Islamic law and international law: the terms of a relationship

The relationship between Islamic Law and other legal systems (basically western type domestic legal orders and international law) is often thought of in terms of compatibility or incompatibility. Concerning certain subject matters of choice, the compatibility of Islamic (legal) principles with the values embedded in legal systems that are regarded as characteristic of the Modern Age is tested by sets of questions: is democracy possible in Islam? Does Islam recognize human rights and are those rights equivalent to a more universal conception? Does Islam recognize or condone more extreme acts of violence and does it justify violence differently? Etc. Such questions and many more presuppose the existence of an ensemble of rules or principles which, as any other set of rules and principles, purport to regulate social behavior. This ensemble is generically referred to as Islamic Law. However, one set of questions is usually left unanswered: is Islamic Law a legal system? If it is a legal system, what are its specific characteristics? How does it work? Where does it apply? It is this paper`s argument that the relationship between Islamic Law and domestic and international law can only be understood if looked upon as a relationship between distinct legal systems or legal orders.

Three principles of competitive nonlinear pricing

We make three contributions to the theory of contracting under asymmetric information. First, we establish a competitive analog to the revelation principIe which we call the implementation principIe. This principIe provides a complete characterization of all incentive compatible, indirect contracting mechanisms in terms of contract catalogs (or menus), and allows us to conclude that in competi tive contracting situations, firms in choosing their contracting strategies can restrict attention, without loss of generality, to contract catalogs. Second, we establish a competi tive taxation principIe. This principIe, a refinement of the implementation principIe, provides a complete characterization of all implementable nonlinear pricing schedules in terms of product-price catalogs and allows us to reduce any game played over nonlinear pricing schedules to a strategically equivalent game played over product-price catalogs. Third, using the competitive taxation principIe and a recent result due to Reny (1999) on the existence of Nash equilibria in discontinuous games, we demonstrate the existence of a N ash equilibrium for the mixed extension of the nonlinear pricing game.

Terms of trade, macroeconomic dynamics and default decisions

A evidência empírica aponta que Termos de Troca é uma variável relevante tanto para dinâmica macroeconômica como para o risco de default em países emergentes. No entanto, a literatura de dívida soberana baseada nos trabalhos de Eaton e Gerzovitz (1981) e Arellano (2008) ainda não explorou de forma adequada as conecções entre a dinâmica de termos de troca e incentivos ao default. Nós contribuímos nessa área, introduzindo volatilidade de Termos de Troca no modelo proposto por Mendoza e Yue (2012), no qual as decisões de dívida soberana são vinculadas à um modelo de equilíbrio geral para a economia doméstica. Nós encontramos que uma economia exposta à volatilidade dos termos de troca consegue produzir uma variabilidade do consumo que supera significativamente a variabilidade do produto, característica que constitui um fato estilizado chave de business cycles de países emergentes. Nossos exercícios também mostram que decisões de default são geradas por mudanças bruscas nos termos de troca, mas não necessariamente estão vinculados à estados ruins da economia.

Protecting user privacy in the Cloud: an analysis of terms of service

We present the results of a study that collected, compared and analyzed the terms and conditions of a number of cloud services vis-a-vis privacy and data protection. First, we assembled a list of factors that comprehensively capture cloud companies' treatment of user data with regard to privacy and data protection; then, we assessed how various cloud services of different types protect their users in the collection, retention, and use of their data, as well as in the disclosure to law enforcement authorities. This commentary provides comparative and aggregate analysis of the results.

The finite-sample size of the BDS test for GARCH standardized residuals

This paper uses a multivariate response surface methodology to analyze the size distortion of the BDS test when applied to standardized residuals of rst-order GARCH processes. The results show that the asymptotic standard normal distribution is an unreliable approximation, even in large samples. On the other hand, a simple log-transformation of the squared standardized residuals seems to correct most of the size problems. Nonethe-less, the estimated response surfaces can provide not only a measure of the size distortion, but also more adequate critical values for the BDS test in small samples.