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The Impacts of Disasters on Capital Flows, International Reserves and Exchange Rates: Implications for Public Sector Financial Risk Management and Development Lenders
Get PDFThis study investigates empirically the effect of disasters on capital flows, international reserves and exchange rates, and discusses implications for risk management and potential mitigation strategies. We define major disaster quarters as quarterly impacts exceeding 1% losses as percent of GDP or 1% of total population affected. We find that for developing countries eligible to borrow from the World Bank Group’s International Development Association (IDA), a major disaster causes a statistically significant decline in net investment flows (portfolio and other) over three quarters and a depreciation of the real effective exchange rate. When observing nominal exchange rates for the entire sample of emerging and developing economies, an initial currency appreciation effect is offset by depreciation in the periods after in the majority of cases: a year after the disaster almost 3 out of 5 countries see their currency depreciating. Our panel dataset combines disaster losses between 2005 and 2021 with foreign exchange, economic and financial flow data for up to 66 countries. Our results provide new colour to policy makers and aid organisations attempting to deal with the increasing severity and frequency of disasters. The documented vulnerabilities of IDA countries support recent policy reform calls. These include a medium to long-term agenda to strengthen domestic savings and funding markets, more immediate efforts to strengthen the currency and interest rate risk management capacities of IDA recipient debt management offices, and a strong mandate for providers of international development finance to assist IDA borrowers to reduce currency mismatches by offering loans indexed to the local exchange rate and supporting the creation of currency risk markets
Forum-Shopping and Choice of Law in Intra-sect and Inter-sect Muslim Family Disputes in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar
Get PDFThe plurality of opinions that Sharīʿah affords has ensured justice for different groups and disputants in pre-modern times. Although this plurality had been limited by modern state codifications, forum-shopping and choice of applicable Muslim rules may still be possible in some contexts, albeit within the boundaries of state law. This is apparent in states whose legal framework of personal status accommodates or makes space for Jaʿfarī rules alongside Sunnī-based rules. Thus, this article examines the extent to which this is a possibility in intra-sect and inter-sect Muslim family disputes in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, and the ways in which actors have responded to this possibility or its limitation. The paper finds that the Bahraini system is the most flexible, while the Qatari system is the least flexible. Yet, both create opportunities for different groups, including women, that help to maximise their chances of receiving a favourable judgement
Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction
No full textDecolonization has long been debated across the social sciences, but the economics discipline has so far avoided such critical engagement. This book provides a much-needed intervention.Dutt, Alves, Kesar, and Kvangraven uncover the deeply Eurocentric foundations that shape how economists study the world today. These have rendered the discipline ill-equipped to tackle critical questions, such as structural racism, uneven development, the climate crisis, labour relations, and how structural power shapes economic outcomes. Decolonizing economics entails challenging the norms of neutrality and objectivity that economists claim to speak from, while fostering alternative ways of understanding the economy that take seriously structural power relations and contemporary processes of economic development. Readers will come to understand the political stakes of decolonization and the wide range of scholarship that already exists that can help us grasp economics from non-Eurocentric perspectives. Through such scholarship, we can gain an enriched understanding of capitalism and its relationship to exploitation, colonialism, and racialization
Review of: Rethinking Japan’s Modernity: Stories and Translations, By M. William Steele. 372 pp. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Asia Center, 2024.
No full textAdministrative Seals from the Fire Temple of Ādur Gušnasp at Takht-e Solaymān
Get PDFThis paper examines three Sasanian bullae, to date unpublished, from the fire temple of Ādur Gušnasp at Takht-e Solaymān, located in the Northwestern Azerbaijan province of Iran. The bullae, excavated in 2003 by Yousef Moradi and his team, feature impressions of administrative seals with Middle Persian inscriptions. Additionally, these bullae display impressions of so-called "witness seals", used by individuals who were required to authenticate the validity of the documents or objects to which the bullae were once affixed. The administrative seals represent juridico-religious, clerical, and civil administrations. The article discusses the significance of each office within the Sasanian administrative structure. Furthermore, it argues that, unlike other bullae archives, which were predominantly 'local' or 'provincial' , the archive at Takht-e Solay-mān functioned as a 'supraregional' archive. It contained impressions of both personal and administrative seals from not only Ādurbādagān but also from other provinces. The article also provides evidence for the first time, that the šahrab of Ādurbādagān held two different administrative seals
Immediacy in popular culture
No full textThe chapter analyzes anime and manga offering fantasies inextricably linked with immediacy, action, isolation, and the absence of thought. First, in the robot anime Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996), these traits are visible in the mental isolation of the protagonist Shinji, a teenager pilot who confines himself to solipsistic fantasies of self-hatred in a desperate attempt to escape the harsh demands imposed on him by adults in an opaque world. The second anime, Psycho-Pass (2012–2013), imagines a futuristic, dystopian Japan where citizens exchange their intellectual freedom to the immediacy of a technological system that regulates all aspects of life to guarantee prosperity and stability. In the manga series Shingeki no kyojin (Attack on Titan, 2009–2021), immediacy is represented physically by the three massive walls behind which humanity has retreated to survive. These barriers are a solid boundary between an uncritical safe life and the enquiry into the outside world, where the cannibalistic Titans roam. Their overwhelming strength makes humans who encounter them live the end of the world repeatedly, as if in presentist cycles. In all three narratives critical efforts to be part of something greater, beginning with individual inspection, can build communal bridges to change an immutable reality
Red Lines versus Negotiables: How Exposure to Wartime Violence Influences Support for Peace Settlements in Ukraine
No full textWhat shapes attitudes toward wartime negotiation? Does exposure to violence lead citizens to take a hard-line approach to any peace settlements? Or does it make them more open to peace to make the violence stop? To answer these questions, we conducted a series of surveys and survey experiments in Ukraine in July 2022 and May 2023. First, using a series of survey experiments, we show that Ukrainians are flexible on certain issues, but others are considered red lines and not up for negotiation. Second, in the short-term, we find that exposure to violence does not turn Ukrainians against negotiations with Russia, in some cases, it makes them more amenable. Finally, over a longer duration of the war, we find that support for a negotiated solution drops. Our evidence suggests this drop is linked to exposure to violence and to beliefs about the war’s future course
The Energy Transition in Contractual Practice
Get PDFIn the context of the current global discussions on energy transition as part of the response for the move towards achieving net zero, this paper examines upstream activities which involve the extraction of transition mineral in the context of international investment contracts, and argues for a reengineering of the stabilisation, applicable law and dispute resolution clauses, to align with the global policy goals for achieving energy transition
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