Around the Bloc: Around the Bloc - Kosovo Sticks by Coal Plant Despite Pollution Fears
Even with some of the worst air in Europe, the lignite-rich Balkan nation says it can’t afford cleaner energy.
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Even with some of the worst air in Europe, the lignite-rich Balkan nation says it can’t afford cleaner energy.
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This paper explores the dynamics of public and private debt in Ghana for the past 32 years. Ghana’s total public debt stock to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio has remained above the 60.0% sustainability threshold recommended by the West Africa Monetary Zone (WAMZ) since 2013. Implemented bank reforms in the country show an upward trend for domestic credit to private sector by banks as a percentage of GDP. Using exploratory review approach, the paper identified fiscal dominance, cost of borrowing, deterioration in export earnings, ineffective fiscal, monetary and debt management policies coordination as factors responsible for changes in total public debt stock. On the other hand, increased domestic borrowings by government from the banks, and Deposit Money Banks’ (DMBs)’ adverse selection in private sector credit allocation affect changes in domestic credit to the private sector by banks. Of these causes, fiscal dominance is the major determinant of public and private debt in Ghana. The study, therefore, recommends that government should pursue fiscal operations that are necessary to put public debt on a declining path. In addition, effective coordination of fiscal, monetary and debt management policies need to be strengthened together with the autonomy of the Bank of Ghana in the use of its monetary policy instruments.
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This research is important because the commencement of the Asean Economic Community (MEA) has a positive impact that is spurring the growth of investment from within and outside the country, so that domestic investment has the potential to increase which will increase the number of employment for Indonesian workers especially in province of North Sumatera. This study aims to: identify the effect of household consumption on economic growth, identify the effect of investment on economic growth, identify the influence of Labor on economic growth, and identify the effect of interest r ate on economic growth . The data used in this research were secondary data in 2006-2016 in Province of North Sumatera. Data obtained from various agencies, namely: Department of Labor and Transmigration, Central Statistics Agency of Province of North Sumatra, some other sources such as journals and relevant research results. Methods of analysis using Two Stage Least Square method (TSLS). The results of this study found that: Household consumption has a positive and significant effect to economic growth, Investment has positive and significant effect to economic growth, Labor has positive and significant impact to economic growth, and Interest rate has a negative and significant effect on economic growth.
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With disruptive technologies constantly emerging, the impact of artificial intelligence is becoming a relevant topic nowadays. An extensive investment in business intelligence support systems has been recognized as one of the top priorities of most successful managers. However, these constant internal changes of systems and management styles rarely happen smooth and natural, and frequently they trigger serious issues for the companies and its interactions with their customers. Implementations like automated call centers and online payment systems are just mainstream examples which can be used to show the numerous implications of the intrusion of artificial intelligence systems in our everyday life. With the increasing use of various forms of technology, an ongoing discussion has emerged about people's willingness to accept these technological trends. There are, of course, both pro and counter arguments to be discussed. In this article there are presented the results of an eye-tracking experiment about the reaction of consumers towards several forms of artificial intelligence. It has been shown that consumers have the tendency to react more at unexpected situations involving robots and forms of artificial intelligence.
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In the present paper, a fog computing framework for smart urban transport is developed. The proposed framework is adapted to the smart city concept. It uses a collaborative multitude of end-user clients to carry out a substantial amount of communication and computation. It can be adapted for specific situations of smart cities in Romania, such as: Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Iași or Bucharest. Economic and social implications as well as available European funding sources are presented.
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The performance guarantee represents the contractor's liability to ensure the beneficiary on the fulfillment of the quality conditions for the contracted works, as well as of their execution within the agreed contractual term. In the context of a growth trend in the industrial construction market since 2018, we considered it appropriate to study the impact of the performance guarantees on the financial balance of the contractors operating on this market. Through this research we aim to analyze the methods of guaranteeing the construction works, to assess the financial, accounting and fiscal issues of a construction company as a general contractor, to identify potential risks and to find solutions to avoid them.
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Kosovo has imposed 100 percent tariffs on Serbian and Bosnian goods in a decision that could seriously hurt its economy.
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The global economic crisis, which also affected the Western Balkans countries since 2008, in the Republic of Serbia has resulted in an increase of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion rates.These changes caused the increase of social protection system users, especially those belonging to the group of materially vulnerable.The Center for Social Work represents the basic social service or institution of the social protection system in the Republic of Serbia, within which the benefits and social services are provided to vulnerable population. The overall aim of this research is to obtain deeper knowledge of factors that disrupt social workers to secure these rights in the centers for social work.In the descriptive part of the research, using qualitative analysis we examined the scientific, expert and evidence documents on the subject of the research. Analysis of documents content in the first part of the paper has indicated the discrepancy between the normative acts and the practice of the social service functioning. Exploratory part of the research included application of a specially constructed questionnaire addressed to the centers for social work in order to collect information on the material and non-material conditions of work of social workers. The questionnaire was answered by 75 social workers, the results of the survey pointed out the necessity of improving the position of professional workers in social protection in the Republic of Serbia with the aim of more effective and more efficient provision of social rights.
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Psychological evidences of impulsivity and false consensus effect lead results far from rationality. It is shown that impulsivity modifies the discount function of each individual, and false consensus effect increases the degree of consensus in a multi-agent decision problem. Analyzing them together we note that in strategic interactions these two human factors involve choices which change equilibriums expected by rational individuals.
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The purpose of this note is to explore the problem of non-convex labor supply decision in an economy with imperfect observability of work effort, and the need to use efficiency wages to prevent shirking as in Shapiro and Stiglitz 1984. In addition, the paper and explicitly performs the aggregation presented in Vasilev 2017 without a formal proof, and thus provide - starting from micto-foundations - the derivation of the expected utility functions used for the aggregate household. We show how lotteries as in Rogerson 1988 can be used to convexify consumption sets, and aggregate over individual preferences. With a discrete labor supply decisions, the elasticity of aggregate labor supply increases from unity to infinity.
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In this article, we have selected movies and TV series of undoubted success in the US and we have studied if the names of the most beloved protagonists have influenced the choice of the name of the new born. We used the baby names dataset of the statistical software R, which contains all the names of children born in the US from the year 1880 to 2015.
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In this brief lecture notes, we consider the concepts of technological paradigm and technological trajectory introduced by Dosi in 1982 and we analyze the possible roles of firms in the innovation process according to the “technology push”and “demand pull” innovation models.
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In this paper, we introduce the position operator on the space of the tempered distributions, with some its fundamental basic properties.
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This work aims at formulating considerations to demonstrate the Goldbach’s Conjecture by using a demonstration process by far easier than the usual attempts already present in literature.
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Sukuk is an interest-free Capital market tool developed for use in Islamic finance. Sukuk is an Islamic compliant certificate, which is developed as an alternative to traditional bonds and which isbased on asset-based securities with different characteristics from bond-based securities and revenue share certificates, which are traditional financial market instruments by structure. It is seen that sukuk certificates resemble bonds in order to provide the financing required by the investor. However, while bonds are indebted to the structure while investors offer interest income, sukuk is not a debt instrument,but should be based on an asset and its investor, not a fixed interest income, but right to benefit from the income from the underlying asset. Sukuk, on the other hand, is also different from the company shares that give the company the right to partnership and management. Although the sukuk may grant the right of ownership to the holders of the underlying rights subject to sukuk, this right of ownership has a limited rights structure that does not contain any management exc. rights on the underlying assets.In this study, firstly, types of sukuk and its importance are mentioned and the differences between the traditional financial market instruments are revealed. Then, it is mentioned about the issue sukuk and types of issues in the World and Turkey.Purpose of the study; one of the types of sukuk, and both in the World and in our country is issued with large numbers of hybrid sukuk which is including in murabahah sukuk are examined the direction of conformity to Islam. In this study, it was found that there was no consistent legal basis for the use of murabahah in the hybrid sukuk and the fact that it was/was not suitable for Islam in the secondary markets.According to this, an important financial source hybrid sukuk based asset pool in the secondary markets will be experienced in the process of trading problems should not be placed in murabahah contracts. Murabahah sukuk should be issued separately and these murabahah certificates should not be traded in the secondary markets.As a result; The insertion of murabahah contracts into hybrid sukuk is not appropriate as it will create a ban on trading in the secondary markets. The fact that all parties, especially Islamic Banking activities are more sensitive about this issue is very important for the future of Islamic financial market.
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Public and private education can unlock different doors and help to flood the country with a rising power, sunlight and sustainable development. Hence, this paper argued that there is a need to sustain both public and private higher education. Financial difficulties restrict private higher education from balancing their budget and maintain a balance between a quality education and maximization of shareholders wealth. This paper outlines and analyzes a critical business model for higher education institutions, Dhofar University and Majan College, both of which are publicly traded in Muscat Securities Market. Both the educational institutions are critically examined from profitability, liquidity, long term solvency and asset management perspective using appropriate financial ratios. Five year forecasts of financial statements up to 2021 are estimated to evaluate the financial stability of the two educational institutions. The paper uses Monte Carlo simulation technique to examine the issue of financial sustainability. Overall the finding shows positive financial results for Majan College compared to Dhofar University. The key take away from the analysis is that educational institutions should be funded primarily by equity and not by debt to survive, sustain and provide high quality education.
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This paper builds an economic growth model with endogenous wealth and human capital accumulation. It analyzes interactions between domestic economic structure, foreign goods, foreign tourism, and imported energy. Education, foreign goods, foreign tourism, and imported energy are integrated into small-open growth models with wealth accumulation in a comprehensive framework. The economic structure is a synthesis of Uzawa’s two-sector growth model and Uzawa-Lucas’ two-sector growth model. The economy is composed of one capital goods sector, services sector, and education sector. The capital goods sector, service sector and households need energies, which foreign economies supply. The capital goods sector, services sector, and households use up the land. The general equilibrium model determines consumption, production, saving, education and resource distribution under given rate of interest and prices of imported energy and goods fixed in international markets. We build the model and simulates its behavior. We conduct comparative dynamic analysis to demonstrate how different exogenous changes change transitory processes and long-run structures of economic growth.
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During the 21st century, we are witnessing a very dynamic international activity of the cities around the globe. The effect of globalization accelerates the overall processes of international cooperation between the cities and the scope of network development between the cities it goes behind the limits. In this highly dynamic and growing environment, the City of Skopje especially in recent years is very active in the field of international cooperation with other cities in many aspects of societal life while promoting the concept of smart city development. Thus, the main objectives of the paper are directed towards examining the scope of international cooperation of the City of Skopje in the light of numerous international projects for strengthening the cities performances and improving the lives of the city residents. Regarding the scope of the research, the paper mainly builds on the research that already exists in the literature as well as various reports and experiences that were noted in the past. Consequently, the methods of observation and content analysis of the international project cooperation of the City of Skopje as a case study are considered. The research results point to very intensive international smart city cooperation of the City of Skopje with many cities around the globe in many aspects of the human life. The results of the research can serve as a great source of very important data on smart city concept of the City of Skopje for both academicians and researchers i.e. practitioners. The research in the paper impose a great value for any other same or similar research in the future by concluding that the City of Skopje is very active in promoting the concept of smart city development in the field of energy, transportation, pollution and air quality, local economic development etc.
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The EU’s Central and Eastern European members are still hungry for old, dirty diesel cars even as many European cities gear up to ban them.
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The author analyzes in his paper the economic and trade relations between Germany and the Soviet Union in the period of 1918–1944. During this period trade relations with Germany constituted a continuation of relations between Tsarist Russia and Germany before World War I. The German-Soviet Economic Agreement of October 12, 1925, formed special conditions for the mutual trade relations between the two countries. In addition to the normal exchange of goods, German exports to the Soviet Union were based, from the very beginning, on a system negotiated by the Soviet Trade Mission in Berlin under which the Soviet Union was granted loans for financing additional orders from Germany. Trade with the Soviet Union, promoted by the first credit-based operations, led to a dynamic exchange of goods, which reached its highest point in 1931. In the early 1930s, however, Soviet imports decreased as the regime asserted power and its weakened adherence to the disarmament requirements of the Treaty of Versailles decreased Germany’s reliance on Soviet imports. In addition, the Nazi Party’s rise to power increased tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union. In the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union made repeated efforts at reestablishing closer contacts with Germany. The Soviets chiefly sought to repay, with raw materials the debts which arose from earlier trade exchange, while Germany sought to rearm, therefore both countries signed a credit agreement in 1935. That agreement placed at the disposal of the Soviet Union until June 30, 1937 the loans amounting to 200 million Reichsmarks which were to be repaid in the period 1940–1943. The Soviet Union used 183 million Reichsmarks from this credit. The preceding credit operations were, in principle, liquidated. Economic reconciliation was hampered by political tensions after the Anschluss in the mid-1938 and Hitler’s increasing hesitance to deal with the Soviet Union. However, a new period in the development of Soviet-German economic relations began after the Ribbetrop–Molotov Agreement, which was concluded in August of 1939.
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