahren, nach dem er eingesetzt und gegebenenfalls seines Amtes enthoben wird, erweisen sich als wichtige Erfolgsfaktoren, insbesondere beeinflussen sie die Ausmaße, die der für Konkurse typische Werteverfall annimmt. Eine Unternehmenssanierung kommt meistens nur dann in Frage, wenn das Management ausreichend starke Anreize hat, den Konkurs nicht zu verschleppen. Postkommunistische Rechtsordnung haben dies vor allem durch Strafandro-hung zu gewährleisten versucht, dieser Ansatz war wenig erfolgreich. Als problematisch er-weist sich auch die Neigung postkommunistischer Gesetzgeber, die Gesamtvollstreckung zulasten der Einzelvollstreckung zu favorisieren.trustee,execution,fraudulent conveyance,reorganization,going concern sale,Konkursverwalter,Einzelvollstreckung,Konkursplan,übertragende Sanierung,Vollstreckungsvereitelung

The Impact of the War 1991: 1995 on the Croatian Economy: A Contribution to the Analysis of War Economies

The economics of the Croatian war differ considerably from what is often thought of as typical features of a war economy. Most strikingly, while wars are often perceived as generating a tendency towards repressed inflation and a command economy the Croatian economy actually moved in the opposite direction. Croatia "nevertheless" won the war. This has prompted some to think of the war as matter of minor relevance for Croatian economic development in the nineties. The paper argues that this view is mistaken. Croatia offers an opportunity to reconsider the macroeconomics of regional wars. This reconsideration demonstrates the power of the new classical framework. -- Die kroatische Volkswirtschaft brachte in den Kriegsjahren 1991 ? 1995 keineswegs die gemeinhin als typisch erachteten Eigenarten einer Kriegswirtschaft hervor. Weder kam es zu einer zurückgestauten Inflation noch zu einer Verstärkung befehlswirtschaftlicher Elemente, eher war das Gegenteil der Fall. ?Nichtsdestoweniger? gewann Kroatien den Krieg. Manche haben daraus geschlussfolgert, dass der Krieg für die kroatische Wirtschaft ein Ereignis von untergeordneter Bedeutung war. Diese These ist irrig. Kroatien bietet uns eine Gelegenheit, die ökonomische Analyse regionaler Kriege zu überdenken. Die neuklassische Makroökonomik erweist sich dabei als hilfreich.Wehrpflicht,totaler Krieg,Flüchtlinge,sozialistische Industrialisierung,Draft,total war,refugees,socialist industrialization

Impaired regulation of emotion: Neural correlates of reappraisal and distraction in bipolar disorder and unaffected relatives

Deficient emotion regulation has been proposed as a crucial pathological mechanism in bipolar disorder (BD). We therefore investigated emotion regulation impairments in BD, the related neural underpinnings and their etiological relevance for the disorder. Twenty-two euthymic patients with bipolar-I disorder and 17 unaffected first-degree relatives of BD-I patients, as well as two groups of healthy gender-, age- and education-matched controls (N=22/17, respectively) were included. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while applying two different emotion regulation techniques, reappraisal and distraction, when presented with emotional images. BD patients and relatives showed impaired downregulation of amygdala activity during reappraisal, but not during distraction, when compared with controls. This deficit was correlated with the habitual use of reappraisal. The negative connectivity of amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) observed during reappraisal in controls was reversed in BD patients and relatives. There were no significant differences between BD patients and relatives. As being observed in BD patients and unaffected relatives, deficits in emotion regulation through reappraisal may represent heritable neurobiological abnormalities underlying BD. The neural mechanisms include impaired control of amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli and dysfunctional connectivity of the amygdala to regulatory control regions in the OFC. These are, thus, important aspects of the neurobiological basis of increased vulnerability for BD

Spectral constraints on unidentified EGRET gamma-ray sources from COMPTEL MeV observations

We investigated the MeV properties of 173 unidentified or only tentatively identified EGRET sources listed in the third EGRET catalogue, by analyzing the simultaneously collected COMPTEL MeV data for each individual source. The sources can generally be divided into 4 groups. In this paper we focus on one of these, a group of 22 EGRET sources for which we can provide additional constraining information: their spectral extrapolations from the energy range above 100 MeV towards lower energies overshoot the fluxes or upper limits derived simultaneously at MeV energies. This means that for these sources a spectral turnover/break between 1 MeV and 100 MeV is required. At least two of these sources, but most likely the majority of this sample, have the maxima of their gamma-ray luminosities in this energy band. The sources have rather soft EGRET spectra (average photon index: 2.72), and seem to spatially cluster in the inner Galaxy. Variability analyses revealed 11 out of the 22 sources to be significantly variable. Object classes proposed as possible counterparts for the unidentified EGRET sources are discussed in the light of these additional constraints.Comment: 9 pages including 4 figures; A&A accepte

The evolution of law under communism and post-communism: a system-theory analysis in the spirit of Luhmann

The paper suggests that Luhmann’s theory of social systems and evolution offers a powerful approach for analyzing law and the economy. It considers Yugoslavia and some Central European countries before and after 1990. Luhmann’s concept of evolution stands in stark contrast to mainstream economic theory. It enables us to clarify the concept of transformation. A transformation became necessary because communism was an evolutionary dead end. According to this view, in postcommunism the primacy of functional differentiation needs to be reestablished because it was partially reversed under communist rule. In these circumstances, the popular call for “sufficient” public control over the market is asking for the impossible. Post-communist law is bound to fall behind the evolution of markets. This causes economic problems and retards financial deepening

Temporal changes in the lunar soil from correlation of diffuse vibrations

International audienceIt was recently demonstrated that one can reconstruct the impulse response between passive sensors, by cross-correlating diffuse waves or ambient noise. Using seismic waves recorded on the moon, we show here that not only direct waves can be retrieved but also late arrivals that have been scattered before reaching the seismometers. As these late arrivals propagate for longer time, they are more sensitive to weak perturbations of the medium such as velocity changes. This high sensitivity of scattered waves is used to monitor periodic velocity changes in the lunar soil by measuring small delays of the passively retrieved coda waves. The velocity changes result from temperature variations due to periodic heating of the lunar surface by the sun

An Unidentified Variable Gamma-Ray Source near the Galactic Plane Detected by COMPTEL

We report the detection of an unidentified gamma-ray source near the Galactic plane by the COMPTEL experiment aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. The source is detected at a significance level of ~ 7.2 sigma in the energy range 1-3 MeV and at ~ 4.6 sigma in the lower 0.75-1 MeV band in the time period March to July 1995. At energies above 3 MeV are only marginal hints or upper limits obtained. The MeV spectrum has a soft shape. Strong flux variability is found within one year at energies below 3 MeV. Possible counterparts of galactic and extragalactic nature are discussed