107159 research outputs found
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Fabricating homeland security: police entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel By Rhys Machold, Redwood City: Stanford University Press. 2024. 348 pages. $47.00 (paperback). ISBN: 9781503640719
No full textImproving the regulatory process for EU capital markets – insights from equity settlement discipline
No full textModern securities market structure is intricate, typically involving holding chains, central clearing, and ultimate settlement at a central securities depository. This complexity naturally leads to complex policy questions and to a sophisticated policy debate which is largely conducted between experts from regulators and large intermediaries. However, the rights of a wider set of stakeholders, including beneficial investors and issuers are affected. Moreover, policy makers must balance the conflicting claims of these groups of stakeholders as well as the goals of market efficiency and promoting investor confidence. This paper analyses and evaluates European policy making in the area of equities settlement discipline as a case study in financial rule-making. It reveals how a failure to specify precise policy goals, overly-narrow consultation, disproportionate rule-making and inattention to European specificities led to a controversial and sub-optimal policy outcome, offering insights for the process of further development of EU settlement discipline policy specifically and EU capital markets regulation more generally
A history of cross-cultural research on childhood learning: cross-cultural contributions
No full textPolitical connections and corporate debt structure: the moderating effect of India's government-owned banks
No full textIn the corporate finance literature, much attention has been paid to the relationship between politicians and businesses. Our paper explores novel data to show the role of political connections on corporate debt structure in India during the period 2003–2022. We find that firms donating to the major political parties (Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC)) have higher long-term debt (LTD), which is mainly obtained through government-owned banks (GOBs). These banks exhibit a positive and moderate effect on the LTD of only those firms that contribute to both the BJP and the INC, which highlights an issue of collusion between GOBs and firms, and calls into question their ethics regarding public money. Finally, politically connected firms enjoy easy access to credit through rent-seeking and the GOB channel. These findings remain robust to several dynamic panel data specifications, sectoral control, and robustness checks
Do larger firms exert more market power? Markups and markdowns along the size distribution
No full textCombining financial statements with firm-level product prices, we find that larger firms exhibit lower markups, although they are overcompensated by substantially higher wage markdowns. We explain our divergence from prior results by highlighting how labor market power affects markup estimates
Evaluating the role of community-based multi-disciplinary teams in England’s Pioneer integrated health and social care programme: setting the scene
No full textThis paper introduces an evaluation of community-based, integrated health and social care multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs), primarily serving older people with long-term conditions, undertaken as part of the wider evaluation (2015-2022) of the Integrated Care and Support Pioneer Programme in England (2013-2018). To explain the context within which the MDT evaluation was undertaken, we first outline a brief history of health and social care integration policy in England, describe the Pioneer Programme and the requirements of the national ‘longer-term’ evaluation of the Pioneers. We then explain our rationale for focusing on MDTs, describe our conceptual framework of MDT functioning and provide a brief description of the evaluation design and methods, highlighting four overarching challenges we faced in undertaking it. We then briefly describe the individual papers that constitute the current supplement
Company disclosures and metrics as tools for just transition monitoring: investor, rightsholder and policy perspectives
No full textThis report seeks to identify how monitoring and scrutiny can be an effective tool for enhancing just transition finance. Its aim is to identify gaps and use cases for the metrics and monitoring space. The report presents the different needs for just transition metrics of investors and rightsholders – i.e. stakeholder groups impacted by company activities under transition plans in ways that affect their human rights. It explores policy options that can meet both groups’ needs while also remaining feasible and viable – including for companies, which will need to provide much of this information. The research focuses on large, listed companies and their assets while acknowledging that there are different considerations for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and privately-owned entities. The report draws on engagement-led research focused on the users of company plans and data. The report concludes that while substantial progress has been made, current frameworks have not been clear enough about the form best practice should take for information to promote a just transition. Furthermore, some initiatives have been led by company and investor needs with insufficient incorporation of systemic risks and of the needs of rightsholders
Mobilising bonds for the just transition: an exploratory assessment methodology of thematic sovereign bonds
No full textThis report presents a novel methodology to assess the presence of just transition elements in green, social, sustainability and sustainability-linked (GSS+) bond frameworks. This methodology demonstrates how GSS+ bonds can be leveraged for the just transition, which can inform both issuers’ bond design and investor decision-making. The authors classify certain GSS+ bond framework characteristics – eligible expenditures, performance targets and post-issuance reporting – as just transition-related where activities cover both climate change mitigation and one of the following social themes: education, employment or equality. Where there is a causal link between the mitigation and social activities in question, the expenditure, target or reporting is considered just transition-focused. Using this methodology, they assess nearly all existing sovereign GSS+ bond frameworks, amounting to 68 in total, finding moderate evidence that just transition elements are present
The effect of advisors' incentives on clients' investments
No full textWe use granular data from an investment firm and a credible identification strategy to estimate the effect of financial advisors’ incentives on client investments. Exploiting a natural experiment triggered by the 2018 implementation of MiFID II, we find that clients’ investments respond strongly to changes in advisor incentives. Advisors react through multiple mechanisms: (a) inducing existing clients to bring in new money, (b) channeling it to high-incentive funds, and (c) attracting more new clients. We also find that the MiFID II reform generated more balanced incentives, which translated into higher portfolio efficiency through both lower average fees and stronger portfolio diversification
Undoing or unstructuring gender: the effects of the Slovak leave policy for fathers on the change of the gender structure
No full textSince the 1990s, leave policies for fathers–typically parts of parental leave set aside for fathers–have been gaining popularity as a solution to persisting inequalities in the gendered division of leaves. Research has focused on their contribution to undoing gender and found that changes in parents' division of labour have varied within and across contexts. I argue that to understand the effectiveness of leave policy for fathers, it is helpful to look beyond undoing gender (changes to parents' division of leave), to unstructuring gender (policy effects on multiple dimensions of the gender structure, which, if unchanged, may limit policy effectiveness). To illustrate my argument, I investigate the 2011 Slovak leave policy for fathers, introduced into a context characterized by an inegalitarian gender structure, including societal gendered norms on the division of leave, inegalitarian individual gendered identities and unequal patterns of leave division. Drawing on interviews with 38 mothers and fathers, I find that while the policy has affected a change in parents' leave-division, there was little evidence of change to the prevalent norms or parents' identities. Instead, these dimensions of the gender structure persisted and continued constraining fathers' uptake of the policy and parents' more equal division of leave