Border Crossings between Georgia and Turkey: The Sarp Land Border Gate

The Sarp land border gate between Turkey and Georgia has become Turkey’s gateway to the East in recent years. With a large number of individuals crossing every day, it is also a labour gate, where irregular Georgian immigrants cross the border for work in Turkey. In general, border policies are constructed and reconstructed in a dynamic process in which economic, security, ethnopolitical, geopolitical and cultural paradigms interact. The aim of this paper is to observe the complementary and conflicting relationship and negotiation process between economic and security paradigms in particular, with a focus on the perceptions of the officers of the border administration and state bureaucracy at the local level. To this end, field research was carried out consisting of interviews with Turkish state officials responsible for immigration and border crossing in the Sarp gate region. The article sheds light on the interaction between various agencies, actors and stakeholders in border policymaking at the regional level. It also elaborates on the profiles both of incoming immigrants employed as irregular workers and of deportees. The results of the qualitative study show that the dominance of the economic paradigm that underlies the main framework of Georgia-Turkey relations overrides security concerns between the two countries, thus necessitating a more flexible implementation of laws. The field research illustrates that implementation of laws and regulations at the local level varies and while some groups of irregular immigrants are allowed to work, others are not and, what is more, are deported.     

经济计量学模型的边界研究

文章从构建经济计量学模型出发,对有关经济计量学模型的边界问题给出一个界定。计量经济学模型的边界确定,首先是一个界定思路问题,文章先给出理论模型的一般形式,由一般形式再导出模型的类型,进而给出模型的估计和检验。     

Border region commercial electricity demand

Border region electric utilities face unique circumstances in attempting to assess overall business and load demand conditions. These result from the many business cycle conditions facing these entities as a consequence of operating near international political boundaries. Can international economic fluctuations be systematically incorporated into electricity demand models? Along the U.S.-Mexico border, this problem is further complicated by economic interactions between an advanced economy and a developing country where data constraints exist at the regional level of disaggregation. Transfer function autoregressive moving average analysis is utilized to examine whether commercial electricity sales in El Paso, Texas respond to the national and metropolitan business cycles affecting economic performance in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Together, these cities form one of the largest international metropolitan areas in the world. This provides a logical starting point when considering the questions raised in this paper.     

Technologies of Border Management: Performances and Calculation of Finnish/Schengen Border Security

This paper focuses on the Finnish Border Guard, a professional law enforcement authority responsible for the control and surveillance of the Finnish and Schengen borders, and its performances of border security. Performativity approach means that the analysis of the material, consisting of the bulletins and reports that have been published by the Border Guard service, is not merely focused on the representation of borders but the bulletins themselves are understood as performances of border security. The paper argues that new technological innovations, together with new legislation and institutional procedures, now steering the governance of the Finnish/Schengen border, are bound up with a new culture of border management in which border security is not (just) conceptualised in terms of territorial sovereignty but in terms of international cooperation, prevention and economic profitability.     

Re-Imagining the Border: Border Art as a Space of Critical Imagination and Creative Resistance

Contemporary world is increasingly marked by borders, fences and walls, which run through the spaces we live in. Borders are the result of a composite articulation of material aspects, concerning their external realisation, and structures of imagination, symbolic constructs and conceptual formations that involve the border and make it meaningful. In this dynamic and mutable field, artistic practices and interventions can interrupt and alterate the logic of the border, opening up a space of resistance and critical imagination, where the transparent, immutable and essentialist representation of the border is constantly challenged. Works of artists such as Bajevic, Hatoum, Salcedo, Rosver and Meredith-Vula will be analysed. They are used to transforming this separation, which they have usually lived personally, in symbolic landscape like interior landscapes. Working on imagination and creating alternative spaces, artists are able to challenge dominant representations and hegemonic discourses, making the border an active site of resistance and struggle.     

分权、外部性与边界效应

分权创造竞争激励的同时也带来了协调不足的问题。当经济活动存在正外部性,地方政府会策略性地减少辖区边界上的公共投资,产生区域发展中的边界效应。本文构建了存在外部性的政府投资模型来说明边界效应的产生机制,并从三方面给出经验证据:第一,利用县级经济统计和夜间灯光数据,在控制影响本地生产率的因素后,发现省份边界县的经济产出显著低于其他县,即存在区域经济发展的省界效应。第二,由省政府主导投资的交通设施存在显著的省界效应,这种效应并不存在于由中央政府主导投资的交通设施。第三,基于夜间灯光亮度的微观地理数据,利用撤县设区的政策实验和双重差分模型,发现地级市政府统筹权力的加强显著提高了原市辖区与被撤并县交界处的经济活动水平,即降低了区县边界效应。本文的结果表明,在保证地方政府竞争激励的前提下,建立政府间协调和利益共享机制,对于实现区域协调发展战略至关重要。     

西藏边境地区贫困调查

自然条件恶劣,基础设施薄弱,经济发展落后导致西藏边境地区贫困发生率高于西藏平均水平,西部平均水平和全国平均水平,边境贫困问题已成为影响我国国家形象,国家安全以及西藏社会进步的重大问题.为此,应加大扶贫力度,实施扶贫计划,统筹资金管理,加快扶贫点建设,搞好扶贫培训和扩大对外开放,以尽快缓解和消徐西藏边境地区的极端贫困.     

基于信息空间制约的产业集群边界

产业集群是一种特殊的中间组织,集群企业间最一般关系是技术、管理、市场信息以非同寻常的方式在特定空间内积累、交流、传播和扩散.信息高效积累和传递是企业聚集的基础,也是决定集群边界和规模主要因素.本文在对集群知识信息、营销信息的生产传播机制进行分析的基础上,探讨了集群信息空间边界对集群规模的制约作用.     

Border region panel evidence on PPP deviations

This article examines prices for 32 identical menu items sold by restaurant franchises operating on both sides of the border between El Paso in the US and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico from July 1997 to June 2008. The relationship between Real Exchange Rate (RER) volatility and the degree of price convergence is examined within a panel data context. The city-pair and goods selected provide a unique experiment in which distance, tradability and industry considerations are set aside and the extent of RER volatility is the only factor to influence price convergence. We find nonmonotonic relationships between mean reversion and RER volatility: very fast adjustments for both low and high volatility panels of goods (between 1 and 2 months) and slower half-lives (between 3 and 4 months) at moderate levels of uncertainty. These figures are, however, substantially smaller than the 6 or 7 months reported in previous research for general US–Mexico goods, suggesting the very strong price convergence observed along the US–Mexican border.     

EU-Russian Border Crossing: The Dialogical Perspective

Mainstream post-positivist approaches to Border Studies typically represent national borders as losing their importance or blurring. This insight usually fails to grasp the perspective of those who have to cross ‘hard’ borders, for whom these borders are primarily ‘hard facts’ quite precisely restricting territorial limits of their movement. Aiming to take this perspective and practical problems experienced by such border crossers into account, the author proposes an approach focusing on communication between those who cross ‘hard’ borders and those who protect these borders. The case of the EU-Russian border shows that border crossers have an increasing range of options to make themselves heard by their own country's officials, though it is much more difficult for them to reach gatekeepers and public on the other side of the border without resorting to intermediaries (such as their states or business actors). The author suggests that border crossers could be heard better if cross-border cooperation initiatives would prioritise this purpose thus making the EU's external borders not only ‘friendly’ or ‘blurred’ but also ‘dialogic’.     

Is the Border Really That Wide?

This paper analyzes cross‐border price behavior in a three‐dimensional sample of US and Canadian retail prices. Unit‐root tests reveal that a majority of the cross‐border relative price series are stationary and that short‐run cross‐border price differences are eliminated at average speeds comparable to those for intranational prices. Cross‐border convergence is not absolute; the long‐run international price differences average two to three times their intranational counterparts. Moreover, gravity‐type equations reveal a border effect that is sizable but considerably smaller than earlier estimates. These results suggest that, while significant, the Canada–US border may not be the formidable barrier portrayed in previous studies.     

Border Studies: Changing Perspectives and Theoretical Approaches

The author considers the stages of development and the progress in theory of border studies from the early twentieth century to the present. He characterises the content of each stage, new ideas, the main achievements and practical applications. The essay is particularly focused on postmodern approaches that have emerged during the last 15 years.     

Border collision bifurcations in boom and bust cycles

Boom and bust cycles are widely documented in the literature on industry dynamics. Rigidities and delays in capacity adjustment in combination with bounded rational behavior have been identified as central driving forces. We construct a model that features only these two elements and we show that this is indeed sufficient to reproduce some stylized facts of a boom and bust cycle. The bifurcation diagrams summarizing the dynamic behavior reveal complex cycles and in particular also abrupt changes in the nature of these cycles. We apply new insights from the mathematical theory of piecewise smooth dynamic systems—in particular, results from the theory of border collision bifurcations—and show that the very existence of borders such as capacity constraints or nonnegativity constraints may lie behind abrupt changes in the dynamic behavior of economic variables.     

Illegal Migration, Border Enforcement, and Growth

This paper analyzes the economic consequences of illegal migrants in the context of a model of trade and growth. In the model, capital and domestic labor are mobile sectors while illegal migrants are sector-specific. These assumptions give rise to a production possibility curve (with migrants) that lies partially inside the zero migration production possibility frontier. It is this feature of the model which generates ambiguous results regarding the relation betweendomestic welfare, illegal migrants, and enforcement. The steady-state growth path with migrants may lie above or below the balanced growth path without migrants.     

对《边城》美的赏析

对《边城》中展现的自然美、民风美和人物美进行赏析，引导读者更好地获得文学艺术关的享受，进一步了解掌握作品，解读作者所要表现的林林种种，近距离地感受作者丰富的内心世界。     

从竞争压力新视角看企业边界分析新框架

科斯在论述企业边界的时候，用交易成本和组织成本两个变量来确定企业的边界。但在目前情况下，这未必能有效地解释现实。有必要引入第三个变量——竞争的压力，来说明企业的边界确定同时受到交易成本、组织成本和竞争压力三者的共同影响。竞争压力导致企业边界扩大，企业扩大边界的目的是为了减少竞争压力。