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The present paper was prepared and submitted as part of the European Commission's public consultation to give stakeholders the opportunity to express their views on the questions raised and policy options proposed in the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence.

On 19th February 2020, the European Commission published the long-awaited and pre-announced White Paper on artificial intelligence. In addition, the Commission published a document shaping Europe's digital future, a document on the European data strategy and a report on the impact of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and robotics on security and liability . Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her presentation of the new EU digital strategy that the objectives for shaping Europe's digital future cover “everything from cyber-security to critical infrastructures, digital education to skills, democracy to media" . Whether this promise has been fulfilled and to what extent it has been possible to focus on content will be examined below. For this purpose, the following article will discuss individual proposals from selected documents and address newly emerging liability issues arising in connection with the use of AI.

Using new transaction-level data for non-financial commercial paper (CP) in the U.S., we show that companies systematically reduce their outstanding short-term debt on quarterly and annual disclosure dates. Constraints on CP lending supply cannot explain this pattern. Instead, firms prefer repaying short-term debt over disclosing high cash holdings to signal that their cash is readily available and not trapped in foreign subsidiaries. Consistent with this interpretation, we show that firms with higher cash holdings, more sales in regions with tight capital controls, or with higher debt-equity ratios compared to industry peers reduce their short-term debt more aggressively at disclosure dates.

In February 2020 the EU published its white paper on ‘Artificial Intelligence: A European approach to excellence and trust’. This is likely to form the core of future policy and legislation within the EU and as such will have global impact on standards and norms. In this comment piece we survey the five sections of the white paper and then critically examine three themes, namely, i. regulatory signalling, ii. the risk-based approach, and, iii. the auditing styles. The key takeaway is that the white paper, and the EU’s strategy at large, is ambiguous and lacks vision, which, if unchecked, is likely to have a negative impact on EU competitiveness in the development of AI solutions and services.

The EU White Paper on AI mentions healthcare as one of the sectors where AI applications might pose high risks. These comments provide the vision on the regulatory framework for high-risk healthcare AI applications. The key takeaways concern transparency, preventing bias, safety and quality of AI applications used for medical purposes. I suggest that the transparency of AI shall not be equated to its explainability. To increase transparency and ensure the safety of AI healthcare applications, cooperation between manufacturers and users of AI (healthcare providers) shall be improved. I highlight that biased AI decisions alert on the inaccuracy of algorithms. While discrimination and stigmatization are difficult to identify and prove, especially for AI and especially for healthcare, controlling of AI’s accuracy is an efficient tool to prevent and mitigate biases in AI systems. Finally, I briefly compare the two regulations that might apply to AI tools in healthcare - the Medical Devices Regulation (EU) 2017/745 (MDR) and the In-vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Regulation (EU) 2017/746 (IVDR). I conclude that the IVDR is more tailored to AI characteristics while it is more detailed and more focused on data quality and relevance. Thus, the IVDR rules can be a good starting point for clarifying and implementing a regulatory framework for high-risk AI healthcare applications.

This short position paper was presented at the Meeting of the OECD Network of Experts on Artificial Intelligence (ONE AI) held in Paris on 26-27 February 2020. It argues that public and collective governance, including through collective bargaining, is urgently needed to prevent the most invasive uses of Artificial Intelligence and algorithmic management and surveillance over workers. Tools such as GPS-based wearable devices that monitor workers' position at the workplace and collect data on particularly private information, including workers' heartbeats and emotional status call for immediate action from regulators and social partners. Surveillance practices should be limited to indispensable cases and transparency of data collection and processes should be safeguarded, also to rule out the many possible discriminatory consequences of management-by-algorithm.

In response to recent calls for major reforms to the American military justice system, which are apparently based on continuing Congressional concerns about sexual assaults in the military, the authors present statistical data on sexual assaults from a number of sources: national crime statistics; military crime statistics; crime statistics from several states, and statistics from a university. The authors also present information on the tremendous strides that have been made in recent years to protect the rights of military victims of sexual assault, noting that some of those rights are not found in federal or state criminal justice systems. Finally, the authors conclude that the rate of sexual assaults in the military is lower than for other civilian jurisdictions. Military victims report offenses at a higher rate than the jurisdictions examined.

Since the first RNs earned orthopaedic certification in 1988, over 12,000 nurses have proudly held the ONC credential. Today, nearly 7000 orthopaedic-certified nurses, nurse practitioners, and clinical nurse specialists demonstrate excellence in the care of persons with musculoskeletal health concerns. Why did they choose certification? A representative sample of over 300 orthopaedic-certified nurses responded to a survey from the Orthopaedic Nurses Certification Board (ONCB) to confirm why they value their credentials and maintain specialty certification. Their answers offer compelling reasons for nurses to get, and keep, orthopaedic nursing certification.

In April 2019, the U.K. released a white paper about Online Harms. The White Paper proposes to take Internet censorship to a new height, essentially unmatched by any other Western democracy. It’s a sign of how comprehensive censorship has moved beyond repressive regimes to become trendy even in leading republican democracies. To redress a wide range of anti-social online activity, the White Paper seeks to tightly circumscribe user-generated content — so tightly that only a small number Internet giants will be able to profitably publish user-generated content. Other Internet publishers will be pushed towards licensing professional content and cover those costs by charging subscriber fees to consumers. Thus, the White Paper will produce a reconfigured Internet 3.0 that will resemble the cable TV industry, not the current Internet we know and love. This essay addresses three main points. It first deconstructs the some of the “facts” the White Paper uses to justify its censorious ideas. Then it highlights some of the proposals’ worst policy aspects. The essay concludes by explaining how the White Paper will reshape the Internet and kill off most user-generated content.

We examine voluntary disclosures made by issuers of initial coin offerings (ICOs) in their “white papers” and use them to rate the blockchain technology being developed by the ICO issuers. First, we find that most ICOs receive a low rating. In fact, over 80% of the ICOs do not need to use a blockchain. Second, ICO projects with a higher rating raised more funds than their counterparts, after controlling for other project-, issuer-, and token-related features. Third, ICOs with a high rating are more likely to have their digital coins/tokens listed on a cryptocurrency exchange within 180 days after their ICO end dates. Finally, results indicate that providing technical details in the white paper can be an effective way to signal the quality of an ICO project. Overall, these results are consistent with ICO token buyers/investors taking into consideration the underlying blockchain technology of the ICO projects when making their purchasing/investing decisions. Since the white paper is the main source of ICO information, our findings imply that the credibility of this information is important to protect the interests of ICO buyers/investors and to ensure the long-term viability of the ICO as a capital-raising tool for blockchain-based ventures.

This document seeks to respond to the questions raised by the Australian Human Rights Commission and World Economic Forum in their ‘Artificial Intelligence: governance and leadership’ White Paper consultation. It draws upon some of the research conducted at the Allens Hub to make suggestions about if and how systems involving some component of artificial intelligence or automation should be regulated. It also seeks to create further clarity regarding the potential structure and functions of the proposed Responsible Innovation Organisation. We note that our research does not relate to all the questions asked in the White Paper consultation, and so we only set out answers in relation to those matters where our research may be relevant. We are otherwise grateful for the opportunity to present our views and hope this submission will help the Australian Human Rights Commission and World Economic Forum in their consideration.

The purpose of this submission is to address the list of questions posed by the Australian Human Rights Commissioner on the White Paper Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Leadership (2019). It is an interim submission, and a final submission will be made later. Some main points of the interim submission, stated in summary, are: 1) The main goals of government regulation in the area of artificial intelligence include: a. ‘Regulation’ must not be confused with economic enablement and stimulation. Both may be legitimate in relation to AI, but the same organisation must not be given responsibility for both, as they involve an inherent potential for conflict of interests. b. Attempts to ‘pick winners’ or to encourage governments to do so should be avoided. Focus on principles, not products. c. Encourage Australian input into the global development of standards for, ethics of, and treaties concerning, AI development and use. d. Legislate where necessary to prevent the most harmful uses of AI. e. It should be assumed that some regulation (possibly including co-regulation) will be necessary. f. The general objectives of the regulation of AI are primarily the protection of human rights and the protecting of competition. 2) There is no Australian policy-oriented organisation with a permanent high level of expertise in AI-related technologies, and certainly no such organisation which does not have potentially conflicting industry development objectives. 3) There would be value in Australia creating such a new policy-oriented organisation, with a limited life-span, but ‘Responsible Innovation Organisation’ (RIO) is a completely inappropriate title, as it suggests that the body has a role in promoting innovation (ie industry development), either by itself or as part of some larger economically-oriented organisation, which will inevitably dominate and distort its views. We should consider approaches taken by other national governments. 4) Many Australian organisations would find it valuable to have an Australian policy-oriented organisation recommending international standards for Australian adoption, or assisting in the developing of Australian standards. 5) Strictly econometric measures of the ‘business case’ for such policy-oriented organisations are not possible or desirable. 6) The desirable goals for such an organisation are set out in (i) above. a. It should primarily encourage and assist other Australian organisations to provide inputs into development of standards and ethics (internationally and in Australia), including by funding assistance where necessary. It should have the capacity to make such inputs itself, when needed. b. A board of part-time Commissioners, with one full-time Commissioner, is desirable. It should be a stand-alone organisation, as it would not fit comfortably within other organisations c. Public funding is more desirable, as the costs will be modest. Joint funding by industry prevents very grave risks of regulatory capture. d. It should provide an annual report to Parliament, and communicate its work between reports via a variety of Internet channels.

All forty-four states with corporate income taxes must consider how to respond to changes that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made to the federal corporate tax treatment of multinational corporations. In particular, the states must consider how to respond to two new anti-base erosion provisions at the federal level: GILTI and the BEAT. Here are a few of the options: 1) The states can choose not to conform to these provisions. 2) The states can choose to piggy-back on these provisions with little change. 3) The states can choose to piggy-back on these provisions, but do so strategically. That is, a state could choose to institute superior versions of these taxes. There is a lot of room for improvement. 4) The states can also choose to go back to the future and require mandatory worldwide combined reporting. This White Paper presents several reasons for why now is the time to consider mandatory worldwide combination and proposes specific helpful reforms.

This White Paper identifies shortcomings in the current federal child welfare financing system, and recommends changes for improvement. It calls for a funding system that allows effective implementation of child welfare laws by government at the state and federal levels. It also recommends required longitudinal independent studies of each major program receiving federal funds and a specified appropriation for that purpose. Such empirical testing would include sunset dates terminating each program where data fails to warrant continuation. Such sunset proceedings are commonly used in evaluating regulatory agencies in many states. Based on the studies they compel, programs that do not perform will be discontinued and those that do may be continued, expanded and replicated in analogous settings. The understandable reticence to expend monies on social welfare among many in Congress should be assuaged by that assured accountability. Nelson Mandela was famously quoted as observing, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” But federal child welfare spending is a step above such general humanitarian sentiments. This is not funding for children in general. Rather, it is funding to protect and promote the well-being of those who are more than our children in a metaphorical sense. These children have been removed from their homes and their parents and are in state custody. We delegate their care to our publicly appointed and paid judges who serve as their legal parents. And their seizure by the state and their subsequent fate is largely determined by laws enacted by our elected officials and funded by us through mandatory taxation. For those who politically cite “family values” as a basic moral tenet, the status that these children hold as a direct legal part of our “family” makes their treatment a basic test of the bona fides of that stated value.

That AI will have a major impact on society is no longer in question. Current debate turns instead on how far this impact will be positive or negative, for whom, in which ways, in which places, and on what timescale. In order to frame these questions in a more substantive way, in this prolegomena we introduce what we consider the four core opportunities for society offered by the use of AI, four associated risks which could emerge from its overuse or misuse, and the opportunity costs associated with its under use. We then offer a high-level view of the emerging advantages for organisations of taking an ethical approach to developing and deploying AI. Finally, we introduce a set of five principles which should guide the development and deployment of AI technologies. The development of laws, policies and best practices for seizing the opportunities and minimizing the risks posed by AI technologies would benefit from building on ethical frameworks such as the one offered here.

Academic reading, a form of active reading, often involves interaction with the text. Highlighting and annotating are some of the most common strategies of interacting with academic texts, yet we have limited understanding of exactly how such interaction affects reading comprehension in digital versus analog reading environments. In this paper, we compare how university students (N=50) interact with a digital and a physical text, focusing on highlights and annotations. We compare reading speed, interaction with, and subsequent memory of the texts. We make nine observations about reading speed, highlighting frequency and memory scores between paper and laptop. We find indications that highlighting and annotating when reading a digital text has a higher impact on memory than when reading a paper text, and suggest that the main challenge for designers of digital reading support tools appears to be better designs for active annotation.

Paper Series VII discusses Arrangement or compromise between two or more companies, the provisions applicable to schemes or contract involving the transfer of shares in a company, the provisions applicable to dissenting shareholders. Further, the Paper Series considers Arrangement on sale of company’s property during members’ voluntary winding-up, power to compromise with creditors and members and then the moratorium on creditors voluntary winding-up in a scheme of arrangement.

Whilst the media freedom and pluralism implications of content moderation, takedowns, privatised censorship and down-ranking have been widely discussed in recent years, content curation practices like prioritisation, prominence, and discoverability started to raise concerns among policy makers only in the past few years. These are however, two sides of the same coin. The question of whether regulators or governments should create regimes of prominence online, or rather step back from the ongoing process of ad-hoc private construction of these regimes, raises complex questions at the intersection of freedom of expression, media freedom and media pluralism that demand our attention. Such questions are currently being addressed through different regulatory instruments in different countries, as we witnessed an acceleration of the institutionalisation of new prominence and discoverability regimes during the Covid-19 pandemic. Such developments are therefore leading towards an extremely fragmented regulatory landscape that is trying to solve shared challenges of platform governance systems. In this context, the objective of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, the research investigates the legislative measures and regulatory proposals used in different countries to regulate prominence and discoverability online; secondly, it questions the potential implications of such measures for media pluralism, understood as a plurality of content and information from sources independent of private and/or state-interference. To do so empirically, the paper applies a qualitative methodological framework with a document analysis of relevant literature and current legislative proposals and measures from a selected sample of countries. Based on this, this work discusses four approaches to prominence regulation, informed by the policy debates and legislative proposals of four countries, namely, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and China. These countries were purposively selected because they present the most mature proposals in this policy area, and they are used as illustrative national cases that are compared on two dimensions: 1) the criteria used to determine which content and services should be granted preferential treatment and 2) the types of services and devices that should comply with new prominence and/or discoverability obligations.

U.S. Supreme Court justices typically donate their working papers to archives upon their retirement, often with lengthy embargoes. Researchers have debated whether the justices should be required to retain and disclose their papers as government records, but there has been little study of how the papers are used in scholarly and journalistic discussions of the Court. This empirical study examines how the papers of Justices William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and Harry Blackmun are used via citations in books and academic law journal articles. We find that the vast majority of citations to the papers support discussions of the justices’ deliberations and negotiations when deciding cases, precisely the kinds of uses that show the value of transparency. To address constitutional objections to mandated disclosures, we propose an incentive grant program that benefits the archives that receive justices’ collections. This program would encourage justices to donate their papers with relatively short embargoes, ideally 15 years after retirement from the Court.

This paper looks back at the development of the common law right to remain silent and its eventually being made a constitutional right as an amendment to the United States Constitution via the 5th Amendment. The paper also traces the historical development of the right not to incriminate oneself and the link between the right to remain silent found in the Fifth Amendment but also to the right to have counsel present during interrogation found in the Sixth Amendment.

Different chroniclers of the history of the Byzantine Empire have noted various economic data gleamed from historical documents and accounts of the empire at different periods of time. Research for this paper has not uncovered any estimates of long term, annual macroeconomic data (gross domestic product (GDP), national income (NI), etc.) for the empire during its existence. Such data has been estimated to one extent or another for other nations and societies that have existed during the middle ages. This paper attempts to provide conjectures on approximate real GDP per capita trends for the empire over its existence from AD 300 to 1453. Finally, some hypotheses on factors that would have affected Byzantine economic performance are tested using climate/environmental factors. The results of this paper appear to confirm some findings on how the Byzantine economy might have been affected by periods of regional climate change. [enter Abstract Body]

In China, HSS master students are becoming the main target of Chinese-language predatory journals. Existing research has not paid attention to why the HSS master students publish papers in Chinese-language predatory journals. This research interviewed 13 HSS (Humanities and Social Sciences) master students with different majors using the semi-structured interview method, then used GT to analyze the data and found that research discrimination, research context, self-awareness and individual demand are the main reasons why HSS master students publish papers in Chinese-language predatory journals. This research suggests that universities, colleges, and research institutions establish mechanisms for evaluating the quality of researcher’s papers, and no longer value the number of papers.

This White Paper summarises currently available empirical data about attitudes and opinions of citizens and state actors regarding cybersecurity. The data emerges from reports of EU projects, Eurobarometer surveys, policy documents of state actors and additional scientific papers. It describes what these stakeholders generally think, what they feel, and what they do about cyber threats and security (counter)measures. For citizens’ perspectives, three social spheres of particular interest are examined: 1) health, 2) business, 3) police and national security.

Investment in capital, new technology, and agricultural techniques has not been considered an endeavor worthwhile in a medieval economy because of a lack of strong property rights and no incentive on the part of lords and barons to lend money to or grant rights to peasant farmers. Therefore, the medieval economy and standards of living at that time often have been characterized as non-dynamic and static due to insufficient investment in innovative techniques and technology. Paul Baran’s concept of the economic surplus is applied to investment patterns during the late medieval, mercantile, and early capitalist stages of economic growth in England and the UK. This paper uses Zhun Xu’s Baran Ratio concept to try to develop general trends to demonstrate and to reinforce other historical accounts of these times that a productive and sufficient level of public and private investment out of accumulated capital income, taxation, and rents does not have a real impact on economic per capita growth until around the 1600s in Britain. This would also be about the time of capitalism’s ascent as the dominant economic system in England. Even then, dramatic increases in investment and economic growth do not appear until the late 18th Century when investment more consistently becomes more than one hundred percent of the level of economic surplus and takes in government spending. The types of investment, threshold amounts of investment out of profits and rents along with government spending seem to matter when it comes to a growth path raising GDP per capita and national income per capita to higher levels. Although much of this knowledge perhaps is embodied in current historical accounts, the Baran Ratio nicely summarizes and illustrates the importance of levels of investment to economic growth.

As part of its corporate financing strategy, a company may raise capital through debt securities and these could be by mortgage of real property or chattels, debenture, bond, promissory notes, and bill of exchange made or accepted on behalf of the company by an authorized person etc. For purposes of this Paper Series IV(B), emphasis is placed on Company’s Debt Securities, particularly on debentures, debenture trust deed and realization of security.

This study was entitled Catalyst and Transparency; An analysis of the Campus Paper Function as a Watchdog. The study reveals that the publication is inconsistently complying with all standards of journalism because of some major problems like the fear of being personal attacks, lack of funds, and beginner in the field of campus journalism. However, this reveals the improvement of the publication in excelling from the various competitions and also in the releases. Campus publication is realized as citizens’ journalism outside, this plays a vital role in shaping the discipline and awareness need of the students. Ethics and standards of journalism should be part of the training and learning of every students’ journalist. This research study was conducted to analyze the efficiency of the CLSU Collegian in terms of practicing the standards of journalism. This also reviewed the status of the publication in the present situation and the continuation of listing the important accounts of the publication from the year 2011-2015. It also examines the engagement of the staffers of the CLSU Collegian in the elements of journalism, knows the workings of the press. The problems they encountered and solutions they made in practicing the elements of journalism. Key informant interview, focus group discussion, archival research, and library research are the major methods that the researcher do, to validate the data that are being collected the study adapted the triangulation process.

Sustainability has immensely become a widespread buzzword with a contested meaning in the last century. Different scholars have portrayed the concept from different backgrounds and magnitudes. This paper aims to discuss various standpoints of the concept of sustainability. The notion has been defined as the procedures of maintaining a suitable environment for the growing consciousness, for instance, environmental dilapidation, resource diminution, and socioeconomic discrimination. The concept of sustainability has its root in the ‘Brundtland Report’, which has been encircling social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Thus, sustainability is the ability of prevailing or co-existing of human beings and the biosphere uninterruptedly. In 1978, Thomas Malthus discussed his theory of growing starvation for the barren land to feed a high population. Moreover, sustainability is the concept of economics where the scarcity of resources is the primary concern. In 1987, the Brundtland commission introduced the concept of sustainable development for ensuring improved life within this scarce resource.

This paper conceptualizes that a human mind consists of three components: (1) rational self (2) emotions (3) an automatic system that memorizes habits. Based on anthologists’ research, I posit that rational self is used only in the occasions that the return of using it is high, which serves human genes’ purposes of saving vital energy of physical strength for production and fighting against ferocious animals in ancient times. In other occasions, rational self is in a dormant mode, with habits determining human behaviors. The switch from dormant to active state of rational self is through the spur of emotions. For example, in ancient times, when an individual’s peers obtain something valuable, it is usually a good opportunity for him to try to obtain it as well. Therefore, human genes create the emotion of jealousy, which yields psychological pain to spur the rational self to find the best way to get it as well through learning from his peers. When an individual makes a serious mistake, human genes create the emotion of regret, which generates psychological pain to spur the rational self to learn the lesson. When humans feel contended and their energies are under-used, human genes create the emotion of greed and boredom, which yields psychological pain to spur them to act… In contemporary times, however, these emotions may often only yield tremendous human suffering while bringing no benefits to the survival of the gene. To mitigate pains or to utilize the pleasure mechanism that human genes create, rational self may choose illusions, sexual promiscuity, taking drugs, addiction to video games, or even suicide, all of which can be conceptualized as a “principal-agent problem” between human genes and rational self. Moreover, religions may be a way to reduce human suffering. The goal of rational self is to maximize the individual’s lifetime happiness by trying to be fully aware of all of the desires and emotions that human gene creates and imposed on the individual and striking an optimal balance among them. This goal can be interpreted as the “meaning of life”, which often amounts to the satisfactions of biological needs and/or the continuous pursuit of the sense of “winning” in some aspects of life.

With the increasing sophistication of the global financial markets, comes the need for domestic financial markets to develop their architecture and infrastructures to support requisite advancement as well as align with international standards, thus the enactment of new companies’ legislation and other financial legislation that will position Nigeria and its capital markets at par with its international counterparts. This paper examines the provisions of the Act on Netting and the enforceability of netting agreements and other qualified financial contracts.

Debt underpins the modern global economy. Debt is also intimately tied to the function and form of the modern state. As a form of capital, debt is a combination of several legal modules and legal qualities that allow holders of debt to secure a future pecuniary return. The development of these legal modules and legal qualities may be observed in the emerging commercial society of the United States of America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. By tracing the transformation of debt over this time period in the USA, we may gain insight into how debt, the economy, and the state could be re-envisioned for the future.

The WTO Panel Report in Australia – Anti-Dumping Measures on A4 Copy Paper marks a significant development of the multilateral rules on anti-dumping. The Report is the first to examine in detail when an anti-dumping authority may determine that a “particular market situation” exists in the country of exportation under Article 2.2 of the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement, potentially justifying the imposition of elevated remedial duties. The Report also develops the jurisprudence on how such remedies may be calculated, expounding the use of benchmark costs for the calculation of a constructed normal value (‘CNV’) under Article 2.2.1.1. These doctrinal questions are central to the longstanding debate over how far the Anti-Dumping Agreement allows anti-dumping measures against state intervention and market distortions. On both fronts, the Australia – A4 Copy Paper panel created flexibilities for WTO members to respond to government-induced distortions. In doing so, the Report deviates considerably from the course set by the Appellate Body in the landmark EU – Biodiesel decision – which seemed to confine anti-dumping measures to responding to private action. At the same time, the panel left open several important issues relating to the adoption of CNVs and the use of benchmarks for their calculation, leaving wide latitude for investigating authorities to inflate dumping margins in practice.

Background: The capital of Croatia was hit by several earthquakes during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, simultaneously introducing two sources of stressors to the same cohort. This study aimed to determine the individual and joint effects on children’s mental health. Methods: The study comprised a web-based survey for parents (N = 22,202), deployed in February 2021. Exposure to COVID-19 and earthquake related stressors were assessed using scales constructed for this study and symptoms of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTS) and anxiety/depression were assessed using the CATS-C and RCADS-25-P. Demographic data were used to assess the effects of gender and age. Regression analyses were conducted to identify and evaluate predictors of PTS and anxiety/depression and test for possible interactions between pandemic-related and earthquake-related factors. Findings: Results indicate that impaired mental health is more likely among girls, children who were affected by earthquake and suffered more home damage, and those who are at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 or have a family member at risk. Further, anxiety/depression symptoms were higher among children whose family member was self-isolated and whose homes were more damaged. Interpretation: Our findings link earthquake exposure and pandemic related stressors to symptoms of PTS, anxiety, and depression. It demonstrated limited interactions of both stressors on children’s mental health. The risk was higher for girls and no age differences were found. Future studies should expand the aspects of both resilience and risk factors, allowing for development of effective intervention strategies. Funding: The study was self-funded by the authors. Declaration of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. Ethical Approval: The study design was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Zagreb Child and Youth Protection Centre, Ministry of Education and Croatian Education and Teacher Training Agency

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some goods suddenly became scarce due to panic purchases and stockpiling. The decision to hoard is influenced by higher-order beliefs. If an agent believes that other agents think that a good will become scarce, she concludes that these other agents will hoard, and thus tries to preempt them by hoarding herself. To capture such behaviour, we construct a model with a global game. Agents receive noisy information about some variable that influences supply or demand. They then form higher-order beliefs, and possibly panic and hoard the product. We analyze determinants of such panics. Endogenizing prices and quantities, we show that producers with market power set prices strategically to induce panics and thus boost demand. Absent market power, strong competition leads to low prices and thus little overproduction, also causing panics. We also consider firms who need the scarce good as an intermediate product in their production chain, and show that a regulator would require such firms to stockpile the product, thus increasing resilience.

This study was inspired by the literature of the hypothesis of the curse of natural resources, but particularly in authors such as Castelo-Branco (2010), Tiess (2011), Sigam and Garcia (2012), Obiri (2014), Halland et al. (2015) and Addison and Roe (2018).These authors deal with the issue of natural resources from the perspective of the extractive industry. So, the objective of this study was to estimate the impact of the extractive industry of natural resources on the economic growth of Mozambique in the context of the SADC countries. To carry out the study, an econometric model of economic growth based on panel data was estimated, more specifically the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) using data from 11 SADC countries between 1980 and 2017. The main results of the study indicate that, taking into account all 11 SADC countries, in the long-run the extractive industry rents have a negative and statistically significant impact on economic growth. In the short-run the extractive industry has no impact on the economic growth of the SADC countries. In the context of Mozambique, the results show that, in the short-run extractive industry rents has a negative but statistically insignificant effect, i.e. have no impact on Mozambique's economic growth. These results suggest that extractive industry rents in Mozambique and in SADC, in general, are not used as a factor of production applied in other sectors to directly raise the national product. It’s leased for the remuneration of production factor and/or for consumption. Thus, for the short run the study recommends policies for allocating the rents of extractive industries in productive and economically efficient investments in the detriment of political efficiency and the creation of sovereign wealth funds. For such policies to have results, in the short run, Mozambique must improve the quality of the institutions which at long run will be the antibiotics against the voracious and rentist effects of local elites and bureaucrats

[enter This study aims to explore the challenges facing the perception of women entrepreneurs in Bule Hora town administration. Related to the challenges facing in the perception, attitude, and belief of women entrepreneur in-action and the potential women are segregated. The researchers used a qualitative research design related to the interpretative approach was developed. The researchers used eight interviewees who were involved in the study. The purposive sampling techniques were used to get data from the sample respondent, an interview was used. The qualitative data analysis method thematic data analysis is used. The major finding of the study shows that challenges facing the perception of women entrepreneurs in the study area are a lack of finance, working place, and training, social-cultural factors. The implication of the study will help the government to revise his policy to give a solution personal and organizational –related, legal/administration, economic, social/cultural and other factors that affect the perception of women entrepreneurs in entrepreneurial activity

The Panama Papers are eleven million leaked electronic documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than two hundred thousand offshore entities. The documents were leaked in April 2016 by an anonymous whistle-blower from the database of Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca. In this case study, we discuss how a team of international network of journalists collaborated using data mining tools to unearth vital financial fraud information from this large chunk of unstructured data. The case study begins with a prologue of dialogue between the whistle-blower and protagonist. The case is divided into nine mini chapters where we start with how a data team were formed followed by the tools used to clean and annotate the unstructured data into a graph-based database and finally using expert network of journalists to generate financial insights from the various nodes and links of the graph. We conclude the case by providing word clouds that highlights Indian connections.

The present pitch paper intends to pitch the research idea, its methodology, and possible outcomes by following Faff (2015) pitch my research template The rese

A series of four working papers describing the significant changes in the global IT outsourcing market, regarding digital disruption, sourcing as a service and the impact of Covid-19 on outsourcing IT

The revival of the non-delegation doctrine, foreshadowed last term in Gundy v. United States, signals the end of a distinctive style of legal and political thought. The doctrine’s apparent demise after the 1930s facilitated the development of a methodological approach that embodied what Lon Fuller once called “the spirit of the Federalist Papers”: an open-ended engagement with the problem of designing democracy and controlling public power. At its best, this discourse was critical and propulsive, with each purported solution generating more questions than it answered. The turn against congressional delegations will likely bring to a close this period of open and self-critical experimentation. In its place, we are likely to see the emergence of warring visions of the administrative state, each claiming legitimacy — neither credibly — according to its own comprehensive normative doctrine.

High-profile revelations of organizational malpractices in the last few years such as unethical business deals based on large-scale conflicts of interest, insider trading, overvaluation of housing mortgages, doctored inventories of inadequate capital holdings to raise finances, and manipulation of facts and figures have made transparency an important value in today’s organizational world. Stakeholders, whether internal or external, expect to have access to information and organizations have little choice but to open up in keeping with current trends (Christensen, 2002; Christensen & Langer, 2009). This paper offers a tentative examination of what we believe to be an original conceptual framework for a critical understanding of processes of and motivations for organizational transparency, including its paradoxes, by drawing on and combining theories of power, hegemony, legitimacy, and liquid modernity.

This paper is one of the first to quantify the welfare effects of proposed cash suppression policies. We work within the context of a general equilibrium framework in which households face an endogenous cash-in-advance constraint and firms use cash transactions to evade taxes. Eliminating currency increases transactions costs and raises effective tax rates by curbing tax evasion. Our quantitative experiments imply that a total cash ban improves steady-state welfare, but only if paired with a revenue-neutral decrease in the tax rate on capital. We show in an extension with heterogeneous agents that curtailing cash harms frequent-cash users more than others. Such distributional effects of cash suppression may be a concern for policymakers.

In July 2015, China’s national legislature brought in prosecutor-led civil environmental public interest litigations (“EPILs”) for thirteen selected provincial areas of the country. After a two-year legal experiment, this prosecutor-led civil EPIL system was then established nationwide in July 2017. Yet, can it be said that prosecutorial regulators in China are in fact a paper tiger? Drawing upon content analysis of the 655 prosecutor-led civil EPILs and in-depth interviews with twelve frontline prosecutors and judges, this article examines the dynamics of regulatory practice and the motivation of the Chinese prosecutorial organs to engage in environmental regulation through litigation. Based upon the above two legislative landmarks in the law reform of this area, the regulatory practice of prosecutorial organs can be viewed as having occurred in three stages, with each stage featuring a distinct regulatory model: ad hoc regulation through local innovation before July 2015, forced regulation during the legal experiment from July 2015 to July 2017, and perfunctory regulation after the nationwide establishment of the prosecutor-led civil EPIL system in July 2017. The data show that the Chinese prosecutorial organs have engaged in a larger number of such lawsuits since the second stage, but they have shown a strong preference for cases with less complicated facts, weak and small defendants, and minor environmental violations. Three factors that influence regulatory motivation are employed to analyse the change in regulatory models: the ambiguity of the law, the top-down political pressure for regulation, and the cost of regulation. This study highlights the very limited effectiveness of vertical political pressure in boosting prosecutorial regulation and the strong impacts of the cost of regulation and the ambiguity of the law. In particular, the high cost of regulation that takes weak regulatory capacity, lack of regulatory autonomy, and the winning rate-oriented performance appraisal system into account have significantly weakened the motivation of prosecutorial organs to pursue civil EPILs. The findings of this study echo the conditions present in the successful prosecutorial regulations in Brazil and contribute to the scholarship about prosecutorial regulations in the field of environmental protection in the Global South.

Wealth declaration by public officials has been globally embraced as an accountability tool in public service. The United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) requires member states to establish structures and frameworks for assets disclosure by public officials. This is an accountability mechanism geared towards enhancing good governance and the fight against corruption across the continent and within the African states. Globally, African countries have maintained a conspicuous lead in the ratification of UNCAC and subsequent establishment of wealth declaration systems. Despite continued implementation of these frameworks in the pursuit of public sector accountability, corruption and low levels accountability in the public sector remain a dominant challenge in most African countries. This raises the question of the effectiveness of the wealth declaration systems including their design and mode of application. This paper establishes why wealth declaration systems have largely failed in Africa and recommends reform measures to enhance their accountability objectives, drawing best practice from jurisdictions that have registered notable success in assets disclosures.

Digital revolution has changed people’s behavior and culture in communicating and consuming information using online media that is why the existence of printed media in local language is increasingly displaced and threatened with extinction. The number of magazine in local language published is dwindled as they are not able to compete against magazines in Indonesian language. This is also supported by the breakdown of regeneration of printed media readers shifting to digital media. The dominance of Indonesian language as national language over local language used for speaking and the lack of local language development as local content in the school curriculum shows that the literacy level of millennial generation is low on Penginyongan language in Barlingmascakep area (Banjarnegara, Purbalingga, Banyumas, Cilacap and Kebumen). Ancas magazine becomes vernacular press and local wisdom based printed media providing educative, persuasive and recreational information. The use of gadget or electronic device connected to internet network can be used to improve the culture of Penginyongan literacy on millennial generation in digital era. Based on the problems above, the research question in this research was how the implementation of e-paper magazine of Ancas Banyumasan improved the culture of Penginyongan language literacy in millennial era. The objective of this research was to maintain the existence of local magazine of Ancas Banyumasan in the development of digital based information technology in the Internet of Things (IoT) era and then it can be awareness media in maintaining and preserving local culture value of Banyumasan.

In light of the upcoming opportunity for Cyprus and other Member States to appoint by rotation an Advocate General (‘AG’) to the Court of Justice (‘ECJ’) in 2020-21, the objective of the present report taking the form of a discussion paper is to clarify the law and practice related to such appointments and set out recommendations accordingly. It does so by looking in particular into the relevant provisions of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’), namely the Article 253 TFEU requirements themselves, the reports of the Article 255 TFEU Panel, and the selection processes carried out at the national levels. Article 253 TFEU requires only that such nominees are persons whose independence is beyond doubt and who either meet the requirements for highest national judicial office or who are jurisconsults of recognised competence. An Article 255 TFEU Panel was established with the Treaty of Lisbon and is responsible for advising the Council of the EU on the suitability of candidates appointed to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Panel has elaborated upon the Article 253 TFEU requirements, taking six considerations into account in their assessment: i. legal capabilities; ii. professional experience; iii. ability to perform duties of a judge (or Advocate General); iv. language skills; v. ability to work in a team in an international environment in which several legal systems are represented; and vi. whether their independence, impartiality, probity and integrity are beyond doubt.1 In a 2018 report, the Panel stated that ‘[i]t considers all professional paths in the field of law to be equally legitimate to apply for the office of Judge or [AG]’, ‘in particular, those of judge, university professor, jurisconsult, lawyer or senior official specialised in the field of law.’2 The Panel is further elaborated upon in Part I, including through its latest report published in January 2020. To further assist in understanding the nature of Advocate General appointments in the EU, a study was undergone into the law and practice at the national level related to ECJ appointments (Part II and the Tables in the Annex), and also into the characteristics of the profiles of the AGs that have been successfully appointed to date (Part III).

The White Paper on the Reform of the Federation promised an inclusive and effective pathway to a strengthened federal system. It offered a path to increasing efficiency, reduction in cyclical policy fluctuations, better balancing of fiscal equalisation and fiscal responsibility, clarification and untangling of responsibilities, and simplification of the administration of federal grants. But after less than two years effort, the project was shelved. When compared to federalism reform processes adopted in other countries, serious questions arise about the Australian White Paper process. These include whether the time horizon was adequate, whether the process was genuinely collaborative, whether Australian governments would be able to overcome barriers to reform caused by oppositional politics, and whether principle or pragmatic self-interest would, ultimately, determine the outcome. The failure of the White Paper process offers an opportunity to ask whether Australian federalism can ever be reformed, and what would need to happen for this to occur.

The relationship between religion as a source of meaning and the violent or compassionate behavior of the human beings is one of the vital ingredients of a Society of Conscience. While organized religions are viewed with suspicion, and accused to be the main sources of aggression, intolerance and divisiveness, the conscience of religious faith, as a devotional behavior, offers the key to a renewed spirituality; the cornerstone to a Society of Conscience. Therefore, this white paper focuses on the contributions of the founder of the Institute for Peace Studies in Eastern Christianity, in exploring the resources of Orthodox Christianity in order to advance compassion, and peaceful coexistence.

The U.S. faces an increasingly complicated set of national security and economic threats. Chief among these are: (1) increasingly sophisticated and damaging cyber-attacks that threaten national security; harm government institutions, for-profit enterprises (including defense contractors), and institutions of higher learning; and undermine the country’s system of property rights; and (2) rising levels of national debt held by foreign competitors. China poses the greatest threat in both regards. China’s government carries out, organizes, and/or facilitates cyber-attacks to misappropriate intellectual property with serious consequences to the U.S.’s national security and economy. China also has acquired significant holdings in U.S. government issued debt instruments. Mounting U.S. government debt restricts annual federal government budgetary decisions, negatively affects the U.S.’s international standing as a borrower, and threatens national security by giving foreign debt holders, such as China, potential leverage in foreign relations negotiations. No policy prescription to date has achieved meaningful and lasting success in addressing these threats, and there are indications the threats are only worsening. The National Trade Secret Protection and Remedy Strategy (“NTSPS”) policy prescription proposed by this Article addresses the cyber attack and federal debt threats in a way that links and transforms them from vulnerabilities into leverage to protect the U.S.’s national security, system of property rights, and future economic well-being. Specifically, the U.S. government should pursue trade secret theft-related litigation and remedies against the Chinese government and its surrogates in U.S. federal courts. The proposed NTSPS would: (a) create a specific, limited government property interest in intellectual property developed under government defense contracts; (b) create extra-territorial jurisdiction for the U.S. government and personal jurisdiction over foreign nations that engage in trade secret misappropriation either directly, or indirectly through state-supported or enabled entities or persons; and (c) provide for ready availability of pre-judgment remedies, such as attachment and liens to secure the government’s remedy, and satisfaction of judgement through execution on U.S. debt held instruments held by the mis-appropriator — in this case, China. Successful implementation of the NTSPS would require amendments to several existing federal statutes and defense contracting regulations and procedures. Implementing the NTSPS strategy will allow the U.S. federal government to: (1) compensate itself and U.S.-based companies for the damages each has suffered as the result of Chinese-led or sponsored cyber-attacks; (2) deter future Chinese cyber-attacks by conveying a strong message that the U.S. will take meaningful action in response to said attacks; (3) slow the advancement of Chinese military technology by forcing China to internalize the significant research and development expenses incurred by the U.S. to develop the technological capabilities often targeted by cyber espionage initiatives; (4) significantly reduce U.S. debt and consequently the restrictions and burdens it places on the U.S. economy and national defense capability; and (5) pare down the financial leverage China holds over the U.S. in foreign relations.

We consider a principal who periodically offers a fixed, binary, and costly non-monetary reward to agents endowed with private information, to incentivize the agents to invest effort over the long run. An agent's output, as a function of his effort, is a priori uncertain and is worth a fixed per-unit value to the principal. The principal's goal is to design an attractive reward policy that specifies how the rewards are to be given to an agent over time, based on that agent's past performance. This problem, which we denote by P, is motivated by practical examples from both academia (a reduced teaching load for achieving a certain research-productivity threshold) and industry ("Supplier of the Year" awards in recognition of excellent past performance). The following "limited-term'' reward policy structure has been quite popular in practice: The principal evaluates each agent periodically; if an agent's performance over a certain (limited) number of periods in the immediate past exceeds a pre-defined threshold, then the principal rewards him for a certain (limited) number of periods in the immediate future. For the deterministic special case of problem P, where there is no uncertainty in any agent's output given his effort, we show that there always exists an optimal policy that is a limited-term policy and also obtain such a policy. When agents' outputs are stochastic, we show that the class of limited-term policies may not contain any optimal policy of problem P but is guaranteed to contain policies that are arbitrarily near-optimal: Given any epsilon>0, we show how to obtain a limited-term policy whose performance is within epsilon of that of an optimal policy. This guarantee depends crucially on the use of sufficiently long histories of the agents' outputs for the determination of the rewards. In situations where access to this historical information is limited, we derive structural insights on the role played by (i) the length of the available history and (ii) the variability in the random variable governing an agent's output, on the performance of this class of policies. Finally, we introduce and analyze the class of "score-based'' reward policies - we show that this class is guaranteed to contain an optimal policy and also obtain such a policy.