American Overreach: Strategic Interests and Millennial Ambitions in the Middle East

This article argues that American actions in the Middle East designed to advance democracy and/or ‘moderation’ tend to yield perverse outcomes that frustrate the aspirations of local actors while undermining the values purportedly being promoted by the US. In order to explain these contradictions, we emphasise the linkage between policies of democracy promotion and long-standing American commitments both to millennialism and geographical omnipresence. As a result of these policies and geopolitical vision, we argue that ‘democracy promotion’ often devolves into a simple defence of American interest – by producing electoral outcomes intended to strengthen local agents seen as compliant with US regional priorities. In this context, the shift from democracy promotion to a policy of pursuing ‘moderation’ in the region, understood as support for American policies, is entirely coherent. Commentators tend to present this shift (particularly in the wake of the Iraq War) as recognition by US political actors of the imperial overtones embedded in more heavy-handed approaches to regime change. Yet, the call for moderation is itself profoundly intertwined with American millennial aspirations, while remaining remarkably devoid of clear content and thus equally amenable to manipulation for strategic ends. By way of conclusion, we suggest an alternative basis for a less intrusive American position in the region, one that rejects the need for an overstretched territorial presence and that is grounded in a substantive respect for local self-determination.     

Dynamic causality testing for EKC hypothesis,pollution haven hypothesis and international trade in India

This study examines the causality relationships between foreign direct investment (FDI), economic growth (GDP) and CO₂ emissions along with the level of trade (exports and imports) taking place in India. The study uses data obtained from World Development Indicators (WDI) of World Bank Group for the period 1982–2013. The study employed the dynamic multivariate Toda-Yamamoto (TY) approach that uses the modified Wald (MWALD) test. Among the major findings of the study are: the existence of both Pollution Haven Hypothesis and Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in India. The other findings of the study are: FDI is causing exports; exports are causing imports; imports are causing CO₂ emissions; and finally CO₂ emissions and GDP are causing each other. This finding concludes mainly two things. First, India imports more of pollution-intensive manufactured goods. Second, FDI is causing GDP in India but through CO₂ emissions.     

New technologies and developing countries: Prospects and potential

Technological innovations in informatics and other new technologies are having a major impact on most production and service sectors in industrialized countries. Inadequate transfer of such technologies to developing countries, with a few notable exceptions, is increasing the technology gap and reducing competitive capability in these countries. Far-reaching policy changes and a new emphasis on technological development must be made by developing economies in order to avail themselves of the growing potential of new and emerging technologies.     

地区竞争格局演变下的中国转轨:财政激励和发展模式反思

在考察1990年代中期之前和之后中国地区竞争模式演变的基础上,本文提出了一个分析框架,通过考察中央-地方和地方政府-企业两个维度关系及其在中国转轨30年中两个不同阶段的变化,研究了不同时期地方政府在财政激励下所面临的约束条件的变化和对应的地区竞争行动。本文指出,无论是"中国特色的保护市场型财政联邦主义"理论,还是"官员晋升锦标赛"理论,都难以解释中国转轨高增长的政治经济学逻辑。本文考察了地方政府在工业和商住用地出让上的不同策略,并指出中国当前发展阶段中以地方政府提供低价土地、补贴性基础设施乃至放松劳工、环境保护标准吸引制造业的地区"竞次性"发展模式,不具备经济、社会发展乃至环境保护上的可持续性。     

The changing role of procurement: Developing professional effectiveness

The major objectives of this paper are to explore, from the perspective of 18 senior procurement professionals interviewed, the current status of their role and identify the skills they need to develop, in order to effectively manage the changes they are experiencing. The interviews revealed a schism in perception of the procurement role between professionals (strategic) and their organisations (transactional). Although skills have a direct impact on the ability of procurement professionals to fulfil their role proficiently, the degree of organisational support and internal acknowledgement of the role's importance, were found to be a major barrier to the development and progress of procurement professionals. A Procurement Skills Effectiveness Framework is presented to enable managers to assess the likely sophistication level of procurement and its impact, given a set of procurement skills and the degree and type of internal support for the role.     

A societal cost-of-illness study of hemodialysis in Lebanon

Aim: Renal failure is a growing public health problem, and is mainly treated by hemodialysis. This study aims to estimate the societal costs of hemodialysis in Lebanon.

Methods: This was a quantitative, cross-sectional cost-of-illness study conducted alongside the Nutrition Education for Management of Osteodystrophy trial. Costs were assessed with a prevalence-based, bottom-up approach, for the period of June–December 2011. The data of 114 patients recruited from six hospital-based units were collected through a questionnaire measuring healthcare costs, costs to patients and family, and costs in other sectors. Recall data were used for the base-case analysis. Sensitivity analyses employing various sources of resources use and costs were performed. Costs were uprated to 2015US$. Multiple linear regression was conducted to explore the predictors of societal costs.

Results: The mean 6-month societal costs were estimated at $9,258.39. The larger part was attributable to healthcare costs (91.7%), while costs to patient and family and costs in other sectors poorly contributed to the total costs (4.2% and 4.1%, respectively). In general, results were robust to sensitivity analyses. Using the maximum value for hospitalization resulted in the biggest difference (+15.5% of the base-case result). Female gender, being widowed/divorced, having hypertension comorbidity, and higher weekly time on dialysis were significantly associated with greater societal costs.

Limitations: Information regarding resource consumption and cost were not readily available. Rather, they were obtained from a variety of sources, with each having its own strengths and limitations.

Conclusion: Hemodialysis represents a high societal burden in Lebanon. Using extrapolation, its total annual cost for the Lebanese society is estimated at $61,105,374 and the mean total annual cost ($18,516.7) is 43.70% higher than the gross domestic product per capita forecast for 2015. Measures to reduce the economic burden of hemodialysis should be taken, by promoting chronic kidney disease’s prevention and encouraging transplantation.     

Correcting for biases when estimating production functions: an illusion of the laws of algebra?

This paper shows that the endogeneity bias that allegedly appearswhen estimating production functions using value data, and whichthe literature has tried to deal with since the 1940s, is simplythe result of omitted-variable bias due to a poor approximationto an accounting identity. This problem has no econometric solution.As a result, recent attempts to solve the problem by developingnew estimators are questioned. The only possible way to estimatethe technological parameters of the production function is touse physical quantities.     

Adoption of enterprise systems and radio frequency identification among service firms

A promising technology for optimizing supply-chain processes is radio frequency identification (RFID). By adding functionality to previous enterprise systems, the aim is to increase transparency of information throughout the supply chain. In this paper, we present a survey of RFID implementation in Swedish service firms. The findings show that although the great majority of firms are actively working with integrated information systems, only a very small fraction have adopted RFID.     

Trade liberalization and unemployment: Theory and evidence from India

A widely held view among the public is that trade liberalization increases unemployment. Using state and industry-level unemployment and trade protection data from India, we find no evidence of any unemployment increasing effect of trade reforms. In fact, our state-level analysis reveals that urban unemployment declines with trade liberalization in states with flexible labor markets and larger employment shares in net exporter industries. Moreover, our industry-level analysis indicates that workers in industries experiencing greater reductions in trade protection were less likely to become unemployed, especially in net export industries. Our results can be explained within a theoretical framework incorporating trade and search-generated unemployment and some institutional features of the Indian economy.     

公民社会视域下非营利组织在我国和谐社会构建中的价值呈现

非营利组织是构建我国社会主义和谐社会的一支重要力量。文章首先提出一个基本观点,即非营利组织在和谐社会构建的路径依赖在于我国公民社会的塑造,在此基础上分析了基于和谐社会构建下非营利组织促进社会结构性重塑的基本内容。最后,文章集中阐述了公民社会下非营利组织在我国和谐社会构建中的价值呈现的核心内容及其典型异化。