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“WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, AND IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”. The slogan from George Orwell’s “1984” dystopia appears to capture the state of Russia’s 2014 official discourse quite accurately. This has not gone unnoticed by public and academic spectators in and outside Russia: while Bild magazine is counting Putin’s lies in his recent ARD interview, a Zeit article declares Russia itself to be a post-modern “lie”...
The impacts of climate and environmental changes on migration have gained increasing attention in recent years. Yet the role and significance of the climate as an influencing factor for migratory processes is still poorly understood. Case studies are required which consider the specific historical, socio-cultural and environmental context. The micle project examined the interactions between climate change, land degradation and migration in selected regions in the Sahelian countries Mali and Senegal.
The Crusade movement is one of the most important occurrences of medieval history. It took place throughout two centuries in the Levant and affected both Muslims and Crusaders and in turn changed the way in which West and East related to one another. When the Crusaders took control of the Holy Land and many Islamic cities in the Levant, they transferred their feudal European system there. They established four main fiefdoms or lordships, Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli. In addition, there were another twelve secondary fiefdoms, of which Tibnīn was one. Tibnīn was called “Toron” by the Crusaders. Once the Crusaders had captured Tibnīn, they began building its fortified castle, from which the fief of Tibnīn gained its importance throughout the period of the Crusades.
This paper traces the military role of Tibnīn and its rulers in the Latin East against the Muslims until 1187/ 583. Tibnīn played a key role in overcoming the Muslims in Tyre and controlled it in 1124. It also played a vital role in the conflict between Damascus and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Tibnīn participated in defending Antioch, Banyas, Hebron and Transjordan several times. Furthermore, its soldiers and Knights joined the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to capture Ascalon in 1153, and joined the campaigns of Amaury I, King of Jerusalem, against Egypt from 1164 to1169. The military situation of Tibnīn under the rule of the royal house until its fall to the Muslims in 1187/ 583 will be studied as well.
A second Yalta
(2014)
The bloody rebellion in Syria has aroused hostilities between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, a religious conflict that dates back to the first Muslim civilwar and the Battle of Siffin in 657 AD which took place on the banks of the Euphrates river, in what is now Ar-Raqqah, Syria. Today we see how the conflict is again spreading from Syria to the rest of the Middle East in places like Tripoli in Libanon, Falludscha in Iraq and Sad’ah in Yemen. But how did it come to this?
On January 29, 2014, EU Commissioner Barnier published a draft law proposing a ban for proprietary trading by big banks in Europe. In this opinion piece, published in a German newspaper on 30 January, 2014, Jan Pieter Krahnen, who was a member of the Liikanen Commission, argues that the proposal could prove to be effective in preventing systemic risk.
Freiburg School of Law and Economics, Freiburg (Lehrstuhl-)Tradition and the Genesis of Norms
(2014)
The paper analyzes the parallels and differences between the Freiburg School of Law and Economics represented by the works of Eucken (and Röpke) and the Freiburg (Lehrstuhl-)Tradition represented by the works of Hayek and Vanberg. The parallels are illustrated by making use of the constitutional economics concepts Ordnungspolitik (i.e., order of rules/choices over rules) as well as freedom of privileges and discrimination. The differences, which have received surprisingly little attention, include the following aspects: 1. philosophy of science and epistemology, 2. genesis of norms, and 3. political philosophy. The paper tackles these issues in three steps. The second chapter presents Vanberg’s constitutional economics theory with special emphasis on the concepts of citizen sovereignty and normative individualism. The third chapter reviews the ordoliberal concepts of science and the state which are – to a certain degree – elitist and expertocratic, that is, they rely to a considerable degree on intellectual experts (in particular, scientists) being part of the societal elite. The fourth chapter differentiates two kinds of genesis of norms: an evolutionary one and an elitist-expertocratic one allowing for a differentiation between Eucken’s and Röpke’s Ordoliberalism on the on the hand and Vanberg’s Hayekian -- and Buchanan-style constitutional economics approach on the other hand. The paper ends with a summary of the main findings.
We study the dispersion of debt maturities across time, which we call "granularity of corporate debt,'' using a model in which a firm's inability to roll over expiring debt causes inefficiencies, such as costly asset sales or underinvestment. Since multiple small asset sales are less costly than a single large one, firms diversify debt rollovers across maturity dates. We construct granularity measures using data on corporate bond issuers for the 1991-2012 period and establish a number of novel findings. First, there is substantial variation in granularity in that we observe both very concentrated and highly dispersed maturity structures. Second, observed variation in granularity supports the model's predictions, i.e. maturities are more dispersed for larger and more mature firms, for firms with better investment oppo
On 11 February, the World Fought back against Mass Surveillance. See those capital letters? They denote Things that Matter – somehow. We don’t necessarily know who ‘We’ are, what the ‘World’ is, nor whether the Mass Surveillance We’re against is the big and sexy kind run by acronymized (foreign) government agencies that We all recently learned about through Edward Snowden or the everyday kind conducted by means of cookies, computer profiles and GPS data we all send to whomever is watching in the course of a normal day’s activities, like checking Facebook, leaving the house to buy some bread or sending family pictures over the holidays via email. But ‘We’ ‘Fought’ ‘Them’, or maybe ‘It’.
Out of area or out of business?: the bourgeois parochialism of international studies conferences
(2014)
Most face-to-face interaction with other IR types happens at conferences, and it’s easy to break conferences down by profile and inclusiveness. The ISA annual conference is supposed to rate pretty highly on both, and almost everyone has been a few times by the end of their post-grad careers. Then there are the conferences that are high profile but less inclusive. APSA, BISA, the ISA regional conferences, and the newly constituted EISA are fairly high profile in that most IR professionals have heard of them, but they’re less inclusive in that few of us would cross broad bodies of water and long customs lines to participate...
Trust me, I’m an expert
(2014)
Given such phenomena as the dramatic leaks of the last decade, the vibrantand inflammatory discourse about ‘cyberwar’ and the conflation of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement with the ‘backbone of the European economy’, regulation of what the Internet is supposed to be and what people are allowed to do in it is always and everywhere about security, whether users like it or not. And that regulation comes from people, special people we like to think of as experts.
With the current conflict in Gaza going full tilt, the usual questions have popped up: Who is to blame, what is everyone’s motivation and strategy, how to stop the bloodshed, how to end the conflict. And as usual, the two-state solution, i.e. two separate, sovereign states within the borders of the 1949 armistice agreement, keeps popping up as a purported solution. This is especially prominent in the statements of politicians in countries not directly involved in the conflict. Countries that at least claim to want to help end the conflict, be it through mediation or other diplomatic measures. But for those countries, the two-state solution has become an idea to hide behind. It does not help solve the conflict, neither in the short- nor mid-term. Clinging to the idea merely prolongs the status quo. However, it does allow the rest of the world to avoid facing the facts, which would force them to reevaluate their position on who to support and actually do something about the conflict as it currently is. But it’s high time we face the music and admit it: The two-state solution is no longer a viable option when it comes to mediating this conflict...
Using fiscal reaction functions for 3a panel of actual euro-area countries the paper investigates whether euro membership has reduced the responsiveness of countries to increases in the level of inherited debt compared to the period prior to succession to the euro. While we find some evidence for such a loss in prudence, the results are not robust to changes in the specification, as for example an exclusion of Greece from the panel. This suggests that the current debt problems may result to a large extent from pre-existing debt levels prior to entry or from a larger need for fiscal prudence in a common currency, while an adverse change in the fiscal reaction functions for most countries does not apply.
In this paper, we investigate the implications of providing loan officers with a compensation structure that rewards loan volume and penalizes poor performance. We study detailed transactional information of more than 45,000 loans issued by 240 loan officers of a large commercial bank in Europe. We find that when the performance of their portfolio deteriorates, loan officers shift their efforts towards monitoring poorly-performing borrowers and issue fewer loans. However, these new loans are of above-average quality, which suggests that loan officers have a pecking order and process loans only for the very best clients when they are under time constraints.
This paper analyzes the inherent dangers of paternalist economic policies associated with the newly established economic sub-disciplines of behavioral economics, economic happiness research and economic psychology. While the authors in general welcome these sub-disciplines for enriching and critically evaluating mainstream economics – especially their criticism of the Homo oeconomicus-heuristic is of great value contributing to a more realistic idea of man –, the political-economic implications as well as inherent risks of paternalist economic policies should be received with concern and thus be subject to a critical review. The paper is structured as follows: In the first step, we recapitulate Kahneman’s, Thaler/Sunstein’s, and Layard’s versions of paternalism pointing at similarities and differences alike. We contrast libertarian or soft paternalism of behavioral economics (Thaler/Sunstein) and economic psychology (Kahneman) with (Layard’s) happiness economics and its hard paternalism. In the second step, we analyze the political and economic implications and consequences of paternalism. We give an overview of the main points of criticism of paternalism from a constitutional economics perspective. The Ordnungs- vs. Prozesspolitik argument is discussed as well as epistemological, political-economic or idea of man arguments. The paper ends with some concluding remarks.
As police with tear gas and water cannons fuel unrest across Turkey, it seems that many eyes are wearily cast over Europe’s favourite neighbour, soon to join the list of potentially unstable Middle-East nations. Yet even as Erdogan’s messy power play brings Turkey’s democratic survivability into question, the nation’s solar energy industry is breaking new ground and massive nuclear power capacity is quietly being prepared to relieve the nation’s energy import dependency. In Brazil, riots breaking out over a transport price hike reflect the pressures of inflation and widespread corruption: an outburst fuelled by a long history of mismanagement and ineffective policy at state and federal levels. Nevertheless, big plans are underway for the expanding of Brazil’s power grid, set to underwrite national economic growth into 2030 and beyond. Behind these gruelling scenes of democratic upheaval, lie two distinct cases of energy policy in the making, in spite of overt political turmoil. This post highlights two instances of critical energy policy, unfolding behind the scenes.
Paging is one of the prominent problems in the field of on-line algorithms. While in the deterministic setting there exist simple and efficient strongly competitive algorithms, in the randomized setting a tradeoff between competitiveness and memory is still not settled. Bein et al. [4] conjectured that there exist strongly competitive randomized paging algorithms, using o(k) bookmarks, i.e. pages not in cache that the algorithm keeps track of. Also in [4] the first algorithm using O(k) bookmarks (2k more precisely), Equitable2, was introduced, proving in the affirmative a conjecture in [7].
We prove tighter bounds for Equitable2, showing that it requires less than k bookmarks, more precisely ≈ 0.62k. We then give a lower bound for Equitable2 showing that it cannot both be strongly competitive and use o(k) bookmarks. Nonetheless, we show that it can trade competitiveness for space. More precisely, if its competitive ratio is allowed to be (Hk + t), then it requires k/(1 + t) bookmarks.
Our main result proves the conjecture that there exist strongly competitive paging algorithms using o(k) bookmarks. We propose an algorithm, denoted Partition2, which is a variant of the Partition algorithm byMcGeoch and Sleator [13]. While classical Partition is unbounded in its space requirements, Partition2 uses θ(k/ log k) bookmarks. Furthermore, we show that this result is asymptotically tight when the forgiveness steps are deterministic.
“We shall bring victory”. Those were the words of sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, on 25 may 2013. Usually these words would be directed at Israel, the sworn enemy of the Lebanese movement. But this time Nasrallah was referring to the fighting in Syria. That night Hezbollah explicitly chose to side with the Syrian government in her fight against the rebels in the ongoing civil war. Why does the Shia Islamic and pro-Iranian Hezbollah stand so firmly alongside the secular Arab nationalist regime of Bashar al-Assad? What are the consequences for Lebanon and what does the interference of Hezbollah tell us about the balance of power in the small and deeply divided neighbouring country of Syria?
The G20 summit starting today will be overshadowed by the Syrian crisis. Wolfgang Seibel assesses that,while Germany and Russia share a common history that has shaped their relationship as well as close and crucial economiclinkages, their worldviews are incompatible – international problem-solvingvs. prioritizing geopolitical interests. The question is, in light of the crisis in Syria, are German foreign policymakers in a position to influence Russian key-players?
Is wider access to stockholding opportunities related to reduced wealth inequality, given that it creates challenges for small and less sophisticated investors? Counterfactual analysis is used to study the influence of changes in the US stockholder pool and economic environment, on the distribution of stock and net household wealth during a period of dramatic increase in stock market participation. We uncover substantial shifts in stockholder pool composition, favoring smaller holdings during the 1990s upswing but larger holdings around the burst of the Internet bubble. We find no evidence that widening access to stocks was associated with reduced net wealth inequality.
Following Foucault's analysis of German Neoliberalism (Ordoliberalism) and his thesis of ambiguity, this paper introduces a two-level distinction between individual and regulatory ethics. In particular, its aim is to reassess the importance of individual ethics in the conceptual framework of Ordoliberalism. The individual ethics of Ordoliberalism is based on the heritage of Judeo-Christian values and the Kantian individual liberty and responsibility. The regulatory or formal-institutional ethics of Ordoliberalism which has so far received most attention on the contrary refers to the institutional and legal framework of a socio-economic order. By distinguishing these two dimensions of ethics incorporated in German Neoliberalism, it is feasible to distinguish different varieties of neoliberalism and to link Ordoliberalism to modern economic ethics.
Variations and disparities between von Hayek and Ordoliberalism can be detected on diverse levels: 1. philosophy of science; 2. setting dissimilar priorities; 3. social philosophy; 4. genesis of norms; and, 5. notion of freedom. Therefore, it is possible to make an important distinction within neoliberalism itself, which contains at least two factions: von Hayek’s evolutionary liberalism, and German Ordoliberalism. The following essay not only takes the neoliberal separation of different varieties as granted; it proceeds further. It focuses on the topic of justice and elaborates the (slightly) differing conceptions of justice within neoliberalism. Thus, the specific contribution of the paper is that it adds a sixth dimension of differences (which is highly interconnected with the differing conceptions of genesis of norms). In this paper, I emphasize the (often neglected) subtle differences between von Hayek, Eucken, Röpke, and Rüstow, with special emphasis on their theories of justice. In this regard, I focus not only on Eucken and von Hayek; in addition, I include the concepts of justice developed by Rüstow and Röpke, as well, and, in consequence, broaden the perspective incorporating Eucken as a member of the Freiburg School of Law and Economics, and Rüstow and Röpke as representatives of Ordoliberalism in the wider sense. The paper tackles these topics in three steps. After briefly examining and discussing the existing literature and providing a literature overview on the decade-long debate on von Hayek and Ordoliberalism, I then describe von Hayek’s conception of commutative justice; particularly, justice of rules and procedures (rather than end-state justice). Then, I examine Eucken’s, Rüstow’s, and Röpke’s theories of justice, which consist of a mixture of commutative and distributive justice. Then, I draw a comparison between the ideas of justice developed by Eucken, Röpke, Rüstow, and von Hayek. The essay ends with a summary of my main findings.
4 June 2013 marked the formal launch of the third generation of the Equator Principles (EP III) and the tenth anniversary of the EPs – enough reasons for evaluating the EPs initiative from an economic ethics and business ethics perspective. This chapter deals with the following questions: What has been achieved so far by the EPs? Which reform steps need to be adopted to further strengthen the EPs framework? Can the EPs be regarded as a role model in the field of sustainable finance and CSR? The first part explains the term EPs and introduces the keywords related to the EPs framework. The second part summarises the main characteristics of the newly-released third generation of the EPs. The third part critically evaluates EP III from an economic ethical and business ethics perspective. The chapter concludes with a summary of the main findings.
This paper outlines relatively easy to implement reforms for the supervision of transnational banking-groups in the E.U. that should not be primarily based on legal form but on the actual risk structures of the pertinent financial institutions. The proposal also aims at paying close attention to the economics of public administration and international relations in allocating competences among national and supranational supervisory bodies.
Before detailing the own proposition, this paper looks into the relationship between sovereign debt and banking crises that drive regulatory reactions to the financial turmoil in the Euro area. These initiatives inter alia affirm effective prudential supervision as a pivotal element of crisis prevention.
In order to arrive at a more informed idea, which determinants apart from a per-ceived appetite for regulatory arbitrage drive banks’ organizational choices, this paper scrutinizes the merits of either a branch or subsidiary structure for the cross-border business of financial institutions. In doing so, it also considers the policy-makers perspective. The analysis shows that no one size fits all organizational structure is available and concludes that banks’ choices should generally not be second-guessed, particularly because they are subject to (some) market discipline.
The analysis proceeds with describing and evaluating how competences in prudential supervision are currently allocated among national and supranational supervisory authorities. In order to assess the findings the appraisal adopts insights form the economics of public administration and international relations. It argues that the supervisory architecture has to be more aligned with bureaucrats’ incentives and that inefficient requirements to cooperate and share information should be reduced. The evolving Single Supervisory Mechanism for euro area banks with its rather complicated allocation of responsibilities between the ECB and the national supervisors in participating and non-participating Member States will not solve all the problems identified as it is partly in disaccord with bureaucrats’ incentives.
The last part of this paper finally sketches an alternative solution that dwells on far-reaching mutual recognition of national supervisory regimes and allocates competences in line with supervisors’ incentives and the risk inherent in cross-border banking groups.
Our most recent podcast: We were able to talk to the Japanese culturalanthropologist Mihara Ryôtarô while he visited Frankfurt in July for a talkon the Coool Japan Initiative [link]. As we have written on K-Pop in the past,we were very interested to talk about this kind of export promotion ofcultural goods as a foreign policy strategy: Do export subsidies of J-Popartifacts really promote Japanese soft power in the region? What are thedangers of promoting certain images of Japanese-ness? And is fried sushireally cool?
We develop a dynamic network model with heterogenous banks which undertake optimizing portfolio decisions subject to liquidity and capital constraints and trade in the interbank market whose equilibrium is governed by a tatonnement process. Due to the micro-funded structure of the decisional process as well as the iterative dynamic adjustment taking place in the market, the links in the network structures are endogenous and evolve dynamically. We use the model to assess the diffusion of systemic risk (measured as default probability), the contribution of each bank to it as well as the evolution of the network in response to financial shocks and across different prudential policy regimes.
We introduce a new measure of systemic risk, the change in the conditional joint probability of default, which assesses the effects of the interdependence in the financial system on the general default risk of sovereign debtors. We apply our measure to examine the fragility of the European financial system during the ongoing sovereign debt crisis. Our analysis documents an increase in systemic risk contributions in the euro area during the post-Lehman global recession and especially after the beginning of the euro area sovereign debt crisis. We also find a considerable potential for cascade effects from small to large euro area sovereigns. When we investigate the effect of sovereign default on the European Union banking system, we find that bigger banks, banks with riskier activities, with poor asset quality, and funding and liquidity constraints tend to be more vulnerable to a sovereign default. Surprisingly, an increase in leverage does not seem to influence systemic vulnerability.
We outline a procedure for consistent estimation of marginal and joint default risk in the euro area financial system. We interpret the latter risk as the intrinsic financial system fragility and derive several systemic fragility indicators for euro area banks and sovereigns, based on CDS prices. Our analysis documents that although the fragility of the euro area banking system had started to deteriorate before Lehman Brothers' file for bankruptcy, investors did not expect the crisis to affect euro area sovereigns' solvency until September 2008. Since then, and especially after November 2009, joint sovereign default risk has outpaced the rise of systemic risk within the banking system.
We develop a dynamic network model with heterogenous banks which undertake optimizing portfolio decisions subject to liquidity and capital constraints and trade in the interbank market whose equilibrium is governed by a tatonnement process. Due to the micro-funded structure of the decisional process as well as the iterative dynamic adjustment taking place in the market, the links in the network structures are endogenous and evolve dynamically. We use the model to assess the diffusion of systemic risk, the contribution of each bank to it as well as the evolution of the network in response to financial shocks and across different prudential policy regimes.
This paper presents a theory that explains why it is beneficial for banks to engage in circular lending activities on the interbank market. Using a simple network structure, it shows that if there is a non-zero bailout probability, banks can significantly increase the expected repayment of uninsured creditors by entering into cyclical liabilities on the interbank market before investing in loan portfolios. Therefore, banks are better able to attract funds from uninsured creditors. Our results show that implicit government guarantees incentivize banks to have large interbank exposures, to be highly interconnected, and to invest in highly correlated, risky portfolios. This can serve as an explanation for the observed high interconnectedness between banks and their investment behavior in the run-up to the subprime mortgage crisis.
The “Diversity Concept of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main 2011–2014” is based on the goals as laid down in the University Development Plan 2011. The Goethe University combined various instruments for working out the concept, not least in order to ensure adequate participation: on the one hand, guided interviews were conducted, for example, with employees in advisory functions, members of the AStA (General Students’ Commit-tee), etc. On the other hand, Internet research, an open space workshop, as well as four strategy and awareness-raising workshops on various topics were organized.
The concept was developed in close cooperation with the vice president responsible for gender and diversity, Prof. Dr. Roser Valenti, the Senate Commission “Advancement of Women, Equal Opportunity, and Diversity”, the “Project Supervision Group Diversity Poli-cies”, and the Equal Opportunities Office.
The Goethe University already has various concepts and target agreements on gender equal-ity and family support. The Diversity Concept therefore includes no measures on these top-ics. With the expiry of the Plan for the Advancement of Women in 2014, all of the other reports and measures related to equal opportunity and diversity will be consolidated in a central “Gender Equality & Diversity Action Plan of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main” (GEDAP) and updated every four years.
This paper investigates the accuracy of point and density forecasts of four DSGE models for inflation, output growth and the federal funds rate. Model parameters are estimated and forecasts are derived successively from historical U.S. data vintages synchronized with the Fed’s Greenbook projections. Point forecasts of some models are of similar accuracy as the forecasts of nonstructural large dataset methods. Despite their common underlying New Keynesian modeling philosophy, forecasts of different DSGE models turn out to be quite distinct. Weighted forecasts are more precise than forecasts from individual models. The accuracy of a simple average of DSGE model forecasts is comparable to Greenbook projections for medium term horizons. Comparing density forecasts of DSGE models with the actual distribution of observations shows that the models overestimate uncertainty around point forecasts.
After initial temporary measures in support of Greece prooved insufficient to end the sovereign debt crisis, extensive countermeasures have ensued. The heads of state of the euro group have agreed to permanent support mechanims over the course of the past two years. In addition, the European Central Bank (ECB) has become involved in the assistance program. The article provides an overview of the various support mechanisms installed and cautions against the connected legal problems.
In its decision of December 13, 2011, the Constitutional Court of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia ruled that a State Court of Auditors is granted by the constitution a broad scope of powers not only to control the immediate state administration but also entities outside the direct state administration, as far as they exercise financial responsibility for the state. This ruling may have serious implications for the capital guarantees extended by EU Member States to the newly established institutions on the European level, as for instance the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
The latest appointment to the ECB's Executive Board initiated a political dispute between the European Parliament and the Euro Group on the question of representation of females on the Executive Board and the Governing Council of the ECB. The dispute has raised awareness to the fact that a culture of equality and equal opportunity should be built from the ground up. A long term plan helping talented women to emerge and be prepared to take increasing responsibilities is necessary to make sure that there is a growing pool of qualified female candidates.
Chinese is often taken as a prime example of an isolating language. Most relation marking takes the form of particles rather than affixes or inflections. Possibly relevant to the facts that are presented below, Chinese has been argued to not have grammaticalized the sort of pivot constructions normally associated with grammatical relations. That is, it has been argued to not have any particular alignment, as there are no grammatical relations, and the clause pattern is simply topic-comment (Chao 1968, Lü 1979, LaPolla 1993, 1995, 2009; LaPolla & Poa 2005, 2006). We will first talk more generally about structures found in Sino-Tibetan languages, and then focus on Modern Mandarin Chinese.
Research aimed at helping to solve pressing societal problems must meet specific quality requirements: The knowledge it produces must not only be sound but also useable. This is particularly true of research that aims at bringing specific knowledge to bear on policy issues relating to sustainable development. This guide provides detailed actor-specific requirements profiles for this type of “policy relevant sustainability research.”
This guide is aimed at research funding agencies and contracting entities, researchers themselves and policymakers1 who participate directly in the research process. It can be used both for cases where the research funding agency/contracting entity and the policymaker are different institutions or where they are identical. However, policy consulting by specialized agencies that do not perform original research is not addressed.
The requirements profiles serve two functions. First of all, they should function as a guide for the three stakeholder groups, aiding them in their efforts to increase and ensure the quality of research processes and research outcomes. And, secondly, they should improve the reflexive communication among stakeholders regarding the means and the goals of research...
The results presented here are part of a research and development project (Research Code Number: 3711 11 701) funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA). The project was carried out by the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE, project management), the Institute for Ecological Economy Research and the Environmental Policy Research Center for of the Freie Universität Berlin (FFU) (project duration: 09/2011-01/2013).
The aim of the project was to develop concepts that can be used to increase the relevance of sustainability research for the design of environmental policy in Germany. In addition to the requirements profiles for a policy relevant sustainability research presented in this guide, recommendations, based on empirical studies, have been developed regarding how the coordination between different government departments with respect to funding such research can be optimized. The project's final report will be available starting March 2013 from the UBA.
Financing asset growth
(2012)
We document the existence of a debt anomaly that is in addition to the asset growth anomaly: for a given asset growth rate, firms that issue more debt, as well as firms that retire more debt, have lower stock returns in the 12 months starting 6 months after the calendar year of asset growth. Exploring the reasons for debt issuance, we find that managers of firms for which analyst expectations are more over-optimistic, which suffer from declining investment profitability, and whose earnings-price ratios are relatively high are inclined to rely more heavily on debt financing. On the other hand, firms that retire more debt for a given asset growth rate tend to have improving profitability but to be over-priced. We also find that the financing decision is influenced by the prior debt ratio, the asset growth rate, profitability, and CEO pay sensitivity. We interpret our results in terms of managerial incentives, signaling, and market timing.
I investigate the effect of transparency on the borrowing costs of Emerging Market Economies. Transparency is measured by whether or not the countries publish the IMF Article IV Staff reports and the Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC). Using difference-in-difference estimation, I study the effect on the sovereign credit spreads for 18 Emerging Market Economies over the periods 1999-2007 and 2008-2012. I show that the effect of publishing the Article IV reports is negligible while publishing ROSC matters, leading to a reduction in the spreads of nearly 30 basis points in the pre-crisis sample 1999-2007.
The idea of appointing a non-national as Central Bank Governor remains surprisingly controversial. Nevertheless, given the skills required by the Governor in order to manage what no doubt are increasingly complex institutions, considering non-nationals makes good sense for at least two reasons. First, increasing the pool of candidates to include those with broader skills and backgrounds makes it easier to find a suitable person for the job. Second, non-nationals are less likely to be beholden to domestic pressure groups and could help better insulate the central bank from political pressures.
This present comment suggests an amendment to the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council, establishing a framework for the recovery and resolution of credit institutions and investment firms. The current proposal focuses on bail-in, but does not sufficiently take into account the pressure exerted on central bankers, supervisors and politicians by the fear of interbank contagion. The only way out of this hold-up type of situation can be found in bail-in bonds. Bail-in bonds are dedicated loss taking debt instruments, whose status of being first in line if it comes to default is clearly communicated from day one.
With this paper, I propose a simple asset pricing model that accounts for the influence from social interaction. Investors are assumed to make up their mind about an asset’s price based on a forecasting strategy and its past profitability as well as on the contemporaneous expectations of other market participants. Empirically analysing stocks of the DAX30 index, I provide evidence that social interaction rather destabilises financial markets. Based on my results, I state that at least, it does not have a stabilising effect.
An analyst who works in Germany is more likely to publish a high (low) price target regarding a DAX30 stock if other Germany based analysts are also optimistic (pessimistic) about the same stock. This finding is not biased by the fact that DAX30 companies are headquartered in Germany. In times of bull markets, price targets of analysts who regularly exchange their opinion are higher correlated compared to other analysts. This effect vanishes in a bearish market environment. This suggests that communication among analysts indeed plays an important role. However, analysts’ incentives induce them not to deviate too much from the overall average during an economic downturn.
The exceptional circumstances in which the ECB has been operating in the past years are testing not only the currency union itself, but also its institutional design. While the Governing Council of the ECB was designed to mainly set interest rates optimally for the union as a whole, the recent crisis has expanded the tools of the ECB to include unconventional monetary policy actions that potentially increase the risk exposure of its balance sheet. Since each country would contribute to the losses according to its capital key, a different voting mechanism that takes into account the single country’s contribution to the ECB’s capital could be advisable.
In the event of a Greek exit from the Eurozone, the stronger members of the monetary union, especially Germany, face at least two risks: First, the debt of the Greek National Bank vis-à-vis the Eurosystem of central banks will most likely be lost. Secondly, the large flow of capital from Greece and other periphery countries to Germany will accelerate inflation.
Option-implied information and predictability of extreme returns : [Version 24 September 2012]
(2012)
We study whether option-implied conditional expectation of market loss due to tail events, or tail loss measure, contains information about future returns, especially the negative ones. Our tail loss measure predicts future market returns, magnitude, and probability of the market crashes, beyond and above other option-implied variables. Stock-specific tail loss measure predicts individual expected returns and magnitude of realized stock-specific crashes in the cross-section of stocks. An investor, especially the one who cares about the left tail of her wealth distribution (e.g., disappointment-averse), benefits from using the tail loss measure as an information variable to construct managed portfolios of a risk-free asset and market index. The tail loss measure is motivated by the results of the extreme value theory, and it is computed from observed prices of out-of-the-money put as the risk-neutral expected value of a loss beyond a given relative threshold.
In this paper, I analyse the reciprocal social influence on investment decisions within an international group of roughly 2000 mutual fund managers that invested in companies of the DAX30. Using a robust estimation procedure, I provide empirical evidence that in the average a fund manager puts 0.69% more portfolio weight on a particular stock, if other fund managers increase the corresponding position by 1%. The dynamics of this influence on portfolio weights suggest that fund managers adjust their behaviour according to the prevailing market situation and are more strongly influenced by others in times of an economic downturn. Analysing the working locations of the fund managers, I conclude that more than 90% of the magnitude of influence is due to pure observation. While this form of influence varies much in time, the magnitude of influence resulting from the exchange of opinion is more or less constant.
The paper analyzes the mutual influence of the capital structure and the investment decision of a bank, as well as the incentive effects of the bank executives compensation schemes on these decisions. In case the government implicitly or explicitly insures deposits and/or the banks debt, banks are incentivized to invest in risky assets and to have a high leverage. Capital regulation could potentially solve this excessive risk taking problem. However, this is only possible if the regulator can observe and properly measure the investment risks of the bank, which was called into question during the 2008-09 financial crisis. Hence, we propose a regulatory approach that is also able to implement the first best risk taking levels by the bank, but does not require the regulator to know the investment risk of the bank. The regulatory approach involves the implementation of capital requirements, which are made contingent on the management compensation.
We build on previous work on operational performance evaluation of private equity portfolio companies as we are able to at least partially decrypt the black box consisting of restructuring tools these investors use and the corresponding impact on their portfolio companies. Beyond answering whether private equity improves operating efficiency we figure out which of the typical restructuring tools drive operating efficiency. Using a set of over 300 international leveraged buyout transactions in the last thirty years we find that while there is vast improvement in operational efficiency these gains vary considerably. Our top performing transactions are subject to strong equity incentives, frequent asset restructuring and tight control by the investor. Furthermore, investors experience has a positive and financial leverage a negative influence on operational performance.
How do changes in market structure affect the US business cycle? We estimate a monetary DSGE model with endogenous
rm/product entry and a translog expenditure function by Bayesian methods. The dynamics of net business formation allow us to identify the 'competition effect', by which desired price markups and inflation decrease when entry rises. We
find that a 1 percent increase in the number of competitors lowers desired markups by 0.18 percent. Most of the cyclical variability in inflation is driven by markup fluctuations due to sticky prices or exogenous shocks rather than endogenous changes in desired markups.
This contribution draws on two recent publications in which the macroeconomic model data base (www.macromodelbase.com) is employed for model comparisons. The comparative approach is used to base policy analysis on a systematic evaluation of the different implications that a certain economic policy can have when submitted to different modeling approaches. In this manner, policy recommendations are more robust to modeling uncertainty. By extending the comparative approach to forecasting, the authors investigate the accuracy of different forecasting models and obtain more reliable mean forecasts.
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and great recession, many countries face substantial deficits and growing debts. In the United States, federal government outlays as a ratio to GDP rose substantially from about 19.5 percent before the crisis to over 24 percent after the crisis. In this paper we consider a fiscal consolidation strategy that brings the budget to balance by gradually reducing this spending ratio over time to the level that prevailed prior to the crisis. A crucial issue is the impact of such a consolidation strategy on the economy. We use structural macroeconomic models to estimate this impact. We consider two types of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models: a neoclassical growth model and more complicated models with price and wage rigidities and adjustment costs. We separate out the impact of reductions in government purchases and transfers, and we allow for a reduction in both distortionary taxes and government debt relative to the baseline of no consolidation. According to the initial model simulations GDP rises in the short run upon announcement and implementation of this fiscal consolidation strategy and remains higher than the baseline in the long run.
Management Summary: Conducted within the project “Economic Implications of New Models for Information Supply for Science and Research in Germany”, the Houghton Report for Germany provides a general cost and benefit analysis for scientific communication in Germany comparing different scenarios according to their specific costs and explicitly including the German National License Program (NLP).
Basing on the scholarly lifecycle process model outlined by Björk (2007), the study compared the following scenarios according to their accounted costs:
- Traditional subscription publishing,
- Open access publishing (Gold Open Access; refers primarily to journal publishing where access is free of charge to readers, while the authors or funding organisations pay for publication)
- Open Access self-archiving (authors deposit their work in online open access institutional or subject-based repositories, making it freely available to anyone with Internet access; further divided into (i) CGreen Open Access’ self-archiving operating in parallel with subscription publishing; and (ii) the ‘overlay services’ model in which self-archiving provides the foundation for overlay services (e.g. peer review, branding and quality control services))
- the NLP.
Within all scenarios, five core activity elements (Fund research and research communication; perform research and communicate the results; publish scientific and scholarly works; facilitate dissemination, retrieval and preservation; study publications and apply the knowledge) were modeled and priced with all their including activities.
Modelling the impacts of an increase in accessibility and efficiency resulting from more open access on returns to R&D over a 20 year period and then comparing costs and benefits, we find that the benefits of open access publishing models are likely to substantially outweigh the costs and, while smaller, the benefits of the German NLP also exceed the costs.
This analysis of the potential benefits of more open access to research findings suggests that different publishing models can make a material difference to the benefits realised, as well as the costs faced. It seems likely that more Open Access would have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period, they are likely to be positive for both ‘author-pays’ Open Access publishing and the ‘over-lay journals’ alternatives (‘Gold Open Access’), and for parallel subscription publishing and self-archiving (‘Green Open Access’). The NLP returns substantial benefits and savings at a modest cost, returning one of the highest benefit/cost ratios available from unilateral national policies during a transitional period (second to that of ‘Green Open Access’ self-archiving). Whether ‘Green Open Access’ self-archiving in parallel with subscriptions is a sustainable model over the longer term is debateable, and what impact the NLP may have on the take up of Open Access alternatives is also an important consideration. So too is the potential for developments in Open Access or other scholarly publishing business models to significantly change the relative cost-benefit of the NLP over time.
The results are comparable to those of previous studies from the UK and Netherlands. Green Open Access in parallel with the traditional model yields the best benefits/cost ratio. Beside its benefits/cost ratio, the meaningfulness of the NLP is given by its enforceability. The true costs of toll access publishing (beside the buyback” of information) is the prohibition of access to research and knowledge for society.
Japheth Omojuwa is the Editor of AfricanLiberty.org for Atlas Economic Research Institute United States and also founder and curator of www.omojuwa.com, one of the most popular web pages in Nigeria. As a crucial part of the Occupy Nigeria movement, Japheth consults for local and international organisations and, with well over 42,000 followers on Twitter, has a significant influence on young people. Japheth is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers and well published in local and international media. Currently, he is working on the Green Deal Nigeria project: this is how I got to know him on a panel discussion at the Heinricht-Böll-Stiftung in Berlin, and Japheth immediately agreed to answer some questions for our Blog.
Guerillas win as long as they do not lose, and government forces lose as long as they do not win. In Afghanistan, this adage holds, once again, true. Western civilian and military leaders want us to believe that insurgents and criminals are running out of options. Indeed, after much initial stuttering, NATO has transformed into a veritable counter-insurgency machine, with the United States shouldering most of the burden. Casualties among the Taliban and other enemies of NATO are enormous. Enormous, too, is the coalition of NATO and Afghan troops, approaching half a million soldiers and militia-types.
Europe’s reaction to the recent upheavals in North Africa clearly exposed one thing: The EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), including its Security and Defence branch (CSDP), were steamrolled by a multitude of overtly national policies. The resulting cacophony of views made a mockery of the aspiration to present a united European position to external players. It also thwarts the claim of the EU being a more credible security actor in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty reforms. While commentators have moaned about a CFSP and CSDP ‘fatigue’ for quite some time now, the likelihood that what used to be the most dynamic EU policy field of the last decade will enter a period of prolonged hibernation never seemed as high...
Reforms or bankruptcy?
(2011)
Almost 20 Greek academic economists from renowned universities in Europe and the US have prepared a one-page statement regarding the Greek crisis. In their statement the economic experts call upon the Greek public to accept the economic program of structural reforms, privatization, efficient tax collection, and shrinking of the public sector proposed and financed by the EU partners and the IMF. Among the signatories are this year's Nobel Prize winner Christopher Pissarides and Michalis Haliassos, Director of the Center for Financial Studies and Professor for Macroeconomics and Finance at the House of Finance.
Prodigal Italy Greece Spain?
(2011)
Contrary to widely held perceptions, workers in the southern European states that are most afflicted by the sovereign debt crisis work hard. However, labor productivity in these countries lags far behind the EU average. Structural reforms to boost productivity should be at the top of the reform agenda.
This paper analyzes the equilibrium pricing implications of contagion risk in a two-tree Lucas economy with CRRA preferences. The dividends of both trees are subject to downward jumps. Some of these jumps are contagious and increase the risk of subsequent jumps in both trees for some time interval. We show that contagion risk leads to large price-dividend ratios for small assets, a joint movement of prices in the case of a regime change from the calm to the contagion state, significantly positive correlations between assets, and large positive betas for small assets. Whereas disparities between the assets with respect to their propensity to trigger contagion barely matter for pricing, the prices of robust assets that are hardly affected by contagion and excitable assets that are severely hit by contagion differ significantly. Both in absolute terms and relatively to the market, the price of a small safe haven increases if the economy reaches the contagion state. On the contrary, the price of a small, contagion-sensitive asset exhibits a pronounced downward jump.
This article discusses the effects of the countercyclical premium discussed in insurance supervision in the context of Solvency II. While the basic principle of introducing countercyclical elements into Solvency II is endorsed, the authors argue for a system based on market scenarios which would enforce stricter capital requirements in boom times and less strict requirements in times of crisis.
The European Commission's Green Paper "The EU corporate governance framework" raises 25 questions in order to assess the effectiveness of the current corporate governance framework for European companies. The authors contribute to the EU's consultation, respond to the 25 questions and comment on the suggestions set out in the Green Paper.
The bail-in puzzle
(2011)
Under the current conditions of a global financial crisis, notably in Europe’s banking industry, the governance role of bond markets is defunct. In fact, investors have understood that bank debt will almost always be rescued with taxpayers’ money. The widespread practice of government-led bank bailouts has thus severely corrupted the bond market, leading to the underestimation of risk and, as a consequence, the destruction of market discipline. Any feasible solution to the bank-debt-is-too-cheap problem will have to re-install true default risk for bank bond holders.
At least since the 1980s, a scholarly debate on the very meaning of security has structured the field of (Critical) Security Studies to a large extent (see Working Paper #1). Today, many new concept such as human security and societal security are prominent anchors in academic and political debates directing our attention to the non-military aspects of security, in particular to the manifold insecurities people (and not only the state) face. The call for energy security is one prominent example...
Brecht - Galileo
(2010)
This is the age of doubt, says Brecht's Galileo, the 17th century scientist. "It ain't necessarily so," says Gershwin's Sportin' Life of the 1930ies. "De t'ings dat yo li'ble / to read in de Bible / it ain't necessarily so. / Now I takes dat gospel / whenever it's pos'ble / but wid a grain of salt."
Condensing phenomena for systems biology, ecology and sociology present in real life different complex behaviors. Based on local interaction between agents, we present another result of the Energy-based model presented by [20]. We involve an additional condition providing the total condensing (also called consensus) of a discrete positive measure. Key words: Condensing; consensus; random move; self-organizing groups; collective intelligence; stochastic modeling. AMS Subject Classifications: 81T80; 93A30; 37M05; 68U20
The tentative title of my presentation is GENDER AMBIVALENCE (AMBIGUITY?) and deals with Renaissance iconography in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. It will show that homosexual attraction, although obvious in the story (and Mann's life) is a secondary issue and that the main concern lies with the problem provided by an aesthetic principle. (Parallel narratives, the plot is not the real/only story).
The house of Tantalus
(2010)
Wozu Dichter?
(2010)
Goethe's Tasso is no "Dichter in duerftiger Zeit." He is rather duerftig himself, unbalanced and impulsive in the extreme. In fact, in an annoyed moment, the diplomat Antonio sees him as a useless and pampered brat and undiplomatically says so, triggering a fateful sequence of events that generate a seemingly unstoppable momentum.
Goethe: Helena
(2010)
Although we are concentrating on the Third Act, Faust's appreciation of legend's most beautiful woman begins much earlier, perhaps as early as the Hexenkueche scene where he is thoroughly enraptured by a woman's image in a magical mirror. It drives him crazy, he says (2456), particularly since he has to stay at a certain distance to keep it in proper focus (2434); can you see Mephisto's mischievous smile at this bit of enforced "disinterested contemplation"? Woman is God's final art work, the true Crown of Creation, we learn from Schiller's Princess Eboli; Mephisto seems to say as much, and Faust like most men needs no convincing. We can't be sure that this is indeed Helen, we (and Faust) have yet to meet her. She remains nameless but, by any name, would be as sweet.
Gretchen's infanticide
(2010)
In the scene At The Well, Gretchen herself describes the sequence of events best and in all their fateful simplicity. It is the progress from "sin" to "shame", that is to public disgrace as soon as her private transgression becomes "visible" as pregnancy. Already here the painful confusion over her private perception ("good, dear love", lines 3585/6) and public judgment ("slut", line 3753) which will eventually drive her mad is obvious. In her derangement and despair she will destroy the evidence against her, that is, drown her child.
Goethe - Egmont
(2010)
Do you know what I think? asks Adrian Leverkuehn. "Musik ist die Zweideutigkeit als System." Music is Janus-faced by its very nature. It can move and paralyze. "What passion cannot music raise and quell," exclaims John Dryden in his Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687. Music is an expert in the use of opiates, asserts Settembrini in The Magic Mountain, and Nietzsche speaks of her dual, intoxicating and befogging, nature. Shakespeare's Desdemona "will sing the savageness out of a bear" (IV, i) and the merchants in Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen tell the story of another Orpheus whose song so charms a sea "monster" that it saves the singer's life and returns his treasure to him. John Dryden's Thimotheus "to his breathing flute and sounding lyre, could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire" (Alexander's Feast, 1697). "Musica Consolatrix" and "Musica Tremenda". She is the "Mysterium tremendum et fascinosum" in Kleist's novella about the power of music. While English late 17th and early 18th century literature offers a particularly rich harvest of poetry celebrating the contradictory qualities, or effects, of music, there is in fact testimony to this at all stages of our tradition.
Music
(2010)
The musical ending [of Goethe's Novelle] recalls the fascination with "music as metaphor", "the power of music", among recent and contemporary poets from Pope and Dryden and Collins to E.T.A. Hoffmann and Kleist and, of course to Goethe himself. Music saves Faust's life on Easter morning at the end of a dreadful night, and we'll encounter a similar role of music in his Trilogie der Leidenschaft which we'll read in this context.
A single mother and her grown children. A team now. The fathers have come and gone and are barely remembered. These are her children. By contrast, Matthew (27; 56) identifies an anonymous woman as "the mother of Zebedee's children." We'll talk about it, for what it may mean. More important is the fact that this group is headed by a dominant female. Let's see if it makes a difference. Demian, as you'll remember, was the product of matriarchy, as it were, and seemed to be none the worse for it. It wasn't even worth mentioning. Fifty years later, Edgar Wibeau of Plenzdorf's The New Sorrows of Young W. (1972), a modern version of Goethe's bestselling novel Werther written 200 years earlier, and one of the most brilliant pieces of theatre post-Brecht, does find it worth mentioning. He is "sick & tired" of being paraded as living proof that "a single mother can successfully raise a male."
At the beginning of The Judgment, we find Georg Bendemann, who has just finished a letter to his friend in Russia, reliving once more the agonizing decision to write the letter in the first place. The decision had not been easy. Like many of Kafka's characters, Georg Bendemann is obsessed with the idea of analysis, with the painstaking exploration of all sides of a given issue. "What could one write to such a man without hurting him?" had been the question. "On the other hand, by writing only casual gossip or not at all one would doubtless increase the friends isolation" had been the counter-argument. What follows now is an exercise in looking at alternatives that spawn new alternatives that leaves the reader dazzled. Each conclusion is in turn explored to its possible opposite implications, which are in turn qualified, which leads to more questions followed by more partial conclusions plus qualifications thereof. The process could continue ad infinitum, in fact, has gone on for years--we are merely presented with a condensed version of it.
The Birds of the Highlands of South-West Saudi Arabia and adjacent parts of the Tihama: July 2010
(2010)
The objective of the survey was to compare habitats and bird life in the Asir region, particularly Jebal Souda and the Raydah escarpment protected area of the Saudi Wildlife Commission, and adjacent regions of the tihama, with those observed in July 1987 (Jennings, et al., 1988). The two surveys were approximately the same length and equal amounts of time were spent in the highlands and on the tihama. A number of walked censuses were carried out during 2010 on Jebal Souda, using the same methodology as walked censuses in 1987, and the results are compared. Broadly speaking the comparison of censuses revealed that in 2010 there were less birds and reduced diversity on the Jebal Souda plateau, compared to 1987. However in the Raydah reserve the estimates of breeding bird populations compiled in the mid 1990s was little changed as far as could be assessed in 2010. The highland region of south-west Saudi Arabia, especially Jebal Souda, has been much developed since the 1987 survey and is now an important internal recreation and resort area. This has lead to a reduction in the region’s importance for terraced agriculture. These changes may be a contributing factor to changes in bird numbers on the plateau. Subsidiary tasks that arose during the 2010 survey were to help locate satellite tagged Bald Ibises Geronticus eremita from Syria which were transiting Saudi Arabia at the time. Secondly to search for the Asir subspecies of the Eurasian Magpie Pica pica asirensis, which is endemic to the south-west Saudi Arabia highlands, and is reported to be in decline. A separate team searching for the Bald Ibis located some individuals and one was found dead. Few Magpies were located and it seems clear that this very scarce bird has declined further in numbers in recent years. A number of interesting records of birds were obtained, especially on the tihama, where two new birds for Saudi Arabia were observed, Black-headed Heron Ardea melanocephala and Painted Snipe Rostratula benghalensis and one species, Glossy Ibis Plegadis falcinellus was found breeding for the first time in the Arabian Peninsula. Some recommendations for the protection and management of the Raydah reserve are presented. A systematic list of all birds seen is provided.
Goethe : Novelle
(2010)
Eckermann reports a conversation with Goethe on January 29, 1827: Es kam sodann zur Sprache, welchen Titel man der Novelle geben sollte; wir taten manche Vorschlaege, einige waren gut fuer den Anfang, andere gut fuer das Ende, doch fand sich keiner, der fuer das Ganze passend und also der rechte gewesen waere. "Wissen Sie was", sagte Goethe, "wir wollen es die Novelle nennen; denn was ist eine Novelle anders als eine sich ereignete unerhoerte Begebenheit. Dies ist der eigentliche Begriff, und so vieles, was in Deutschland unter dem Titel Novelle geht, ist gar keine Novelle, sondern bloss Erzaehlung oder was Sie sonst wollen. In jenem urspruenglichen Sinne einer unerhoerten Begebenheit kommt auch die Novelle in den Wahlverwandtschaften vor." This is the epilogue, as it were, to a lengthy conversation on January 15, 1827, in which Goethe interprets his own Novelle. Here an excerpt, a highly condensed analysis: Zu zeigen, wie das Unbaendige, Unueberwindliche oft besser durch Liebe und Froemmigkeit als durch Gewalt bezwungen werde, war die Aufgabe dieser Novelle, und dieses schoene Ziel, welches sich im Kinde und Loewen darstellt, reizte mich zur Ausfuehrung. Dies ist das Ideelle, dies die Blume. Und das gruene Blaetterwerk der durchaus realen Exposition ist nur dieserwegen da und nur dieserwegen etwas wert.
"Since the events of the eighteenth century, in particular the French and American Revolutions, the concept of revolution has become one of the most important, and most widely used, concepts of modern political and philosophical thought. The revolutions of the eighteenth century are, however, also marked by a temporal logic that questions their radical departure from the past, both intellectually and practically. Indeed, the concept of revolution is often coupled with a renewed interest in ideals of human self-conception, moral beauty and education that are seen as having emerged in the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome. On both sides of the Atlantic, references to classical antiquity support contemporary achievements, on the one hand, and are used to question the existing state of political and intellectual affairs, on the other."
During the period 24 May to 1 June 2010 observations were made of the flora, fauna and habitats of two study areas in the Rub al Khali in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Firstly the route of an existing pipeline, known as Shabab 1, which runs from the Jafurah desert south of Abqaiq to a point 211 km west of the Shaybah oil field, a distance of 422 km. Secondly the Shaybah oilfield area (administered by Saudi ARAMCO), paying particular attention to the sites listed at paragraph 6. (See also the map at Fig. 1.) In the following paragraphs the two sites are often identified simply as Shabab and Shaybah.