In 1990 Mongolia, the second oldest communist state in the world, initiated a fundamental transformation of its economy and moved rapidly to a multi-party democracy. Unlike any other Asian economy it adopted the shock-therapy approach to transition. This book is the first attempt to provide a detailed examination of transition in Mongolia since 1990. It includes analyses of macroeconomic performance, the agriculture and industry sectors, the labour market and the emerging financial sector. It also focuses on poverty, gender, privatisation and the environment. The contributors to this volume argue that policymakers have exacerbated the painful transition process by underestimating its complexity and by pursuing inappropriate or, at best, overly optimistic policy reforms.

In World Mathematical Year 2000 the traditional St. Flour Summer School was hosted jointly with the European Mathematical Society. Sergio Albeverio reviews the theory of Dirichlet forms, and gives applications including partial differential equations, stochastic dynamics of quantum systems, quantum fields and the geometry of loop spaces. The second text, by Walter Schachermayer, is an introduction to the basic concepts of mathematical finance, including the Bachelier and Black-Scholes models. The fundamental theorem of asset pricing is discussed in detail. Finally Michel Talagrand, gives an overview of the mean field models for spin glasses. This text is a major contribution towards the proof of certain results from physics, and includes a discussion of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and the p-spin interaction models.

Three-year-old twins, Scarlett and Orly, learn about the primary colors, mixing colors, cleaning their brushes, and the fun of painting pictures.