CEEOL - Browse Subjects Result

We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.

Bancassurance: Challenges and Opportunities in Republic of Serbia

Author(s): Ivana Marinović Matović / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Bancassurance is not just a sale of insurance products at bank counters, but a complex cooperation involving both partners in the project realization, with the goal of satisfying their own interests as well as clients' interests. In the Republic of Serbia, banks began to deal with insurance activities in 2007. Since then, the sale of insurance products through banks has been constantly growing. The paper will present the current bancassurance models in the Republic of Serbia: integral distribution; expert distribution and combined distribution. The paper will present the comprehensive condition of bancassurance in the Republic of Serbia, above all the legal framework of the bancassurance concept; activities necessary for the successful implementation of bancassurance; market participants; competition among banking products and insurance products; the current level of cooperation between banks and insurance companies. Participants in the insurance market established by the Republic of Serbia, such as the National Mortgage Insurance Corporation, the Serbian Export Credit and Insurance Agency and the Deposit Insurance Agency, will be presented in paper, with an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of state insurance regulations. By gathering facts and data based on available literature and public databases, the current state of the insurance market and the possibilities for further development of bancassurance in the Republic of Serbia will be determined. The choice of a bancassurance model is essential for the successful functioning of the overall concept and its long-term sustainability in a dynamic business environment. The paper points to the fact that by designing an adequate bancassurance model, there may be a significant development of the Serbian financial services market.

More...

The Future of the European Union

Author(s): Titus Corlăţean / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The European project known as European Union has brought during the years lasting peace, democracy and respect for fundamental human rights and liberties, prosperity and welfare for its member states and peoples. The current challenges and transformations of EU redefine the project and different scenarios were proposed from this perspective by the European Commission and a number of political European leaders. This is why the future of the European Union became one of the main topics under the Romanian EU Presidency of the Council in the first semester of 2019. Each of the main 4 priorities of the Romanian Presidency of the Council reflects important dimensions of the integrated vision related to the profile, role and weight of the future European Union. The Inter-parliamentary conference organized in Bucharest in the beginning of April 2019 brought therefore a substantial contribution to this vision through the Declaration adopted by the members of the EU national parliaments on this occasion.

More...

Notes on Work Super-Exploitation: A Study on the Topicality of the “Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”

Author(s): Vitorio Felipe Santosbra Valenzuela Toro,Jesus Ranieri / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

It is intended, into the scope of this work, to analyze the Marxian categories presented in the Capital, Volume III; and analyze the case of the mass dismissals occurred in the USIMINAS steel mill in Cubatão (SP) between 2015 and 2017 based on them. Marx argues that the price of the merchandise falls as the productivity grows (Tendency of the rate of profit to fall). This happens because only the living labor is able to add value to the merchandise. The fall in the rates of profit of the capitalists happens because, as the variable capital in the productive process diminishes, less value is created in the productive process; therefore, the unitary value of the merchandise falls. Marx presents some anti-cyclical measures that defer, for a while, this tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Among the six anti-cyclical measures presented by Marx, attention will be given to the two first: I) Elevation of the degree of exploitation of the work force: as the work hours are augmented and the rhythm of work intensified, the capitalist appropriates greater rates of surplus work and surplus value. II) Compression of salaries under their value. In the case studied, USIMINAS (Cubatão) has not offered a real salary increase since 2010. After the company has applied afore mentioned measures between 2015 and 2017, it has presented significant growth in its profit rates.

More...

Evolution of Academic Freedom in the US Higher Education System as Part of Constitutional Principles

Author(s): Mindia Ugrekhelidze,Ekaterine Bakaradze / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The present paper aims at analyzing the development of academic freedom in the USA as a part of Constitutional principles. The main objective of this research is to identify legal approaches regarding academic freedom, reveal positive and negative sides of its development. It is essential to study the professional and legal definition of the term to determine its international context, what the notion of academic freedom means for the modern society. The research indicates that modern legal constitutional analysis of academic freedom is incomplete for the protection of the interests of academic society. Constitutionally guaranteed academic freedom is limited by state action doctrine, restriction of the principles of freedom of expression of the public servant and judicial decisions, which gives freedom only to the universities and leaves professors’ interests without protection when their interests are contrary to the university’s interests. Academic freedom guaranteed by the constitution, may be incompatible with the concept that implies freely exchanging the ideas in the marketplace of ideas, which are likely to be limited by universities. In order to completely understand and evaluate the importance and purpose of academic freedom, it is necessary to study those cases which led to the establishment of American Association of University Professors - AAUP and the protection of academic freedom in American universities.

More...

The Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education: A Proposed Model for Open Data

Author(s): Carla Hamida,Amanda Landi,Ziyi Liu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Recently, governmental institutions and private industries in power have been pushed to be more transparent so that more people can have ownership of their data. Another type of institution with a large amount of power over data are educational institutions. Colleges and Universities around the globe store a significant amount of data on millions of students, such as financial aid, grades, dropout or graduation, successes after graduation. Each institution is rated with respect to these items and more, and potential students are making decisions to go to the school based on these ratings. Therefore, it is imperative for students, who invest their time and their money into the school of their choice, to know the truth. In 2017, the College Transparency Act and the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act were passed, which were created to push transparency for data in higher education. The openness of data in higher education will be beneficial to prospective students. The push for these two bills coincided with the bitcoin bubble. In the past three years, experts in economics, medicine, and supply chain management have been researching methods on how to implement blockchains to create optimal and decentralized data systems. In this paper, we propose a model for open data in higher education inspired by the Bitcoin, which uses blockchain. When used together with InterPlanetary File System, a peer-to-peer distributed file system, we can create a decentralized platform that increases accessibility of data and autonomy of prospective students.

More...

The Legal Status Regarding the Romanian Tax Executor

Author(s): Alice Maria Cristina Zdanovschi / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This article focuses on the legal provisions governing the institution of the Romanian tax executor and aims to identify its legal status, by presenting its role and tasks in the tax execution procedure, and at the same time presents comparative aspects between the tax executor and the court executor. So, the forced execution of fiscal obligations is a way of extinguishing them. Furthermore, according to the special provisions existing in the field of taxation, when the taxpayers have not fulfilled their fiscal obligations at the date when they became due, the right of the state to pass to forced execution of the fiscal obligations is born on this date. And due to the enforceability of the title of the tax claim, the forced execution procedure carried out by the tax authorities is not preceded by another judicial procedure. Moreover, the tax authorities fulfill the forced execution procedure through tax executors, thus, the importance of its legal status is more than relevant compared to the “common law” executor in the Romanian legal system, which is the court executor.

More...

Mental Temporal Accounting

Author(s): Julia M. Puaschunder / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This paper introduces Mental Temporal Accounting – the behavioral economics application of mental accounting in the time domain. While most discounting studies are in the finance domain, social and environmental components have not gotten as much attention as appearing to require based on the novel perspectives this research grants. Theoretically we may also derive conclusions for contact theory and point at opening monetary gains focuses to social and environmental cues that may nudge people to perceive time differently and act on it accordingly. As mental accounting was successfully introduced to be extendable onto time, traditional mental accounting theory (Thaler 1999) should be revisted for attention to time discounting in the social and environmental spheres alongside the economic attention. Elucidating how contexts and experiencing critical life stages of parenthood influence temporal activity allocation choices promises to improve manifold decisions on education, health, asset management, career paths and common goods preservation throughout life for this generation and the following.

More...

Transparency, Accountability and Participation through Social Audit: Case of MGNREGA in Sikkim, India

Author(s): Feba Varghese / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Transparency, accountability and participation (TAP) are some essential elements for ensuring democratic governance. Social audit is an operational instrument to reduce corruption by empowering people to scrutinize public expenses, detect corruption, and ensure accountability. Social audit is one of the robust element of MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) in India as they work through the Panchayat, and stimulate the public to participate with a sense of communal accountability. At the state level even five years after the issue of operational guidelines, we witness wide variations in the quality of social audits. Different states have adopted their own models and while some of them are successful, some of the states have still not set up and some are in the process of setting up an independent social audit unit. The Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) model of social audit in the state of Sikkim which is not widely discussed in literature is the focus of the study. This research attempts to study the efficacy of Social audit as a tool to bring Transparency, Accountability and Participation in MGNREGA taking the case of Sikkim.

More...

Corporate Financing in Romania

Author(s): Sebastian Bodu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Two are the external sources of corporate financing: equity and debt. These are exclusive (other sources of external financing no longer exist, but only variants thereof) and can be combined in turn. Capital with which a company is financed is its engine, no company being able to operate without capital regardless of the industry. Funding may be private or public. Private financing is provided through banking credit or equity contracted through direct negotiation with investors. Each mode of financing has advantages and disadvantages, not only in terms of financial costs (direct) but also indirect costs. Internal funding source is self-financing, i.e. reinvesting the company's profit instead of distributing it in the form of dividends. Balancing the use of internal and external financing sources, as well as the share of an external source in relation to another external source, primarily depending on the cost of financing (direct or opportunity) is a difficult, important and complex decision. The more the company is and / or the more attractive for investors, the more varied the range of financing options and the cost structure that is heavily influenced by rating agencies. Conversely, a small company without too many development prospects will not have access to all available sources in the market and will have to confine itself to small bank loans. Corporate contributions can be in cash, in kind, in debt and in services. They constitute the common fund that the shareholders exploit under the umbrella of the legal personality of the company. From a legal point of view, contributions become property of the company (assets) and it dispose of them as it deems necessary by spending, selling or mortgaging. In order to be valid, the contributions must fulfill several conditions. In all cases, the contributions must be real, fictitious inputs being forbidden. Apart from the reality of contributions, they must also be useful to company. In exchange for its contribution, the shareholder receives shares incorporating rights, which for a shareholder or future shareholder interested in his investment is the share of legal capital or, in other words, the share of the legal capital represented by his shares in the company. The second form of external financing, credit, may be private or institutionalized. Institutionalized credit is an interest-rate loan granted by a financial institution such as a bank, an investment fund, or a non-banking financial institution. In practice, funders put conditions for the funded company in relation to its shareholders, managers or assets, so as to avoid changes that would risk reimbursing the credit. The statute of limitation of the right to request repayment of the credit is within three years of the maturity date, and in the case of successive loans between the same parties, a separate term will begin to run for each loan. The repayment of credits granted in a given currency must be made in the same currency, regardless of the increase or decrease of the value of the respective currency against other currencies (the monetary denomination rule). To hedge foreign exchange risk, some companies resort to hedging through options on the foreign exchange market in the form of risk transactions in the opposite direction to that assumed by the contracted loan.

More...

What Makes a State Swing?

Author(s): Jonathan L. Clayton / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This report provides a methodology for defining and identifying true swing states in US presidential elections. After these states are identified by cross-tabulating high-performing states under the categories of battleground (states with the lowest margin between competitors), shift (states with the highest frequency of flipping from Republican to Democrat or vice-versa), and bellwether (the accuracy of a state to vote concurrently with the winner of the electoral college) during the US presidential elections from 1992 through 2016, an examination is completed to determine any similarities among these states in terms of median household income, population density, racial demographics, political party affiliation, voter behavior, and voter registration. These states are then compared to national averages to determine if the “average swing state” can be identified. Hecht and Schultz utilize a four-point method for identifying swing states (2015). This report attempts to utilize less arbitrary data, using a three-point methodology: battleground, shift, and bellwether.

More...

The Impact of Internal Communication in Organizational Management

Author(s): Maria Daniela Pipaş,Camelia Lucia Bakri / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Modern society represents a set of organizations. Almost all aspects of human existence are regulated, assisted or facilitated by an organization or another. Almost all people are part of the structures and processes of a type of organization, be it family, school, government, church, business or club. According to a simple definition, an organization is the combination and use of human, financial and material resources to achieve objectives. The organization is a social system composed of activities that brings together human and material resources, through which the objective for which it was created is achieved: products, works, services appropriate to social order. The organization is not defined only by its products and/or services, but also by the manager's ability to communicate with employees and the management team. All activities related to the organization are mediated by communication, so communication is a key element in the organizational processes, interfering with their success or failure. Communication is one of the most important organizational activities. Fundamentally, human relations grow out of communication and the functioning and survival of organizations is based on effective relationships between individuals and groups. Moreover, organizational capabilities are adopted and developed through intense social and communication processes. Internal communication, seen as a set of procedures and organized communication exchanges, participates in the construction of numerous definitions of problematic situations underlying the understanding and behavior of employees. Every organization has its moments of glory and decay in functional and communicative terms. It is very easy to go from an effective communication situation to a poor one, given the multitude of factors that can disrupt the flow of information and communication of a group or of an organization. Like any activity that takes place within the organization, communication must have a planned dimension; it cannot be done randomly, but requires a plan, a strategy, rules and procedures. In other words, communication must be institutionalized and incorporated into the strategic plan of the organization. Communication is specific to each organization; each organization has its own communication system based on the profile, size and especially the organizational culture.

More...

Political Economy of Connectivity: China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Author(s): Tolga Demiryol / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

There are ongoing academic and public debates on the nature of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While some observers hold that the BRI is primarily about economic development, others see it as a grand strategy of a great power with hegemonic aspirations. Is the BRI about development or geopolitics? This article adopts a political economy approach to bridge the developmental and geopolitical perspectives. The main argument is that the BRI signifies an attempt by the Chinese state to manage internal problems of capital accumulation by externalizing development on a trans-regional scale. The problems of capital accumulation under China’s export-oriented growth model indicates a particular form of spatial fix via the BRI, which goes beyond the exportation of excess industrial/financial capacity and seeks to transform external productive spaces through inter-regional connectivity. The process of constructing new nodes and infrastructures of capital creates space for new forms of asymmetric interdependencies, rendering it prohibitively costly for most BRI partners to exit China-centered networks. To the extent that such asymmetric dependencies can be leveraged for strategic purposes, the BRI serves a geopolitical as well as a developmental function.

More...

The Legal Extent of Malpractice in Romania. A Glance

Author(s): Crina-Maria Hristodorof / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This article aims to focus on the phenomenon of malpractice with its causes, conditions and causality, as well as how it is regulated from the legal perspective. The aim is to take into account the causes that can lead to errors occurring in the exercise of a profession, to deepen the idea of accountability of the professional causing harm, to establish possible solutions for avoiding malpractice events. In the first instance, the concept of malpractice was analyzed and subsequently, following the documentary analysis, taking into consideration that the casuistic and specialized literature are focused on the medical field, this route was taken by focusing on this sphere of interest. It is a reality that, not long ago, the malpractice lawsuits were practically non-existent, but with the passage of time their number has most definitely increased. Thus, a first question to which I wanted to find an answer is: What are the underlying causes of this phenomenon? The specialized literature refers especially to the medical field, but not so much in terms of how physicians are exercising their profession, but, rather being focused on the legal and judicial aspects of the matter, namely the ways of recovering the damages, and how the guilty professional shall be held accountable for his harmful actions.

More...

New Concerns in International Business: The Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Policies

Author(s): Maria Esther Kim / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In recent years, the debate over the application of non-tariff measures for environmental protection as a new form of disguised restriction on international trade by developed countries has become increasingly important. While tariffs have decreased over the decades, the increasing application of environmental-related requirements are a new factor that affects international business. These new requirements not only modify companies’ decision-making processes at national and international levels, but also within the firm. Hence, this paper proposes to examine the application of such measures by the European Union in the tea, coffee and yerba mate market, and their impact on exporting Latin-American firms for the 1995-2015 period and analyze whether there has been an improvement in their productive quality. For this aim, through a qualitative methodology, we carried out interviews with specialists of the field and surveys to Latin-American exporting companies. In this way, this analysis discusses with theorists if the application of measures related to environmental sustainability leads to ameliorate firms’ productive quality. Among the results, it is highlighted the fact that non-tariff measures—in particular sanitary and phytosanitary ones—have been used as trade barriers. However, complying with them allows exporting companies to develop environmental performance strategies and ultimately, it leads to a positive growth in their productive quality in the medium-long term.

More...

The Ambassador Program: A Framework for Recruiting and Engaging Flexible Volunteers

Author(s): Ike Obi,Alexus Jimson-Miller,Michaela Hahn,Darik Hall / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Volunteers are vital to the mission of nonprofit organizations. However, most nonprofits are struggling to recruit the volunteers they need to support their goals. Due to this difficulty, many of these organizations are seeking innovative techniques for recruiting and engaging volunteers in ways that are enriching, meaningful and productive. On the basis of this need we surveyed 55 participants, interviewed 10 users and conducted literature reviews on 30 materials to uncover insights into the best method for recruiting and retaining volunteers. Findings from the study revealed that most of the respondents were interested in a flexible and open-choice approach to volunteering. It also showed that the respondents would like to participate with their friends and that they wouldn't mind a reward for helping out such organizations. Based on these findings, we developed a flexible volunteer framework that could be implemented by nonprofits or any other organization that needs help recruiting volunteers. This paper should provide a clear understanding of the process, its benefits, and how to incorporate them into their current volunteer, recruitment, and engagement strategies.

More...

Aggressions Committed with White Weapons and Injuries Caused

Author(s): Ovidiu Andrei Hamburda / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Violence is one of the negative signs of our time, without age, gender and continent limitations, combining peace partnerships with bloody crimes. Aggressions using white weapons are more frequent than other vulnerable agents due to accessibility to these objects. Guns such as the knife, the ax were originally designed as tools; they were the first tools of humanity. But with time, they became weapons. There is a difference of the “weapon”, a distinction that lies not in the material from which they are made but in the way humans use them. Thus, by using them as a “weapon”, the rights of the human being are violated which implies liability in accordance with the law. White weapons are part of the category of mechanical traumatic agents, acting on the skin they always affect its anatomical integrity. Classification of white weapons is important because the lesions have characteristic shapes depending on the properties of the white weapon that created them.

More...

What's in a Name? The Semantics of Migration and Its Policy Implications

Author(s): Nguh Nwei Asanga Fon / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Across the globe, migration has emerged as one of the most daunting challenges bedeviling globalization. The second decade of the 21st Century has been marked by issues on how to manage influx of migrants on both sides of the Atlantic (the European Migrant Crisis of 2015 and debates on ‘Migrant Caravan’ and border security in the US). A major borne of contention on migration is a war of words over its framing. The semantics of migration are meticulously exploited by rival politicians and political parties, policy actors, and other stakeholders to frame the issue, orient policy and mobilize support or acquiescence to their cause (usually securitization versus accommodation). This paper probes into the discourse on migration with a focus on its framing by pro and anti-migration actors and stakeholders and how this has affected policy decisions and actions concerning the issue. Empirical cases of how migration was framed in Europe and the US were examined with a greater tendency towards securitization. Recommendations were also advanced on how to resolved the migration stalemate with the de-politicization of the term as a starting point.

More...

Fight against Crime - Criminological Perspective

Author(s): Tiberiu Viorel Popescu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The fight against crime aims to prevent the impact on social values. This preventive approach must be based on the principle of legality and should be carried out on the basis of pre-established procedures. At present, criminality has a diverse typology that implies not only a permanent adaptation and diversification of procedures, but also a rigorous definition that must reflect as accurately as possible the hypothesis, disposition and sanction for each type of crime. From a criminological perspective, a series of concepts such as high crime, organized crime, terrorism, drug trafficking, or trafficking in human beings can easily highlight defective definitions. However, there are a number of concepts and philosophies surrounding these types of crime. We propose a review of how crime is defined in order to assess to what extent the identified operational definitions can or must imperatively be improved.

More...

Historical Unemployment Rate and External Trade in Boyaca 2004-2016

Author(s): John Jairo Martínez Álvarez / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Through the historical study of numbers, it will be known how employment, in general, and public employment, in particular, has been suffering a detriment over the years. Likewise, by means of comparative tables, it will be reflected how the department of Boyacá, in Colombia, has been losing ground in the export field, generating lag in the economic activity and a higher unemployment rate, which converges in a low competitiveness index in the country. The economy is nourished by numbers because its strict use allows identifying the magnitude of the economic problems and reduces the uncertainty in decision-making. For which a set of indicators will be observed, such as unemployment and external trade in the department of Boyacá, which make it possible to design, to measure and to evaluate the policies performance for decision making.

More...

Some Aspects of Forensic Identification

Author(s): Lucia Cerasela Balan / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Forensic identification is a very important factor in the investigation of both civil and criminal investigations. The object of forensic identification is the whole of the objects, phenomena, qualities, time and space intervals, the physical attributes or psychic actions of the person. Almost all cases are directly linked to the person, and information about the appearance or appearance of a person is among the most important. Information about age, gender, ethnicity is provided by the unique and almost unique look that each person is endowed with. Available evidence about a person's physical appearance can always be associated with functional features such as voice, hair color, mimics, etc. The essential content of probation with the help of forensic identification is the detection, detachment of the object or person involved from an indeterminate totality of objects or potential persons. Of great importance are both the clothes and the personal objects that give a complete picture and help identify the person. Specialized persons have the duty to perform the identification activity.

More...