Monetary transmission: Are emerging market and low-income countries different?

We use the Christensen, Diebold, and Rudebusch (2011) representation of the yield curve to test the functioning of the interest rate transmission mechanism along the yield curve based on government paper in advanced, emerging market, and low-income countries. We find a robust link from the policy and short-term interbank rates to the longer-term bond yields in all countries. Two policy implications emerge. First, the presence of well-developed secondary markets does not seem to affect transmission of short term rates along the yield curve. Second, the strength of the transmission mechanism seems to be affected by the choice of the monetary regime and the level of development: advanced countries with a credible inflation targeting regime seem to have better-behaved yield curves than the countries with other monetary regimes.     

Attitudes towards childcare policies,policy feedback and path dependency: Czech Republic contrasted to Norway

This article explores the recent changes in mothers’ employment, childcare policies and attitudes towards gender equality in the labour market, in the Czech Republic and Norway, how these factors interact and what impact they have on the provision of childcare. Analysis suggests that there is convergence of the Czech Republic with Norway in terms of female employment, but divergence in childcare policies. The policy feedback – the mutual interrelatedness of attitudes towards mothers’ employment and childcare policies – has shaped refamilialising policies in the Czech Republic, whereas in Norway policies that support gender equality in work and family have emerged.     

Renaissance of a rural artifact in a city with a million people: biodiversity responses to an agro-forestry restoration in a large urban traditional fruit orchard

The rural landscapes surrounding large cities are rapidly becoming incorporated into the urban environment. The most conspicuous changes involve green spaces, such as former agro-forestry systems like fruit orchards. In this paper, we assess the influence on biodiversity of restoring a large urban traditional fruit orchard as reflected by six selected taxa: plants, lichens, butterflies, beetles, orthopteroids and birds. The study was performed in Prague, which is the capital city of the Czech Republic and has more than a million inhabitants. We studied the effect of orchard renewal in 45 patches (15 for birds and 30 for other taxa). The majority of taxa responded positively to the restoration. The restoration had a significant positive effect on the species richness of lichens, butterflies and beetles. All taxa showed significantly altered species compositions, and the number of red-listed species increased. Orchards have a high potential for multi-functional use. Orchards are productive agro-forestry systems and host numerous possible human activities. Therefore, orchard restoration also has a social aspect. Moreover, our research in this artificial ecosystem revealed that its restoration increased the biodiversity and conservation potential of the associated areas.

     

Battling the Eighth Stage: Incrimination of Genocide Denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Denial is considered to be the eighth and the final stage of genocide. Facing this issue, many European Union countries have opted to incriminate genocide denial. Furthermore, with the aim of harmonising national legislations, Framework Decision No. 2008/913/JHA was adopted in 2008, obliging the Member States to incriminate “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes”. Genocide and other crimes denial is still present in Bosnia and Herzegovina, even though the rulings of the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, have shown that genocide was committed over Bosnian Muslims, in July 1995 in Srebrenica and its surrounding areas, as well as other numerous crimes against humanity and war crimes across entire Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 2007 there have been a number of attempts to incriminate genocide denial at the state level in Bosnia, but all of them were unsuccessful due to the opposition by representatives of Republika Srpska. Finally, in 2014, the genocide denial was incriminated in the Criminal Code of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an act of encouraging “national, racial and religious hatred, rift and intolerance”.     

Paths of Memory: Srebrenica Genocide Exhibits at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,DC

Abstract

After the horrors of the Holocaust the world said “Never Again”. The promise that echoed for decades was broken during the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995) and its culmination on 11 July 1995 in Srebrenica, a UN designated safe area, when Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladi? captured the town and killed over 8000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys. The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice ruled the massacre in Srebrenica as genocide. In 2005, an exhibit of Bosnian photographer Tarik Samarah's work about the Srebrenica genocide opened at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (the Museum). A few years later the Srebrenica genocide was included in the special exhibition “From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide”. This article examines the installation and importance of both of the Srebrenica genocide exhibits at the Museum. It shows that the inclusion of the Srebrenica genocide at the Museum bears witness to the importance of genocide prevention, education and memorialization. It highlights the purpose of the Museum and the decision to expand its educational program to include post-Holocaust genocide cases. The conclusion emphasizes that the presence of the Srebrenica genocide is directly contributing to the importance of “keeping the memory alive” with regard to the Holocaust and genocide studies in general.     

Race lines and spaces of political action among migrant youth

Recently proposed Anti-Racism Strategy established within a framework of the Australian Government's multicultural policy, People of Australia, identifies ‘youth engagement’ as one of the key areas that needs to be promoted and supported. Young people have been invited to join youth councils and youth forums and work with national, state and local policy-makers. Some have taken up this challenge and became public faces and active members of anti-racism campaigns. Others, however, either remained silent about the discrimination they face, or organised their own grassroots youth-based and youth-led initiatives. This paper discusses individual and collective responses to racism among young people in Australia, focusing on Melbourne, and examines possibilities in which racism, as a common experience among migrant youth, can be utilised to form alternative spaces for political action, challenging not only interpersonal, but also systemic forms of racism. By drawing attention towards institutional and systemic forms of racism, and the historical perpetuation of racist practices, these youth initiatives rely on legal measures, and argue that racism should be discussed in the context of the broader Australian society, not only in relation to minority groups.     

Quantile and mean value measures of search process complexity

Performance measures of metaheuristic algorithms assess the quality of a search process by statistically analysing its performance. Such criteria serve two purposes: they provide the verdict on which algorithm is better for what task, and they help applying an algorithm on a given task in the most effective way. The latter goal may be achieved by an appropriate restart strategy of the search process. Furthermore, these criteria are traditionally based on analysis of the search step mean value. Our aim is to elaborate the mean value analysis as well, but via a novel and more general quantile-based analytic approach, which can be used to define new measures. We prove and demonstrate this purpose on three quantile-based performance measures.