Seventeen papers, originally presented at a conference held in honor of Erik Thorbecke at Cornell University in October 2003, highlight the depth and breadth of Thorbecke's influence in research and policy on poverty, inequality, and development. Papers discuss the growth and roots of Erik Thorbecke's career; the consistency of poverty lines; poverty indices; whether poverty and inequality measures should be combined; an approach to measuring health inequality in India; household investments in education and income inequality at the community level in Indonesia; poverty traps and safety nets; progress in the modeling of rural households' behavior under market failures; labor laws and labor welfare in the context of the Indian experience; macro models and multipliers; multiplier effects and the reduction of poverty; developing an accounting matrix for the euro area; globalization, economic reform, and structural price transmission--social accounting matrix decomposition techniques with an empirical application to Vietnam; institutions, factor endowment, and inequality in Ghana, Kenya, and Senegal; an optimal nonlinear taxation approach combining incentives, inequality, and the allocation of aid when conditionality doesn't work; agricultural research and policy to achieve nutrition goals; and whether dualism is worth revisiting. No index.
The Working Paper examines the peculiarities of the Russian model of corporate governance and control in the banking sector. The study relies upon theoretical as well as applied research of corporate governance in Russian commercial banks featuring different forms of ownership. We focus on real interests of all stakeholders, namely bank and stock market regulators, bank owners, investors, top managers and other insiders. The Anglo-American concept of corporate governance, based on agency theory and implying outside investors’ control over banks through stock market, is found to bear limited relevance. We suggest some ways of overcoming the gap between formal institutions of governance and the real life.
The paper offers an interpretation of Plato’s dialogue Gorgias in the context of post- Nietzschean political thought (M. Heidegger, L. Strauss, H. Arendt, G. Deleuze, M. Foucault). Each interlocutor of the dialogue claims that his speech is free. Two different political logics are introduced: «geometrical» (as in the conversation between Socrates and Polus) and «erotic» (as in the conversation between Socrates and Kallikles). The philosopher is able to make use of both languages. In the end, it is only Socrates who truly speaks freely, because philosophy doesn’t seek to be loyal to any of these two logics as it only aspires to solve a political collision between freedom and justice.
The purpose of this paper is to carefully assess the size of public sector within the Russian banking industry. We identify and classify at least 78 state-influenced banks. For the state-owned banks, we distinguish between those that are majority-owned by federal executive authorities or Central Bank of Russia, by sub-federal (regional and municipal) authorities, by state-owned enterprises and banks, and by "state corporations". We estimate their combined market share to have reached 56% of total assets by July 1, 2009. Banks indirectly owned by public capital are the fastest-growing group. Concentration is increasing within the public sector of the industry, with the top five state-controlled banking groups in possession of over 49% of assets. We observe a crowding out and erosion of domestic private capital, whose market share is shrinking from year to year. Several of the largest state-owned banks now constitute a de facto intermediate tier at the core of the banking system. We argue that the direction of ownership change in Russian banking is different from that in CEE countries.
Management in Russia is as difficult to define as a profession as it is in other countries, and the question of what education is appropriate for a future manager is also difficult to define. Business schools in russia need to think more carefully about their curriculums and about what they should be preparing their students for.
The objective of this paper is to estimate the factors of intergeneration educational mobility in Russia and Soviet Union, that is to test the equality in accessing the continuation of education at the next level for children from different social groups (families with various levels of the family capital), estimated for different cohorts. The data source is Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE) in 2006-11. There are panel data collected in 1994-2011. The sample is representative for Russia population as a whole. In 2006 there were some questions about respondent parents, that allow us to test if there is the dependence between educational level of respondent and some parameters of his/her parents, including their educational level, Communist Party membership and several other.
We estimated the model of probability to get the education of the given level depending on gender, age, nationality, characteristics of parents and birthplace for Russian people born in 1946-1990. Data about respondents' education are collected in 2006-11, about their parents - in 2006. The method of this model estimation is multinomial regression. The model was estimated for the pooled sample, as well as for three cohorts separately: born in 1946-60, 1961-75, 1976-90. It was found out that the family capital (first of all, the educational level of parents and urbanization level) represent an essential obstacle for educational opportunities of Russian high schools graduates. Regression estimation for the pooled sample demonstrates the significant level of dependence of respondents' education on that of their parents.
How are professors paid? Can the "best and brightest" be attracted to the academic profession? With universities facing international competition, which countries compensate their academics best, and which ones lag behind? Paying the Professoriate examines these questions and provides key insights and recommendations into the current state of the academic profession worldwide. Paying the Professoriate is the first comparative analysis of global faculty salaries, remuneration, and terms of employment. Offering an in-depth international comparison of academic salaries in twenty-eight countries across public, private, research, and non-research universities, chapter authors shed light on the conditions and expectations that shape the modern academic profession. The top researchers on the academic profession worldwide analyze common themes, trends, and the impact of these matters on academic quality and research productivity. In a world where higher education capacity is a key driver of national innovation and prosperity, and nations seek to fast-track their economic growth through expansion of higher education systems, policy makers and administrators increasingly seek answers about what actions they should be taking. Paying the Professoriate provides a much needed resource, illuminating the key issues and offering recommendations.
The paper deals with the political sense of the dialectical method of Plato. Dialectics is often understood as a pure logical procedure. However the two forms of the dialectical discourse (mentioned in the “Phaedrus”) must be interpreted politically: the first one is a movement of freedom, the second one is a movement of justice. The paper offers a comparison of different conception of dialectics by Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Paul Ricoeur.
Twenty-four papers examine the state of early childhood development among sub-Saharan Africa's children. Papers discuss the state of young children in sub-Saharan Africa; positioning early childhood development (ECD) nationally--trends in selected African countries; early childhood care and education in sub-Saharan Africa--what it would take to meet the Millennium Development Goals; brain development and ECD--a case for investment; new threats to ECD--children affected by HIV/AIDS; ECD in Africa--a historical perspective; (mis)understanding ECD in Africa--the force of local and global motives; fathering--the role of men in raising children in Africa--holding up the other half of the sky; ECD policy--a comparative analysis in Ghana, Mauritius, and Namibia; participatory ECD policy planning in Francophone West Africa; responding to the challenge of meeting the needs of children under three in Africa; introducing preprimary classes in Africa--opportunities and challenges; inclusive education--a Mauritian response to the "inherent rights of the child"; parenting challenges for the changing African family; ECD and HIV/AIDS--the newest programming and policy challenge; supporting young children in conflict and postconflict situations--child protection and psychosocial well-being in Angola; strategic communication in early childhood development programs--the case of Uganda; the synergy of nutrition and ECD interventions in sub-Saharan Africa; the impact of ECD programs on maternal employment and older children's school attendance in Kenya; the Madrasa ECD program--making a difference; linking policy discourse to everyday life in Kenya--impacts of neoliberal policies on early education and childrearing; community-based approaches that work in Eastern and Southern Africa; whether early childhood programs can be financially sustainable in Africa; and a tri-part approach to promoting ECD capacity in Africa--ECD seminars, international conferences, and the Early Childhood Development Virtual University. Garcia is Lead Human Development Economist in the World Bank's Human Development Department, Africa Region. Pence is Director of the Early Childhood Development Virtual University and Professor in the School of Child and Youth Care, Faculty of Human and Social Development, at the University of Victoria. Evans is Director Emeritus for the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development. Index.
This paper uses the banking industry case to show that the boundaries of public property in Russia are blurred. A messy state withdrawal in 1990s left publicly funded assets beyond direct reach of official state bodies. While we identify no less than 50 state-owned banks in a broad sense, the federal government and regional authorities directly control just 4 and 12 institutions, respectively. 31 banks are indirectly state-owned, and their combined share of state-owned banks’ total assets grew from 11% to over a quarter between 2001 and 2010. The state continues to bear financial responsibility for indirectly owned banks, while it does not benefit properly from their activity through dividends nor capitalization nor policy lending. Such banks tend to act as quasi private institutions with weak corporate governance. Influential insiders (top-managers, current and former civil servants) and cronies extract their rent from control over financial flows and occasional appropriation of parts of bank equity.
Тhе article is devoted to the analysis of science, education and business as key institutional agents of civil identity in contemporary society. The civil identity is specified as a subject-object interaction between an individual and a state. Also preconditions for diversification of state power in the field of civic identity forming are determined.
The article considers the Views of L. N. Tolstoy not only as a representative, but also as a accomplisher of the Enlightenment. A comparison of his philosophy with the ideas of Spinoza and Diderot made it possible to clarify some aspects of the transition to the unique Tolstoy’s religious and philosophical doctrine. The comparison of General and specific features of the three philosophers was subjected to a special analysis. Special attention is paid to the way of thinking, the relation to science and the specifics of the worldview by Tolstoy and Diderot. An important aspect is researched the contradiction between the way of thinking and the way of life of the three philosophers.
Tolstoy's transition from rational perception of life to its religious and existential bases is shown. Tolstoy gradually moves away from the idea of a natural man to the idea of a man, who living the commandments of Christ. Starting from the educational worldview, Tolstoy ended by creation of religious and philosophical doctrine, which were relevant for the 20th century.
This important new book offers the first full-length interpretation of the thought of Martin Heidegger with respect to irony. In a radical reading of Heidegger's major works (from Being and Time through the ‘Rector's Address' and the ‘Letter on Humanism' to ‘The Origin of the Work of Art' and the Spiegel interview), Andrew Haas does not claim that Heidegger is simply being ironic. Rather he argues that Heidegger's writings make such an interpretation possible - perhaps even necessary.
Heidegger begins Being and Time with a quote from Plato, a thinker famous for his insistence upon Socratic irony. The Irony of Heidegger takes seriously the apparently curious decision to introduce the threat of irony even as philosophy begins in earnest to raise the question of the meaning of being. Through a detailed and thorough reading of Heidegger's major texts and the fundamental questions they raise, Haas reveals that one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century can be read with as much irony as earnestness. The Irony of Heidegger attempts to show that the essence of this irony lies in uncertainty, and that the entire project of onto-heno-chrono-phenomenology, therefore needs to be called into question.
The article is concerned with the notions of technology in essays of Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger. The special problem of the connection between technology and freedom is discussed in the broader context of the criticism of culture and technocracy discussion in the German intellectual history of the first half of the 20th century.