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In this article, we argue that international law can help state leaders reach a settlement in territorial disputes by suggesting a focal point for negotiations. International law is more likely to serve as a focal point when the legal principles relevant to the dispute are clear and well established and when one of the states in the dispute has a stronger legal claim to disputed territory. When these two conditions are present, we expect the state with a legal advantage to push for and receive favorable terms of settlement. In our analysis of all negotiated settlements in territorial disputes from 1945 to 2000, we find strong support for the importance of international law in influencing the terms of settlements. States with a strong legal advantage are more likely to secure favorable terms, whereas states lacking a strong legal claim are more likely to receive unfavorable terms.

We analyse a dynamic trading process of coalitional recontracting in an exchange economy with indivisible goods, where agents may make mistakes with small probability. According to this process, the resistance of a transition from one allocation to another is a function of the number of agents who make mistakes and of the seriousness of each mistake. If preferences are always strict, the unique stochastically stable state is the competitive equilibrium allocation. In economies with indifferences, non-core cycles are sometimes stochastically stable, while some core allocations are not. The robustness of these results is confirmed in a weak coalitional recontracting process.

The Vienna negotiations on the final status for Kosovo were an impossible project. It was clear at the outset that both parties would not be able to find common ground on the status issue. However, the talks focused on the practical issues of governance in Kosovo, such as decentralization, community rights and cultural heritage. It was thought that these could be addressed, initially at least, in a statusneutral way. While the parties did not manage to agree on all or most of these problems, the UN Special Envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, generated a comprehensive proposal offering compromise solutions that should have been acceptable to both sides. The recommendation of the Special Envoy in favour of supervised independence was deliberately separated from the comprehensive proposal. It was thought that the UN Security Council would at least endorse the proposal, even if it was ultimately unwilling to pronounce itself in favour of independence. The issue of status might then be settled outside the Council. However, when it appeared to some states on the Council that endorsement of the substantive Ahtisaari plan would in fact be tantamount to acceptance of independence, this avenue was closed.

In the mid-summer of 1989 the German Democratic Republic-- known as the GDR or East Germany--was an autocratic state led by an entrenched Communist Party. A loyal member of the Warsaw Pact, it was a counterpart of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), which it confronted with a mixture of hostility and grudging accommodation across the divide created by the Cold War. Over the following year and a half, dramatic changes occurred in the political system of East Germany and culminated in the GDR's \"accession\" to the Federal Republic itself. Yet the end of Germany's division evoked its own new and very bitter constitutional problems.The Imperfect Uniondiscusses these issues and shows that they are at the core of a great event of political, economic, and social history. Part I analyzes the constitutional history of eastern Germany from 1945 through the constitutional changes of 1989-1990 and beyond to the constitutions of the re-created east German states. Part II analyzes the Unification Treaty and the numerous problems arising from it: the fate of expropriated property on unification; the unification of the disparate eastern and western abortion regimes; the transformation of East German institutions, such as the civil service, the universities, and the judiciary; prosecution of former GDR leaders and officials; the \"rehabilitation\" and compensation of GDR victims; and the issues raised by the fateful legacy of the files of the East German secret police. Part III examines the external aspects of unification.

In this study, we analyze the expiration day effects of index futures on the cash market in Taiwan, and find that both volatility and trading volume are higher on the final settlement days than on other trading days. We also calculate the volume of open interest for the final settlement of index futures contracts relating to different classes of traders, as well as the profits they earn from their open interest positions. We find that proprietary traders exhibit superior performance whereas foreign investors achieve the worst returns. Our empirical results support the view that the expiration day effects in the Taiwan futures market are at least partially attributable to attempts at ‘marking the close’.

Based on the real-time settlement monitoring of embankment on-site, Hyperbola method and Index curve method are used in the prediction of embankment settlement and the prediction results were compared to verify the feasibility and the potential engineering value of the prediction of embankment settlement. The calculation results showed that the relative error of the results calculated by the above methods was controlled within 2%. The accuracy of early settlement prediction of Index curve method was lower than the accuracy of later settlement prediction, but the predicting result met the needs of the engineering accuracy. The accuracy of settlement prediction of Hyperbola method was significantly higher than Index curve method. Through the comparing and analyzing of the prediction results of embankment settlement, the final settlement value calculated by Hyperbola method was higher than the real-time monitoring on-site, and the final settlement value calculated by Index curve method was lower than the real-time monitoring on-site, Hyperbola method is more suitable for the estimation to the subsidence of actual embankment engineering construction.

Two widely used forms of arbitration are conventional arbitration, in which the arbitrator makes an unconstrained settlement choice, and final-offer arbitration, in which the arbitrator must choose between disputants' final offers. Under an innovative, as yet unused approach called \"combined arbitration,\" if the arbitrator's notion of a fair settlement lies between the disputants' final offers, final-offer arbitration rules are used; otherwise, conventional arbitration rules are used. Theoretically, by combining the risks that the two standard forms of arbitration pose for disputants who do not voluntarily settle, combined arbitration should generate convergent final offers. The results of this controlled laboratory study show, however, that dispute rates are highest in combined arbitration and lowest in conventional arbitration. These results challenge the theoretical predictions for combined arbitration as well as claims that final-offer arbitration should reduce disputes compared to conventional arbitration. The results are, however, consistent with a simple theory of disputant optimism.

This section covers items-reprinted articles, statistics, and maps-pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material. Adapted from the source document.