The conference landscape of selenium research: A brief history, global structure, and stewardship.

Official development assistance (or aid for short) that is intended for financing social protection is, for the most part, not actually spent on social protection given that social protection expenditures—especially cash transfer programmes—are almost entirely in domestic currency, whereas aid is in foreign currency. This article elaborates a theoretical and conceptual framing of this counterintuitive understanding that has been ignored in the scholarship on the financing and/or politics of social protection in developing countries. The framing is based on what can be called a monetary transfer dilemma facing most developing countries that confront strong external constraints with subordinated (or “soft”) currencies. Combined with illustrations from a research project on the external financing of social protection, it clarifies how external funding that is notionally associated with social protection programmes tends to exacerbate underlying tensions between donors and recipient governments given the balancing act that the latter must perform between addressing foreign currency needs versus compliance with donor expectations. These tensions are synthesised along three themes: the predominance of budget support in so called social protection financing, which relies on conditions rather than direct funding; how this has tended to associate the social protection agenda to the broader policy mandates of international financial institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund, with its focus on fiscal consolidation, austerity, and macroeconomic reforms; and the gulf of understanding between governments and donors regarding the fundamental role of aid in such contexts. Rather than simply accepting that the supply of their hard currency is the primary function of their aid, the insistence of donors to influence domestic policy and spending through the power of their hard currencies potentially paves the road to structural adjustment with good intentions.

The aim of this study is to analyze the development, functions, and socio-economic significance of convertible currency retail stores in the socialist countries, with a special focus on the “Corecom” retail chain in Bulgaria and its counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE): “Tuzex”, “Intershop”, “Baltona”, “Pewex”, “Intertourist”, and “Comturist”. The research methodology combines historical-economic and comparative analysis based on a synthesis of existing scholarly and archival literature. Primary archival sources were utilized alongside secondary studies in the fields of economic history and cultural studies. A content analysis was applied, as well as a comparative review of the names of various socialist retail chains. The research results show that convertible currency retail chains performed a dual function, both economic and social. Attention is given to the relationship between the state’s economic objectives and citizens’ everyday lives, illustrating how access to goods in exchange for hard currency became a symbol of social privilege and prestige. These retail chains are examined not only as an economic phenomenon but also as a cultural marker of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe.

In emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), limited investment in renewable energy remains a major obstacle to electrification efforts. This article explores the risks that deter investments in renewable energy projects in EMDEs. It analyzes data from surveys and interviews with key stakeholders involved in renewable energy development, complemented by data from the World Bank’s Utility Performance and Behavior in Africa Today (UPBEAT) database. Beyond the commonly cited risks and barriers, including a shortage of bankable projects, inconsistent government policies, and weak regulatory frameworks, the findings reveal that off-taker payment risk and currency mismatch are the most significant factors undermining investor confidence. Over 50 utilities in these markets operate with negative net profit margins and face difficulties servicing hard currency debt, largely due to poor revenue collection and substantial technical and commercial losses. Despite these challenges, promising solutions are emerging. Financial instruments such as partial risk guarantees and blended finance are helping to mitigate risks, while the growth of decentralized power markets is creating new investment opportunities. Nevertheless, achieving a sustainable energy transition will also require utilities to improve operational and technical performance, alongside broader adoption of hedging strategies and local currency financing to reduce financial risks across the sector.

ABSTRACT We evaluate the market reaction to 320 cross-border transactions (CBTs) by South African-listed corporations from January 2005 to June 2024. The sample is divided according to the development state of the target company’s country and the currency of the target’s earnings. We observe that South Africa-listed firms experience negative (positive) abnormal returns following the announcement of CBTs in developed (emerging) markets. Similarly, negative (positive) abnormal returns are experienced for targets with hard (soft) currency earnings. We find a negative relationship between cultural distance and the value created through CBTs.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has a limited but essential role in development finance. The IMF is itself not a development lender, but its assessment of debt sustainability plays a central role in both determining access to financing in in low-income countries and the balance between financing, adjustment and negotiated restructuring in discussed low- and lower middle-income “market access” countries. Efforts to move away from balance of payments-based assessments of debt sustainability have already proved to be a mistake. The IMF also can play an unexpected role in facilitating new multilateral development bank flows by reforming the Voluntary Trade Arrangements (VTAs) for the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to allow more efficient and reliable conversion of SDRs into hard currency.

The Iraqi economy suffers from increased public spending due to the rise in money supply resulting from the growth in hard currency oil revenues. Therefore, this research aims to determine the relationship between broad money supply and public spending. The study is based on the hypothesis that a monetary policy shock, represented by money supply, has a positive and proportional impact on public spending. To test this hypothesis, the inductive method was employed alongside the analysis of several macroeconomic variables and the measurement of asymmetric effects using the dynamic cumulative multiplier, in order to obtain results that could be generalized. The study found that the broad money supply affects public spending, with a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.418%. The short-run symmetric relationship further confirms that a 1% increase in money supply leads to a 0.32% increase in public spending in the second month, rising to 0.45% in the third month, and stabilizing at 0.40% until the end of the study.

ABSTRACT By the late 1960s, Budapest had an international reputation as Eastern Europe’s most swinging city, where the Western tourist could find luxury hotels, striptease and charming girls in short skirts. This article investigates the relationship between masculinity, money and intimacy and how this played out in the historically and geographically specific context of Hungary’s opening up to Western tourism in the Hungarian ‘long 1960s’. Focusing on Western, specifically German-speaking men who bought sex in Hungary between 1963 and 1973, I explore the interaction between payment, authenticity and power within intimate transactional sex encounters. Taking a micro-historical approach, using letters from clients and trial documents of women who sold sex to Western men, I investigate how both ethno-sexual stereotypes and dominant Cold War narratives around sexuality and gender roles shaped these encounters, and how these men positioned themselves as men and negotiated power within them. While their position as citizens of Western capitalist states with access to hard currency afforded them attractiveness and a certain power, in many cases these men distanced themselves from the transactional nature of the relationship. Instead, they framed their encounters in terms of mutuality and emotional intimacy and displayed vulnerability and anxiety about the authenticity of their experience.

Interest rate swaps play an important role in global finance. This paper analyzes the stylized facts about interest rate swaps and the dynamics of swap yields denominated in various currencies. John Maynard Keynes hypothesized that a central bank’s actions influence the long-term interest rate through the effect of its policy rate(s) on the current short-term interest rate. Recent empirical research on modeling interest rate swap yields supports that the Keynesian hypothesis extends to the behavior of interest rate swaps denominated in hard currencies, as well as selected emerging market currencies. This paper summarizes the findings of the empirical research on interest rate swaps from a Keynesian perspective, emphasizing the central bank’s vital role in interest rate dynamics in the OTC derivatives markets. It would be useful to supplement the econometric analysis of swap yields with the study of swaps markets’ institutional frameworks because their historical, social, and legal factors also affect their behavior dynamics, as well as how swaps are applied for both hedging and speculating.

This research shed light on problematic issues faced by Muslims living in the Western world, including members of the Saudi community. In the west, buying a graveyard or a tomb entails significant costs of hard currency. Whoever does not have the money for a grave, competent authorities cremate his body, then throw his ashes into a sea, or send it to his family. Furthermore, the family afford the coffin’s costs because burial in the ground is banned in the west, unlike Muslim countries. Such an issue is subjected to specific Islamic rulings that this research addresses. KSA is distinguished from any other country regarding that matter as it pays great attention to community members abroad. Whoever dies, precise procedures and excellent follow-up from the Kingdom’s embassies in countries around the world take place, based on what is dictated by the basic system of the Saudi regime. THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVES ARE Developing a set of jurisprudential rulings related to burying the body of a Muslim in the West. Presenting a set of proposals that contribute to alleviating the problem. Proving the greatness of Islamic law in honoring the dead by burying him and hiding his body in the ground. This research required adopting the inductive analytical approach which based on developing the juristic rulings of burying the bodies of Muslims who died in Western countries. The research provided a number of significant findings which will be elaborated at the end and it emphasize that the original rule is that if a Muslim dies, his body must be buried in Muslims’ cemetery, not in a cemetery belongs to people of other faiths, such as Christians, Jews, and Buddhists. It is the duty of Muslims who live in the West to join hands to establish their own cemetery. Otherwise, the body of a dead Muslim must be transferred to his own Muslim homeland or to the closest Islamic land. The research also concluded a set of relevant important proposals presented at the end.

The Iraqi economy is one of the prominent rentier economies, as it depends largely on oil sector revenues as a major source of hard currency. This has resulted in a set of impacts on the general economy, as the growth of public revenues in the federal budget of the state and the gross domestic product depends on the fluctuations of crude oil prices in the global market, which in turn affects oil revenues. In addition, these fluctuations directly affect the management of public spending by the state, making it difficult to reduce it. There is still an ongoing debate about the causes and motives of these fluctuations. Accordingly, the Iraqi government faces great difficulties in preparing the state's general budget, if there is a decrease in oil revenues. Hence, the necessity of diversifying sources of public revenues in the federal budget and supporting and developing other economic sectors in Iraq that are suffering from an almost complete halt at the present time, and benefiting from them in financing the general budget revenues, in addition to getting rid of or reducing dependence on oil sector revenues.

The successful Revolution of 1959 marks the moment when the Cuban people emerged from under the influence of the United States to assert their increased autonomy and begin to chart their own course of history. While they found success in the years immediately after the Revolution, Cuba was exposed to the unpredictable forces of the international economy following the collapse of the Socialist Bloc in 1991, and the loss of its most important trade partner, the Soviet Union. To conduct trade on the international market, Cuba sought to generate foreign currency. The two most successful sources of hard currency that emerged during this Special Period were tourism and remittances from abroad. This new embrace of foreign currency is an about-face from the previous Cuban policy, enacted in 1979, which banned the possession of U.S. currency for Cuban citizens but permitted it for tourists and foreign diplomats.1 This did not stop migrants from sending money, and after 1991, remittances became a crucial source of hard currency for the Cuban government. At the same time, the Cuban government became increasingly dependent on the flow of remittances in the 1990s. The U.S. used this period of economic instability to tighten sanctions on Cuba and implement some of the most debilitating policies to date.

This article is about Central American asylum seekers from the perspective of dependency theory and Gramscian international relations. It argues that Northern Central American asylum seekers are fleeing the contradictions of the hegemonic US-led neoliberal development model that depends on migration and remittances as its main source of hard currency. This article is grounded in structural/conjectural analysis and supported with quantitative methods. I suggest that the increase in asylum seekers is a function of US aid through the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), which contributes to the conditions that people flee and to US apprehensions of Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Honduran nationals, leaving would-be migrants no choice but to apply for asylum. I conclude that the security and development model imposed on the region under the conditions of US hegemony, and US migration control policies designed to apprehend and deport asylum seekers are producing the very crisis they purport to resolve.

Dollarization is visible in developing countries that are prone to high inflation and local currency devaluation against hard currencies. Market makers demand hard currencies as store of value and distance themselves from local currency. Over the years, worn out due to continuous devaluations and high inflation, countries convert their local currencies to hard currencies either through official conversion or adopting it by market makers and public in general. Dollarization has been underway for a long time in Turkiye. In its economic history there has been many devaluations and high inflations. Its currency is no longer a store of value. The paper explores two alternatives. One is establishing a currency board and the second being if the USD can be a replacement currency for TL. It concludes that replacing TL with USD will be the best solution for Turkiye`s continued economic downturns. Along with currency replacement, should come the government savings and borrowing from IMF as part of the suggested solution.

Tourism in Iraq in general and Najaf Governorate in particular has occupied a distinguished position among other activities, in addition to its civilizational and cultural effects due to the increase in demand and the increase in tourists, and thus increased interest in the tourism movement that provides a resource with hard currencies and reduces the unemployment rate and develops and develops vast regions.Therefore, the research aimed to reveal the tourist sites in the governorate and how to develop and develop them. The research structure dealt with three topics, the first of which came with the theoretical framework of the research from the problem, importance and goal, then stating the concept of tourism and its importance. The second topic focused on highlighting the most important tourist sites in the governorate that witnessed wide demand, especially at the present time, and were identified using the (GIs) program. Then the third topic dealt with the potential, whether natural or human, affecting tourism in Najaf Governorate, after identifying the strengths and weaknesses using SWOT analysis. Then the research came out with a set of conclusions and recommendations that can be applied by decision-makers to develop tourism more in the governorate.

This study aims to highlight the impact of the food manufacturing industry on the economic growth during the period (2000-2022) in Algeria, and this type of manufacturing was selected for its importance as it constitutes one of the important pillars on which the industrial sector is based, which is mainly related to the achievement of food security for people. the country is sometimes forced to pay large amounts of hard currency to cover this deficit, where we used the error correction model (ECM) in an equation that highlights the relationship between economic growth represented by the index of GDP and the GDP of the food industry.

Financial literacy is the basis for building a wise nation to manage money. As one of this kind of knowledge, pension planning and implementation must be deeply introduced by higher education institutions, as exhibited by their lecturers, to society in service to the community. To support it, the lecturers in the undergraduate management department at the Business Faculty of Maranatha Christian University do it by training teachers and administration staff members of BPK Penabur Jatibarang. Moreover, the community service committee takes seven questions from Luchak and Gunderson (2000), develops them into nine questions with a multiple-choice system, and examines the difference in the percentage of accurate answers (PAA) post and pre-presented materials by the paired sample t-test to evaluate this training. Based on this testing result, the participants can correctly answer more questions after training (63.17%) than before (47.30%), reflecting the zone movement based on Chen and Volpe (1998) from the low level below 60% to the middle level between 60% and 79%. Regarding the long-term implementation, the participants must obtain the money needed for pensions by saving money monthly and investing in assets that can elevate their value, such as marketable securities in the capital market, gold, and hard currency.

Abstract In the 1970s, the Romanian authorities put together a large collection of compensation claim files of Romanian citizens victims of Nazi persecution between 1939 and 1945. The Romanian Communists’ scope was for a hard-currency settlement with the Federal Republic of Germany. In doing so, the Romanians claimed that the Federal Republic of Germany would pay for persecutions for which the Romanian state had been responsible. The selective denial of the Holocaust was the Communist authorities’ approach to the topic after the end of the Second World War. Especially after 1948, they carefully avoided tackling the issue of country’s own involvement in the persecution of its citizens, externalizing the blame on Nazi Germany. Additionally, in the official narrative the focus was on anti-Fascist resistance and Communists’ martyrdom during the Holocaust and not on Jewish sufferings. By analyzing different claim files part of the larger Romanian collection to be found in the Arolsen Archives I argue that Romanians’ plan of getting Germany’s money–and indirectly recognition of Germany’s responsibility for the Romanian authorities’ wrongdoings during the Holocaust – would have solidified the externalization of blame at international level on the long run.

In view of the reluctance with which cybernetics was treated in the Stalinist times in the USSR and other countries of the communist camp, the research on digital machines became possible on a larger scale in Poland only from the mid-1950s. As a result of the work carried out at that time in several scientific and research units, the first Polish computers based on electronic tube technology were created. Their implementation to wider production was entrusted by the central authorities in the early 1960s to the Wroclaw Electronic Works “Elwro”. The company also undertook to manufacture digital machines “Odra” of its own design. They were widely used in science, administration, communication and industry – both in Poland and abroad, primarily in the member states of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. Then a few more plants were launched, which cooperated as part of the “Mera-Elwro” group. Since the late 1960s, an important impulse in the creation of local IT systems were internships of Polish IT specialists in the USA and the UK, as well as software brought to the country together with the IBM and ICL machines. By the end of the 1960s, about 30 models and prototypes of digital machines had been created in Poland, which gave it a leading position among communist countries. The situation changed in the early 1970s when Poland lost its position among the Eastern Bloc countries by introducing the production of machines from the Unified System Series (ЕС ЭВМ), imposed by the USSR. At that time, Polish exports were mainly based on products from the machinery industry, while the sales of electronic products and software sharply declined. The attempt to create a national IT system, undertaken in the 1970s, also ended in failure. This was due not only to technical or financial problems but also to the government's fears of losing control over information about the state of the economy or social processes. The crisis of the 1980s significantly limited orders for Polish computers, which, during the PC revolution, remained at the stage of specialized digital machines for large enterprises and institutions. The production of Polish microcomputers did not develop on a larger scale due to a shortage of components imported for hard currency, high taxes, and the lifting of restrictions on the import of Western computers. As a result, although Poland carried out large-scale development and production of digital machines until 1989, trained many specialists to work with them and implemented numerous applications, this effort did not bring the expected results.

BackgroundFetal calf serum (FCS), an existing cell culture supplement, is effective but has several drawbacks, including being expensive, requiring a lengthy process of production, and requiring a hard currency. With this in mind, we planned to evaluate chick embryo extract and egg yolk extracts in cell culture as alternatives to fetal calf serum (FCS).MethodsSpecific pathogen-free eggs were purchased from the National Veterinary Institute, Bishoftu, Ethiopia, and incubated in a humidified incubator at 37 °C for 11 days. Egg yolk extract (EYE) and chick embryo extract (CEE) were collected after the egg was opened with caution not to destroy the yolk sack or the chick embryo itself. Chick fibroblasts and Vero cells were cultured in minimum essential medium (MEM) supplemented with egg yolk extract or chick embryo extract at ratios of 0:10, 1:9, 2.5:7.5, and 5:5% fetal calf serum.ResultsFibroblast cell attachment was better in media supplemented with 5% CEE and 5% FCS. The confluency was also greater than 50% at this concentration. Vero cells cultured with 5% CEE and 5% FCS also exhibited very good cell attachment and a confluency of up to 70%. Viability and confluency were also observed at 5%:5% ratios of 50 and 70%, respectively.ConclusionThis investigation evaluated these two extracts as cell culture supplements and revealed promising results as alternatives to fetal calf serum. The limitation of this study is that it only used two cell types and additional cell lines, and different ratios should be tested. With the above findings, further research using different cell lines, ratios and conditions is warranted.