Law, Politics and Financial Development: The Great Reversal of the U.K. Corporate Debt Market

This article examines the role of creditor protection in the development of the U.K. corporate bond market. This market grew rapidly in the late nineteenth century, but in the twentieth century it experienced a reversal, albeit with a short-lived post-1945 renaissance. Such was the extent of the reversal that the market from the 1970s onwards was smaller than it had been in 1870. We find that law does not explain the variation in the size of this market over time. Alternatively, our evidence suggests that inflation and taxation policies were major drivers of this market in the post-1945 era. Copyright © The Economic History Association 2013

The Economics of Total War and Reconstruction, 1914-1922

This chapter features a discussion of the economy and mobilization for the First World War. The authors analyse the implications and cost of total war, concluding with an examination of its contradictory legacies. In studying the war’s impact on Germany in particular, the chapter provides an in-depth look at the consequences of war on Europe’s strongest pre-war economy, without the complications of separating out the issues of a developing country, which can mimic those faced in wartime. The economic challenges that warring parties faced during the war included mobilization, warfare, labour shortage, impaired domestic economic activity, restricted international trade, a systematic redistribution of resources towards the war economy, food rationing, the predictable emergence of black markets, and a drop in living standards. The authors also discuss strategies to meet the significant financial demands associated with the war, and its tumultuous economic and political aftermath.

Beyond Financialisation? Transformative Strategies for More Sustainable Financial Markets in the European Union

The global financial crisis has led many regulators and lawmakers to a rethinking about current versus optimum financial market structures and activities that include a variety and even radical ideas about delevaraging and downsizing finance. This paper focuses on the flaws and shortcomings of regulatory reforms of finance and on the necessity of and scope for more radical transformative strategies. With 'crisis economics' back, the most developed countries, including the EU member states, are still on the edge of disaster and confronted with systemic risk. Changes in financial regulation adopted in the aftermath of the financial meltdown have not been radical enough to transform the overall system of finance-driven capitalism towards a more sustainable system with a more embedded finance. The paper discusses financialisation in order to understand the development trends in finance over the past decades and examines various theories to describe the typical trends and patterns in financial regulation. By focusing on a limited number of regulatory reforms in the European Union, the limitations of current reforms and the need for additional transformative strategies necessary to overcome the finance-driven accumulation regime are explored. Finally, the regulatory space for such transformative strategies and for taming finance in times of crisis, austerity, and increased public protest potential is analysed.

Regulating Digital Financial Services Agents in Developing Countries to Promote Financial Inclusion

Limited access to bank branches excludes over one billion people from accessing financial services in developing countries. Digital financial services offered by banks and mobile money providers through agents can solve this problem without the need for complex and costly physical banking infrastructures. Delivering digital financial services through agents requires a legal framework to regulate liability. This article analyses whether vicarious liability of the principal is a more efficient regulatory approach than personal liability of the agent. Agent liability in Kenya, Fiji, and Malawi is analysed to demonstrate that vicarious liability of the principal, coupled to an explicit agreement as to agent rewards and penalties, is the more efficient regulatory approach.

Finance, social economics and community development

The last three decades have seen social enterprises in the United Kingdom pushed to the forefront of welfare delivery, workfare and area-based regeneration. For critics, this is repositioning the sector around a neoliberal politics that privileges marketization, state roll-back and disciplining community groups to become more self-reliant. Successive governments have developed bespoke products, fiscal instruments and intermediaries to enable and extend the social finance market. Such assemblages are critical to roll-out tactics, but they are also necessary and useful for more reformist understandings of economic alterity. The issue is not social finance itself but how it is used, which inevitably entangles social enterprises in a form of legitimation crises between the need to satisfy financial returns and at the same time keep community interests on board. This paper argues that social finance, how it is used, politically domesticated and achieves re-distributional outcomes is a necessary component of counter-hegemonic strategies. Such assemblages are as important to radical community development as they are to neoliberalism and the analysis concludes by highlighting the need to develop a better understanding of finance, the ethics of its use and tactical compromises in scaling it as an alternative to public and private markets.

Taxation and Household Financial Decisions: Evidence from the Bush Tax Acts

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013

Do financial distress and liquidity crises affect value and size premiums?

This study investigates the impact of liquidity crises on the relationship between stock (value and size) premiums and default risk in the US market. It first examines whether financial distress can explain value and size premiums, and then, subsequently, aims to determine whether liquidity crises increase the risk of value and size premium investment strategies. The study employs a time-varying approach and a sample of US stock returns for the period between January 1982 and March 2011, a period which includes the current liquidity crisis, so as to examine the relationship between default risk, liquidity crises and value and size premiums. The findings indicate that the default premium has explanatory power for value and size and premiums, which affect firms with different characteristics. We also find that liquidity crises may actually increase the risks related to size and value premium strategies.

How bank business models relate with risk?: The case of Portugal in times of financial crisis

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Exploring profitability diversity through financial statement analysis

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Three essays in financial markets

A PhD Dissertation, presented as part of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the NOVA - School of Business and Economics

Macroeconomic impacts of politics and policy: Applications to financial and real markets

A PhD Dissertation, presented as part of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the NOVA - School of Business and Economics

Noise traders, rational traders, and the rest: A new approach to efficient financial markets

A PhD Dissertation, presented as part of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the NOVA - School of Business and Economics

Higher education branding: Nova School of Business and Economics and Bocconi University

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Economic grand rounds: financial burden of medical care and risk of forgoing care among Europeans with depressive symptoms

Little is known about the financial burden of individuals with depressive symptoms. This study explored that burden, using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe. To assess the association between depressive symptoms and the individuals' financial burden for medical care and whether they forwent medical care because of costs, logistic regressions were performed that adjusted for age, gender, marital status, education, and chronic diseases. A total of 16,696 noninstitutionalized individuals aged 50-79 years were included in the study. Individuals with depressive symptoms and those without such symptoms bore a similar financial burden. However, individuals with depressive symptoms were at increased risk of forgoing care because of costs, which may worsen their health and financial situation