Regulation of the model types of crowdfunding: China's experience and its applicability in Russia

This article is dedicated to assessment of the experience of regulation of crowdfunding market in China, as well as its applicability and adaptation in Russia. The key goal consists in conducting a comparative analysis of the approaches towards regulation of crowdfunding in China and Russia. The relevance is define by enactment of the law of August 2, 2019. N.259-FZ “On Attraction of Investments via Investment Platforms and On Introducing Amendments to Separate Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation”. The research is based on the international and Russian statistical data, conceptual reports of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, and the Bank of Russia. The conclusion is made that it is China that China holds the leading position in the world crowdfunding market. Most widespread in China is Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending via digital platforms. The absence of special regulation led to an investment boom that lasted until 2017, followed by the bankruptcy of a multiple platforms and projects. Strengthening of the state control entailed reduction in alternative financing. The authors formulate recommendations for improving the regulatory approaches towards crowdfunding. The use of RegTech and SupTech technologies is considered as promising direction.

Manifestation of the Internal Systemic Conflict in Mongolia

The article deals with the issue of Mongolia's foreign policy during the Cold War. This period is divided into two parts. The first period, 1945-1960s, is a period of conflict between two systems: socialism and capitalism. In this first period of the Cold War Mongolia managed to establish diplomatic relations with socialist countries of Eastern Europe, as the “system allowed”. The second period, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, is the period of the conflict of the socialist system, the period of the Soviet-Chinese confrontation. During this period Mongolia's foreign policy changed dramatically and focused on the Soviet Union. This was due to the Soviet investment «boom» that began in 1960s and the entry of Soviet troops on the territory of Mongolia in 1967. The Soviet military intervention into Mongolia was one of the main reasons for cooling the Soviet-Chinese relations. And military withdrawal contributed to the improvement of Soviet-Chinese relations until the mid-1980s and one of the conditions for improving relations with their neighbors. The internal systemic conflict had a serious impact on Mongolia's foreign policy over those years.

The Dynamic Effect of Micro-Structural Shocks on Private Investment Behavior

This paper estimates the dynamic effect of three micro-structural shocks, namely, investment-specific technology, markup and technology shocks to key components of the Iranian economy: private investment behaviour. The identification strategy positions the structural shocks to private investment behaviour in the Dynamics Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) framework with a three-accuracy test estimation: The Brooks and Gelman test, the Metropolis-Hastings jumping distribution acceptance ratio, and the distribution of the deep posteriors parameters are asymptotically normal. The quarter economic data of Iran economy from July 1988 until March 2015 is applied. The findings illustrate that the structural shocks about technology have a similar impact and cause a growth in private investment, and the only difference is, in investment-specific technology shock due to a temporary decrease in the capital expenses installation (Tobin's Q), an investment boom is driven. In contrast, the price markup shock due to inflation causes a decline in all investment indices.

5. The end of the end of History

‘The end to the end of history’ assesses how, since the rise of the avant-garde, only art viewed from a historical distance has appeared to have direction and coherence, while the present always seems clouded in confusion. The rise of antagonistic art and street art are both part of this, which points to a deep shift in the constitution of the contemporary art world. The shift is partly caused by the increasing use of art as pure investment. In the early 2000s, the years of the art investment boom were also those of the unfolding ‘war on terror’. One direct response in the art world was a marked revival of a great variety of documentary forms.

Toward a Dialectic of Discrepant Cosmopolitanisms

The opening of dozens of pubs, cafés and bars catering to an alternative ‘youth’ clientele illustrates how Ramallah, Beirut and Amman have benefited from a post-2008 investment boom that curates leisure and cultural production with bohemian, DIY and other ‘counterculture’ aesthetics. Yet, social expectations and price points in these venues often betray the supposedly progressive politics of these ventures. In this article, I acknowledge that it would be easy to dismiss this cosmopolitan growth and the patterns of policing behavior they impose as an exclusionary and problematic ‘gentrification-as-liberation.’ But such a critique would miss the opportunity to engage the affective and social struggle over visions of a social future enacted by urban Arab youth in their choices of leisure consumption. I argue that being able to cogently critique gentrifying processes in these cities means we must first understand the development of counterculture and counter discourse as necessarily dialectical. The micro-negotiations between competing or discrepant cosmopolitanisms offer important insight into sociopolitical discourse and cosmopolitan feeling in urban centers that did not, in large part, witness sustained mass protests in the years following the Arab uprisings.

Book Reviews

Gregory Dempster of Hampden-Sydney College reviews “Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution,” by Hassan Malik. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Chronicles the Russian investment boom and bust of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using financial, economic, and archival data, and investigates Russia's relationship with international finance during that period.”