This collection of academic articles in three languages, English, Russian, and Yiddish, covers in a comprehensive manner the history and culture of the Jewish societies in the Far East, geographically close, yet existing in very different political systems. The collection also analyses the mechanisms they developed for self-preservation, as well as the Jewish question in the Far-Eastern perspective, which, during the twentieth century, linked together the history of Russia, China, Japan, Poland, Germany, and other countries.

Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements have been gaining attention and relevance in recent years. For the countries around the Mediterranean basin the most important regional trade agreements involved are the Euro-Med Agreements, which influence their trade flows as they aim to promote regional integration. Based on the theory of applied welfare economics, this study analyses empirically the impacts of different policy scenarios on the agricultural sector of Mediterranean countries by using an extended and modified version of the trade policy model AGRISIM. The results show that trade...

This study is concerned with the function of the mirror metaphor in texts by three modern African-American authors. Wright s photo-text 12 Million Black Voices, Baldwin s early essays, and Ellison s novel Invisible Man go back to the time before the Civil Rights Movement when their authors envisioned social and cultural integration in the American melting pot rather than a separate literature of their own. In this context the mirror metaphor leads directly to the thematic core of each text in which issues of visibility, social recognition, the formation of self-images, and the...

Private equity investors offer one solution to medium-sized German family businesses facing succession by actively investing in these businesses through the managed process of a buyout or buyin. This study investigates the individual contributions of a wide range of factors impacting on the realization of a private equity backed succession buyout. Due to the explorative nature of the study the author makes use of a qualitative research design. Interaction theory and transaction cost economics are utilized to identify, analyze and systematize critical success factors. Next to behavioral and...

The author presents an empirical study on Vietnam s national competitiveness by using mixed methods research (qualitative and quantitative) with a combination of hard and soft data. The result shows that production resources (human, infrastructure, capital and natural resources) have played the most important role in improving competitiveness, productivity and living standard in Vietnam in the last two decades. The author also analyzed and evaluated the competitiveness of the Vietnamese economy, and pointed out the remaining weaknesses of competitiveness compared to the selected regional...

The German banking system is characterized by high fragmentation, low profitability and low foreign ownership. Main reason for this is its particular structure that can best be described as forced segmentation. This structure produces local banking markets. The book argues that local bank competition is not as pronounced as national concentration ratios predict and presents a bank pricing study which indicates that local banks, banks located in less densely populated areas and less productive banks tend to charge higher prices for retail bank services than banks that operate nationally. These...

Can science and religion coexist in harmony? Or is conflict inevitable? In this volume an international team of distinguished scholars addresses these enduring yet urgent questions by examining the lives of thirteen eminent twentieth-century scientists whose careers were marked by the interaction of science and religion: Rachel Carson, Charles A. Coulson, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Arthur S. Eddington, Albert Einstein, Ronald A. Fisher, Julian Huxley, Pascual Jordan, Robert A. Millikan, Ivan P. Pavlov, Michael I. Pupin, Abdus Salam, and Edward O. Wilson. The richly empirical studies show a...

This collection of essays explores the poetics and politics of US-American poetry's diverse and distinct investments in the imaginary space of 'the Orient'. Reading American poets - from Emily Dickinson to Frank Bidart, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Kimiko Hahn - the contributions show how tropes of the Orient have fabricated screens onto which we project matters by no means foreign, but very close to home. As we accompany American poets on their journeys East, we are bound to arrive in - culturally specific - territories of the West. Traversing cultural crossroads and rediscovering places as...

This book explores the role of constitutions in public finance, with a special focus on transitional context in Central and Eastern Europe. The main questions addressed are: How do formal constitutional provisions that matter for public finance come about? How do constitutions shape policy choices in public finance? Part l of the book puts forth an analytical framework for analysing how fiscal constitutional provisions come about and tests the conjectures with the case of constitution-making in Estonia in 1991-1992. Part II summarises, synthesises and criticises the emerging orthodoxy in...

The denominational plurality in continental Europe keeps growing. The churches of African origin are of increasing number. Seeking for a new identity in their new home, the concept of Diaspora and the question for legal issues get important for their identity. To what extent is their identity determined rather by seclusion or openness? Are the churches missionizing amongst Germans and are there ecumenical relations? What are the characteristics of such a new identity? How does it develop? By analyzing three different types of churches of African origin in the German context, especially by...