Shadow Economy & Corruption : Invisible Hands: August 2007

Thursday 30 August 2007

Iran socio-economy by The Economist

Tuesday 21 August 2007

Annual Oil Market Chronology

Useful for users who want to do some research about oil prices and affecting events on oil markets: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/AOMC/Overview.html

What to Do about Teheran's Money-Laundering

As the US presses for a stronger UN Security Council resolution on Iran, the Treasury Department continues its international outreach to highlight Iran's illicit financial activity. While the Treasury-led campaign has achieved considerable success, this initiative would be far more effective if the US was not the only voice decrying the risk that Iran's deceptive practices pose to the global financial system.

Read This article here: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC06.php?CID=1078

World Drug Report - Global Illicit Drug Trends

You can access the World Drug Reports from here: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/world_drug_report_index.html

Time Series data for Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)

You can find time series data of CPI index compiled by Transparency International here:
http://www.icgg.org/corruption.cpi_2006.html

Keep in mind, according to compilers of this index, it is recommended to use this index in cross-country analysis not time series or panel analysis.

The Economics of Corruption 2007

From Oct. 7-13 2007 the annual program "The Economics of Corruption - A University Training on Good Governance and Reform", headed by Prof. Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff, will take place at the University of Passau, Germany. The program is directed towards anti-corruption policymakers and practitioners, as well as towards graduate and post-graduate students and faculty in the social sciences. For further information please click http://www.icgg.org/

Friday 17 August 2007

Glossary of Job Market Terms

Academia: Academia was a public garden near Athens where Plato lectured his pupils. The school became known as the Academy and the teachers and pupils as Academics. Today colleges and universities are referred to collectively as academia or the academy, and professors are known as academics.
Adjunct Professor: A person whose primary employment is outside the university but is hired to teach specific courses for a limited period of time. One of several non-tenure-track academic appointments; for others, see instructor, lecturer, and visiting professor.

Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA): The American Economic Association (AEA) holds annual meetings jointly with other social science associations, e.g. the American Finance Association (AFA), the Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA), and the Association for Social Economics (ASE). These meetings are collectively called the Meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations. The vast majority of your initial academic job interviews will likely take place at the ASSA meetings, held in early January.

American Economic Association (AEA): The professional organization of economists. The annual meeting is held in early January as part of the Meeting of the ASSA. The AEA website is http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/index.htm Student membership in the AEA is available at bargain rates and includes membership to three journals: the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and the Journal of Economic Literature.

Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM): The professional organization of academics working in the area of public policy. They hold their annual meeting at the end of October or beginning of November. The APPAM website http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~appamwww/ contains job listings. You may post your CV on the APPAM website. Interviews at the APPAM meetings tend to be less formal than those at the ASSA meetings.

Assistant Professor: The lowest of three tenure-track or tenured faculty positions. Your first tenure-track job will almost certainly be at the assistant professor level. Progress of assistant professors toward tenure is generally assessed in a third-year review; failure to make acceptable progress can result in non-renewal of the employment contract. In the vast majority of cases, after the third-year review the assistant professor is told to publish more and work harder and is granted a second three-year contract. Assistant professors in most departments have a six-year review at which they are considered for promotion to associate professor. The salaries of assistant professors are driven by three things: 1) the salary at which one was hired, which is determined largely by the market-clearing salary for that year and the presence of alternative offers; 2) annual raises, which are usually a few percent per year; and 3) raises in response to outside offers of employment. Assistant professors may not be allowed to vote on certain issues during faculty meetings, such as a tenure review; university policy varies.

Associate Professor: the middle rank of the three tenure-track or tenured faculty positions. Generally one is promoted to associate professor after spending several years as an assistant professor and passing muster in a review. There are associate professors with tenure and associate professors without tenure; university policy varies. The length of time one must serve as an associate professor before being considered for professor may be left vague.

Campus Visit: see Flyout.
Carnegie Classification: A typology of American colleges and universities developed by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. Institutions are divided into categories such as Extensive Doctoral/Research Universities, Intensive Doctoral/Research Universities, Masters Colleges and Universities, Baccalaureate Colleges, Associates Colleges, Specialized Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. Universities may tout their status as an Extensive Doctoral Research University as evidence of the university’s commitment to graduate education.

Chair: 1) Abbreviation for chairperson, as in “She is the chair of the economics department,” or “She is the chair of the search committee.” 2) Abbreviation for endowed chair, as in “She has a chair in the economics department.”

Committee Work: Departmental administrative service. Different types of committees on which you may be asked to serve include: search (for new faculty), admissions, curriculum, and benefits. Departments should try to minimize the amount of committee work given to assistant professors so that they have a better chance of publishing the research necessary to pass the tenure review.

Cover letter: a letter sent as part of your application for a job. The letter should politely request an interview, list the reasons that you believe that you are a good match for that particular job, list enclosures (such as research papers and your curriculum vitae) and provide your contact information.

Curriculum Vitae: In Latin, it means “course of life” but in the context of the job market refers to a resume tailored for academic jobs. It should list your contact information and details about your education, employment, publications, research experience, and teaching experience. The term curriculum vitae is often abbreviated either CV or c.v. There is a widespread but mistaken notion that vita is singular and vitae is plural; in fact, vitae is correct for both the singular and plural.
Dead Wood: slang for faculty who do not contribute to the productivity of the department but who cannot be easily removed because they have tenure. Often a relative term used to refer to colleagues who have been in the department ten years longer than the speaker.

Dean: a university administrator with power over department chairs but lesser in rank than the provost. Deans often have control over the number of lines assigned to each department and can veto the tenure recommendations of departments.

Dual Job Search: a search that is conducted jointly by two people, e.g. a husband and wife. Dual job searches can be especially difficult and stressful, which is why they are called the two-body problem.

Emeritus: an honorary title awarded to retired faculty. Typically emeriti are given an office, library privileges, and the right to participate in commencement but do not remain voting members of the faculty.

Endowed Chair: A faculty line that has been endowed with outside funds that provide for salary and often research support. Given these extra perks, endowed chairs are generally awarded to particularly distinguished faculty and are used to recruit prestigious senior faculty from other universities. Endowed chairs are often named for the source of their endowment; for this reason you may see senior faculty referred to as, e.g., the Jane Doe Distinguished Professor in Economics.

Flyout: an invitation to visit the campus, meet faculty, and give a job talk. Generally occur after the initial interviews at the ASSA meetings and only the top few candidates are initially invited. Also called a campus visit.

Hard Money: A salary offer is hard money if it is guaranteed even if the faculty member never receives any outside grants. This is in contrast to soft money. Most offers in economics departments are hard money.

Instructor: Instructor is one of several non-tenure-track academic appointments; for others, see adjunct professor, lecturer, and visiting professor. Often instructor refers to someone who teaches a class but does not have a Ph.D.; for example, a graduate student.

Job Openings for Economists (JOE): The primary list of academic job openings in economics and related fields. A publication of the AEA and the economics department at the University of Texas at Austin, JOE is published every month except January and July. Each issue is released around the fifth day of the month. The website is located at: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/joe/

Job Talk: A formal 60- or 90-minute presentation of your research for the purpose of allowing prospective employers to gauge several things: the quality of your research, your communication skills, and your ability to think on your feet. The atmosphere of a job talk varies greatly depending on the department’s culture; faculty may sit attentively to hear an entire presentation before asking polite questions or may interrupt immediately with aggressive challenges.

Joint Appointment: the state of having appointments in multiple academic units of a college or university. If you are offered a joint appointment, ascertain which department is the primary appointment (i.e. in which department is the line) -- that department would have the most influence over your reviews. For an appointment joint between units with different objective functions, the appointee may find it difficult to satisfy all the stakeholders.

Junior Faculty: faculty without tenure; i.e. assistant professors and untenured associate professors.

Land-Grant Institution: a college or university designated by its state legislature or the U. S. Congress to receive funds under one of three pieces of legislation designed to increase the efficiency of agricultural production and educate farmers and rural populations. Those three such pieces of legislation are:
1) The Morrill Act of 1862, which gave 17.5 million acres of federal land to the states. Most of this land was sold by the states and the income was used to support the land-grant colleges and universities.
2) The Morrill Act of 1890, which required states that maintained separate colleges for blacks and whites to equitably divide the funds received under the 1862 Act; this caused the creation of 16 black land-grant colleges in the southern U. S.
3) The National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching Act of 1994, which conferred land-grant status on 29 Native American colleges.
The mission of land grant institutions was expanded by two pieces of legislation: the Hatch Act of 1887, which supports agricultural experiment stations, and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which supports extension efforts in agriculture and home economics. There are currently 105 land-grant institutions. For some people, the term “land-grant institution” has less than positive connotations; the reason is that many states used the land-grant legislation to start new agricultural universities that were not as strong in classical education as older universities. Today the land-grant institutions are diverse, including institutions with highly ranked economics departments, such as University of California-Berkeley, Cornell, University of Maryland-College Park, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lecturer: Lecturers generally teach significantly more, but are paid significantly less, than assistant professors. Lecturers tend to have little job security; they are not tenure-track, their contracts are generally for a single year, renewable at the discretion of the department, and they rarely are promoted to assistant professor. Whereas instructor refers to someone teaching a class who does not hold a Ph.D., the term lecturer is usually reserved for a teacher with a Ph.D. Lecturer is one of several non-tenure-track academic appointments; for others, see adjunct professor, instructor, and visiting professor.

Postdoc: abbreviation for postdoctoral fellowship or a person on such a fellowship. Postdoctoral fellowships support one to three years of full-time research after one has completed one’s dissertation. In the life sciences almost all Ph.D.s complete postdocs before starting as assistant professors. Fewer Ph.D.s in economics than in the life sciences do postdocs but the practice has become more common over time. A postdoc is a useful way of getting your research agenda underway before teaching. Salary for postdocs is usually significantly less than that for assistant professors. Some postdocs are formal programs sponsored year after year by organizations (e.g. the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development) whereas others are ad hoc -- for example, a professor might hire a postdoc to help with a specific project. Some postdocs fund you to do your own research whereas others make you a full-time worker on a project of the employer’s design.

Professor: the highest-ranking of the three tenure-track or tenured faculty positions; to distinguish them from assistant and associate professors, they are sometimes called full professors.

Visiting Professor: a non-tenure-track academic position, usually for a single year, often by academics who have tenure or are tenure-track at another university. Many faculty serve as visiting professors while on sabbatical.

Tuesday 14 August 2007

Some photo from Erfurt in Germany

Know Germany better-part 2

Ordnung: Rules and Regulations
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
The sense of Ordnung is not limited only to the Germans’
material domain, it also strongly influences their social world.
Germany is a society structured by a large number of explicit
rules and regulations. One of the first encounters foreign
residents have with the regulatory nature of German society
is the Einwohnermeldeamt (resident’s registration office). All
residents of Germany are required to register with their local
Einwohnermeldeamt and to notify that office whenever they
move or change their place of residence. German bureaucracy
can be irritating or confusing, if not downright intimidating,
especially when one is waiting in long lines, filling
out innumerable forms, or dealing with unfriendly civil servants.
The good news is that while it is time-consuming in
the beginning, at least it generally works fairly well. Don’t
forget that Germany is one of the more densely populated
countries in the world, and its bureaucracy helps keep everything
running smoothly.

Travel to German villages or small towns and you will be
struck by how picturesque they appear. All of the houses are of
a similar style and they present a pretty sight: roofs are covered
with similar tiles and the colors harmonize. This is generally
no coincidence but rather the result of a housing code that
goes into great detail about how a house may be designed,
painted, and equipped. While such detailed regulations often
seem too confining to most Americans, the Germans see it as
a way of ensuring a society that is concerned not only with
individual rights but also with the common good. As we will
see later, this notion of the common good and the social
contract is an important part of the German mindset.

The rules that regulate Germany extend far beyond the
many official laws and requirements. Unwritten codes of
manners and customs also structure German social life. Some
of these are detailed and quite explicit. Others are less so and
are simply things that “one doesn’t do.” For example, there is
even a protocol for hostess gifts. Because Germans are very protective of their homes and private lives, being invited
into someone’s home for dinner is an honor. But once invited,
there are many rules about how to behave.1 For instance,
it is customary to bring the hostess a bouquet of
flowers. Germans love flowers and florist shops are abundant.
But not just any flowers will do. Red roses symbolize romance,
so be careful to whom you give them. And white
chrysanthemums and carnations are generally reserved for
funerals. Also, it is proper to give bouquets consisting of an
odd number of flowers. No one seems to really know why this
custom is important. Some Germans say it’s an old superstition;
others justify the custom by claiming an odd number
makes for a more aesthetic arrangement.

Be that as it may, Germans feel comfortable with these
kinds of rules, which give them a feeling of security as well as
a strong sense of what is right and wrong. This sense of right
and wrong is often expressed openly and emotionally by
Germans, especially when they think someone has done something
wrong. This can seem overly judgmental or rude at
times, but Germans prefer structure to an ambiguous situation
where no one seems to know the correct way to proceed.

At times it appears Germans have a rule for everything—
and they do, almost! This is an aspect of what Germans call
Gründlichkeit, or thoroughness. Germans are great believers
in doing things thoroughly, and this has led to their reputation
as perfectionists. If they are going to do something, they
spare little expense or time in doing it well. And if they can’t
do it thoroughly, they are inclined not to do it at all. As a
German carpenter once told me, “If I don’t have the time to
do it right in the first place, when will I get the time to fix
it later?” It is this logic which underlies the reputation Germany
has for producing such high-quality automobiles and
other products. Gründlichkeit is also an important component
in the decision-making processes in traditional German
organizations.and is often a source of misunderstanding
in German and American joint ventures.

For Americans with their strong sense of individualism
and belief in personal freedom, the German devotion to order
can seem obsessive and highly constricting, even invasive,
but there is little getting around the varied laws and regulations,
because they are generally strictly enforced. At times
they irritate the Germans, too. I remember the indignation of
a German friend who had gotten a ticket for not locking her
car when she parked it. When she complained to the police,
she was told the rule was in place to discourage auto theft.
German rules can all be rationally justified, and German
officials will quickly do just that.

Know Germany better! Major German Cultural Themes

This material has been extracted from the book entitled: Germany UNRAVELING AN ENIGMA (by GREG NEES)
*********************************************************************
Major German Cultural Themes

In order to communicate successfully with people from other
cultures, it is important to understand how they interpret a
given situation and what their intentions are. To do this we
must have some sense of their values, norms, and beliefs,
which interact in a complex way to influence all behavior
and communication. For the purpose of brevity I will call
these complex interactions “cultural themes,” because they
run through a culture as a theme does through a book or a
piece of music. Only when you understand the central cultural
themes of any given culture can you accurately interpret
and understand its inhabitants’ behavior, communication,
and way of life. If you don’t understand their cultural themes,
you will necessarily project your own values, norms, and
beliefs onto them, and this projection is one of the principal
causes of intercultural misunderstanding. If, however, you
begin to learn the cultural themes, what before had seemed
illogical or wrong behavior will take on a different meaning.
This chapter offers insights into seven central German
cultural themes in an attempt to explain Germans’ behavior
and their way of life. By understanding how Germans understand
the world, you will increase your chances of communicating
more successfully with them.

Ordnung Muß Sein

Ordnung muß sein (there must be order) is a well-known and
commonly heard saying in Germany; indeed one of the first
things that strike visitors to Germany is its cleanliness and
orderliness. Ordnung is a theme that permeates German society.
Go into a German house and it will be very clean, with
everything in its proper place. Walk into a mechanic’s garage
or carpenter’s workshop and the tools and equipment will be
well maintained and stored neatly. In German offices you
will notice large numbers of well-kept files and special notebooks
that are referred to as Ordner. The old saying “a place
for everything and everything in its place” might well have
originated in Germany. It is certainly a premise on which
Germans like to operate.

The desire for Ordnung is also related to Germans’ strict
adherence to schedules and deadlines. Punctuality is a virtue,
and lateness is seen as sloppiness or a sign of disrespect. Being
late upsets the general Ordnung. Perhaps the country’s railways
offer the best illustration of German punctuality. The
trains of the German railway system are famous for their
punctuality. It is a standard joke that you can set your watch
by a train’s arrival and departure times. Germany has one of
the world’s best public transportation systems, and a major
part of its success stems from the German sense of Ordnung.
This system, which links almost every village, town, and city
in Germany, is a striking example of the German ability to
effectively organize and coordinate complex processes. Like
the transportation system, the rest of the country’s infrastructure
is also well organized for the same reason.

One visible result of this well-regulated society is the condition
of German autos.Germans take their cars very seriously indeed. It
is rare to see a car in Germany that is not well kept and in
excellent mechanical condition. Germans take good care of
all their property, but their cars are especially important
because, more so than in the United States, they are a status symbol as well as a means of transportation. The fact that
they are in such good mechanical condition is in large part
due to the Technischer Überwachungsverein, or TÜV. This
agency inspects all vehicles licensed in the country and is
well known for the rigor with which its inspectors go about
their job. A horn that doesn’t work, broken turn signals, or
rust in a crucial spot are all reasons for a car to fail this strict
inspection. Inspections at a TÜV center are a microcosm of
German orderliness. These inspection stations are spic-andspan,
brightly lit, and operated by inspectors whose uniforms
would be clean enough to be seen in a doctor’s office. While
administrators take care of the paperwork in a brisk, matterof-
fact way, the cars move through a series of checkpoints,
where they are thoroughly inspected. I can well remember
the feeling of apprehension in my stomach as I watched an
inspector walking underneath my elevated car with a bright
light and very large screwdriver. He was intent on finding
any spot where rust might have weakened the car, and he did
this by thrusting the screwdriver with resounding force into
each and every section of the chassis and underbody. Luckily
for me, all rusted areas had been fixed by welding heavy
sheets of metal over them, or my car would have been one of
the many that the TÜV pulled out of circulation.

Germans claim such rigor is necessary because of the large
number of autos, especially on the Autobahn, where there is
often no speed limit and where they put their vehicles through
their paces. This can be unnerving to Americans not used to
aggressive drivers who often come racing up from behind at
over 120 miles per hour while blinking their headlights to
warn you out of their way. And as might be expected, German
drivers know each and every traffic rule and regulation
by heart—the result of strict licensing exams and extensive
and mandatory driver education programs typically costing
more than $1,000—and they expect you to do the same.
Forewarned is forearmed: defensive driving is still a foreign
concept in Germany.

*************************++ NEXT POST . Ordnung: Rules and Regulations++++++++

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