Slovakia's Surge: The New System's Impact on Fiscal Decentralisation

Slovakia's transition history long paralleled that of the Czech Republic, but the former adopted bold new reforms early in this decade. This article is a comparative treatment of fiscal decentralisation since 1993 and more recent reforms of public administration, the two efforts representing the foundation of the New System. Czech experience is invoked simply to provide an appropriate benchmark for the evaluation of Slovakia's New System introduced in 2004, including the 19% ‘flat tax’ and other striking measures in local public finance.

The second focus of the article is on the macroeconomic impact of the New System. It is too early to perceive what its long-term effects will be, so this treatment is more tentative. But because one would like to know whether Slovakia's return to an economic growth path is actually a result of the New System and whether this recent growth will persist, these issues are given some consideration.     

The New Nomos of Europe

According to Carl Schmitt, in his late work The Nomos of the Earth, published in 1950, the long evolution in the relation between humans and the earth has been decisive for the nature of traditional legal order. The historical links to European international jurisprudence (ius publicum Europaeum) have decayed with the old world order that supported them. Territoriality, once the foundation of the nation-state has evolved, causing a parallel change in the nation-state paradigm of sovereignty and the fabric of international law which has its basis in that paradigm. If Schmitt is correct in his prognoses about the end of a global era and the rise of a new yet uncharted world order in the mid-1940s, then the architects of the nascent European Coal and Steel Community face the same conditions, and must carry out their work with the same cultural, social and juridical raw materials, against the backdrop of the same concrete historical experience. This article will attempt to continue the trajectory of Schmitt's historical analysis of the ius publicum Europeaum, suggesting how its central concepts and theses map onto the grand geopolitical and civilisational project of European construction from 1950 to 2004 and beyond. It will explore the applicability of the concept of nomos for the nature of EU evolution, and interpret general elements of the European legal system in terms of the concept of nomos.     

On the Contribution of David J. M. Hooson to the Geographical Study of the Soviet Union

One of the aims of this article it to clarify the nature of the debate over ‘civil society’ and its relationship to the state. It begins by suggesting that the EU's borderland provides a context in which deep-rooted ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ understandings of state and civil society meet and overlap. The second section outlines the geo-political reshaping of the ‘Neighbourhood’. It concentrates on the influence of non-EU actors, notably Russia, complementing the EU-focused literature on the subject. The third section elaborates the consensus in the literature on the weakness of civil society in the EU ‘Neighbourhood’. This is followed by a discussion of ‘Western’ debates over the role and significance of civil society. This discussion suggests that the ‘export’ of a Western model eastwards begs many questions about which particular model is to be promoted. It concludes that the precise characteristics of state-civil society relationship remains central to the prospects for enhancing civil society co-operation.     

Re-Orientating Vertical Geopolitics

Geopolitics has a tradition of adopting a downward looking view-from-above, which is imbued with an imperialistic ‘god's eye’ perspective. Although acknowledged and critiqued, this paper argues that it needs to be actively re-orientated to encompass the discourses and practices of looking up. The paper analyses the practices of looking up and surveilling the sky through which air defence is achieved. It interrogates the ways in which UK air defence is represented in official documents and analyses the activities of the Royal Air Force's Air Surveillance and Control System. The paper argues that this system enacts a vertical geopolitics that goes beyond those understood in other geopolitical literatures and offers suggestions for developing our understandings of a volumetric vertical geopolitics that recognises the aerial view as generated from below as well as from above.     

A Structuralist Approach to the Economic Trajectories of Russia and the Countries of East-Central Europe since 1900

I introduce geographical specificity to world-systems concepts of core and periphery to develop a structuralist approach on semiperipheral development in the world-economy. I apply this approach to the historical trajectory of economic growth in Russia and east-central Europe since 1900. I find circumstantial support for Wallerstein's classic assertion that mercantilist semi-withdrawal is a potentially effective development strategy for semiperipheral countries and show that Russia raised its economic output above historical trend levels during the Soviet period. In contrast, east-central Europe fell short of historical trends during the Soviet period, suggesting that Russia's gains may have been made at the expense of its satellite empire. With the end of communism, both Russia and the countries of east-central Europe quickly returned to their long-term historical output levels relative to the core countries of western Europe.     

Crude oil price forecasting based on internet concern using an extreme learning machine

The growing internet concern (IC) over the crude oil market and related events influences market trading, thus creating further instability within the oil market itself. We propose a modeling framework for analyzing the effects of IC on the oil market and for predicting the price volatility of crude oil’s futures market. This novel approach decomposes the original time series into intrinsic modes at different time scales using bivariate empirical mode decomposition (BEMD). The relationship between the oil price volatility and IC at an individual frequency is investigated. By utilizing decomposed intrinsic modes as specified characteristics, we also construct extreme learning machine (ELM) models with variant forecasting schemes. The experimental results illustrate that ELM models that incorporate intrinsic modes and IC outperform the baseline ELM and other benchmarks at distinct horizons. Having the power to improve the accuracy of baseline models, internet searching is a practical way of quantifying investor attention, which can help to predict short-run price fluctuations in the oil market.     

Firm financing and growth in the Arab region

This paper documents how firms in Arab countries use equity, corporate bond and syndicated loan markets to obtain financing and grow. Working with a new dataset on issuance activity in domestic and international markets and firm performance, the paper finds that capital raising through these markets has grown rapidly since the early 1990s and involved an increasing number of firms. Whereas the amounts raised in equity and loan markets (relative to gross domestic product) stand well relative to international standards, bond issuance activity lags behind. However, bond financing has gained importance over time. Equity issuances take place primarily in domestic markets, whereas bonds and loans are mostly issued internationally, display long maturities and entail low levels of credit risk. Issuing firms from the Arab region are very large compared to international standards. They also tend to be larger, faster growing and more leveraged than non-issuing firms in Arab countries.     

When value co-creation fails: Reasons that lead to value co-destruction

Value co-destruction is a possible outcome of business, public and consumer collaboration. We examine reasons that lead to value co-destruction and when these reasons emerge. Since previous research on the topic is limited, our research approach is abductive qualitative research. The empirical data emerges from 19 semi-structured interviews conducted in seven organizations operating in Finland. Results indicate that value co-destruction emerges due to eight reasons. Our empirically grounded framework for value co-destruction demonstrates when these reasons emerge (before or after the collaboration or interaction) or they are time-independent. Results provide important insights for academics and managers into how value co-creation efforts can have negative outcomes and at what stage each reason is more likely to happen.     

On the terminology of economic design: a critical assessment and some proposals

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical examination of some of the terminology that is common in economic design and to suggest ways in which it can be improved.