Naturaleza y regimen jurídico del impuesto sobre los sueldos y salarios de los funcionarios de las Coumnidades Europeas

La prevalencia del interés comunitario para salvaguardar la igualdad entre los funcionarios de la Comunidad y la independencia de la Administración comunitaria, movieron al establecimiento de un impuesto comunitario en los Protocolos sobre Privilegios e Inmunidades anejos a los Tratados de Roma, privando a la exención de impuestos nacionales del carácter de privilegio, para configurarla como directa consecuencia de la creación de un impuesto comunitario. La realización del presente estudio nos lleva a plantearnos, en primer lugar, el problema de la naturaleza del recurso objeto del mismo.

Pass-through in dollarized countries: should Ecuador abandon the U.S. Dollar?

In this article we examine the convenience of dollarization for Ecuador today. As Ecuador is strongly integrated financially and commercially with the United States, the exchange rate pass-through should be zero. However, we sustain that rising rates of imports from trade partners other than the United States and subsequent real effective exchange rate depreciations are causing the pass-through to move away from zero. Here, in the framework of the Vector Error Correction Model, we analyse the impulse response function and variance decomposition of the inflation variable. We show that the developing economy of Ecuador is importing inflation from its main trading partners, most of them emerging countries with appreciated currencies. We argue that if Ecuador recovered both its monetary and exchange rate instruments it would be able to fight against inflation. We believe such an analysis could be extended to other countries with pegged exchange rate regimes.

Labor Mobility of the Chinese Graduates from British and Spanish Universities: What Happens to the "Talent Migration"?

The scholarship on migration in Europe heavily focuses on the integration of economically vulnerable migrants. In the age of commercialization of education, however, the European Union attracts a rising number of highly skilled non-EU migrants that take up studies across the continent. Despite economic downturn, the EU universities experience a rapid growth in the number of Chinese students, many of whom settle in Europe upon graduation. Surprisingly, although the number of Chinese students in the EU increases, scholars largely ignore the labor paths that these highly skilled migrants take upon graduating from European universities. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the variation in the Chinese graduates’ labor incorporation patterns and in their spatial mobility. In this project, I also examine macro-level hypotheses predicting that the EU and host states’ labor market institutions, changes in the EU policies on the highly skilled and the outburst of economic crisis matter for the Chinese highly skilled social and spatial mobility. Seizing on surveys, interviews and on the bodies of literature on stratification and social mobility, economic incorporation, social capital and human capital, I look at the Chinese students that graduated from universities in Great Britain and Spain. These states differ in the university tuition fees, migration policies towards the highly skilled workers and in the period of the Chinese students’ influx, thus providing an economically and socially diverse sample. My research will contribute to the literature on the relations between migrants’ social mobility, class and status background and spatial mobility, at the same time adding a transnational level perspective to the study of highly skilled Asian migration.

Braving the Storm: How Are Global Biofuel Policies Sustained Despite Being Contested? An Analysis of the Biofuel Discourses of the EU, Brazil and Mozambique

Considered as a remedy to multiple problems that our world is facing, biofuels are nowadays promoted on a global scale. Despite this globalised approach, however, biofuels are heavily contested. Not only the social implications of biofuels are disputed and uncertain, particularly in countries of the global South, but also their environmental and economic rationales. Given these huge controversies, policies promoting biofuels would seem difficult to maintain. Yet, support for them has been surprisingly well established on the political agendas. With the aim of understanding this puzzle, this study asks how the dominant approach to biofuels has been sustained on a global level. In order to answer this question, the meanings and assumptions in biofuel discourses are explored through the lens of Maarten Hajer’s “argumentative” discourse analysis. Based on the existence of a “partnership for sustainable bioenergy” between the EU, Brazil and Mozambique, the study takes these three locations as case studies. The analysis reveals that various discursive strategies, including a particular problem construction and the use of two main story-lines, have played an important role in ensuring the permanence of the global approach to biofuels. Moreover, while the discourse of critics against biofuels demonstrates that there is room for contestation, the analysis finds that the opponents’ discourse largely fails to target the most salient justification for biofuels. A more effective strategy for critics would therefore be to also question the problem constructions underpinning this main justification in the global discourse.

Hollywood Films in the Non-Western World: What Are the Criteria Followed by the Chinese Government When Choosing Hollywood Film Imports?

This dissertation argues that the Government of the People’s Republic of China, when it made the decision to import a quota of Hollywood films in 1994 to revive the failing domestic film industry, had different possible criteria in mind. This project has studied four of them: first, importing films that gave a negative image of the United States; second, importing films that featured Chinese talent or themes; third, importing films that were box office hits in the United States; and fourth, importing films with a strong technological innovation ingredient. In order to find out the most important criteria for the Chinese Government, this dissertation offers a dataset that analyzes a population of 262 Hollywood films released in the PRC between 1994 and 2010. For each unit, a method has been developed to compile data that will determine whether the film reflects any of the four criteria, and findings in the form of yearly percentages have been drawn. Results show that, out of the four studied criteria, the two predominant reasons for China to import films were technological innovation and box office hits. This tells us that, at this point, the Chinese Government shows more interest in obtaining big revenues and learning from technically innovative American films than in delivering underlying political messages. This dissertation contributes to the existing literature by analyzing the content of all the films imported by China between 1994 and 2010, while integrating in the analysis variables based on the existing knowledge.

Europeanisation and Conflict Resolution: The Case of Cyprus

This paper investigates the example of Cyprus as a case study for the Europeanisation of conflict resolution. The argument advanced is that the European Union (EU) impacts the positions of the parts of the conflict (here, Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots and Turkey) but not always towards the resolution of the dispute and compliance with EU conditionality. Conformity with EU conditionality depends on its credibility, which is decreased by the internalisation of the conflict into the EU. In this context, this work contributes to the discussion on Europeanisation and the aptitude of the EU in conflict resolution as well as the role of the EU in the Cyprus conflict during the post-accession years.

Universal Service Policies in Europe & Latam: Evidence on Bridging the Divide in Rural Areas

Broadband access is a key factor for economic and social development. However, providing broadband to rural areas is not attractive to private telecommunications operators due its low or zero investment return. To deal with broadband provision in rural areas, different governance systems based on private and public cooperation have appeared. This paper not only identifies and defines public and private cooperation models but also assesses their impact on overcoming the digital divide in rural areas. The results show that public ownership infrastructure under private management policy has had positive effects on reducing the broadband digital divide and being applied to areas with higher digital divide; subsides to private operators providers only positive effects on reducing broadband digital divide; but public infrastructure with public management programs did not. The results, obtained using quasi-experimental methods, suggest the importance of incentives and control mechanisms in broadband universal service provision plans.

The Evolution of the European Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications

The paper reviews the historical transformation of the European regulatory framework for electronic communications from the era dominated by state-owned enterprises to the presence of regulated competition. In the course of these developments, the vision of the roles of the public and private sectors in electronic communications changed in expected and unexpected ways. While the period is characterized by a shift toward less direct state intervention, the intensity of regulation has increased in many areas. Most recently, in the wake of the financial crisis, new forms of state intervention can be observed, including public investment in communications infrastructure and public-private partnerships. As a result of the reforms, Europe has been able to achieve major successes but it also suffered unanticipated setbacks compared to other regions. The European Union emerged as the global leader in mobile communications during the 1990s and was able to roll-out first-generation broadband access networks more rapidly than many of its peers. Recently, however, Europe as a whole has not performed as well in deploying next-generation networks and advanced mobile communications services. The paper offers a political-economic explanation for these developments and assesses their effects on the performance of the European electronic communications sector and the economy. From this analysis, the European model emerges as a unique institutional arrangement with peculiar advantages and disadvantages. Once these are recognized, sensible next steps to build the strengths while avoiding the weaknesses of the model can be seen more clearly.

Net Neutrality: Measuring the Problem, Assessing the Legal Risks

Network neutrality is a growing policy controversy. Traffic management techniques affect not only high-speed, high-money content, but by extension all other content too. Internet regulators and users may tolerate much more discrimination in the interests of innovation. For instance, in the absence of regulatory oversight, ISPs could use Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to block some content altogether, if they decide it is not to the benefit of ISPs, copyright holders, parents or the government. ISP blocking is currently widespread in controlling spam email, and in some countries in blocking sexually graphic illegal images. In 1999 this led to scrutiny of foreclosure of Instant Messaging and video and cable-telephony horizontal merger. Fourteen years later, there were in 2013 net neutrality laws implemented in Slovenia, the Netherlands, Chile and Finland, regulation in the United States and Canada , co-regulation in Norway, and self-regulation in Japan, the United Kingdom and many other European countries . Both Germany and France in mid-2013 debated new net neutrality legislation, and the European Commission announced on 11 September 2013 that it would aim to introduce legislation in early 2014. This paper analyses these legal developments, and in particular the difficulty in assessing reasonable traffic management and ‘specialized’ (i.e. unregulated) faster services in both EU and US law. It also assesses net neutrality law against the international legal norms for user privacy and freedom of expression

Innovation and Regulation in ICT. Keys for Development

The expansion of broadband speed and coverage over IP technology, which extend over transport and terminal access networks, has increased the demand for applications and content which by being provided over it, uniformly give rise to convergence. These shifts in technologies and enterprise business models are giving rise to the necessity for changing the perspective and scope of the Universal Service and of the regulation frameworks, with this last one based in the same principles as always but varying its application. Several aspects require special and renewed attention, such as the definition of relevant markets and dominant operators, the role of packages, interconnection of IP networks, network neutrality, the use of the spectrum with a vision of value for the citizenship, the application of the competition framework, new forms of licensing, treatment of the risk in the networks, changes in the regulatory authorities, amongst others. These matters are treated from the perspective of the actual trends in the world and its conceptual justification.

The Emergence of Regional ICT Regulatory Spaces

This paper examines the role that existing Latin American policy institutions and regulatory coordination mechanisms (otherwise referred to as “regional regulatory spaces”) play in innovation and development of the ICT sector. In doing so, it recognizes that sector regulation does not currently match regional development, thereby limiting its potential progress. In order to shed light on the role that the “regional regulatory space” could potentially play, the author addresses three main questions: · Is there a hierarchy of policies by which it is presumed easy to “coordinate within well-defined technical subjects” but extremely challenging to “agree in matters of public policy?” · What would happen if policy divergence became more important than convergence? Is it reasonable to consider creating “regional regulatory spaces?” or should we focus solely on technological coordination? · Do institutions capable of serving as effective regional regulatory spaces already exist in Latin America or should we consider modifying existing institutions or creating new institutions? After analyzing these three overarching areas of concern, this paper then discusses the need to create a regional space in order to harmonize ICT regulatory frameworks and public policies. Ultimately, this work aims to advance the institutional formulation beyond pre-existing efforts.

Influències de Dostoievski a Incerta glòria de Joan Sales

El treball analitza els punts de contacte entre 'Incerta glòria' i les principals obres de Dostoievski, amb l'objectiu de demostrar que el rus va exercir una influència sobre Joan Sales. Els elements tractats pertanyen sobretot a l'ordre temàtic i, secundàriament, a la construcció formal i dels personatges. Aquests elements són la narració de la vida espiritual dels personatges i l'escissió de la seva personalitat en bé i mal, les idees com a components centrals de les novel·les, la polifonia, l'alliberament pel sofriment i la presència de filosofia i religió en el gènere novel·lístic.

Las islas Senkaku/Diaoyu : Implicaciones en la política exterior y de seguridad de Japón

El presente trabajo de investigación se centrará en el estudio de uno de los conflictos territoriales más candentes que existen en la región de Asia Oriental y, por ende, en la escena internacional, que enfrenta a Japón contra China y Taiwán por la soberanía de las Islas Senkaku/Diaoyu. Aunque dadas las dimensiones del mismo, nos centraremos en la postura nipona. No en vano, el objetivo general que pretendemos alcanzar se sustenta en analizar la política exterior y de seguridad japonesa ante tal contencioso, como también las consecuencias e implicaciones que puede tener para la misma a la hora de entender el papel que debe desempeñar Japón en la escena internacional.

Del Estado-nación al Estado-marca. El rol de la diplomacia pública y la marca de país en el nuevo escenario de las relaciones internacionales

El establecimiento de relaciones entre países en un entorno global parece requerir nuevas estrategias que trascienden la tradicional diplomacia de Estado. La diplomacia pública deviene una renovada estrategia de proyección internacional, donde la marca de país ejerce un importante papel a modo de dispositivo aglutinador y de transmisión de identidades nacionales. De este modo, el nuevo “poder blando” de la representación geográfica parece transcurrir en el seno del debilitamiento del Estado-nación y en claro beneficio de una nueva forma de comunicar la identidad de un país más próxima a la intervención de diferentes agentes sociales que a la firma de tratados internacionales de competencia gubernamental. A partir de una revisión de la literatura existente, este artículo presenta un estado del arte relacionado con las nuevas estrategias de representatividad internacional llevadas a cabo por países y naciones.

Cabouret, Bernadette, Groslambert, Agnès, Wolff, Catherine (eds.), Visions de l’Occident romain. Hommages à Yann Le Bohec. Collection Études et Recherches sur l’Occident Romain, 2 vol. Paris, De Boccard 2012, págs. 959.

Este libro, en dos volúmenes, es un merecido homenaje al profesor Yann LE BOHEC (professeur émérite, Paris IV-La Sorbonne), jubilado forzosamente de la docencia universitaria en septiembre de 2011. La carrera investigadora del profesor Le Bohec que naturalmente continua en la actualidad ha tratado multitud de temas relacionados con el Imperio Romano, aunque deben ser destacadas en especial dos temáticas: el norte de África y el ejército romano. Y obviamente estos asuntos se ven también muy reflejados en los artículos de todos aquellos colegas y amigos que colaboran en el homenaje.