World Economic Problems Research Articles

The Rise and Fall of the ‘World Economy’ in Weimar Germany

Abstract Recent studies have emphasized the role of international institutions in the emergence of a transnational culture of economic experts in the interwar period. According to this view, collaboration over the difficulties of international trade in goods and finance was driven by a common language of problem diagnosis and solution finding. This interpretation has pushed the relevance of the domestic context for ‘agents of the international’ into the background. The World Economic Conference in Geneva organized by the League of Nations in 1927 shows that Weimar business representatives saw their participation as an opportunity to improve their position in their national federations and vis-à-vis the Reich government. Therefore, on the one hand, they sought to be appointed by state authorities to participate in the Geneva discussions. On the other hand, they stressed the relevance of the World Economy as well as their competence in solving world economic problems. As a consequence, immediately before and after the meeting in Geneva, the World Economy was a prominent topic among Weimar’s business representatives. However, this strategy counted on the implementation of the conference’s economic policy proposals by national governments. As it became apparent that the Geneva recommendations would not have lasting impact, interest in the World Economy waned and its spokesmen turned to other forms of international cooperation, in particular regional customs alliances and cartel agreements. The rise and fall of the topic of the World Economy among German business representatives cannot be understood independently of its interaction with the domestic context of Weimar Germany.

The Great Island Of Mini-Oceania: Madagascar at the Crossroads of Empires

"The Great Island of Mini-Oceania: Madagascar at the Crossroads of Empires. Madagascar, though rich in natural resources, is one of the poorest countries of the world. The mostly accepted explanation relies in its colonial past, which has become almost a cliché for many African countries. The great powers and empires played a major role in the formation and the evolution of the states, and Madagascar is no exception. The inheritance of the past, good or bad, is a burden for any country, but the evolution of national states, their successes and failures, depend on many more factors than their recent history. The present situation of many developing countries is not enviable, especially taking into consideration their enhanced vulnerability to world economic problems and environmental challenges. Keywords: Austronesian, piracy, missionary, colonialism, imperialism, insularity, slavery, independence, republic, president, faction, crisis. "

The effect of using the WCO biodiesel as an alternative fuel in compression ignition diesel engine on performance and emissions characteristics

Recently, the need for using a substitute fuel for petroleum fuel in diesel engines becomes an utmost necessity, However, the petroleum fuel is considered a non-renewable source and has some environmental side effects. The price of petroleum fuels changes according to the world economic and political problems. Engine emissions should be reduced and fit the governmental guidelines, the harmful emissions produced from engines have extreme environmental side effects, one of these effects is called the global warming which causes a global increase in the world temperature. In this study, the biodiesel extracted from the Waste Cooking Oil (WCO) is generated as a substutute for the diesel fuel. In the process of the biodiesel production, catalytic transesterification reaction is used to change WCO to methyl esters by adding low alcohol concentration. The produced biodiesel will be prepared for using as a fuel blend along with the commercial diesel fuel and using it to petrol the four-stroke direct injection diesel engine without any modification to original fuel system. The engine will be tested experimentally with varying loads at fixed speed of 1400 rpm with a natural aspiration process, using blends of (B20 [is composed of 20% biodiesel and 80% diesel], B40 [is composed of 40% biodiesel and 60% diesel], B60 [is composed of 60% biodiesel and 40% diesel], B80 [is composed of 80% biodiesel and 20% diesel] and pure diesel). The effect of the use of different biodiesel blends has been investigated and tested on the performance of the engine and emissions. The experimental findings clarify that the diesel engine can be run with different blends of diesel and biodiesel at the same operating condition with decreasing brake thermal efficiency by 9.6 %, decreasing exhaust temperature by 7.6% and increasing brake specific fuel consumption by 16%.

Foreign experience of financial support of citizens in case of unemployment

Introduction. Unemployment, as one of the world's economic problems today, significantly affects the material, social and professional level of the working population. Payment of unemployment benefits is one of the measures of social support of citizens by the state. Such social benefits are twofold, as on the one hand they replace lost earnings, and on the other one they will be perceived by the state regulation of labor resources. The purpose of the paper is to study and borrow positive experience of social insurance in case of unemployment in different countries of the world in accordance with their affiliation to labor market models and employment promotion. Results. The American Unemployment Insurance System is formed solely by employers' contributions (except in 3 states where employees also pay contributions) and provides benefits for 26 weeks. Each state has its own social security program, according to which contributions are formed and unemployment benefits are paid. If we talk about the European model of employment, its characteristic feature is that it is focused on reducing employment by increasing productivity and increasing the income level of working citizens. The Swedish model of social insurance in the event of unemployment is characterized by an active employment policy, in particular, preference is given to vocational training and professional development. In addition, the emphasis is on providing employment by creating jobs in the public sector with average and satisfactory working and pay conditions. The Japanese model of employment incentives has a number of characteristic features: the country has a widespread system of lifelong employment; the amount of remuneration for work is set depending on the length of service of the employee, his age and marital status; trade unions (unions) are not created on a sectoral basis, but directly at the level of economic entities. Conclusion. Building a multi-level social insurance system enables insured persons to receive high-level social benefits, insurers to create favorable working conditions and select highly qualified workers, and insurers to regulate the labor market and reduce unemployment.

Экологические и энергетические проблемы России в контексте мировых экономических проблем

Экологические и энергетические проблемы России в контексте мировых экономических проблем

Глобальний борг як індикатор проблем світової економіки та виклики для фінансової політики України

Глобальний борг як індикатор проблем світової економіки та виклики для фінансової політики України

Theoretical and Methodological Context of (Post)-Modern Econometrics and Competing Philosophical Discourses for Policy Prescription

This research article was championed as a way of providing discourses pertaining to the concept of Critical Realism (CR) approach, which is amongst many other forms of competing postmodern philosophical concepts for the engagement of dialogical discourses in the area of established econometric methodologies for effective policy prescription in the economic science discipline. On the whole, there is no doubt surrounding the value of empirical endeavours in econometrics to address real world economic problems, but equally so, the heavy weighted use and reliance on mathematical contents as a way of justifying its scientific base seemed to be losing traction on the intended focus of economics when it comes to confronting real world problems in the domain of social interaction. In this vein, the construction of mixed methods discourse(s), which favour that of CR philosophy is hereby suggested in this article as a way forward in confronting with issues raised by critics of mainstream economics and other professionals in the postmodern era.

Theoretical and Methodological Context of (Post)-Modern Econometrics and Competing Philosophical Discourses for Policy Prescription

Abstract This research article was championed as a way of providing discourses pertaining to the concept of “Critical Realism (CR)” approach, which is amongst many other forms of competing postmodern philosophical concepts for the engagement of dialogical discourses in the area of established econometric methodologies for effective policy prescription in the economic science discipline. On the whole, there is no doubt surrounding the value of empirical endeavours in econometrics to address real world economic problems, but equally so, the heavy weighted use and reliance on mathematical contents as a way of justifying its scientific base seemed to be losing traction on the intended focus of economics when it comes to confronting real world problems in the domain of social interaction. In this vein, the construction of mixed methods discourse(s), which favour that of CR philosophy is hereby suggested in this article as a way forward in confronting with issues raised by critics of mainstream economics and other professionals in the postmodern era.

World Flora Online Mid-term Update

Abstract There are an estimated 400,000 species of vascular plants on Earth, out of which 10% are still to be discovered. These plants, both known and unknown, may hold answers to many of the world's health, social, environmental, and economic problems. A full inventory of plant life is vital if many threatened species are to be protected and if their full potential is to be realized before many of these species, and the possibilities they offer, become extinct. In 2010, the updated Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) of the United Nation's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) included as its first target (Target 1) the need for “an online flora of all known plants.” Bearing this in mind, in January 2012 in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A., representatives from four institutions—the Missouri Botanical Garden, the New York Botanical Garden, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, all members of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation—took the initiative to mee...

India's Foreign Policy and BRICS

Since the 1990’s, India’s foreign policy has gone through transformation in harmony with the changing global scenario. The disintegration of USSR, demise of the bipolar world and domestic economic problems impelled India to realign its foreign policy and fine-tune its foreign relations of the earlier decades. In modern world of globalization, India has improved its relations with United States and other western countries, established relations with Israel and embraced multilateralism, to solve its major problems on the economic front. India has made progress toward participating in regional multilateral arrangements in both the economic and security realms. It has also expressed support for some major principles of multilateral cooperation. BRICS is one such institution formed for new world order of multilateralism and realigning political grouping BRICS have come together in a political grouping in a way that has far exceeded most expectations. For India, co-operation with the BRICS is more important in terms of addressing its food and energy security issues, and combating terrorism. Engaging China has been one of the important components of India’s foreign policy in recent years. In spite of diversity in culture, geography and political system common interest of development and security in new emerging world order can make this institution even more relevant. The BRICS holds promise of greater understanding and cooperation among the member States also it may develop forum for solving bilateral issues also.

Leonhardi Euleri Opera omnia: Editing the works and correspondence of Leonhard Euler

The paper gives an overview on the history and present state of the edition of the complete works of Leonhard Euler (1707–1783). After several failed initiatives in the 19th century, the project began in 1907 with the edition of Euler’s printed works. The works were divided into three series: I. Mathematics (29 volumes); II. Mechanics and Astronomy (31 volumes); and III. Physics and Miscellaneous (12 volumes). After several ups and downs due to two World Wars and economic problems, the publication of the printed works with a total of 72 volumes is nearly finished. Only two volumes on perturbation theory in astronomy are still missing. The publication of series IV (manuscripts and correspondence) started in 1967 as a joint project of the Swiss and the Soviet academies of sciences. The manuscript edition was postponed, and the project focussed on Euler’s correspondence which contains approximately 3000 letters, 1000 of them written by Euler. The correspondents include famous mathematicians of the 18th century like d’Alembert, Clairaut and the Bernoullis, but also many less-known people with whom Euler corresponded on a great variety of subjects. A major problem is to find and to finance appropriate editors who are able to read French, Latin, and the old German handwriting, and who are acquainted with history, culture and science of the 18th century. During the last 50 years, the editors gathered copies or scans of most of the preserved Euler’s letters. The original letters addressed to Euler were made available to the editorial group in Switzerland by the Russian Academy of Sciences before World War I, and before their restitution in 1947 the editors made fairly good photographs that are now an important part of the material basis of the edition. Each volume of the letter series (VIA) contains Euler’s correspondence with one or more of his contemporaries, presented in a chronological order. Up to the present day, four volumes of the correspondence have been published, in addition to an inventory of all known letters to and from Euler, including short summaries and useful information about the date, language and location of the existing copies, and former publication. Four more volumes are in progress and will be published in 2016 or 2017. The remaining letters that are not intended for publication in the printed volumes are planned to be made available in an online edition.

Problems of Global Democracy

HP: International or planetary democracy was first discussed in the 1940s when the United Nations was founded. During the Cold War years, the topic was all but forgotten. However, in the 1970s, when the Third World demanded a New International Economic Order, it was declared that ‘all states are judicially equal and, as equal members of the international community, have the right to participate fully and effectively in the international decision-making process in the solution of world economic, financial and monetary problems’ (UN, 1975: Article 10). That was the heyday of state sovereignty. The 20th-century spread of state sovereignty can be conceived as an outcome of the first coming-together of humanity under the rule of industrializing capitalism and the European empires that represented themselves at home, as it were, as ‘national sovereign states’. The institution of state sovereignty seemed, during and in the immediate aftermath of the process of decolonization, to provide a legitimate platform for fighting the imperial rule and capitalist exploitation that the majority of humanity experienced outside the core regions of the world economy (cf. Linklater, 1990: 67–72). Hence, in the 1970s, world democratic aspirations were articulated in terms of inter-state relations. The topic of planetary democracy re-emerged in the 1980s with the rise of the globalization discourse and, a little later, the end of the Cold War. In particular, your works on critical theory, democracy and state theory in the 1980s, and related early attempts to question the connection between democracy and the state such as John Burnheim (1986), resulted in the theory of cosmopolitan democracy. This theory was first outlined in your essay ‘Democracy, the Nation-state and the Global System’ (Held, 1991) and developed further in the book Democracy and the Global Order (Held, 1995). These have been extremely important openings. Yet, it also seems to me that the model of cosmopolitan democracy is based on a rather selected set of

Insecurity, Conflict and the New Global Disorder

Summaries The current neoliberal preoccupation with the benefits of globalisation, which have been hailed as the great panacea for all the world's economic problems, has done little for the 1.3 billion people whose economic circumstances have stagnated or deteriorated in poverty over the last ten years. The neoliberal idea that somehow the benefits of global economic growth will ‘trickle down’ to the world's poor, has been challenged by the stark reality of the experience in the world's poorest societies. Deep polarisation of wealth that has become a structural feature of the global economy has been identified as one of the major threats to future peace and security in the coming millennium. Conflict theorists have for some time been at pains to point out that the unequal distribution of wealth and the failure to meet basic human needs constitute a source of structural violence that lies at the heart of the many conflicts. Endemic poverty is a basic factor that undermines human security. It not only leaves basic needs unmet, but creates the conditions for conflict and violence, as groups compete for access to scarce and often diminishing resources. Facing extremes of economic deprivation and threats to basic human security (life, food, shelter, income), the widespread resort to arms within a growing number of least developed economies can be understood as a Darwinian bid for survival.

International Business and Global Terrorism

Just a few months before the horrific terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, the world economy began to witness general stagnation. In fact, many countries such as the United States, Japan, and Argentina were either clearly in a recession or experiencing sluggish performance. Both layoffs and cutbacks in corporate spending were widespread. The New York Times (See Kahn & Andrews, 2001) stated, “The world economy, which grew at a raging pace just last year, has slowed to a crawl as the United States, Europe, Japan, and some major developing countries undergo a rare simultaneous slump. The latest economic statistics from around the globe show that many regional economic powers … have become economically stagnant, defying expectations that growth in other countries would help compensate for the slowdown in the United States.” Many governments were taking steps to revitalize their economies and designed strategies to fuel economic growth. The terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, however, have greatly reduced expectations for a near term solution to the world's economic problems.

Sovereign immunity and international organization: The case of DeLuca v. the United Nations

DeLuca v. the United Nations has brought many unanswered questions to the American and international public regarding the immunity of the United Nations and the consequences such a policy has had on that organization over the last fifty years. By diplomatic tradition, immunity has been very important to the United Nations in maintaining its freedom of action, as called for in Articles 104 and 105 of the United Nations Charter. Through immunity, the United Nations has escaped the fate of the former League of Nations and has become an organization which has contributed tremendously to the solving of the world's many political, economic and social problems. Yet, immunity has also “cloaked” and protected the United Nations from its own internal administrative weaknesses and abuses. Accountability has become harder to obtain from the UN bureaucracy due to this immunity. Simultaneously, for the American legal system, immunity has become somewhat analogous to the previous difficulties of “piercing the corporate veil,” namely attempting to redress the wrongs by preserving the legal rights of individuals through the effective use of the judicial system. Should the world continue to grant immunity to actions which can be classified as ‘suspect’ or being with “improper motive” or “bad faith” by the United Nations or any other international organization? Will the United Nations ultimately be “above the law”? Only future actions by the UN General Assembly, national legislatures such as the United States Congress or cases likeDeLuca v. the United Nations will determine the final answer.

World-Economic Theories and Problems: Quigley vs. Wallerstein vs Central Civilization

This is one in a series of papers on civilizational issues. Its predecessors have argued for the existence of a world system/civilization, "Central Civilization," born regionally in the Middle East about 1500 B.C. in the collision of two smaller, expanding local civilizations, expanded throughout the globe, engulfing all competing civilizations to become the unique global social system in the last 100-150 years. If continuing social struggles both are and imply continuing social entities, there is social continuity-stabilities, trends and cycles--in the struggles forming and maintaining Central Civilizations. A consequence of accepting Central Civilization as a genuine entity, or a reason for treating it as a fruitful heuristic, is, in particular, the finding that it possesses a political cycle (states system--universal empire) characteristic of other entities commonly treated as civilizations (Wilkinson, 1986; 1987, 53-56; 1988) as well as a political evolution (from multistate anarchy to balance-of-power) incipient but never successfully established in other world systems (Wilkinson, 1985).

World-Economic Theories and Problems: Quigley vs. Wallerstein vs Central Civilization

This is one in a series of papers on civilizational issues. Its predecessors have argued for the existence of a world system/civilization, "Central Civilization," born regionally in the Middle East about 1500 B.C. in the collision of two smaller, expanding local civilizations, expanded throughout the globe, engulfing all competing civilizations to become the unique global social system in the last 100-150 years. If continuing social struggles both are and imply continuing social entities, there is social continuity-stabilities, trends and cycles--in the struggles forming and maintaining Central Civilization.ill A consequence of accepting Central Civilization as a genuine entity, or a reason for treating it as a fruitful heuristic, is, in particular, the finding that it possesses a political cycle (states system--univcesal empire) characteristic of other entities commonly treated as civilizations (Wilkinson, 1986; 1987, 53-56; 1988) as well as a political evolution (from multistate anarchy to balance-of-power) incipient but never successfully established in other world systems (Wilkinson, 1985).

The Rise in Unemployment.

The rise in unemployment is one of the key world economic problems of our time. Its causes are complex, particularly since, although unemployment has risen in most countries, the size of the increase differs greatly. This wide-ranging volume, written by leading economists in the field, contains detailed studies of the unemployment experience of most of the major developed economies, providing an invaluable guide to this global dilemma.

Editorial: Disarmament and Development - the International Context

The interconnections between international economic recession, the new Cold War and militarisation in the South provide the context for the articles in the IDS Bulletin 'Disarmament and World Development: Is There a Way Forward', from October 1985. Contributors were asked to reassess four key reports on development, disarmament and security issues. All were undertaken during a period of transition in the global economy and the Cold War (1979–83). Despite differences of emphasis they all advocate an integrated global approach to world economic and military problems, the restructuring of North-South economic relationships, strengthening of detente, and reductions in the allocation of resources for military purposes. But why, then, have they had so little impact on policy and still less on the march of events? Contributors to the Bulletin were also asked to address how disarmament and development could be put back on the international agenda. For instance, is there an adequate political case for linking disarmament to development and does military spending in fact entrench underdevelopment?

World economic problems in the 1980s in a global perspective

(1985). World economic problems in the 1980s in a global perspective. World Futures: Vol. 20, No. 3-4, pp. 207-229.