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Whether fighting inflation or deflation, it has been a decade since the European Central Bank (ECB) managed to successfully attain its Treaty-mandated objective, that is, price stability. This is defined by the Bank itself as maintaining an inflation target of 'below but close to 2% over the medium term' and, since 2021, as '2% over the medium term'. The further reality has veered from policy, the more attention has been brought to the redistributive choices, both implicit and explicit, in the ECB's pursuit of price stability. The current article analyses this debate in the context of the legal terms stipulated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, conceptualised as a function of monetarist theory. It claims that the ECB's failure to deliver on its price stability objective has contributed to intensifying the re-politicisation of monetary policy, cast doubt on the presumed legitimacy of foundational monetarist theory and caused a legal struggle within EU constitutionalism to sustain a stable distinction between economic and monetary policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Since the end of World War II, the USA has maintained a sizable military presence around the world. As one of the main mechanisms that the USA uses to exercise its military power abroad, it is a defining characteristic of the international order. Using time-series cross-sectional models and case evidence, I show that, in addition to strategic considerations, the President's party strength in Congress and the proportion of moderates in the Senate are key determinants of US deployment outcomes. This finding adds to the literature on causes of US troop deployments by examining the incentives for deployments within US politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose. Energy consumption is a standard measure to evaluate the progress and quality of life in a country. When used properly and logically it could be cause of progress in science, technology and welfare of the people in any country and otherwise irreparable economic losses and economic gross recession would happen. And finally, the quantity of energy consumption per GDP will increase day by day. Electrical energy, as the most prominent type of energy, is very important. In this article based on a different approach, according to the final consumption of electric energy, a proper economic planning in order to supply electrical energy is submitted. In this programming, the details of final energy consumption, will replace with the information of power network, by considering the network efficiency and power plants. Operation of power plants is based on the energy optimization entranced to a plant. By using the proposed method and gravitational search algorithm, the total cost of electrical energy can be minimized. The results of simulation and numerical studies show better convergence of gravitational search algorithm in comparison with other existing methods in this area.

Copyright of Electrical Engineering & Electromechanics is the property of National Technical University, Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There has been a growing interest on the study of the human-ecosystems sustainability from an integrated point of view. The recognition of sustainability as a complex long-term problem has led to the development of tools that address it from a multidisciplinary perspective. Several mathematical models have been developed to support the understanding of the interactions between human activities and natural resources, and the effect of economic and social issues on the sustainability of such ecosystems. However, only a few of them have considered these aspects holistically; even more, critical social aspects such as uneven distribution of goods and services have not been addressed. Developed countries have a larger pool of resources when facing environmental and social issues than developing countries, along with larger resilience to external threats, being able to rely on scientific and technological advances against poverty and inequity. Therefore, these developed societies are socially fairer and more capable to become sustainable. This work presents an integrated ecological-economical-social model which includes a crucial social aspect in the sustainability study such is inequity, having two sectors of a population with different economic distribution values; these two populations interact directly with each other representing a stratified society as an attempt to conceptually describe a real-world human ecosystem where goods and natural resources are not evenly distributed. Also, the system is under the influence of uncertain external instabilities due to the inclusion of real data series, captured in the model by stochastic processes incorporated in demographic variables. Four typical kinds of societies with different levels of development and inequity were analyzed. Over the sixty percent of the times simulations led to a system collapse, being the probability of collapse directly related to the inequity. Results suggest that societies with unevenly distributed economies are less sustainable than more equalitarian societies, proving that economic equality is an important factor to consider in sustainability studies. Additionally, a typical pattern for per capita wages was found in those cases where the system collapsed, similar from a macroeconomic behavior in real world economies under economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TheCantar de Mio Cidwas probably composed in the first decade of the thirteenth century. This situates it in the years just prior to the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, the decisive engagement that ended Almohad dominance in Al-Andalus. TheCantarseems to propagandize Peninsular Christians with regard to military projects that advanced the goals of the Reconquest. There is great emphasis on issues of leadership, recruitment, valor and teamwork, tactics and strategy, fair distribution of loot and lands, and so forth. But theCantaris also about domestic things: the pursuance of feuds; the vindication of family honor; the arrangement of marriages. This epic, in other words, is also about the home front. In the poem, the real threat to the home front comes from treacherous and meddlesome nobility personified by the Infantes de Carrión. TheCantarexalts a system of royal justice that protects families from such nefarious elements. Aimed at the rank and file, theCantar'svision of warfare thus promises justice, wealth, and landed property. It also allows men to prove their manhood to the maximum, as we see from the poet's continual emphasis on a gendered division of labor—women assigned to home and hearth, men to the domain of warfare and related activities—and on the virility exemplified by the Cid and his followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis of 2008-2009 has been viewed primarily as a financial one, which has spilled over into the economy more generally. I want to argue that there is a much deeper crisis, of which the present one is a result. The deeper crisis is political: more specifically, it is a crisis in the ideology and social ethos of the American people. I refer to what has happened to the thinking of United States citizens since the Second World War, and the dangers that that transformation entails for world peace and cooperation-let alone the creation of an economic regime in which deep financial crises do not occur. Short of a change in the ideology of a many of its citizens, I do not believe the United States can succeed in preventing a repeat performance, perhaps many encores, which become increasingly severe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews Nicholas van de Walle's discussion of the relationship between democracy and economic development in Africa. It puts forward three main arguments. First, it discusses how the relationship between democracy and economic development is affected by patrimonialism. Against van de Walle, Eriksen argues that patrimonialism is a system fundamentally based on redistribution, and that there is no prima facie reason to assume that the introduction of democracy will change the amount of distributional pressures. Second, it discusses the role of foreign donors. Eriksen accepts van de Walle's point that donors have not directed more aid to democracies than to non-democracies, but argues that while this is true, it is less significant for democracy than donors' concern with structural adjustment programmes. Finally, some key features of ‘the developmental state’, or the kind of state required to promote economic development, are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]