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Different chroniclers of the history of the Byzantine Empire have noted various economic data gleamed from historical documents and accounts of the empire at different periods of time. Research for this paper has not uncovered any estimates of long term, annual macroeconomic data (gross domestic product (GDP), national income (NI), etc.) for the empire during its existence. Such data has been estimated to one extent or another for other nations and societies that have existed during the middle ages. This paper attempts to provide conjectures on approximate real GDP per capita trends for the empire over its existence from AD 300 to 1453. Finally, some hypotheses on factors that would have affected Byzantine economic performance are tested using climate/environmental factors. The results of this paper appear to confirm some findings on how the Byzantine economy might have been affected by periods of regional climate change. [enter Abstract Body]

Investment in capital, new technology, and agricultural techniques has not been considered an endeavor worthwhile in a medieval economy because of a lack of strong property rights and no incentive on the part of lords and barons to lend money to or grant rights to peasant farmers. Therefore, the medieval economy and standards of living at that time often have been characterized as non-dynamic and static due to insufficient investment in innovative techniques and technology. Paul Baran’s concept of the economic surplus is applied to investment patterns during the late medieval, mercantile, and early capitalist stages of economic growth in England and the UK. This paper uses Zhun Xu’s Baran Ratio concept to try to develop general trends to demonstrate and to reinforce other historical accounts of these times that a productive and sufficient level of public and private investment out of accumulated capital income, taxation, and rents does not have a real impact on economic per capita growth until around the 1600s in Britain. This would also be about the time of capitalism’s ascent as the dominant economic system in England. Even then, dramatic increases in investment and economic growth do not appear until the late 18th Century when investment more consistently becomes more than one hundred percent of the level of economic surplus and takes in government spending. The types of investment, threshold amounts of investment out of profits and rents along with government spending seem to matter when it comes to a growth path raising GDP per capita and national income per capita to higher levels. Although much of this knowledge perhaps is embodied in current historical accounts, the Baran Ratio nicely summarizes and illustrates the importance of levels of investment to economic growth.

New France, like most European colonies in the New World, suffered from a persistent shortage of metal coins. As Quebec could only legally import from France, their standards of living were constrained by their ability to export a few primary products (mostly fur, cod, timber and wheat). Mercantilist restrictions and underdeveloped financial markets limited the ability to use the capital account to import coins and tightened the balance of payments constraint. The introduction of playing card money in New France in 1685, the first use of paper money in the West, provided a means of relaxing this constraint. It produced a substitute domestic money which allowed scarce metal coins to be used to purchase imports. The balance-of-payments constrained growth models that grew out of Thirlwall’s Law is applied to this experience, with discussions of the export constraints of Quebec’s reliance on a few primary exports (with furs being the most dominant one) with inelastic demand and facing the vagaries of changing tastes in Europe.

Debt underpins the modern global economy. Debt is also intimately tied to the function and form of the modern state. As a form of capital, debt is a combination of several legal modules and legal qualities that allow holders of debt to secure a future pecuniary return. The development of these legal modules and legal qualities may be observed in the emerging commercial society of the United States of America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. By tracing the transformation of debt over this time period in the USA, we may gain insight into how debt, the economy, and the state could be re-envisioned for the future.

The financial crisis of 2008-2009 demonstrated the need for a comprehensive approach to risk management of financial institutions and financial area as a whole. Since then, a large number of macroprudential policy studies are published each year. In this paper we provide an overview of the main findings of 19 research papers in 2019. This allows us to draw conclusions about the main directions of current studies and to outline directions for future research.

This study was inspired by the literature of the hypothesis of the curse of natural resources, but particularly in authors such as Castelo-Branco (2010), Tiess (2011), Sigam and Garcia (2012), Obiri (2014), Halland et al. (2015) and Addison and Roe (2018).These authors deal with the issue of natural resources from the perspective of the extractive industry. So, the objective of this study was to estimate the impact of the extractive industry of natural resources on the economic growth of Mozambique in the context of the SADC countries. To carry out the study, an econometric model of economic growth based on panel data was estimated, more specifically the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) using data from 11 SADC countries between 1980 and 2017. The main results of the study indicate that, taking into account all 11 SADC countries, in the long-run the extractive industry rents have a negative and statistically significant impact on economic growth. In the short-run the extractive industry has no impact on the economic growth of the SADC countries. In the context of Mozambique, the results show that, in the short-run extractive industry rents has a negative but statistically insignificant effect, i.e. have no impact on Mozambique's economic growth. These results suggest that extractive industry rents in Mozambique and in SADC, in general, are not used as a factor of production applied in other sectors to directly raise the national product. It’s leased for the remuneration of production factor and/or for consumption. Thus, for the short run the study recommends policies for allocating the rents of extractive industries in productive and economically efficient investments in the detriment of political efficiency and the creation of sovereign wealth funds. For such policies to have results, in the short run, Mozambique must improve the quality of the institutions which at long run will be the antibiotics against the voracious and rentist effects of local elites and bureaucrats

The present pitch paper intends to pitch the research idea, its methodology, and possible outcomes by following Faff (2015) pitch my research template The rese

High-profile revelations of organizational malpractices in the last few years such as unethical business deals based on large-scale conflicts of interest, insider trading, overvaluation of housing mortgages, doctored inventories of inadequate capital holdings to raise finances, and manipulation of facts and figures have made transparency an important value in today’s organizational world. Stakeholders, whether internal or external, expect to have access to information and organizations have little choice but to open up in keeping with current trends (Christensen, 2002; Christensen & Langer, 2009). This paper offers a tentative examination of what we believe to be an original conceptual framework for a critical understanding of processes of and motivations for organizational transparency, including its paradoxes, by drawing on and combining theories of power, hegemony, legitimacy, and liquid modernity.

This paper is one of the first to quantify the welfare effects of proposed cash suppression policies. We work within the context of a general equilibrium framework in which households face an endogenous cash-in-advance constraint and firms use cash transactions to evade taxes. Eliminating currency increases transactions costs and raises effective tax rates by curbing tax evasion. Our quantitative experiments imply that a total cash ban improves steady-state welfare, but only if paired with a revenue-neutral decrease in the tax rate on capital. We show in an extension with heterogeneous agents that curtailing cash harms frequent-cash users more than others. Such distributional effects of cash suppression may be a concern for policymakers.

The Indian Economic Surveys 2018-19 and 2019-20 views the economy in either a virtuous or a vicious cycle of Savings, investment & export with investment and export as the key drivers of the cycles. The current paper focuses on the dilemma of choosing between the two alternatives, i.e., export led growth and investment led growth in light of the Indian Economic Surveys. A comparative study has been conducted to provide a guideline for choosing the optimal mix of growth models, its potential impact on variables of economic growth, choosing the appropriate sector for each model along with the rationale of framing monetary, fiscal and trade policies adopted at macroeconomic, sector and industry level that uses an admixture of the three-fold growth strategies. The current discourse concludes with a rationale of adopting a mixture of export led and investment led growth in the national growth model in the light of the facts and figures provided in the two Economic Surveys of 2018-19 and 2019-20.

In a recent NBER paper, Cutsail and Grubb argue that North Carolina’s colonial bills of credit were valued like discount bonds, with a current market value largely determined by the discounted value of the bills when paid into the treasury in taxes or other public payments. Grubb has previously published several papers making similar claims about other colonies. This comment argues Cutsail and Grubb’s methodology, history, data series, and econometrics, as applied to North Carolina, are all seriously flawed.

This paper builds on recent insights from network theory and on the rich dataset made available by the Panama Papers in order to investigate the micro-economic dynamics of tax-evasion. We model offshore financial entities documented in the Panama Papers as links between jurisdictions in the global network of tax evasion. A quantitative analysis shows that the resulting network, far from being a random collection of bilateral links, has key features of complex networks such as a core-periphery structure and a fat-tail degree distribution. We argue that these structural features imply that policy must adopt a systemic perspective on the matter. We offer three sets of insights from this perspective. First, we identify through centrality measures tax havens that ought to be priority policy targets. Second, we show that efficient tax treaties must contain exchange information clauses and link tax-havens to non-haven jurisdictions. Third, we show that the optimal deterrence strategies for a social-planner facing a strategic tax-evader in a Stackelberg competition can be characterized using the notion of Bonacich centrality.

Government spending on bailing out banks and financing a variety of stimulus packages following the US real estate and financial crisis led to a sharp increase in the already very high level of public debt also of the member countries of the European Monetary Union (EMU). Countries such as Greece, Italy, Belgium, France and even Germany in particular depend on very low or at least low interest rates to stabilize their financial situation. Thus, the central reason for the European Central Bank's low interest rate policy, which has been in place for almost 10 years, is to provide the highly indebted countries of the EMU with a significant reduction in the interest burden in favor of a solution to the debt problem: giving time for a lot of necessary reforms to increase economic development. But none of this has succeeded in the last 10 years. Instead, the budgetary situation in the euro countries is getting worse, the disparities in economic development are increasing rather than diminishing, thereby endangering the stability of the euro and thus the future of the single currency. There is an urgent need for sustained higher net investments in nearly all sectors of all countries from Greece to Germany: instead, net investment in the countries of the EMU is clearly decreasing and Europe is in danger of being left behind not only by the two economic powers USA and China. This outlines a problem that is as pressing as it is topical: the question of how to restore Europes’ economic power. The key lies in the question of how can we be able to solve the crippling debt problem of European countries quickly and sustainably. The answer given by the discussion paper is a kind of debt relief, implemented as a conversion of a relevant amount of the government bonds held by the ECB. Conversion means extending the repayment to 80-100 years and the interest rate to be set very low. Of course a binding agreement is inevitable that net new debt can only be taken up to the maximum value of the GDP growth of a certain period. Only countries can participate in the debt conversion which commit themselves to making higher net investments to be specified more precisely, to carry out reforms especially concerning the efficiency of taxation, respectively set lower and upper limits for some taxes of the central government, and harmonize them within narrow ranges. Also it is necessary to reasonably reduce and largely deregulate bureaucracy and put an end to shadow economy and corruption. By regaining financial strength as a result of a debt conversion, which is only possible within a strong supranational framework, the advantages of membership in the European Monetary Union will once again become evident, and the European Union can again become a shining example of freedom and prosperity, the way that Robert Schuman did formulate as a vision in.

We claim that Shiller's analysis of the efficient market variance inequality suffers from statistical and conceptual errors which falsify his conclusions. We detail the errors and provide an analogy to demonstrate them.

We study implications of unpriced "granular measurement errors" -- idiosyncratic shocks to large firms that aren't well-diversified in market indices -- for asset pricing tests and propose alternative tests insensitive to them. We find stronger evidence of an intertemporal relation between the expected return and variance of the market after these corrections. Cross-sectionally, estimated market betas -- especially for small/high beta stocks -- are biased, the size anomaly disappears, and the price of risk for the market portfolio is consistent with theory. The granular residual is volatile and less informative about real activity than our adjusted index, potentially rationalizing lower/zero risk compensation.

Since the 2008 global crisis, financial literacy has come into the spotlight, but the available definitions are of theoretical nature addressing major issues appeared in specific economies, as presented here through an in-depth analysis of the literature. While the common focus has been on the United States, the economic infrastructure of Europe is very diverse. Despite the global epidemic of the crisis, its pattern was not globally the same. Utilising the current definitions without considering their validity has caused a misconception for inspecting emerging problems. Therefore, a new definition of financial literacy is proposed, which can be universally applied to various types of economies. The approach is to find the appropriate perspective for tailoring the framework of financial literacy for specific environments. Applying this definition to typical cases revealed that some of the key problems discussed in the literature are not indeed the critical issues, while major problems are usually neglected. The best example is the case of the gender gap where we might need to find new solutions as most of the previous studies have been based on inappropriate (or at least less practical) premises.

This paper documents “runs” on asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) programs using a novel dataset of all transactions in the U.S. market during its severe contraction in 2007. We find that one-third of programs were run within weeks of the onset of the ABCP crisis and that runs, as well as yields and maturities for new issues, were related to program-level and macro-financial risks. The findings are consistent with the asymmetric information framework used to explain banking panics, have implications for the degree of risk-intolerance of commercial paper investors, and inform upon empirical predictions of recent papers on dynamic coordination failures.

This study investigates how commercial paper rates respond to the innovations in stock market risk premiums. The unrestricted vector autoregression (VAR) analysis of monthly data from 1997:1 to 2012:M6 shows that the changes in the one-, two-, and three-month non-financial and financial commercial paper rates positively respond to the innovations in the excess returns on the CRSP value weighted index. The response is especially strong during the first few months following shocks to stock market risk premiums. The Granger-causality test results show the changes in commercial paper rates can be predicted by the excess returns on the CRSP value weighted index. The findings from this study provide evidence that there is a link between equity market and commercial paper market.

A meta analysis of key performance indicators (KPI) for a wide range of companies across the paper industry value chain was performed to understand whether disclosure- or performance-based sustainability metrics were better indicators for financial performance of the firms. The study aimed to contribute to theory development on the link between sustainability and competitiveness of the firm, by conducting a multivariate statistical analysis of a wide range of financial and sustainability metrics. Correlation matrices and principal component analysis (PCA) indicated: (i) a slight positive correlation between GHG emissions and disclosure score (e.g. ESG), (ii) a negative correlation between GHG emissions and financial performance (e.g. ROA, stock price, valuation), and (iii) disclosure based measures are better predictors or corporate sustainability performance (CSP) than are performance-based metrics. Targeted correlation analysis using three principal component indicator variables from four models were inconclusive as to links between sustainability and financial indicators. Even though companies clustered along the ESG score spectrum, there was no relationship with financial metrics. Then performance-based CSP scores were used, no clustering was observed. The lack of validation of the results from the meta analysis using the targeted KPIs was likely due to the loss of resolution of environmental sustainability data in the ESG or CSP scores, which mask trends as the result of decreased sensitivity. Future work should focus on preserving higher granularity of metrics and increased use of multivariate statistical tools to increase the ‘signal-to-noise ratio’ for sustainability-financial performance trends.

We find that the commercial paper markets do not conform with the hypothesis of market efficiency and the expectations hypothesis over sample period. Only the overnight commercial paper market yields show a significant response to changes in Federal Reserve policies, and then they show nearly equivalent responses to both anticipated and unanticipated changes.

This white paper provides argumentation and data in support of the Nation Building Here at Home Act of 2012, an infrastructure investment statute introduced in the 112th Congress, 2d Session by Congressman Brian Higgins, 27th District of New York. It shows that the investment program instituted by the Act will significantly boost domestic employment, economic growth, and federal revenue, and in so doing will be partly self-financing. Moreover, in view of presently idle capacity, low borrowing costs, and the cost acceleration attributes of much of the crumbling infrastructure that the bill addresses, the program offers significant opportunity cost savings in respect of projects about which all agree that the question is not whether, but when they are to be undertaken. Add to this the sizable life, limb, and efficiency gains brought to the private sector by the planned public infrastructure-modernization, and the case for the statute is plain. Appendices include the statute itself and the macroeconomic numbers on which the case for it is partly based.

The government set the target for redistribution of land to 30% by 2014. They have adopted the “willing-buyer-willing-seller” model that relies on a voluntary transaction between farmers and government to acquire such land. Frustrated at the slow pace of land reform, the ruling party is starting to indicate that the state will in the future rely on its expropriation powers to acquire such land. Section 25 of the Constitution makes it clear that when the state expropriates property, that compensation must be paid. The current act, the 1975 Expropriation Act, determines that such compensation must be market value, while the Constitution lists market value is listed as only one of at least five factors that must be taken into account when determining compensation. There have been various attempts at drafting legislation that will bring compensation practices in line with the Constitution, with the latest Bill published in March 2013. This article focusses on the Green Paper that preceded the Bill, and argues that not much direction is given on how compensation for expropriation should be calculated.

The UK government has taken steps to reduce the fiscal deficit and the austerity measures put in place since 2010 has paid off. However, the annual GDP growth rates of 1% to 1.5% is hardly something to cheer about. Under the new budget, premium bonds have undergone several changes to increase the scope of its applicability. Premium bonds have been introduced with provisions to be bought for children who are not your own children.

We find a significant negative relationship between stock returns during the week and the reported incidence of domestic violence during the weekend. Our findings suggest that wealth shocks caused by the stock market can affect stress levels within families, escalate arguments, and trigger violence. The effect of stock returns on reported domestic violence is primarily attributable to negative returns, and the incidence of domestic violence increases with the magnitude of loss. The effect also increases with local stock market participation. Using Google search volumes as an alternative proxy for the incidence of domestic violence yields similar results.

Commercial Paper has been a part of Indian money markets for nearly two decades now. Nonetheless, it has failed to create any considerable impact upon credit situations in the country like Unites States where it is a preferred source of short term finance. The instant work is based on the premise given by Alan Greenspan emphasizing upon the urgency of an effective market for corporate debt. This work strongly suggests the need of advocating commercial paper while evaluating the ongoing liquidity crunch, outlining the changes required in the regulatory regime governing commercial paper and how it still makes more sense for Indian companies when compared to the rest of the world. Extension of corporate paper will benefit not only the issuing corporation but also the investor. In the end, the aim of the exercise is to develop a holistic suggestion to counter the crisis which has been thrown upon us by the developing world and study how an instrument like commercial paper can make a ‘short’ yet significant difference.

Hosting mega-events has long been regarded as an opportunity for economic growth, creating long-lasting benefits and attaining international recognition. Recently, both the scientific community and the public opinion at large have turned much more skeptical about the impact of mega-events. Why is it that some events appear successful and other disasters? Why the perception of impacts has changed over time? To answer these (and other) questions, there is a need to go beyond the simple narratives and “stylized facts”, to undertake some serious scientific investigation, based on verifiable data and testable models. Despite the fact that most recent studies use the same modeling tool, namely some Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, results are sometimes contradictory, thereby hindering the trustiness of the economic analysis for policy guidance. In this paper, we show that results are different because assumptions are different and because the range of effects considered is different, even when the same model is employed. Furthermore, some critical hypotheses are not often clearly stated. We advocate some kind of standardization in the process of model building for the economic assessment of mega-events. Only a transparent and replicable model exercise can serve as a “litmus paper”, to ascertain whether hosting a mega-event is good or bad for an economy.

Accounting for financial instruments has been under discussion since more than 20 years. Especially the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and its predecessor has been seeking to develop an accounting solution that allows entities to better depict dynamic risk management in their financial statements, for example in the context of interest rate risk managed by a bank’s treasury department. Portfolios being hedged as open and dynamic groups for economic purposes are currently forced into closed and static hedges for accounting purposes. This leads to a periodical need for re-designations, thereby introducing complexity as well as ineffectiveness (cf. IFRS Foundation (ed.) (2010), p. 2). On April 17th 2014, the IASB published the Discussion Paper (DP) on Accounting for Dynamic Risk Management: a Portfolio Revaluation Approach to Macro Hedging as a next step in relation to its Dynamic Risk Management Project. The DP contains an entirely new accounting concept for dynamic risk management, namely the Portfolio Revaluation Approach (PRA). According to this concept, dynamically managed positions included in the PRA would be revalued for changes in the managed risk through profit and loss while risk management instruments would be measured at fair value through profit and loss (FVTPL). The net effect on profit and loss of both measurements would capture the overall success of an entity’s dynamic risk management. The DP also contains further significant elements, for example elements of behaviouralisation which are common practice in risk management but challenging to display within an accounting framework. From publication in April until October 17th 2014 the public was invited to submit comment letters and thereby answer up to 26 questions posted by the IASB. During this period 123 letters were submitted which are publicly available at the IASB’s website. Despite some publications summarizing commentators’ aggregated views as well as brief descriptions of reasoning regarding the important topics (on this see for example Hori, H./Ah Kun, A. (2015), there was not created sufficient transparency on the outcome of this comment period. This research paper aims to contribute to further transparency by analyzing all submitted comment letters with respect to the most significant questions. On the one hand, this analysis will be conducted quantitatively by stating clearly the outcome of these questions, thereby carving out respondents’ preponderant views. On the other hand, major arguments will comprehensively be discussed, especially where views differ.

During the colonial era, the French colonial government in Canada experimented with paper money printed on the back of playing cards. The first experiment lasted from 1685 to 1719. In the first years, there was little inflation in spite of a rapidly expanding stock of playing card money. It is only in the later years of the experiment that prices rose. The behavior of the money stock and nominal output suggest that velocity fluctuated throughout the period. We argue here that these fluctuations can be explained by variations in the enforcement of legal tender laws. This interpretation provides insights into the debate over the inflationary impact of paper money in the colonial United States.

The paper that follows is the last of a four-part series deciphering what should constitute ‘right governance’ over mergers and acquisitions, by boards of the acquiring company. By ‘right governance’, we don’t mean necessarily leading practice, best practice or even common practice – but rather the right blend for the unique circumstances of each transaction, company and board. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are critical mechanisms for corporate growth and potentially for increased shareholder returns. The reality, however, often does not live up to the promise, as is borne out by empirical data on the high incidence rates of M&A under-performance. At present in Australia, directors and executive management, particularly of the acquiring company, have considerable latitude to put at-risk shareholder value via M&A without any meaningful pre-event restraints or post-event sanctions (and with the benefit of the Business Judgment Rule defence). The old adage caveat emptor (‘let the buyer beware’) still holds true for buyers, but when it comes to ensuring that their shareholders’ interests and capital are properly protected, there are few formally imposed ‘checks and balances’. Additionally, in terms of voluntary controls, there is little clarity on what are the acceptable, key activities and behaviours of the directors of the acquiring company, that represent responsible standards of conduct. The initial question to be considered is whether there is a discernible set of ‘right practices’ that provide a reference set of benchmarks for non-executive directors to know whether they are exercising the necessary care, diligence and skill in selecting and overseeing transactions. Looking from the ‘outside in’, the corollary is ‘How do shareholders in the acquiring company have some visibility and assurance that their executive management team and board are exercising (or have exercised) sufficient due diligence (in the broadest sense of the word) over transactions?’ The challenge thus arises as to how to describe the ‘right practice’ stewardship that should be exercised by ‘reasonable directors’ of the acquiring entity to manage the risks and performance of transactions – before, during and after acquisition. This paper is the fourth in a series of four that focus on identifying and describing ‘right governance’ i.e. the required level and mix of actions and responsibilities of directors of the acquiring company, necessary for protecting the interests of their shareholders. To carry out this research, the opinions and experiences have been elicited from a cross-section of non-executive directors and Chairmen, via targeted interviews (‘grounded research’) to capture their views on good board oversight of M&A practice. (This has been described in shorthand form as the d-ought for ‘directors’ ought’). What has emerged as the board-level themes from seasoned directors have been compared to the extant literature (the t-ought, shorthand for the ‘theoretical ought’ of right practice), to examine how these align and whether there are any key gaps or contradictions. In most cases, there is alignment, although the interviewed directors’ views have crystallised what in the literature could best be described as ‘un-consolidated ideas’ based on ‘an extrapolation of managerial practices’, as the body of documented knowledge is generally not targeted at board members. From these comparisons, has arisen an emergent theory regarding ‘right practice’, outlined in Paper 3B. The emergent theory points to six key themes that those directors interviewed believe make a difference to deal performance: (1) the Board’s degree of strategic thinking (‘Clear strategy upfront’); (2) planning and preparation (‘Early preparation and planning’); (3) the extent of board members’ cultural due-diligence (‘Proper understanding of culture’); (4) robust business-case scrutiny and investment assessment (‘Rigorous testing of the investment business case and funding strategy’); (5) their focus on tracking the delivery of the targeted benefits (‘Effective monitoring post transaction’); and (6) the quality of their mutual challenge and critical debate (‘Well-chaired board with constructive challenge’). This process of comparison of ‘t-ought’ versus ‘d-ought’ has indicated that these initial findings have merit and should be regarded as an emergent theory. The key conclusions drawn below are that these themes can be grouped under three key messages: be prepared, be disciplined and be challenging, which encapsulate the behavioural implications of the six themes emerging from the research. • In terms of the board assuring that management are prepared, well before and during the event, there is a range of practical activities and interventions that the board can adopt – such as planning and having experienced staff at executive and board levels, etc. These activities flow from practices already documented in literature and from gathered-up experienced directors’ wisdom. • The be disciplined messaging, relates to actions during and after the acquisition event, whether that means following due process, enforcing stage-gates assurance and review checkpoints, or tracking synergies achieved. • The be challenging dimension in particular goes to the heart of what chairmen and board members ought to do to ensure debate and vigilance. Research sources indicate a broader malaise at board level around debate and challenge. Whilst internal and external assistance – such as by enlisting the involvement of Internal Audit and Compliance functions and external deal advisers – can help a board to be better prepared and more disciplined, only the board itself can attend to the be challenging dimension. Whilst the views of those directors interviewed are not yet a conclusively proven ‘recipe’ for board success – given the sample size and the Grounded Theory research approach selected – they do provide a solid foundation for further testing and exploration. The emergent theory nonetheless offers important guidance for those boards who want to adopt what may be sensible, prudent actions, even if the efficacy of these steps has not (as yet) been empirically proven.

This paper responds to the government’s proposals for redressing the “intelligence-to-evidence” (I2E) dilemma in national security judicial proceedings, discussed in its targeted consultation document distributed in August 2017. The paper urges the need for not just law reform, but also operational reform in terms of how police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) manage their "parallel" national security investigations. We renew our doubts about the parallel investigation and the dangers it poses for national security. The paper supports the government's proposed changes to the Canada Evidence Act, s.38 national security confidentiality procedures for criminal trials. In particular, it agrees that trial court judges should be able to make and modify s.38 non-disclosure orders. It urges, however, that Parliament codify the Stinchcombe disclosure rules, and their application to national security proceedings, and not simply double-down by codifying the O'Connor "third party" rule - something that may reinforce parallel police/CSIS investigations. The paper expresses considerable skepticism for the "closed material proceeding" (CMP) proposal in civil trials implicating national security proceedings. These would produce, in essence, secret civil trials. We suspect secret civil trials would be challenged on division of power grounds, under s.96 of the Constitution Act 1867 and even under the Charter and the open court principle and, if it remains applicable, the Canadian Bill of Rights. More immediately, the CMP proposal seems likely to make a bill responding to neglected criminal law I2E issues much more controversial than it needs to be.

As measured standardly by levelized cost of energy (LCOE), onshore wind and utility scale solar PV (photovoltaic) have been rapidly declining in cost and are now reported to be the cheapest ways of generating electric power. While this is indisputably a welcome development, the fact that renewables in general --- wind and solar in particular --- are variable and available only intermittently makes LCOE a quite incomplete, perhaps even misleading, measure of value because it neglects the system cost of accommodating renewables for the sake of meeting demand and keeping the grid in balance. The additional cost of building and employing peaker plants (mainly fueled by natural gas), which serve as backup and reserve and hence are often idle, has led many observers to pessimistic conclusions about the economic viability of very high levels of penetration by renewable sources of energy. This paper fully acknowledges the problem. We present an ensemble of several ideas that plausibly may be useful for mitigating the intermittency problem accompanying high levels of penetration of renewable power generation, particularly solar PV (photovoltaic). The ensemble, presented as a proposed setup or institution, includes provision for dispatchable solar PV (and by extension wind power) as well as provision for a market for what we call variable supply electric power. This is described in the paper and contrasted with existing services, which may be described as guaranteed supply. Further, we confront our proposed setup with three years of insolation data for Philadelphia, PA. This leads to a number of quantified measures of variability that should be useful for system design and management. This is an exploratory paper, aiming at an initial vetting of these ideas. Very much remains to be done to investigate them fully.

We analyze why firms use non-intermediated short-term debt by studying the commercial paper (CP) market. Using a comprehensive database of CP issuers and issuance activity, we show that firms use CP to provide start-up financing for capital investment. Firms’ CP issuance activity is driven by a desire to minimize transactions costs associated with raising capital for new investment. We show that firms with high rollover risk are less likely to enter the CP market, borrow less CP, and borrow more from bank credit lines. We find that CP is often refinanced with long-term bond issuance to reduce rollover risk.

We evaluate the manner in which sponsors of highly leveraged asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) conduits responded to FASB Interpretation No. 46 (FIN 46), Consolidation of Variable Interest Entities an Interpretation of ARB No. 51, and its Canadian counterpart Accounting Standards Board of Accounting Guideline 15 (AcG-15), Consolidation of Variable Interest Entities. By matching commercial paper investors with corporations seeking liquidity, ABCP sponsors facilitate a significant amount of short-term, securitized financing in the U.S. FIN 46 and AcG-15 require sponsors to consolidate their ABCP conduits with their GAAP financial statements. We demonstrate that the volume of ABCP began to decline when FIN 46 was first proposed, and that this decline is primarily attributable to a reduction in North American banks' sponsorship of ABCP. We also demonstrate that North American banks entered into costly restructuring arrangements to avoid having to consolidate their conduits per the new accounting standards. Our results suggest that in certain settings, accounting standards appear to have real effects on investment activity and product-market competition.

This paper examines the impact of investments in modernization and innovation on productivity in a sample of firms in the global pulp and paper industry. Our motivation for this paper arose from plant-visits the authors made to pulp and paper mills in North America and Europe, focusing on issues related to productivity, innovation and competition. In contrast to much of the existing literature which focuses on the impact of R&D and patents on firms' performance and productivity, we collected data and information on actual investment transactions in four main areas of operations: (i) mechanical, (ii) chemicals, (iii) monitoring devices and (iv) information technology. We find that firms which made decisions to implement a greater number of investment transactions in modernization achieved higher productivity, and these estimated quantitative effects are greater than the impact of standard innovation variables such as patents and R&D. Investment transactions in the information technology and digital monitoring devices imparted a particularly noticeable boost to productivity. These results are obtained after controlling for other firm-specific variables such as capital-intensity and mergers and acquisitions. Two broad messages emerge from our study. First, firms' decisions to undertake investments in modernization and various forms of incremental innovations appear to be critical for achieving gains in productivity. While these may typically generate small gains on a year-to-year basis, they can compound to form meaningful differences in performance, productivity and competitive position across firms in the longer-run. Second, for some of the traditional industries like pulp and paper, R&D and patents seem to be particularly poor indicators of innovation and, more generally, how firms go about achieving gains in productivity. While this paper focuses on the pulp and paper industry, our broad framework and methodology is general and can be applied to understanding firms' strategies related to enhancing performance and productivity in a variety of industries.

This paper articulates three insights regarding asset prices and monetary policy: (1) Asset price appreciation due to monetary expansion, despite its “paper” wealth nature, tends to make current consumers as a whole wealthier; (2) the wealth effect of monetary policy (on consumption) is negatively correlated with Tobin’s q effect (on investment), which positively depends on investment elasticity; and (3) the soundness of asset market performances does not depend on whether they are fundamental or not, but on their compatibility with the AD-AS balance in the long run. These basic insights and their implications reveal some limitations of monetary policy as a stabilization policy, clarify some misperceptions on fundamental asset prices, and provide a rationale for monetary policy to react directly to asset market performances.

The effects of price and market size variables on the investment propensities in the pulp and paper industry are analyzed. A panel of 15 European countries for the time period 1984 - 1997 is used in the regression analysis. We find that the wages, the $US/ECU$ exchange rate, the price of paper and the installed production capacity are the main determinants of strategic investments in this industry. There are no - or only very small - effects from our measures of market size.

Are the quantitative equity strategies for country selection robust to implementation costs? To answer this question, we conduct a comprehensive examination of the country-level strategies so far. We review, classify, and replicate 120 equity anomalies within a sample of 42 country equity indices for the years 1996–2017. Next, using ETF price and spread data, we test the effect of real-life conditions and trading costs on the anomaly performance. We also examine three cost-mitigation strategies: infrequent rebalancing, capitalization-based weighting, and focus on low-cost securities. We find that 46% of the long-only monthly rebalanced anomaly portfolios display significant alphas, concentrated strongly among strategies based on value, momentum, and liquidity. The effect of transaction costs proves largely lethal to returns, leaving only a handful of anomalies profitable. Less frequent rebalancing (annually) helps to regain the effectiveness of the strategies, increasing the monthly alphas on the long-only anomaly portfolios to 0.44% on average.

"Never Get High on Your Own Supply:" caution to policy makers of producing centers. "Economics teaches that the market economy, if left on its own devices it will maximise the utility of each individual and to the best of all the possible worlds. However, now we see how a flood of new ideas is providing us with the tool to shape a better, fairer and more sustainable economy. These ideas come from diverse sources: new areas of mathematics, social movements like environmentalism or feminism and also the ancient discipline of ethics. Current economic theory is less a science that an ideology peculiar to certain period of history, which may well be nearing an end" - EconoMyths. Paper will discuss various "economic terms/buzzwords" which has flooded the market in recent times, post which it will unveil "PALM:nomics." The new concept/paradigm/buzzword which I am proposing is not confined to the commodity markets or commodity alone but it deals with the relationship between economic policies and price change of commodity/commodities, it tries to demystify that the economic policies at producing centre and various external economic factors along with closely related commodities, which play a major role in influencing the price behaviour besides commodity/commodities fundamental "S&D." It also cautions key producers on "Never Get High on Your Own Supply" and deprive the consuming centre. Further to that paper will also explore the behaviour of key consuming centre (.i.e) India, and how price change influences the decision making process.Last but not the least, paper will conclude by revisiting palm price forecasts for 2016.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are critical mechanisms for corporate growth and potentially for increased shareholder returns. The reality, however, often does not live up to the promise, as is borne out by empirical data on the high incidence rates of M&A under-performance. At present in Australia, directors and executive management, particularly of the acquiring company, have considerable latitude to put at-risk shareholder value via M&A without any meaningful pre-event restraints or post-event sanctions (and with the benefit of the Business Judgment Rule defence). The old adage caveat emptor (‘let the buyer beware’) still holds true for buyers, but when it comes to ensuring that their own shareholders’ interests and capital are properly protected, there are few formally imposed ‘checks and balances’. Additionally, in terms of voluntary controls, there is little clarity on what are the acceptable, key activities and behaviours of the directors of the acquiring company, that represent responsible standards of conduct. The initial question to be considered is whether there is a discernible set of ‘right practices’ that provide a reference set of benchmarks for non-executive directors to know whether they are exercising the necessary care, diligence and skill in selecting and overseeing transactions. Looking from the ‘outside in’, the corollary is ‘How do shareholders in the acquiring company have some visibility and assurance that their executive management team and board are exercising (or have exercised) sufficient due diligence (in the broadest sense of the word)?’ The challenge thus arises as to how to describe the ‘right practice’ stewardship that should be exercised by ‘reasonable directors’ of the acquiring entity to manage the risks and performance of transactions – before, during and after acquisition. This article is the first of a series of four that focus on identifying and describing ‘right governance’ i.e. the required level and mix of actions and responsibilities of directors of the acquiring company, necessary for protecting the interests of their shareholders. To carry out this research, and to shed light on these gaps in knowledge and required practices, the extant commercial, governance and legal literature relating to M&A practice has been studied to understand what level of clarity it provides to non-executive directors. (This has been described in shorthand form as the t-ought for ‘theoretical ought’). Subsequently, opinions and experiences have been elicited from a cross-section of non-executive directors and Chairmen, via targeted interviews (‘grounded research’) to capture their views on good board oversight of M&A practice. (This has been described in shorthand form as the d-ought for ‘directors’ ought’). What has emerged as the board-level themes from seasoned directors have been compared to the extant literature to examine how these align and whether there are any key gaps or contradictions. In most cases, there is alignment, although the interviewed directors’ views have crystallised what in the literature could best be described as ‘un-consolidated ideas’ based on ‘an extrapolation of managerial practices’, as the body of documented knowledge is generally not targeted at board members. From these comparison has arisen an emergent theory regarding ‘right practice’. The emergent theory points to six key themes that those directors interviewed believe make a difference to deal performance: (1) the Board’s degree of strategic thinking (‘Clear strategy upfront’); (2) planning and preparation (‘Early preparation and planning’); (3) the extent of board members’ cultural due-diligence (‘Proper understanding of culture’); (4) robust business-case scrutiny and investment assessment (‘Rigorous testing of the investment business case and funding strategy’); (5) their focus on tracking the delivery of the targeted benefits (‘Effective monitoring post transaction’); and (6) the quality of their mutual challenge and critical debate (‘Well-chaired board with constructive challenge’). This process of comparison of ‘t-ought’ versus ‘d-ought’ has indicated that these initial findings have merit and should be regarded as an emergent theory. The paper that follows is the first of a four-part series: • Paper 1 covers the commercial or practitioner M&A literature to seek what guidance this provides directors involved in transactions and to uncover any material gaps • Paper 2 in similar fashion covers governance literature, again to seek guidance and to uncover any material gaps • Paper 3 covers the findings of director interviews flowing from PhD research, regarding right M&A governance • Paper 4 covers conclusions. Paper 2 available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2880427

Developments in the law are making the corporate form more opaque and allowing the agents who animate it to escape individual accountability for their actions. The law now provides protection for agents to engage in widespread frauds that inflict massive harm on the public. This article challenges the academic orthodoxy that shareholder and director liability are enough to control agent behavior by developing a paper dragon analogy to focus on the importance of agents in corporate animation. Lack of agent accountability encourages the patterns of fraud that caused the financial crisis in which forty-five percent of the world’s wealth disappeared, and which continue to be repeated. The article reveals how making the corporate form more opaque has led to the destruction of corporate conspiracy charges for individuals and now the implosion of securities law as a method of disciplining agents. The article concludes with a call for both watching the paper dragon and the need to track the dancers who move its feet.

The recent divulgence of the Panama Papers (2016) has caused an uproar for the brazen tax avoidance and evasion practices that powerful interest groups employ, even without ostensibly breaching legal frameworks, much to the detriment of fiscal outcomes, and certainly to the disregard of tax morality considerations. This discussion paper ties the Panama Papers into the literature on tax morality, as it is an important new source of both evidence and initiative for greater reflection on the principles of tax morality on a global scale, underpinned by rising inequality, lower economic optimism, intergenerational inequity, low transparency, corporate leverage and weak oversight. The paper thereby revisits several important facets in a timely manner while the tide of public opinion post-Panama favours stronger fiscal oversight of ‘the 1%,’ which allows for a more robust re-examination of the aforementioned fiscal issues.

This comment is submitted in response to the India Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion’s Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and Their Availability on FRAND Terms.

This Internet Appendix contains mathematical and empirical results on the market timing induced bias in Jensen’s alpha using conditional models with time-varying skill in the spirit of Kacperczyk et al. (2014).Full paper available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=1253923

The Government of India Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has requested input regarding its Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and Their Availability on FRAND Terms (March 1, 2016). This Response offers a series of balanced and neutral recommendations in a range of areas for the DIPP's consideration.

With over 20 years in a democratic South Africa, the country still faces serious economic challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment. In response to these challenges, the need for a higher level of economic growth, combined with a more inclusive approach to sharing the benefits of such growth, are universally acknowledged. Recent literature establishes an important link between growth and development and removing constraints to accessing economic activity, and disciplining the market power of large firms. In this context, inclusive economic growth is also about firms being able to overcome strategic barriers to entry and expansion. The South African experience has been one of high levels of concentration in several key sectors resulting in an economy which largely excludes the majority of the population from ownership of important economic assets. This has deprived the economy of the benefits from increased participation and access to markets, and dynamic rivalry in the form of competition based on innovation, competitive pricing, investment in improved production processes and capabilities, and learning-by-doing. This paper highlights the factors which are critical to facilitating the entry of efficient rivals into traditionally concentrated markets premised on the understanding that investment and innovation emanates from and rests with firms. In this context, government’s role (including its various agencies) should be to facilitate the process by lessening structural and strategic barriers in the economy which restrict the dynamic rivalry introduced by firms that compete on the basis of investments, innovation and developing new processes and capabilities. The paper relates these issues back to the international growth and development literature in order to provide a strong motivation for the relationship between barriers to entry, competition and dynamic efficiency, increased participation in the economy and inclusive growth. This assessment provides the theoretical context for understanding the sector-specific experiences of firms in the sectors which the barriers to entry project will analyse. A second companion review paper working paper no. 5/2015 discusses the literature on competition policy, economic regulation and industrial policy.

This paper builds on an earlier working paper no. 04/15 on barriers to entry and inclusive growth by assessing the linkages between competition policy as a microeconomic tool and other national policy objectives. In so far as the mandates of regulators and various government departments charged with facilitating economic development seek to transform the economy into one that is more inclusive, the objectives of competition policy and other policies are complementary. For example, the work of economic regulators should be in parallel with competition policy through promoting access and restricting the ability of incumbent firms to exercise market power to the detriment of rivals and ultimately consumers. However, in practice South African policymakers and regulators faced with difficult choices have placed limited emphasis on regulating for competition and greater emphasis on encouraging investment and balancing the narrow interests of established incumbents. This paper reviews the performance of the competition authorities in the past 15 years and draw links to other economic policies. It discusses the key challenges faced by the competition authorities and other government agencies in regulating for competition and transforming the structure of markets. It also explores the impact of industrial and trade policy on competition and barriers to entry. Successful industrial policy should support entry, dynamism and innovation rather than simply subsidising jobs. However, if the state neglects to facilitate the creation of new entrants, capabilities and industries in its developmental framework, there may be limited competition in the long-term, as is the case in many industries in South Africa. The paper finds that whilst recent policy documents highlight the importance of competition and competition policy in achieving the aims of industrial policy, in practice the importance of rivalry and entry by new players does not seem to have been a major consideration in the implementation of policy programmes.

The Arab Uprisings represented a series of events unprecedented in the history of the Middle East: mass, popular and largely non-violent uprisings took place starting in December 2010 in Tunisia and reverberating throughout the region. These protests threatened – and in several cases resulted in the overthrow of – apparently stable autocratic regimes. The unprecedented nature and extensive domestic, regional and international impact of the Uprisings in and of itself merits attention, but coming hard on the heels of a global financial crisis and given the resonance of the Arab Uprisings with protest movements beyond the region, these Uprisings appear all the more significant beyond the region itself. The significance of the Uprisings is not just academic, however: the Middle East is one of the most frequently conflictual regions in the world, it is central to the global political economy – e.g. as a source of hydrocarbon fuels, and as a global logistical nexus – it is a source of and transit point for migratory flows towards Europe, and its autocracies have been supported as key allies by Western governments, both in Europe and North America. This project aims to generate new data and analyses of the Uprisings themselves, but is also sensitive to the policy implications of these analyses. The objective of the ArabTrans project is to contribute particularly to a better empirical understanding of the Uprisings and of the longer-term processes that lead to them and which they epitomise. To do this, the project will a) identify the principal approaches to transitions between political systems as they pertain to the Middle East generally and to the Arab Uprisings in particular; b) identify a series of political, economic, and social categories and variables based on these orthodox approaches; c) evaluate the available literature and existing data on the basis of these variables; and d) design a survey based on available data in order to facilitate the creation of a useful longitudinal database against which long-term trends and transformations might be identified. While the project will use existing data sets from public opinion surveys to look at long-time trends and transformations in public opinion, it will update and integrate these data by carrying out a new survey which will provide up to date information on public opinion in the MENA countries in 2014. This survey will use relevant questions that have been used in previous surveys to facilitate the longitudinal analysis as well as adding new questions to answer questions that arise from the literature review, particularly focusing on security, detailed questions on participation in the Uprisings and on EU-MENA relations, as well as additional questions on media, including social media use. These survey data will then be combined in a longitudinal database with non-survey quantitative data, enabling measurements of long-term trends and transformations

Tax revenues are forecast to increase from 23.5% of GDP in 2015-16 to 25.1% of GDP by 2019-20. Expenditures are expected to fall from 25.8% to 25.2% of GDP over the same period. Over the four year period the government's nominal tax receipts are forecast to increase by 30%. Tax receipts will amount to $500 billion by 2019-20. Whilst much of the increase is predicated on growth new tax measures will also need to contribute, and in a big way. The government plans to collect an additional $28 billion each year!

This paper responds to 3 discussion questions asked of participants in the Research Conference.1) How do you define "money," and how does that definition inform your work?2) Does your definition lead you to prioritize certain institutions as objects of study? Why? How does your institutional focus relate the conceptualization of money and its practices? What do you hope to accomplish by your institutional focus? 3) How does your approach to money and its institutions illuminate the travel of value across borders? How do you conceptualize the international (or now global) dimensions of the monetary system given the domestic character of many of its elements?

This is the online appendix to our working paper called "Approximate Analytical Solutions for Consumption/Investment Problems under Recursive Utility and Finite Horizon".