The last decade has seen an increasing focus on the involvement of the private sector in international sustainable development, particularly in high-risk jurisdictions. This involvement encompasses a ...broad spectrum, incorporating innovative private sector instruments—now acknowledged as ODA-eligible by the OECD—as well as traditional tools of external official support to developing countries, which remain the primary contributors to ODA flows. This literature review aims to consolidate the academic exploration of the enduring classic foreign aid tools' impact on the political risks associated with foreign direct investment (FDI), and identifies prevalent limitations while suggesting approaches to overcome these challenges.The first section delineates the central theme and rationale behind the literature selection process, utilizing the Google Scholar database to contextualize the research within a comprehensive framework. The subsequent section categorizes and compares the most relevant studies based on formal criteria and methodological parameters. Sections three and four critically assess the scholarly contributions in conceptualizing the mitigating influence of foreign aid in general, focusing on its impact on specific political risks such as expropriation, terrorism, and corruption. The concluding section delves into studies that explore foreign aid and foreign direct investment flows from China, the largest non-Western donor.A bibliometric analysis reveals a noteworthy disparity between research attention and policymaking focus on the subject matter. Notably, the selected papers fail to comprehensively cover the full spectrum of primary extra-legal and legal-governmental political risks for transnational businesses. Scholars' assessments of foreign aid's mitigating effect often lack differentiation between grants and loans or between flows directed to different sectors, as well as the distinction between aid routed through public institutions and bypassing them. Notably absent is a comprehensive analysis encompassing the complete range of 'established' Western and emerging non-Western aid providers, or an exploration of aid flows from non-OECD countries other than China. Most research focuses on Africa and fails to differentiate between recipients based on fragility, income levels, or other relevant categorizations. Moreover, the researchers have yet to delve into data post the COVID-19 outbreak, a critical period that significantly altered perceptions of political risk, foreign aid, and FDI flows. The literature review illuminates a research gap awaiting substantial exploration.
International development cooperation and political risks for transnational business are two topics which have always drawn attention from specialists in international political economy. Each of ...these topics is studied by a dedicated subdiscipline with a specific terminology, strong analytical centers and influential peer-reviewed journals. Despite political risks had initially been associated with developing countries (and transition economies — after the Cold War), two distinctive research clusters have developed separately from one another — quite inexplicably. Drawing on the idea of immanent proximity of international development studies and political risk analysis, this paper develops the logic of blending their research agendas.The first two sections formulate key presumptions meant to justify the conjugation of two topics. The first presumption is an acknowledgement of an engrained commercial motivation in any modality of development cooperation and the latter’s ability to serve as a tool to promote foreign economic interests. The second presumption emphasizes the existence of an indissoluble link between political risks for business with socio-economic and political development disbalances within and between countries. The final section identifies concrete dimensions of conjugation of two research agendas, such as: 1) conducting political risk assessments in the course of programming and implementing development projects; 2) examining the impact of political risk manifestations on provider countries’ ability to mobilize financial resources for international development; studying the practices of using different development cooperation tools to mitigate political risks for foreign economic activity — both through a direct and deliberate reduction of risk perceived by business and through an indirect impact on the environment where political risks are formed; 4) exploring the logic of emergence of new risk factors (of various types) in the course of implementing development cooperation policies. The conclusion argues for focusing on the reverse impact of new trends in international development cooperation on the parameters of political risks for international business from the Western and non-Western countries amidst the global turbulence, using all available sources of statistical data — conventional and unconventional. It also draws a step-by-step research plan and assesses the theoretical and policy relevance of obtaining anticipated results.
The necessity to provide beet-growing farms with high-quality planting material determines the main vector of domestic sugar beet seed-growing development. A special role in the crop seed-growing is ...assigned to improvement of the main methods, including the development of a promising raw-material storage technique. The aim of the investigations is to reveal the impact of physical and chemical methods of raw-material storage, both separately and in combination, on the planting material safety as well as on the productivity of sugar beet seed-bearing plants. The investigations were performed by the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution Mazlumov All-Russia Research Institute of Sugar Beet and Sugar in Voronezh oblast in 2019–2021. The study object was represented by beet mother roots and seed-bearing plants of the domestic hybrid (RMS-127) of male sterile form. The experiments were performed in a beet root storehouse and on isolated plots according to methodological recommendations and instructions for sugar beet seed-growing. The experiment scheme was: (1) control (without treatment); (2) treatment of mother beet roots with infrared radiation (30 s) using a Minin reflector (blue lamp); (3) spraying of mother beet roots with fungicide Kagatnik, VRK (0.10 L/t); (4) treatment with Kagatnik, VRK (0.10 L/t) + infrared radiation (30 s); and (5) treatment with Kagatnik, VRK (0.10 L/t) + surfactant Allur, Zh (0.003 L/t). As a result, the treatment of sugar beet mother roots by fungicide Kagatnik, VRK in combination with infrared radiation or with surfactant Allur, Zh enables the reduction of mass losses by 1.6–2.3 absolute % and proliferation by 21.4–23.3 absolute % during storage as well as the rise in the yield of suitable for planting beet roots by 6–7 absolute %. Positive aftereffect of the storage technique of beet mother roots on the development and productivity of sugar beet seed-bearing plants was determined. The yield increase of the obtained sugar beet seeds was 0.5 t/ha, and the portion of high-quality seeds of sowing fractions (3.5–4.5 mm and 4.5–5.5 mm) was 96–98%.
This paper provides an overview and analysis of existing tools and machinery for fighting ground forest fires. The paper examines theoretical issues of applying soil-thrower machine to extinguish ...forest fires. In the paper, the information database on the usage of existing technology in modern conditions is studied in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the usage of new technology. The design of the presented machine makes it a universal one, replacing two technological units and thereby reducing the material consumption of technological process of extinguishing fire with soil and laying firebreaks; it increases the amount of ground to extinguish the fire, increasing efficiency in the fight against fire, as well as the traveling speed of the unit and its performance.
Forest fires are studied and developed in all countries with forest resources. However, despite large number of studies, the problem is still far from being resolved and fires still cause great ...damage to forests. The article deals with research on the influence of the screw drum parameters on the quality of removing the surface soil layer from combustible materials and on the performance of the forest fires soil-sweeping machine. The geometric parameters of the screw drum of the forest fires soil-sweeping machine were optimized. As a result of optimization, the optimal values of the screw channel depth in the range of 7.5-8.7 cm and the screw pitch of 23-40 cm were obtained. At these optimal values, the ground cover content in the thrown soil stream will be less than 15 %, the productivity of the forest fires soil-sweeping machine will be more than 40 kg/s, and the power consumption will be less than 12 kW.
The United States is indisputable global leader in utilizing tools of economic statecraft to secure national interests both through rewarding foreign countries for policies conforming the Washington ...interests and through punishing them for a deviant behavior. Foreign assistance is one of such mechanisms of global influence. This paper examines the issue of aid prohibition. The first section contains a catalog and an original typology of effective universal (not country-specific) restrictions on foreign aid provision based on the type of the recipient government’s actions or inactions through its domestic policy or international behavior that trigger harming the U.S. economic interests. The paper demonstrates that such a typology is equally applicable to the U.S. bilateral and multilateral aid and invites to differentiate between the restrictions within one category depending on whether they are imposed in response to the recipient’s actions against the United States or to its international policy as a whole. The second section assess the extent to which the U.S. government is consistent in imposing the aid restrictions. The conclusion is drawn that the U.S. has established a parallel (to the international law) legal regime of aid prohibitions that helps them control the developing countries’ behavior. Most of the active restrictions and prohibitions were imposed during the Cold War but not as byproducts of the bipolarity, which is another illustration of continuity in the U.S. global policies in the 20th and 21st centuries. The imposition of these restrictions reflects not only a diversification of external threats to the U.S. vital interests, but also the logic of the U.S. domestic political process and the legislators’ wish to restrain the executive branch. The President, however, is entitled by law to waive most of the norms out of political or strategic considerations. This helps the U.S. government impose restrictions selectively but does not eliminate a hypothetical risk of aid suspension that can refrain a recipient government from certain domestic or external actions. Nonetheless, the impact of the U.S. aid prohibition as a tool of coercion has been declining because of strengthening of non-Western donors – especially, China, Arab countries, Turkey and Russian Federation.
A brief review of the methods used to simulate the interaction of soil-tillage tool is given. The EDEM Academic program was used to practically test the possibilities of using the discrete element ...method (DEM). A brief description of the physical models of this application used to simulate the interaction of the soil-tillage tool is given. To evaluate the selected physical models (Hertz-Mindlin, Hertz-Mindlin JKR, Hysteretic Spring), a virtual soil channel and a model of a simple tillage tool of rectangular shape have been created. The basic parameters of the soil channel, discrete particles and physical models are described. As a result of the research, two components of the traction resistance vector were obtained, the longitudinal component X and the vertical component Z. Data analysis showed that the average values of forces calculated using physical models of Hysteretic Spring and Hertz-Mindlin JKR differ slightly. With a particle radius of 10 mm, they are equal to X - 597 and 592H; Z - 111 and 97H, respectively. More significant differences when comparing these models with the base model Hertz-Mindlin. For example, in comparison with the physical model of the Hysteretic Spring, the component forces X and Z are less than 18.1%. This is due to the introduction of additional forces imitating the adhesion of particles.
The technology of continuous lowering of stumps below the soil surface throughout the area of cutting is proposed to reduce the loads on the working bodies and frames of tillage tools and ensures ...complete mechanization of the reforestation process. A technological process has been developed to prepare stumps for lowering below the ground surface, which consists in creating platform-deepenings around stumps and cleaning their lateral surface from the soil within the depth of the platform. An aggregate for its implementation consisting of a tractor, a hydraulic manipulator, a screw rotator and a platform-maker with flexible working bodies has been designed. A mathematical model of the aggregate operation has been created. It enables to evaluate the efficiency of the manipulator placement of platform-maker and to determine the influence of the parameters of the hydraulic manipulator on the performance of the aggregate. The influences of the stump distribution density, the boom of the manipulator and the maximum angle of its rotation on the performance of the platform-maker have been determined. It was revealed that the productivity of the aggregate increases with an increase in the density of stump distribution on the cutting and the main geometrical parameters of the hydraulic manipulator.
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