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Yes / This study examines extent of financial cooperation in the South Asia region. This region although heterogeneous in terms of size, political ideologies and level of development yet shares similar historical and cultural closeness, poverty and low level of human development. Further, we also examined the likely factors influencing financial integration in the region. Overall, the results show that among the economic and political factors trade, income levels and political stability are the most important factors in influencing South Asian financial cooperation. The results also strongly support the view that countries more open and integrated through trade are more integrated financially.

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Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) are networks in which the participating nodes can move freely without having to worry about maintaining a direct connection to any particular fixed access point. In a MANET, nodes collaborate with each other to form the network and as long as a node is in contact with any other member of the network, it—at least in theory—is part of the network and can communicate with all other nodes. An important function of network management is to observe current network conditions: at the node level, this may mean keeping track of arriving and departing traffic load; at the network level, the system must monitor active routes and changes in network topology. In this research, we present the design and implementation of a distributed network monitoring system for MANETs. Our system is completely distributed, generates no additional traffic on the network and produces a dynamic picture of the network level and node level information on a graphical user interface. In our proposed scheme, multiple monitoring nodes collaborate to achieve a reasonably accurate snapshot of the network conditions. These monitoring nodes passively sniff network traffics and gather information from the network to construct partial network views. They then transmit their findings to a management unit where these local views are put together to produce a comprehensive picture of the network. The communication between all management nodes (a monitoring unit and a management node) takes place in an out-of-band communication link. Therefore, our monitoring solution does not depend on the MANET to perform, hence is robust to network partitioning, link breaks, node's death and node misbehavior in the monitored MANET. Our solution provides a snapshot of the network topology that includes information about node-level behavior ratings and traffic activity. The information provided by our monitoring system can be used for network management as well as for security assessment, including anomaly detection. Information regarding individual nodes' behavior can be used for detecting selfishness in the network. Also, an approximation of arriving and departing traffic levels at each node is important in the context of quality of service, load balancing and congestion control. Furthermore, the network topology picture can provide valuable information to network management in detecting preferred routes, discovering network partitioning and in fault detection. We developed a proof-of-concept implementation of our system, which works with the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol. Through experimental studies with up to 10-node MANETs, we were able to determine the feasibility and workability of our system. The scheme proved to be robust with respect to mobility, rapid changes in the network topology and node connectivity. Throughout our experiments we observed that our system replicated changes in the network on the GUI with less than two seconds delay. Also, when deployed in a high-traffic environment, with multiple TCP and UDP flows throughout the network, the system was able to report traffic load on each node accurately and consistently. On average, CPU consumption on monitoring nodes was about 3.5% and the GUI never took up more than 4% of the processing power (general-purpose laptop computers were used throughout the experiments). Also, the overall storage capacity needed for archiving the information files was estimated as 1 Mbytes for monitoring a 10-node MANETs for 30 minutes. Unobtrusive and distributed nature of our proposed approach helps the system to adapt to the constantly changing nature of MANETs and be able to provide valuable network management, security assessment and traffic analysis services, while requiring only modest processing and storage resources. The system is capable of quickly responding to changes in the network and is non-intrusive, generating no additional traffic on the MANET it monitors. / Master of Science

published_or_final_version / abstract / Civil Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Power inequalities and mistrust have characterized many interstate relationships. Yet most international relations theories do not take into account power and mistrust when explaining cooperation. While some scholars argue that power relations inhibit cooperation between states, other scholars expect interstate cooperation regardless of the power relations and level of trust. I argue that although states benefit from cooperation, they are also wary of the power relations between states, making cooperation difficult. Successful and cooperative bilateral relationships are formed between strong and weak states that are power asymmetric and have mistrust of one another, but they are built in such as way as to overcome the problem of power asymmetry and distrust. In this dissertation, I answer how and why states that are in power asymmetry and have mistrust of one another are able to build a cooperative bilateral relationship. I argue that states forge a relationship due to strategic needs such as economic or security needs. I have developed a database composed of the whole population of bilateral treaties between Russia and each of the former Soviet republics, and examine all of the bilateral relationships formed between Russia and the former Soviet republics. I find that Russia indeed forged relationships with the former republics based on its strategic interests. However, despite Russia's strategic interests, it had to build a bilateral relationship that would address the issues of mistrust and power asymmetry between the states. To achieve this, Russia and the former Soviet republics created treaty networks, which served to legitimize as well as legalize the independent status of each of the former republics while also increasing the cost to Russia of violating any of the treaties. I argue that strong treaty networks account for a more cooperative relationship between states, allowing both states to cooperate by alleviating the problems of mistrust and power asymmetry.

This thesis focuses on cooperation among municipalities in the Czech Republic, on total description of this issue and on evaluation of the forms of the cooperation. The thesis relates especially to small municipalities which can acquire additional financial resources by establishing cooperation and therefore initiate socio-economic development of the region and economies of scale. Diploma thesis is divided into three parts. The first and the second part make up the theoretical part of this thesis. The first chapter characterizes the position and the competency of municipalities in the Czech Republic, clears up the historical context of high number of Czech municipalities, describes current municipal size-structure and then goes over to main theme of this thesis -- cooperation among municipalities in the Czech Republic. The second chapter introduces all possible forms of the cooperation, both inter-municipal and also between municipalities and other local subjects. The third chapter is the practical one and there are two different forms of cooperation analyzed and their activities evaluated. Concretely, I have chosen a voluntary group of municipalities named Region Zlínsko and Local action group named Místní akční skupina Ploština. Both of the cooperative groups are situated in the region of Zlín and their members are (with only some exceptions) small municipalities.

Os contratos de colaboração têm importância crescente nos mercados e são instrumentos adequados para o desenvolvimento de atividades empresariais em diversas situações. O consórcio de empresas é a forma de colaboração empresarial a que este dedica o presente estudo com o objetivo de definir-se seu regime jurídico. Iniciam-se os trabalhos com a questão da polissemia do termo consórcio, diferenciando-se o consórcio de empresas de outras figuras, incluindo notas históricas relativas ao uso do termo no direito brasileiro. Depois, analisam-se diversos institutos semelhantes ao consórcio de empresas encontrados em ordenamentos jurídicos estrangeiros. Passa-se a tratar da questão da colaboração empresarial, relacionando-a com a concentração empresarial. Segue exame aprofundado do contrato de consórcio no direito brasileiro. Dedica-se um capítulo do trabalho a questões conexas ao consórcio de empresas relevantes a áreas do direito diferentes do direito comercial. Por fim; apresentam-se as conclusões decorrentes da pesquisa. / Cooperation contracts have increasing importance in markets and are suitable instruments for the development of business activity in various situations. The business consortium is a kind of business collaboration to which this paper is dedicated aimíng at defining its applicable legal rules. The paper starts with the issue of the polysemy of the term consortium, explaining differences among the business consortium and other legal concepts under the name of consortium, including historical notes concerning the use of the word in the Brazilian Law. Then, we analyze various institutes similar to the business consortium found in foreign legal systems. Following, we address the issue of collaboration, and its relations to business combination. Next, an in-depth examination of the consortium contract under Brazilian Law is presented. The following chapter is devoted to issues related to the business consortium relevant to different areas of Law other than Commercial Law. Finally, we present the findings resulting from the research.