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The paper analyzes a very stylized model of crises and demonstrates how the degree of strategic complementarity in the actions of investors is a critical determinant of fragility. It is shown how the balance sheet composition of a financial intermediary, parameters of the information structure (precisions of public and private information), and the level of stress indicators in the market impinge on the degree of strategic complementarity. The model distinguishes between solvency and liquidity risk and characterizes them. Both a solvency (leverage) and a liquidity ratio are required to control the probabilities of insolvency and illiquidity. It is found that in a more competitive environment (with higher return on short-term debt) the solvency requirement has to be strengthened, and in an environment where the fire sales penalty is higher and fund managers are more conservative the liquidity requirement has to be strengthened while the solvency one relaxed. Higher disclosure or introducing a derivatives market may backfire, aggravating fragility (in particular when the asset side of a financial intermediary is opaque) and, correspondingly, liquidity requirements should be tightened. The model is applied to interpret the 2007 run on SIV and ABCP conduits.

Intro -- INTRODUCTION -- I ORIGINS OF DEMOCRACY -- 1 "The fragile construction of Democracy in Ancient Greece and the search for order in modern democratic theory" -- II TRANSITIONS -- 2 "Typology of Transitions" -- 3 "The Public Administration and the Civil Service during the Spanish political transition" -- 4 "Unfinished transitions, structural reforms, and institutional uncertainties: the Latin American case" -- 5 "The transition-annexation of the German Democratic Republic" -- 6 "The strategic adaptation of successor parties during the democratic transition in Eastern Europe" -- 7 "Paradoxes and challenges of the 'Arab Spring'" -- 8 "Democracy and Islamism in Arab Political Transitions" -- III THE FRAGILITY OF DEMOCRACY -- 9 "The challenges of mass democracy. Deliberative democracy and political transition" -- 10 "The current challenges of politics in Latin America".

After the financial crisis of 2007/2008 academics and policymakers have turned their attention to how private debt can affect, significantly, the economic performance of a country. In the period of the "Great Moderation", the increasing level of income inequality, together with structural transformations, has created an environment where a large portion of the private sector was more prone to rely on bank credit in order to finance its expenditure. While borrowing can have a first expansionary impact, because of the increase in the purchasing power of the borrowers, the increase in the stock of debt in the "medium-term" can have different negative effects. Debt repayment transfers resources to "high propensity to spend" agents (borrowers) to "low propensity to spend" agents (lenders). The impact of this income transfer can have a negative impact on final expenditure and, thus, on GDP. The increase in the stock of debt leads to an increase of the fragility of the household sector because of its increase in the vulnerability to different kind of shocks such as: an increase of the interest rates, a sudden decrease of the disposable income, a collapse of the assets used as collateral, and to possible changes of the attitudes of the lenders. Starting from this, we developed three different theoretical models in order to describe the impact of an expansion of household debt, in an environment of high-income inequality.

The relevancy of Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH) in the current (and still unfolding) crisis has been clearly acknowledged by both economists and regulators. While most papers focus on discussing to what extent the FIH or Minsky's Big Bank/Big Government interpretation is appropriate to explain and sort out the crisis, some authors have also emphasized the need to consider the institutional foundations of Minsky's work (Whalen 2007, Wray 2008, Dimsky 2010). The importance of institutions within the FIH was strongly emphasized by Minsky himself, who assigned them the function of constraining the development of financial fragility. Yet only limited literature has focused on the institutional aspects on Minsky's FIH. The reason for this may be that they were mainly dealt with by Minsky in his latest papers, and they have remained, to some extent, incomplete, unclear, and even ambiguous. In our view, a synthesis of Minsky's proposals, along with a clarification and theoretical justification, remains to be done. Our objective in this paper is to contribute to this theoretical project. It leads us to propose that the notion of 'institutional fragility' can constitute a useful perspective to complement and justify the endogenous development of financial fragility within the FIH. Eventually, this view may contribute to the debate about international financial governance.

Peace processes hold the promise of re-starting non-violent efforts towards creating more equitable, resilient and developed societies. Yet, such processes are politically and psychologically complex, as well as high-risk. Many fail and such failure is harmful, as it reduces confidence and increases cynicism amongst parties to a conflict, citizens and international partners alike. International support can help a peace process to succeed but its nature and quality matter greatly. ?The Missing Piece? identifies seven recommendations to improve the quality of support that states and internationa

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"Sociology in Australia was battered and bruised by the injuries it sustained in the first half of the twentieth century. Most of these were self-inflicted. Through arrogance and overreach its early advocates ruined its chances, such that by the 1930s sociology had been rejected as a distinctive discipline by the only two universities which were prepared to give it a chance, Melbourne and Sydney. But since 1950 the discipline has fought its way back into the academic mainstream and now has a place in most of the nation's universities. This has not been easy; its fortunes seem forever mixed. It has never flourished in all states and territories at the same time and even while it is now on the rise in places like the University of Sydney it is relatively weak at some of its former strongholds in the second tier universities. Despite these mixed fortunes, the discipline has proved itself a survivor"--