How did the wealthiest Britons get so rich?

The source of 200 of the greatest fortunes in Great Britain in 1988 is examined using data published in Money magazine. The 200 fortunes originated in 74 different industries, the most common being land-holding (n=33) and real estate trading and development (n=15). Sixty-two of the industries were judged to be competitive at the time the fortunes orginated, 12 non-competitive. Three-quarters of the fortunes originated in what were essentially competitive industries. Possible explanations include infra-marginal rents due to business acumen or ownership of scarce essential resources, short-run disequilibrium profits, the returns to innovation, luck (or observations of the very fortunate investors who played the business uncertainty lottery), or classification errors. In any case, we learn that monopoly is not the exclusive (or even most common) source of vast fortunes in Great Britain.     

Socialist Men,Liberal Measures?

The Spanish Socialist party, led by Felipe Gonzales (above), is proving far readier to liberalise the Spanish economy than its centre-right predecessors in government. Alison Wright, a specialist in Spanish economic and political affairs, welcomes this surprising development but warns Spain's liberal Socialists that they have a long way to go in restoring efficiency to her economy.     

REGULARITIES IN THE VARIATION OF SKEWNESS IN ASSET RETURNS

This paper documents regularities in the comparative skewness characteristics across several classes of assets and over time. We find smaller capitalized stock indices are more negatively skewed than larger stock indices. Over time, the skewness of stock indices follows a business-cycle-related variation. Skewness is more negative during economic upturns and less negative, even positive, during downturns. Three alternative methods for testing the statistical significance of skewness and for making confidence interval estimates of skewness are presented. These include a bootstrap methodology and a test that allows for nonindependent observations.     

西方商学院为何离开?

伦敦的卡斯商学院是被中国看似巨大且尚未开发的管理教育市场所吸引的数十家MBA教育项目之一.2004年,它首先与上海财经大学合作创办了高级经理教育项目,大约80名学员毕业自这个两年制的项目.但是卡斯商学院派往中国的英国管理人员逐渐对政府审批每位新学员的冗长程序感到厌倦了.     

Visible Homelessness in a “Liveable City”: Municipal Responses to Homelessness in Melbourne

Despite considerable national and urban prosperity, significant numbers of Australians are homeless. How local governments engage with homelessness has significant implications for the homeless population. In recent years, municipal strategies have inclined towards the maintenance of public order at the cost of the rights of homeless individuals. In this article, we investigate the approach to homelessness proposed by the City of Melbourne in 2017, which centered on the expansion of powers to remove individuals and the confiscation of possessions, testing the council’s claims as to the impact of visible homelessness upon local businesses and upon other users of public spaces.     

Sowing Seeds of Displacement: Gentrification and Food Justice in Oakland,CA

Green gentrification is the process through which the elimination of hazardous conditions or the development of green spaces is mobilized as a strategy to draw in affluent new residents and capital projects. Based on observations and interviews in Oakland, California, we argue that food justice organizations seeking to promote access to healthy food in low-income communities can unwittingly create spaces that foster this process. Despite a desire to serve long-term residents, activists embody a hip green aesthetic that is palatable to affluent whites and can be appropriated by urban boosters to promote the neighborhood. We use this process as a lens to theorize links between food and green gentrification, highlighting the importance of food to cities’ efforts to brand themselves as ripe for redevelopment, and understand green gentrification as a racialized process tied to cultural foodways. We also attend to the practical stakes for food justice activism, arguing that a clear understanding of green gentrification and food justice activists’ unwitting role in it can help the latter to attempt to mitigate their culpability and seek to develop broad inclusive strategies for locally led development without displacement.