This new book explains the recent rift between America and some of her oldest European allies, especially with Germany and France.
Particular attention is devoted to the several competing ...interpretations of the Euro-American rift, for example, that Europeans were taken aback when American neo-conservative leaders scornfully rejected their well-meant offers of post-9/11 assistance with expressions of disdain for the allies' backward military technology and budgets. The Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Treaty, its environmental stance and its position on international treaties are also examined in detail.
Merkl's interpretation emphasizes America's neo-imperial, unilateralist posture and policies as contrasted to the Wilsonian internationalism that created the United Nations and established international rule of law backed up by the Security Council, a web of international treaties and international courts, including the International Court of Criminal Justice.
Today's American leaders thus oppose European champions of an American-initiated international order while identifying themselves with the imperialist European doctrines and practices of another age.
Second chance for high school dropouts? Jepsen, Christopher; Mueser, Peter; Troske, Kenneth
Journal of labor economics,
07/2017, Letnik:
35, Številka:
S1
Journal Article
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We evaluate the educational returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification using state administrative data. We use fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) methods to account for the fact ...that GED test-takers can repeatedly retake the test until they pass it and the fact that test-takers have to pass all five subtests before receiving the GED. We find that the GED increases the likelihood of postsecondary attendance and course completion substantially but that the GED impact on overall credits completed is modest; the GED causes an average increment of only two credits for men and six credits for women.
How effective are capital account restrictions? We provide new answers based on a novel panel data set of capital controls, disaggregated by asset class and by inflows/outflows, covering 74 countries ...during 1995–2005. We find the estimated effects of capital controls to vary markedly across the types of capital controls, both by asset categories, by the direction of flows, and across countries' income levels. In particular, both debt and equity controls can substantially reduce outflows, with little effect on capital inflows, but only high-income countries appear able to effectively impose debt (outflow) controls. The results imply that capital controls can affect both the volume and the composition of capital flows.
The availability of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning has grown rapidly, but the value of increased availability is not clear. We document the relationship ...between CT and MRI availability and use, and we consider potentially important sources of benefits. We discuss key questions that need to be addressed if value is to be well understood. In an example we study, expanded imaging may be valuable because it provides quicker access to more precise diagnostic information, although evidence for improved health outcomes is limited. This may be a common situation; thus, a particularly important question is how non-health-outcome benefits of imaging can be quantified.
We study the convergence of European bond markets and the anchoring of inflation expectations in the euro area from 1993 to 2008, using high-frequency bond yield data for France, Germany, Italy, and ...Spain; some smaller euro-area countries; and a control group comprising the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden. We find that Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) led to substantial convergence in euro-area sovereign bond markets in terms of interest rate levels, unconditional daily fluctuations, and conditional responses to major macroeconomic announcements. Our findings also suggest a substantial increase in the anchoring of long-term inflation expectations since EMU, particularly for Italy and Spain. Finally, we present evidence that the elimination of exchange rate risk and the adoption of a common monetary policy were the primary drivers of bond market convergence in the euro area, as opposed to fiscal policy and the loose exchange rate peg of the 1990s.
After some years of trifling development under a system of public tenders (1995–2000), French politicians progressively changed the national policy framework for feed-in tariffs (December 2000) and ...wind power development zones (July 2005). The new policy framework has triggered a beginning of takeoff in wind power capacity. The paper examines French wind power development in the light of two key dimensions and concepts related to wind power policy: “planning” and “siting” (Part 1). We particularly focus on the recent French legislative debate, which led to the adoption of the new policy framework (Part 2). The French case shows that the recourse to planning tools was not tailor-made for siting issues but resulted from a political fight over the decentralization of energy policy. The policy outcome, which we call “flexible decentralized planning”, is both interesting and ambiguous. It is interesting in that it develops interfaces between planning tools and siting institutions. It is ambiguous in that it is potentially very hierarchical: the final decision power is left in State-planners’ hands, making it unpredictable the extent to which room will genuinely be provided for siting processes to take place.
Performance-Sensitive Debt Manso, Gustavo; Strulovici, Bruno; Tchistyi, Alexei
The Review of financial studies,
05/2010, Letnik:
23, Številka:
5
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This article studies performance-sensitive debt (PSD), the class of debt obligations whose interest payments depend on some measure of the borrower's performance. We demonstrate that the existence of ...PSD obligations cannot be explained by the trade-off theory of capital structure, as PSD leads to earlier default and lower equity value compared to fixed-rate debt of the same market value. We show that, consistent with the pecking-order theory, PSD can be used as an inexpensive screening device, and we find empirically that firms choosing PSD loans are more likely to improve their credit ratings than firms choosing fixed-interest loans. We also develop a method to value PSD obligations allowing for general payment profiles and obtain closed-form pricing formulas for step-up bonds and linear PSD.
Previous analyses of dairy farm structural change focus on the variation over time in one or a small number of regions. We present an EU‐15 cross‐regional analysis of the development of dairy farm ...numbers in different size classes over the period 1995–2005. Our purpose is to measure the explanatory relevance and effect of key factors suggested in the theoretical and empirical literature on structural change. Apart from the unprecedented scope, the underlying Markov chain analysis also contributes by combining observed transitions in micro (farm level) data with macro (sector level) data on farm numbers. Results show widely significant impacts of most considered explanatory variables, but also reflect and illuminate the complexity of the underlying processes.
Quantile hedonic house price function estimates imply that appreciation rates were higher between 1995 and 2005 for high-priced homes in Chicago. Decompositions of temporal changes in the house price ...distribution suggest that the types of homes sold and their location do not account for the change in the price distribution. Rather, higher appreciation rates for high-priced homes are explained by differences in the quantile regression coefficients over time.
We integrate input output and NAMEA tables for Spain and Italy in 1995, 2000 and 2005, in order to address the hot policy issue of sustainable consumption and production. A comparison of production ...and consumption perspectives may have relevant policy implications. We deal with the domestic technology assumption and primarily the aggregation bias that may result when calculating indirect emission using different sector aggregations in the analyses (e.g. 16, 30, 50). Extended Input Output Analysis provides analyses of the emissions embodied in domestic consumption and domestic production by considering the structure of intermediate inputs and environmental efficiency in each production sector. Our empirical findings show that different sectoral aggregation significantly biases the amount of emissions for the consumption perspective, though differently in the two countries. Italy surprisingly show consumption/production ratios around or lower than one, but in line with some major work at EU level. Our results thus suggest that special attention must be paid when interpreting the EE-IOA of country estimated amounts of embodied emissions, both in domestic final demand and those directly associated with the production sectors when the sectoral aggregation level has a low definition as considered in some recent similar studies. Copyright Elsevier B.V.
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