Two Risks to World Market

eyond our expectations of happy slowdown＇in 2007, we offer our first guess at the global economic picture in 2008, We expect global growth in 2008 to be higher than in 2007, not least due to a possible improvement in the U.S.. Our forecasts also suggest that the trend growth rate is on the rise in many parts of Europe （especially Germany and the UK）, as well as in significant parts of Asia （particularly China and India）, We also see few signs that this strong growth is generating higher inflation.     

Risky IPTV Investment

IPTV （Internet Protocol television） is a frequently mentioned word recently, since Shanda changes its main business to IPTV, which isrecognized as a new technology and at- tractive business in the future. Shanda is the most active Chinese online game pioneer, it has produced one trail box, which will be used as the host while traditional TV station as terminal of the IPTV. Shanda hopes that the box＇s development and the family entertainment service operation will boost its revenue and help to recover the investors＇ confidence. It is estimated that Shanda has spend about $450 millions on IPTV in the last year, including production research and sales channel establishment. However, it is reported that the box is of poor quality. Even the internal trial members complained about the box＇s unsatisfactory performance. In addition, the price of the box is about 6,000 RMB each （equivalent US $ 800）, it is too expen-sive to most Chinese consumers.     

'THE LAW OF STORMS': EUROPEAN AND INDIGENOUS RESPONSES TO NATURAL DISASTERS IN COLONIAL INDIA, c. 1800–1850

Focusing on collective response to storms and floods in early colonial India, the paper explores obstacles to successful disaster response with one example related to meteorology of cyclones and the other the use of embankments. In both these examples, there was an attempt to build public-private partnerships, which succeeded in the case of weather prediction and failed in river embankment. The failure is explained by two factors. Coordination and contracting were costly when the private partners had variable capacities and interests. Furthermore, whereas meteorology predicted nature, embankments interfered with nature, an intervention which carried social and economic costs.     

3. Money, Credit, and Crisis

The financial crisis of 2008–2009 has antecedents in earlier crises, including the Great Depression. In order to understand how the current crisis arose, we must review the most fundamental principles of banking. Doing that, we find that the main service performed by banks is the creation of liquidity, a collective good that can be destroyed by the behavior of individual financial institutions. The key element in creating liquidity is the monetization of various types of collateral. When collateral takes the form of land or capital that turns over slowly, banks lose liquidity. That is why major banking crises have frequently been associated with real estate lending. The best way to restore health to the financial system is by restoring the principles of the "real bills" doctrine that requires loans to be self-liquidating.     

Migration and the Tiebout-Tullock Hypothesis Revisited

This study investigates, using state-level data for the period 2000–2005, the Tiebout hypothesis (as extended by Tullock) of "voting with one's feet." This analysis differs from previous related studies not only in its adoption of more current migration and other data but also in other ways. First, unlike most earlier related studies, it includes a separate measure of the overall cost of living; second, it examines per pupil (rather than per capita) outlays on public primary and secondary education; and third, in addition to property taxes, it also focuses on per capita state income tax burdens. Inclusion of the last of these variables in the analysis is based on studies that have found the existence of a state income tax to have influenced migration patterns and other studies that have found higher state income tax levels to have resulted in reduced per capita income growth over time. Moreover, including both property tax burdens and income tax burdens broadens the scope of the hypothesis. Strong empirical support for the Tiebout-Tullock hypothesis (as interpreted here) is obtained for the study period.     

12. Transculture: A Broad Way Between Globalism and Multiculturalism

This paper develops a concept of transculture as a model of cultural development that differs from both leveling globalism and isolating pluralism. While culture frees humans from the material dependencies of nature, it also creates new, symbolic dependencies—on customs, traditions, conventions, which a person receives as a member of a certain group and ethnos. Among the many freedoms proclaimed as rights of the individual, there emerges yet another freedom—from one's own culture, in which one was born and educated. Transculture is viewed as the next level of liberation, this time from the "prison house of language," from unconscious predispositions and prejudices of the "native," naturalized cultures. The case of the Japanese poet Araki Yasusada (1903–1972), a survivor of Hiroshima, demonstrates how transcultural creativity, though cast in the form of a literary hoax, can produce an internationally recognized achievement. Transculturalism is especially needed in world politics, where the factor of fixed cultural identity based on race, ethnos, religion, or ideological commitments turned out to be a source of conflict and violence. This paper argues that the categories of opposition and identity do not preclude the significance of the third category, which is difference. The differences complement each other and create a new interpersonal transcultural community to which we belong, not because we are similar but because we are different. The transcultural perspective opens a possibility for globalization not as homogenization but, rather, as further differentiation of cultures and their "dissemination" into transcultural individuals, liberating themselves from their dependence from their native cultures. The global society can be viewed as the space of diversity of free individuals rather than that of fixed groups and cultures. It is an alternative to the clash of civilizations and a hope for lasting peace.     

11. Toward Lasting Peace: Kant on Law, Public Reason, and Culture

Kant helps us understand the conditions for peace by reminding us that lasting peace requires both cosmopolitan legal reform and individual moral improvement, including resistance to egoism and the cultivation of cosmopolitan attitudes. The duty to pursue peace includes the duty to promote the rule of domestic and international law and work against its unilateral subversion. The juridical cosmopolitanism of a worldwide league of free peoples enables resistance to the dangers posed by authoritarian regimes and their dangerous willingness to manipulate their subjects and ignore international law. Constraining egoism enables people to overcome the tyranny of their desires and cultivates a sense of affiliation with the larger community of humanity in general, providing the moral foundation needed to support a cosmopolitan legal order. Moral development to a great extent is fostered through the arts and humanities, and a robust cultural life therefore ought to play a central role in the pursuit of global peace.