Arbitrary Restrictions Research Articles

From farm to fork? Brexit and the International Plant Protection Convention

Import and export controls ensure plant pests and diseases harmful to food production, the plants across our landscape, and ecosystem services, are not moved during trade. The ‘International Plant Protection Convention’ (IPPC) provides the framework for applying preventive measures where they are technically justified, and stipulates controls are not to be used as arbitrary restrictions on international trade. This article examines the aims of the Brexit trade agreements and reviews their alignment with the IPPC and other World Trade Organisation agreements. It argues that unjustified controls have been applied under the guise of protective requirements (contributing to EU-GB trade disruption) and identifies a divergence at the point of regulatory implementation of these laws and treaties by official bodies on both sides. The article reviews the position of Northern Ireland, which, to avoid a ‘hard border’ on the island of Ireland, remains under the European Union (EU)'s plant health (phytosanitary) regime. Reflecting on legislative options available to bring the application of plant health regulations into alignment with the IPPC (such as dispute resolution), these options remain unused. However, the possibility of utilising ‘import authorisations’ would leave neither Great Britain nor EU Member States exposed to any greater environmental risk than that under the single market.

Selfadhesivity in Gaussian conditional independence structures

Selfadhesivity is a property of entropic polymatroids which guarantees that the polymatroid can be glued to an identical copy of itself along arbitrary restrictions such that the two pieces are independent given the common restriction. We show that positive definite matrices satisfy this condition as well and examine consequences for Gaussian conditional independence structures. New axioms of Gaussian CI are obtained by applying selfadhesivity to the previously known axioms of structural semigraphoids and orientable gaussoids.

Housing networks in urban China: A panel VAR model with Bayesian stochastic search

This paper analyzes housing networks in China established through the inter-city information spillover. Unlike conventional methods that either fail to identify the city-level linkage or impose arbitrary restrictions, we investigate both the direction and magnitude of cross-city housing spillover in a data-driven manner by employing a panel VAR framework with Bayesian stochastic search. Through this, significance of the pair-linkages is examined from both perspectives of return and shock with insignificant ones being detected. Using a monthly dataset of housing prices covering 70 major China's cities over 2005–2021, our results confirm the presence of positive housing spillover that 11.68 % and 12.92 % of the total city-paired linkages are found to exist in terms of return and shock, respectively. With a particular focus on China's key urban agglomerations, housing spillovers exist not only across city-tiers in forms of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ but also within the same tier in a ‘peer learning’ pattern, and the spillover magnitude of the latter is shown to be greater than that of the former. Despite the above common pattern, housing networks also demonstrate heterogeneous features across city clusters. Additional analyses reassure robustness of our findings that possess implications for clear comprehension of regional housing price dynamics.

Restriction of the Right of Ownership of Real Property due to Environment Protection in Light of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland

Nowadays, there is a noticeable trend aimed at ensuring broad protection of the natural environment – both for the sake of preserving biodiversity and the quality of life of the future generations. However, the related activities of public authorities and private entities often involve limiting the rights of property owners. The Polish Constitutional Tribunal has ruled on the conflict between property rights and conservation of nature. The Tribunal has pointed out that the principles of sustainable development require an appropriate balance between environment protection on one hand and social and civilizational development on the other. In accordance with the previous jurisprudence of the Tribunal, the article will present the limits set for the state's environment policy in certain specific areas by the Constitution. It is acceptable to establish mechanisms to control the exploitation of plantings belonging to real property. Property owners may be required to obtain permits for their removal, and in the absence of such permits, they may be punished with forfeiture of timber or a fine. However, it is incompatible with the principle of proportionality and infringes the right of owners by arbitrary restrictions or imposed automatically sanctions, without the possibility of taking into account the circumstances. Moreover, the Tribunal has pointed out that the Constitution does not allow disproportionate narrowing down of the possibility to seek compensation for restrictions in the use of real property for the sake of environment protection. Only the two-year deadline for submitting claims in this respect has been considered too painful – too short and impossible to be reinstated for justified reasons.

Statistical and Optimization Methods in Credit Scoring

Introduction. The role of credit scoring in the work of financial institutions is difficult to overestimate. Accurate and efficient scorecards allow lenders to assess risks correctly and monitor their investments. Such cards should be based on reliable statistical data about previous and current customers using statistical analysis methods. Over the years of its development, the toolkit of credit scoring has also been supplemented with non-statistical methods based on the use of optimization procedures, decision trees, intelligent databases and knowledge bases, building network models, etc. Given the wide range of available methods, there is a need for their classification and application analysis. The purpose of the article is to provide a brief description of all relevant statistical and non-statistical methods that allow solving credit scoring tasks in modern formulations. To reveal the features of using the methods described and conduct their comparison. Results. Statistical methods allow to investigate the significance of all the factors included in the model, as well as to obtain a set of statistical estimates that help to assess the quality of the model. Thus, these methods allow to build an optimal and reliable model. Non-statistical methods allow you to add arbitrary restrictions to the model, automatically detect and process interactions between characteristics, and solve problems with a large number of applicants and their characteristics, which is facilitated due to the development of computational methods. Conclusions. Modern mathematical methods allow to solve credit scoring tasks effectively, among which one of the main ones is the binary and multigroup classification. The choice of the optimal method depends on the type of system (static or dynamic), the creditor's computing capabilities and the importance of the results interpretation. Keywords: credit scoring, statistical methods, mathematical programming, neural networks, genetic algorithms.

Open the Doors: Towards Complete Freedom of Movement for Human Rights Defenders in Exile in Uganda

AbstractUganda attracts the highest number of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers in the East and Horn of Africa sub-region. Factors including an ‘open door’ policy, relative political stability, and a central geographical location have contributed to Uganda becoming an attractive hub for human rights defenders. The right to freedom of movement is enshrined in all significant human rights treaties and many regional and sub-regional economic treaties, including the one establishing the East African Community. However, in practice many exiled human rights defenders and refugees face various obstacles to move freely.This article explores the scope and meaning of freedom of movement into, within, and out of Uganda. Uganda remains one of, if not the most open country in the region for asylum-seekers, where everyone, including refugees and exiled human rights defenders, may move and settle wherever they choose. However, the majority of human rights defenders struggle to leave Uganda as they usually do not possess a national passport. While Convention Travel Documents, or refugee passports, are provided for under Ugandan and international refugee law, they are elusive in the refugee community and the majority of those interviewed face overwhelming challenges in obtaining one. This leaves many feeling hopeless and not in control of their own future or opportunities, as they are unable to travel within the East African Community, or beyond, for any reason. In particular, women human rights defenders and those who identified as, or advocated for the LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer) community, face compounded difficulties when moving within and out of Uganda, including arbitrary restrictions by authorities, violations by private actors, and protection concerns when moving.

Irreversibility of structure tensors of modules

Determining the matrix multiplication exponent $$\omega $$ is one of the greatest open problems in theoretical computer science. We show that it is impossible to prove $$\omega = 2$$ by starting with structure tensors of modules of fixed degree and using arbitrary restrictions. It implies that the same is impossible by starting with $$1_A$$ -generic non-diagonal tensors of fixed size with minimal border rank. This generalizes the work of Bläser and Lysikov (Slice rank of block tensors and irreversibility of structure tensors of algebras 170, 2020). Our methods come from both commutative algebra and complexity theory.

Reflections on Freedom of Religion or Belief and Security

This article explores the relationship between the human right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief (FoRB) and security. It argues that FoRB and security are intricately intertwined and uses the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) concept of comprehensive and co-operative security as a theoretical underpinning and ideal-type model from which to assess other approaches to security. Through this lens, it asserts that if sustainable security is an end-goal, and if FoRB helps to ensure it, arbitrary restrictions of this right, or intrusive interference into the lives of religious or belief communities, will ultimately only undermine security and should be avoided.

Algorithm of the successive approximation method for optimal control problems with phase restrictions for mechanics tasks

The algorithm of the method of successive approximations for problems of optimal control in the presence of arbitrary restrictions on control and phase variables is proposed. The approach is based on the procedures of consistent satisfaction of the necessary conditions of optimality in the form of Pontryagin's maximum principle. The algorithm application for the problems of weight optimization of power elements of structures in the presence of constraints of strength, rigidity, and technological requirements is demonstrated.

Anne Conway's Metaphysics of Change

AbstractThe Aristotelian account of change—according to which no individual can survive a change of species because an individual's essence is, at least in part, determined by its species membership—remains popular in the seventeenth century. One important, but often overlooked dissenting voice comes from Anne Conway. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Conway firmly rejects the Aristotelian account of change. She instead endorses the doctrine of Radical Mutability, the view that a creature can belong to different species at different times. A horse, for example, can gradually become a human being and yet remain the same individual. Why, though, is Conway so opposed to the prima facie appealing Aristotelian account of change? This paper claims that she levels two arguments against this account which have been largely neglected so far. First, she argues that there could be no causal interaction between creatures belonging to different species with distinct essences, because cause and effect would be too dissimilar in that case. Second, Conway argues that the Aristotelian model is inconsistent with divine goodness because it allows for the annihilation of creatures and because it imposes arbitrary restrictions on the capacity of creatures to improve.

Ranking intersecting distribution functions

SummarySecond‐degree dominance has become a widely accepted criterion for ordering distribution functions according to social welfare. However, it provides only a partial ordering, and it may fail to rank distributions that intersect. To rank intersecting distribution functions, we propose a general approach based on rank‐dependent theory. This approach avoids making arbitrary restrictions or parametric assumptions about social welfare functions and allows researchers to identify the weakest set of assumptions needed to rank distributions according to social welfare. Our approach is based on two complementary sequences of nested dominance criteria. The first (second) sequence extends second‐degree stochastic dominance by placing more emphasis on differences that occur in the lower (upper) part of the distribution. The sequences characterize two separate systems of nested subfamilies of rank‐dependent social welfare functions. This allows us to identify the least restrictive rank‐dependent social preferences that give an unambiguous ranking of a given set of distribution functions. We also provide an axiomatization of the sequences of dominance criteria and the corresponding subfamilies of social welfare functions. We show the usefulness of our approach using two empirical applications; the first assesses the welfare implications of changes in household income distributions over the business cycle, while the second performs a social welfare comparison of the actual and counterfactual outcome distributions from a policy experiment.

Limits of restrictions of human rights and freedoms to ensure security (problem statement

The subject. The world faced a coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Many states, including Russia, adopted harsh measures that were largely based on restricting human rights and freedoms in an effort to counter pandemic spread. Inter-State borders were closed, restrictions were imposed on the operation of public catering organizations and the holding of sports and entertainment events was suspended, some of the fundamental rights were heavily con-strained. This resulted in the growth of public disaffection, falling of incomes and a worsening of the overall economic environment. As a result, the problem of the permissibility of restrictions of human rights and freedoms for the sake of public security, as well as the requirements for such restrictions, had once again become relevant.The purpose of the article is, firstly, to learn what is the concept of “freedom” nowadays, to define the conditions and principles of application the permissible restrictions on human rights and freedoms, their aims and purpose. The authors dare to analyze the laws and regulations establishing the possibility of restricting human rights and freedoms and to give a description of the procedure for imposing restrictions in situations of greater danger.The methodology of research includes formal legal interpretation of legal acts, systemic approach to cognition of social relations, analysis and synthesis.The main results, scope of application. The definition and concept of freedom, its limited character, the regulation of the possibility of its restriction for the purpose of protecting society have been studied and defined. Russian and international legislation on the restriction of human rights and freedoms has been analyzed. The principles on the basis of which it is permissible to restrict human rights and freedoms have been identified. The principle of the inadmissibility of restrictions on all rights and freedoms; the adequacy of the imposed restrictive measures to the existing threat; the principle of economic efficiency; the principle of detailed regulation of the imposed restrictions are among them. It has been found out that there is a threat of establishing tyranny with arbitrary restrictions on human rights and freedoms.Conclusions. In today’s world, the restriction of human rights and freedoms should be considered as a necessary measure to ensure the security of the individuals and of society as a whole, especially in the situations of a great danger to public interests. At the same time, the imposing restrictions should be strictly regulated and, moreover, possible abuses should be avoided in order to minimize the negative consequences and avoid establishing totalitarian regime.

IMAGE AND SHAPE COMPARISON VIA MORPHOLOGICAL CORRELATION

Abstract. A lot of image matching applications require image comparison to be invariant relative to intensity values variations. The Pyt’ev theory for Morphological Image Analysis (MIA) was developed based on image-to-shape matching with mosaic shape models. Within the framework of this theory, the problem of shape-to-shape comparison was previously considered too. The most sophisticated and weakest part of MIA theory is the comparison of mosaic shapes with some arbitrary restrictions described by graphs or relations. In this paper we consider the possible options for comparing images and shapes using morphological projection and morphological correlation. Our contribution is a new scheme of morphological shape-to-image projection and, correspondingly, the new morphological correlation coefficient (MCC) for shape-to-image correlation with restricted mosaic models. We also refine the expressions for shape-to-shape comparison.

Соразмерность как конституционный принцип ограничения прав и свобод человека и гражданина в Российской Федерации

Introduction. The 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation allows for the possibility of restricting rights and freedoms of individuals and establishes imperative conditions (principles) for the introduction and operation of these restrictions. One of these constitutional principles is the principle of proportionality: the rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen can be limited only to the extent necessary to achieve the goals specified in part 3 of Article 55. Theoretical analysis. The principle of proportionality of restrictions to certain goals is currently declared by the constitutions of many states, and is also part of the international legal criteria for restrictions on human rights. Some conceptual issues of the content of the constitutional principle of proportionality are resolved by the Constitutional Court of Russia. In its most general form, the principle of proportionality means that: the measures (means) used to restrict rights and freedoms must be conditioned by constitutional goals; restrictive measures (means) should not be greater than necessary; restrictive measures (means) should not lead to disproportionate, excessive restrictions. Empirical analysis. The analysis of the decisions of the Constitutional Court of Russia shows that in each specific case, the Court determines the necessary measure to restrict a particular right (freedom), comparing, weighing the constitutionally recognized values (on the one hand, the rights of a certain person, on the other, the rights of other persons, the interests of the state, public interests), as well as assessing the adequacy of the legal means used to achieve any constitutionally established goal (s) of restriction. The conclusions reached by the Court regarding the proportionality or disproportion (excess) of the restriction of this or that right are binding not only for the legislator, but also in some cases for the law enforcement officer. Results. It is concluded that the implementation of the constitutional principle of proportionality of restrictions in lawmaking and law enforcement means that when establishing and applying restrictions on rights and freedoms to achieve a certain constitutional goal (goals), exclusively necessary measures (means) must be provided and used in this situation. The principle of proportionality of restrictions is one of the criteria for assessing the constitutionality of the restriction of any right or freedom, as well as one of the guarantees against arbitrary (unreasonable, excessive, unconstitutional) restrictions, since it presupposes the existence of certain boundaries (limits, frameworks, conditions) of lawmaking and law enforcement.

Does cross-shareholding lead to China's stock returns comovement? Evidence from a GMM-based spatial AR model

This investigation investigates how the cross-shareholding network leads to stock returns’ comovement and makes an empirical test using a spatial autoregressive model with multiple weighted matrices. The cross-shareholding network leads to a significant and considerable positive spatial dependence of stock returns, which is roughly equivalent to the local dependence. Besides, we provide evidence that the strength of comovements is closely related to the network density. Vertices with higher out-degree (investing more firms) take on more spillover effects. In contrast, the cross-shareholding ratio seems not to play a critical role because of its low level and the exponential decline influence mechanism. Changes of the cross-shareholding network measurement suggest the robustness of our result. The result suggests that the cross-shareholding could strengthen the stock comovement effect. The policy implication is that the control of this comovement should focus on the network structure: reducing network density by finding vertices with higher degrees rather than arbitrary restrictions of shareholding ratios.

EU COVID Certificate: A Vehicle of Arbitrary Restrictions

Boasting numerous positive pretexts underpinning its introduction, the EU COVID Certificate is not such a positive development, we demonstrate. Doubt can be cast on the suitability of the COCVID Certificate in facilitating freedom of movement; an extreme fragmentation remains when it comes to cross-border travel rules in the EU. This fragmentation, caused by the violations of the Treaties by numerous Member States, is not acted upon by the Commission. Instead of safeguarding EU citizens’ rights, it seems to rejoice in the ability of the new Regulation introducing the EU Digital COVID Certificate to harm these rights: seemingly a legislative carte blanche for arbitrariness and abuse of power. Doubt can also be shed on the public-health asserted grounds for excluding non-EMA vaccines from the mutual recognition obligation in the Regulation. Member State restrictions on cross-border movement raising doubt on their compatibility with EU law have so far gone unchallenged, yet the DCC Regulation left broad scope for the implementation of arbitrary, discriminatory or disproportionate restrictions on cross-border movement.

Exchange Design and Efficiency

Most assets clear independently rather than jointly. This paper presents a model based on the uniform‐price double auction which accommodates arbitrary restrictions on market clearing, including independent clearing across assets (allowed when demand for each asset is contingent only on the price of that asset) and joint market clearing for all assets (required when demand for each asset is contingent on the prices of all assets). Additional trading protocols for traded assets—neutral when the market clears jointly—are generally not redundant innovations, even if all traders participate in all protocols. Multiple trading protocols that clear independently can be designed to be at least as efficient as joint market clearing for all assets. The change in price impact brought by independence in market clearing can overcome the loss of information, and enhance diversification and risk sharing. Except when the market is competitive, market characteristics should guide innovation in trading technology.

Robust virtual implementation with almost complete information

Artemov, Kunimoto, and Serrano (2013a,b, henceforth, AKS) study a mechanism design problem where arbitrary restrictions are placed on the set of first-order beliefs of agents. Calling these restrictions Δ, they adopt Δ-rationalizability (Battigalli and Siniscalchi, 2003) and show that Δ-incentivecompatibility and Δ-measurability are necessary and sufficient conditions for robust virtual implementation, which implies that virtual implementation is possible uniformly over all type spaces consistent with Δ-restrictions. By appropriately defining Δ in order to restrict attention to complete information environments and thereafter explicitly modelling the assumption of complete information in the language of type spaces, I re-establish the permissive implementation result of Abreu and Matsushima (1992a). However, AKS need to fix a complete information environment throughout their analysis and therefore does not enable us to ask if robust virtual implementation results are “robust” to the relaxation of the complete information environment. The main result of this paper shows that permissive robust virtual implementation results can be extended to nearby incomplete information environments. I also obtain a tight connection between the class of nearby incomplete information environments considered by this paper and that considered by Oury and Tercieux (2012).

Exchange Design and Efficiency

Most assets clear independently rather than jointly. This paper presents a model based on the uniform-price double auction which accommodates arbitrary restrictions on market clearing, including independent clearing across assets (allowed when demand for each asset is contingent only on the price of that asset) and joint market clearing for all assets (required when demand for each asset is contingent on the prices of all assets). Additional trading protocols for traded assets—neutral when the market clears jointly—are generally not redundant innovations, even if all traders participate in all protocols. Multiple trading protocols that clear independently can be designed to be at least as efficient as joint market clearing for all assets. The change in price impact brought by independence in market clearing can overcome the loss of information, and enhance diversification and risk sharing. Except when the market is competitive, market characteristics should guide innovation in trading technology.

COVID-19 and Oil Prices: Effects on the Colombian Peso Exchange Rate

The present study aims to analyze the effect of COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) on the Colombian peso market exchange rate between February 16, and March 14, 2020. This period was selected because therein, the pandemic expanded toward South America and the first case was diagnosed in Colombia. Also, during the same period, a shock was observed in the market representative exchange rate. To verify this effect, a Vector Autoregressive Model (VAR), without arbitrary restrictions, was developed. This was done, given that there is insufficient evidence to presume a causal relationship between the Colombian exchange rate and 2019-nCoV, and between 2019-nCoV and oil prices. Among the principal results is that the Colombian peso depreciation process against the dollar, during said period, is explained by a mixed effect between COVID-19 and oil prices, with greater ease of explanation of the variation of COVID-19 than oil prices. This highlights the short-term effect of the pandemic media coverage on the Colombian economy.