Xinjiang and China's security1

Central Asia occupies a growing role in Chinese security policy. However, an examination of China's Central Asian policies reveals that they are essentially external projections of Beijing's vital interest of internal security in neighboring Xinjiang. Accordingly, this paper examines Xinjiang's importance for China's overall security policies. Through this examination, it becomes clear that the Xinjiang problem very much resembles that of other discontented provinces within a multinational state with a continuing imperial vocation. China's problems in Xinjiang will continue, and have important repercussions for its domestic and foreign policies, and for other key issues like Taiwan.     

Impostors in the Temple,by Martin Anderson

The Teaching Innovations Program (TIP) was a six-year project funded by the National Science Foundation that gave economics instructors the opportunity to learn interactive teaching strategies for use in undergraduate economics courses. TIP participants first attended a teaching workshop that presented various teaching strategies. They then could enroll in a follow-up program of online instruction and mentoring to learn more about one or two teaching strategies. TIP participants also had the opportunity to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning economics to share their work. A retrospective survey was administered to the participants after attending the program to obtain a longitudinal assessment of TIP. This article presents the overall survey findings and discusses the results from each TIP phase (workshop, online instruction, and scholarship).     

Using Household Surveys to Build Analytic Capacity

This article reviews the results of efforts in five countriesto build a national capacity to analyze social policy; theseefforts were undertaken in oconjunction with Living StandardsMeasurement Survey (LSMS) projects. Case studies for Bolivia,Jamaica, the Kyrgyz Republic, South Africa, and Vietnam showthat building such capacity requires explicit planning, significanttime and money, open access to data, and strong support frompolicymakers. Lessons are drawn about four aspects of buildingcapacity—training, technical assistance, research, andrecruitment. The lessons learned from these LSMS projects applyin a more general sense to other kinds of capacity-buildingprojects.      

International Bank Portfolios: Short‐ and Long‐Run Responses to Macroeconomic Conditions

International bank portfolios constitute a large component of international country portfolios. Yet, banks' response to international macroeconomic conditions remains largely unexplored. We use a novel dataset on banks' international portfolios to answer three questions. First, what are the long‐run determinants of banks' international portfolios? Second, how do banks' international portfolios adjust to short‐run macroeconomic developments? Third, does the speed of adjustment change with the degree of financial integration? We find that, in the long‐run, market size has a positive impact on foreign assets and liabilities. An increase in the interest differential between the home and the foreign economy lowers foreign assets and increases foreign liabilities. Foreign trade has a positive impact on international bank portfolios, which is independent from the effect of other macroeconomic variables. Short‐run dynamics show heterogeneity across countries, but these dynamics can partly be explained with gravity‐type variables.     

Shocks at large banks and banking sector distress: The Banking Granular Residual

Size matters in banking. In this paper, we explore whether shocks originating at large banks affect the probability of distress of smaller banks and thus the stability of the banking system. Our analysis proceeds in two steps. In a first step, we follow Gabaix [Gabaix, X., 2008a. The Granular Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1111765] and construct a measure of idiosyncratic shocks at large banks, the so-called Banking Granular Residual. This measure documents the importance of size effects for the German banking system. In a second step, we incorporate this measure of idiosyncratic shocks at large banks into an integrated stress-testing model for the German banking system following De Graeve et al. (2008). We find that positive shocks at large banks reduce the probability of distress of small banks.     

Economic restructuring and emerging patterns of industrial relations

The Review of Black Political Economy -