Local exchange in the southern levant during the early bronze age: a political economy viewpoint

Trade and relations between the southern Levant and other regions of the Near East (mainly Egypt) during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3,600–2,300 BC) have been the subject of many studies. Research concerning the exchange of local commodities was almost ignored or was discussed in parochial studies, focusing on specific archaeological finds. It is the intention of this paper to present the results of recent research of the exchange of commodities provided by archaeological data from excavations in the Southern Levant with regard to economic theories on the exchange-value of goods and exchange networks. Conclusions regarding the type of society and the forms of government in the Southern Levant during the Early Bronze Age are also presented.

The open parliament in the age of the internet : can the people now collaborate with legislatures in lawmaking?

This work seeks to address those questions and evaluate other international experiences and experiments designed to achieve the same ends. The book is based on a study of two particular cases where parliamentary bodies designed and implemented participatory digital processes, namely, the e-Democracy Program developed by the Brazilian House of Representatives, and the Virtual Senator Program developed by the Chilean Senate. The text unfolds in the form of a systematic analysis of institutional aspects embracing political and organizational elements as well as the social aspects associated to the application of digital democracy in parliaments. The investigation shows that at the stage they found themselves in 2010 those projects had only brought in very incipient results in regard to the aspects of enhancing representativity in decision making processes, aggregating collective intelligence to the legislative process or transparency to parliamentary performances, even though all of those are precious components of any democracy that deems itself to be participatory and deliberative. Nevertheless, such experiences have had the merit of contributing towards the gradual construction of more effective participatory mechanisms, complementary to the political representation system in place.

Reference Points and Optimal Management in Stochastic Age-Structured Fisheries Models

The purpose of this article is to characterize dynamic optimal harvesting trajectories that maximize discounted utility assuming an age-structured population model, in the same line as Tahvonen (2009). The main novelty of our study is that uses as an age-structured population model the standard stochastic cohort framework applied in Virtual Population Analysis for fish stock assessment. This allows us to compare optimal harvesting in a discounted economic context with standard reference points used by fisheries agencies for long term management plans (e.g. Fmsy). Our main findings are the following. First, optimal steady state is characterized and sufficient conditions that guarantees its existence and uniqueness for the general case of n cohorts are shown. It is also proved that the optimal steady state coincides with the traditional target Fmsy when the utility function to be maximized is the yield and the discount rate is zero. Second, an algorithm to calculate the optimal path that easily drives the resource to the steady state is developed. And third, the algorithm is applied to the Northern Stock of hake. Results show that management plans based exclusively on traditional reference targets as Fmsy may drive fishery economic results far from the optimal.