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This Note discusses efforts to defeat government censorship of the Internet. In the narrow meaning of that idea, this Note initially discusses technological efforts to circumvent government-imposed Internet firewalls; in the broader sense, it addresses the larger goal of inducing censoring governments to bring their firewalls down. Proposed U.S. legislation would provide U.S. government funding of censorship circumvention technology. This Note discusses why such funding is not a good approach. Absent larger international efforts, private action--within both the U.S. and censoring countries--has the best chance of bringing down government-run firewalls. This Note discusses how the U.S. government can best facilitate such private action through a two-pronged approach. The approach attempts to increase private circumvention efforts while decreasing U.S. corporate assistance in foreign governments' censoring. This Note argues that such an approach would result in the possibility of censoring governments bringing down their firewalls because of an increased demand for an uncensored Internet and sufficient government frustration in maintaining such censorship.

På grund af faktorer såsom befolkningsvækst og ændrede spisevaner i udviklingslandene samt stigende efterspørgsel efter bioenergi i de udviklede lande, stiger efterspørgslen efter landbrugsjord på verdensplan. Eftersom landbrugsjord er mere eller mindre fast, medfører dette stigende jord-værdier. Effekten af en stigende efterspørgsel efter jord i udviklingslande med meget landbrugsjord diskuteres hæftigt, og meningerne er delte. På den ene side foreslås det at dette kan medføre tiltrængte investeringer i landbruget i disse lande, hvilket vil medføre stigende produktivitet samt skabe jobs og højere indkomster i landbruget, med faldende fattigdom og general økonomisk udvikling som følge heraf. På den anden side kan det også medføre en neo-kolonial kamp om jord, hvor politisk og øknomomisk magtfulde aktører eksproprierer jord på bekostning af landbrugsbefolkningen, hvis levebrød afhænger af denne jord. For at undgå en sådan situation hvor magfulde eliter overtager store landområder, peges der i literaturen på vigtigheden af landbrugsbefolkningernes evne til, og mulighed for, at kræve deres ret i et institutionelt miljø karakteriseret ved transparens og veldefinerede ejendomsrettigheder. Sådanne omstændigheder er dog sjældne i mange udviklingslande, og der er ikke noget der peger i retning af at en stigende efterspørgsel efter jord skulle initiere sådanne fundamentale forandringer i det politisk-økonomiske miljø. Derudover foreslår en stor literatur indenfor politisk økonomi og natur ressourcer, at potentialet for store gevinster fra natur ressourcer i lande med svage institutioner, vil have tendens til at medføre konflikter og rent seeking. Ifølge denne literatur er effekten af høje afkast fra naturressourcer på rent seeking givet ved kombinationen af ressourcens karakteristika. Hvis værdien på jord ændrer sig fra lav (hvilket typisk har været antaget) til høj, ændrer kombinationen af karakteristika sig, og passer ikke længere ind i det nuværende analytiske framework. Med andre ord er kombinationen af karakteristika på høj-værdi jord fundamentalt anderledes end konventionelle høj-værdi ressourcer såsom olie og diamanter, og derfor udvikler denne afhandling et analytisk framework som kan bruges til at analysere effekterne af høj-værdi jord på rent seeking, og dermed på fordelingen af ressource renten fra landbruget. Dette framework gør det muligt systematisk at analysere de omstændigheder der afgør hvorvidt stigende værdi på jord hovedsagligt er til gavn for landbrugsbefolkningen eller en politisk-økonomisk elite. Derudover tages der højde for de bagvedliggende faktorer som afgør i hvor stort omfang bønderne er i stand til at opnå politisk magt og dermed kræve deres ret til en del af den kage som stigende værdi på jord medfører. Indenfor dette framework udvikles en makroøkonomisk og en mikroøkonomisk model, for at muliggøre en analyse på både makroøkonomisk og mikroøkonomisk niveau. Derudover udføres et case studie samt et cross-country empirisk studie, for at understøtte det foreslåede teoretiske framework. Baseret på disse studier finder jeg at interaktionen mellem den sociale diversitet blandt bønderne, den relative størrelse på gruppen af bønder, det politiske system samt størrelsen på værdi-stigningen på jord er afgørende for fordelingen af ressource renter fra landbruget. Mere specifikt opnår bønderne en større andel når de udgør en stor og homogen gruppe i et land med politisk konkurrence og stabilitet. Hvis magtfordelingen mellem bønderne og den politisk-økonomiske elite er meget lige kan dette dog have negative velfærds effekter, fordi konkurrencen om renterne vil være hård, hvilket fører til at begge grupper bruger flere ressourcer på at opnå politisk magt. En vigtig implikation af dette er, at når lande med svage institutioner og en heterogen gruppe af bønder oplever stigende værdi på jord, vil introduktionen af mere demokratiske institutioner ikke være den bedste løsning, da dette medfører en hårdrere konkurrence om renterne. ; Due to factors such as population growth and changing diets in the developing world as well as increasing demand for bioenergy in the developed world, the demand for agricultural land is on the rise. Since land is more or less fixed, this implies increasing value of land. The effect of increasing demand for agricultural land on land-abundant developing countries is highly debated, and opinions are divided. On the one hand, some propose that it may induce much needed investments in agriculture in these countries, thereby increasing productivity and creating rural employment and higher rural incomes, with poverty reductions and general economic development as the ultimate outcome. On the other hand it could also induce a neo-colonial scramble for land, where politically and economically powerful actors appropriate land at the expense of rural populations, whose livelihoods depend on this land. To avoid such an outcome of land grabbing by powerful elites, policy recommendations presented in the literature point towards the importance of the ability and potential for rural populations to claim their rights, in an institutional environment characterized by transparency and well-defined property rights. However, such circumstances are rare in many land-abundant developing countries, and there are no good reasons why increasing demand for land should spark such fundamental changes in the political-institutional environment. In addition, a large literature on political economy and natural resources suggests that in countries where institutions are weak, the potential for large gains from natural resources tends to induce conflict and rent seeking. According to this literature, the effect of a natural resource on rent seeking is given by the combination of characteristics of the resource. However, if the value of land changes from low (which has been the assumption so far) to high, the combination of characteristics changes, and no longer applies to the existing analytical framework. In other words, high-value land is fundamentally different from conventional high-value natural resources such as oil and diamonds, and therefore this thesis develops an analytical framework for the analysis of the effects of high-value land on rent seeking, and hence on the distribution of resource rents from agriculture. This framework enables a systematic analysis of the circumstances that determine whether increasing land values will mainly benefit the rural populations or the political-economic elites. In addition, it takes into account the deeper determinants of the extent to which farmers are able to obtain political power, and thereby claim their rights to a share of the benefits from increased value of land. Within this framework, a macroeconomic and a microeconomic model is developed to enable the analysis of the effects at both levels. Moreover, a case study and a cross country empirical study is carried out to support the proposed theoretical framework. The findings in this thesis suggest that the interaction between the social diversity of the farmers, the relative size of the group of farmers, the political system and the size of the increase in land value, determines the distribution of resource rents from agriculture. More specifically, farmers tend to obtain larger shares when they are a large and homogeneous group in a country with political competition and stability. However, if the power distribution between the farmers and the political-economic elite is highly equal, this may have negative welfare effects, because the competition for rents will be very high, and hence a large amount of resources will be wasted by both groups on political power. An important implication of this is that in weakly institutionalized countries with a diverse farmer group, introducing more democratic institutions when facing increasing rents from agriculture, may not be the first best solution, because it increases the competition for rents.

This paper proposes an approach to track US1 trillion of emerging market government debt held byforeign investors in local and hard currency, based on a similar approach that was used for advancedeconomies (Arslanalp and Tsuda, 2012). The estimates are constructed on a quarterly basis from 2004to mid-2013 and are available along with the paper in an online dataset. We estimate that about half atrillion dollars of foreign flows went into emerging market government debt during 2010â??12, mostlycoming from foreign asset managers. Foreign central bank holdings have risen as

Globalization challenges Muslims and Christians in developing religious education in Indonesia. The problem of globalization has attacked the teaching of spiritual values. The output of religious education has recently shifted from the primary goal of education because of a disoriented religious education system. Intolerance, corruption, human rights violations, and all forms of moral decay that the Indonesian people are currently facing are manifestations of Indonesia's lack of religious education. This study uses library research with a comparative study design to analyze and solve problems of religious education from both an Islamic and Christian perspective. This study finally resulted in developing religious education in the global era of Indonesia; cooperation between the government and religious education is needed, it is necessary to integrate spiritual values, and the positive values of globalization, interfaith and interfaith dialogue must be included as part of religious education. Religious education institutions must be separated from commercialization, and the development of cooperation between Christian and Islamic educational institutions must be implemented immediately.