The leading index decreased 0.3 percent, the coincident index increased 0.1 percent, and the lagging index decreased 0.4 percent in March. Taken together, the three composite indexes and their components suggest slow growth until late in the second quarter of this year.
The leading index decreased 0.2 percent, the coincident index increased 0.1 percent, and the lagging index decreased 0.4 percent in February. Taken together, the three composite indexes and their components show not only that there is no sign of a recession looming on the horizon, but that economic activity continues to grow, although more moderately.
The leading index increased 0.8 percent, the coincident index increased 0.2 percent, and the lagging index increased 0.1 percent in January. Taken together, the three composite indexes and their components show that the pace of economic activity is moderating, with no clear sign of a recession looming on the horizon.
This chapter asks why and how services that were not previously thought of as tradable have increasingly been opened up to international competition in EU member states including even in Germany. The chapter contrasts an explanation that focuses on the impact of economic interests with an explanation that focuses on the impact of EU membership. The chapter argues that lobbying by producers or users of services cannot fully explain reform nor does EU membership simply constrain reluctant member state governments to adopt new legislation. Instead the chapter argues that in important service sectors the German government has promoted trade reform even sometimes in the face of strong opposition from providers, consumers, and unions. The chapter maintains that a crucial key to liberalisation is the emergence of a break in government opposition. In particular, the ability of the government to re-interpret services as regular tradable products combined with new regulation to "shelter" exposed groups such as consumers and workers against potential harm. Implications of this claim for future service sector liberalisation are subsequently discussed.
In all the countries of Eastern Europe, the collapse of the socialism presented the legal system and the lawyers and administrators with an immense conceptional and practical challenge. In a couple of years, and in a constantly changing economic and political climate, they were required To introduce the rule of law and democracy (der demokratisch-freiheitliche Rechtsstaat), To introduce and implement the rules and institutions of a market economy, To modernise the normative acts and the public institutions of virtually all aspects of a modern society, and To implement the EU-acquis.
Geopolitics is an old concept, which received its classic modern form in the work of Friedrich Ratzel, Rudolf Kjéllen, Harold J. Mackinder, Alfred T. Mahan, and Karl Haushofer. It can be regarded as an intellectual approach that aims at establishing a political grammar of world politics, through a scientific discipline based on the objective reality of geography. Thus, geopolitics is often seen as a “realistic” attempt to establish world policy as an objective science based on some kind of "physico-spatial reference". The implicit assumption is a discreet claim that it is possible to study international politics and the allocation of power as one studies the weather: as a system based on objective, natural laws with a fixed and firmly established pattern of forces and indispensable reference points. Hence, Halford J. Mackinder believed that he could identify "the Geographical Pivot of History." In this way, somewhere behind the concept of geopolitics as a scientific concept lies a compelling idea: a theory of the international system based on sheer objective forces, which can be reduced to the invariable necessities of an ultimate "physical" matrix that was merely given expression by the vocabulary of "national interests." We find the same notion in the concept of "realpolitik," the idea that it is possible to conduct a policy grounded on a realm of crucial necessities, as in Bismarck's policies framed in the image of Iron and Blood.
International trade negotiations and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have come into the public limelight. Until a few years ago, the governance of the world trading system, encapsulated in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was considered a mundane and dull subject to which only a few people with a special economic interest payed attention. Today, however, the problems dealt with in the WTO affect much broader economic interests and attract attention from different political persuasions and social movements, as illustrated by the battle in Seattle, in December 1999, when the Third Ministerial conference of the WTO was met by massive demonstrations organised by multifarious NGOs. Generally, multilateral economic institutions, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the WTO, have become tempestuous waters, because among other things these institutions are contested by a medley of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and grass roots movements (O'Brien et al. 2000). The conflict centres on “globalisation”, a controversial and ambiguous notion (Hirst and Thompson 2000), and the WTO is a focal point of the globalisation storm (Hart 1997).
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Politics
The Standing Technical Working Group was established in March 2001 to address important issues of public policy in Kosovo/a at a technical level. It is composed of experts from Kosovo/a NGOs, from the parties and other civil society representatives. Its membership is fully interethnic and it prides itself on being able to conduct substantive debates about Kosovo/a in an interethnic way. In addition to reviewing technical aspects of policy, the group also formulates proposals and critical questions in relation to them. It then seeks to engage the international and Kosovo/a authorities on these issues. As the 5th and 6th session of the group were devoted to one common theme, it was found convenient to present the proceedings in one report.
Kosovo cannot have a stable future without sustainable economic development. This report considers the task of promoting such development. After surveying the present state of the economy, it assesses the international efforts so far to lay the groundwork for future prosperity. It also considers the prospects for the former socially owned sector, including plans for privatisation and prospects for restructuring and investment.
Bosnia's economic reality is still bleak. After more than five years and five billion dollars of Dayton implementation, the country seems only at the beginning of an economic transition that should have begun in 1996.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Economics