Re-Examining Sovereignty Claims in Changing Territorialities: Reflections from ‘Kosovo Syndrome’

Current legal and normative doctrine forbids de jure recognition to those territorial units whose political leadership has been resisted by metropolitan central authorities. Recognition on the basis of uti possidetis juris makes the self-determination of people a territorial issue. This paper presents a framework for conceptualising and analysing the impact of ‘indivisible sovereignty’ and territoriality dilemmas on self-determination claims, resonating most strongly in the recent Kosovo campaign for independence. It then re-examines seceding motivations and birth-giving processes in Northern Cyprus, Transnistria and Republika Srpska, all which could be defined as self-proclaimed post-conflict entities deemed to gain international recognition. Finally, the paper illustrates the impact of ‘Kosovo syndrome’ on the preservation of status quo while concluding that the immediate reactions to Kosovo independence diverged from case to case to the extent where Turkish Cypriots found new stimulus for reunification, Transnistrians advocated a new model of conflict resolution and Bosnian Serbs increased their bargaining power.     

Religion and International Trade: Does the Sharing of a Religious Culture Facilitate the Formation of Trade Networks?

A bstract .   Despite interest in the influence of religion on economic activity by early economists like Adam Smith, modern economists have done little research on the subject. In light of the apparent religious fervor in many parts of the global economy, economists' seeming lack of interest in studying how religious cultures enhance or retard the globalization of economic activity is especially surprising. This article makes a contribution toward filling this void by examining how religion affects international trade. Specifically, we examine whether the sharing of religious cultures enables the formation of exchange networks that can overcome the failure or nonexistence of other social and economic institutions necessary for completing complex international transactions. We apply an expanded gravity model of international trade to control for a variety of factors that determine trade, and we use two recently developed regression methods, scaled OLS and nonlinear least squares, to exploit the model to its fullest. We find that the sharing of Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, Eastern Orthodox Catholic, and Protestant cultures by people in different countries has a significantly positive influence on bilateral trade, all other things equal. The sharing of Roman Catholic culture has a significantly negative influence on bilateral trade, and the sharing of Islamic and Judaic cultures neither promotes nor discourages international exchange. These results suggest that some religious cultures are more conducive than others for forming international trade networks.     

Determinants of Traditional Sustainability Reporting Versus Integrated Reporting. An Institutionalist Approach

The aim of this study is to analyze similarities and differences between companies with traditional sustainability reporting (TSR) and those that publish integrated reports. Based on institutional theory we identify potential determinants of integrated reporting (IR) and test their relevance empirically in a sample of 309 companies. Our analysis shows that IR companies are different from TSR companies with regard to several country‐level determinants. In particular, investor and employment protection laws, the intensity of market coordination and ownership concentration, the level of economic, environmental and social development, the degree of national corporate responsibility and the value system of the country of origin proved to be relevant. Based on these results, both implications for practice and future studies are derived. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Resource shifts in South African schools after the political transition

Although racial data are no longer available, this article uses a 1997 dataset to compare education spending with the pre-democracy situation. The new government emphasised fiscal resource shifts to eliminate spending discrimination rather than changing educational outcomes. Fiscal resource shifts in education and increased education spending were concentrated in formerly black schools. At the geographic level, non-metropolitan regions gained massively. Yet, as qualified teachers remain scarce in poorer schools, fiscal inequalities have remained, also among black schools. In addition, private resources have considerably supplemented the resources of affluent schools. The large spending shift was mainly a fiscal one (higher teacher salaries in poor schools), although real resource shifts (in pupil/teacher ratios) were not insubstantial. However, poor matriculation results indicate that additional resources, whether fiscal or real, were poorly translated into improved educational outcomes. As equity in education should be measured by equitable educational outcomes rather than equity in educational resource allocation, much work remains to be done.     

A Simple Bayesian Procedure for Sample Size Determination in an Audit of Property Value Appraisals

The article proposes a simple Bayesian technique for auditing property appraisals to determine whether state accuracy guidelines are met. The proposed technique addresses elicitation of appraisers' prior beliefs, computation of reappraisal sample sizes and reporting of audit results. To facilitate communication of quantitative audit findings to nonstatistician stakeholders, the concept of variance appears nowhere in prior elicitation or reporting. In contrast to classical frequentist techniques, the Bayesian procedure easily integrates expert judgment and responds flexibly to the arrival of new information. In addition, the Bayesian procedure significantly reduces the number of reappraisals required to regulate appraisal systems when they are functioning well. The technique can be applied in other settings where government officials audit their own work and must convince overseers, especially the public, that accuracy requirements are satisfied.