Crowdfrauding: Avoiding Ponzi entrepreneurs when investing in new ventures

Crowdfunding has gained substantial interest in the U.S., allowing entrepreneurs to raise startup capital in exchange for equity in their ventures. This approach to equity capital can open up new sources of venture finance to legitimate entrepreneurs, but little attention has been given to how it offers new opportunities for illegal entrepreneurs to defraud investors. We adopt a forensic approach to examine entrepreneurs who launch Ponzi ventures—businesses that continually bring in new investors in order to use their money to pay returns to earlier investors—to demonstrate the ease, creativity, and audacity with which these illegal entrepreneurs operate. The provided examples of Ponzi entrepreneurs show how easily they can circumvent the safeguards purported to protect investors: screening by ‘the crowd,’ transparency and documentation requirements, independent audit reports, and withholding of funds until the venture's financial goal has been met. In this article, we offer possible solutions to help protect investors, legitimate entrepreneurs, and business in general from the damage created by illegal entrepreneurs.     

CLASSIFYING MONETARY ECONOMICS: FIELDS AND METHODS FROM PAST TO FUTURE

Abstract We propose a simple, yet sufficiently encompassing, classification scheme of monetary economics. It comprises three fundamental fields and six recent areas that expand within and across these fields. The elements of our scheme are not found together and in their mutual relationships in earlier studies of the relevant literature; neither does this attempt aim to produce a relatively complete systematization. Our intention in taking stock is not finality or exhaustiveness. We rather suggest a viewpoint and a possible ordering of the accumulating knowledge. Our purpose is to promote discussion on the evolving nature and internal consistency of monetary economics at large.     

Inflationary shocks and real output growth in nine Muslim-majority countries: Implications for Islamic banking and finance

Low and stable inflation is important for maintaining the viability of Islamic banking and finance within a dual banking system. Inflationary shocks when transmitted to real output growth cause a shift of investment to fixed return products as a hedge against the uncertainty of returns on equity investment under Islamic profit-loss sharing contracts. This study examines the transmission of inflationary shocks to the real economy for nine Muslim-majority countries (Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey) that have introduced Islamic banking, all except Iran within dual-banking systems. A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) framework is deployed to understand macroeconomic relationships using annual data from the late 1970s to 2014. The key finding is that inflationary shocks affect real interest and exchange rates which in turn impact real output growth. The paper argues that the absorption of inflationary shocks in real interest and exchange rates is the outcome of rigidities in nominal interest and exchange rates within repressed financial systems. Policy regimes that allow for greater adjustment in nominal interest and exchange rates under a deregulated financial system would offer better shock absorption capacity which would lead to less volatility in inflation, real interest and exchange rates, and real output growth. The resulting more stable macroeconomic environment would be more conducive to the development of an Islamic financial sector that would promote economic growth.     

BEHAVIORAL PORTFOLIO SELECTION: ASYMPTOTICS AND STABILITY ALONG A SEQUENCE OF MODELS

We consider a sequence of financial markets that converges weakly in a suitable sense and maximize a behavioral preference functional in each market. For expected concave utilities, it is well known that the maximal expected utilities and the corresponding final positions converge to the corresponding quantities in the limit model. We prove similar results for nonconcave utilities and distorted expectations as employed in behavioral finance, and we illustrate by a counterexample that these results require a stronger notion of convergence of the underlying models compared to the concave utility maximization. We use the results to analyze the stability of behavioral portfolio selection problems and to provide numerically tractable methods to solve such problems in complete continuous‐time models.     

城镇化进程中农村金融需求变化问题的调查解析--基于江苏农户的问卷调查

经济决定金融，金融必须努力服务于经济发展方式转变。基于农户微观视角，通过农户问卷调查，研究城镇化进程中农户金融需求变化及其行为特征问题，分析农村金融供给现状及差距，探讨和构建适合新时期农村金融服务工作的发展机制，对促进江苏农村经济发展、提高城镇化水平具有重要现实意义。     

国际金融危机下广东经济现状与发展趋势评析

广东的经济总量多年领先全国，遭遇国际金融危机后的广东经济呈现出若干特点，包括第三产业、民营经济、区域协调、科技进步等因素都展示了广东对危机的抵抗力，其发展趋势的后劲也可以预期。先行一步的广东对我国区域经济发展理念和规律的认识具有启示作用。     

净现值法在融资租赁决策中的运用

融资租赁作为一种融资手段已经广泛应用于各行业领域，如何对具体的融资租赁项目进行合理、科学的分析和评价，对企业有效降低融资成本、提高资金使用效率有着重要意义。针对某一具体的融资租赁项目而言，租入资产账面价值的确定、租金的支付方式、折旧及摊销的抵税作用等因素都会对该融资项目的现金净流量产生重大影响，进而影响最终决策。     

涉农贷款中保证担保的法律思考

我国农村信贷发展中,第三方的保证担保发挥着积极作用。然而,在涉农贷款实践中,保证担保制度仍存在许多问题:农户联保贷款虽得到了广泛的推广,但仍存在诸多不足有待进一步完善;作为农村重要组织的村民委员会的保证人资格问题仍存在争议,需要立法予以规范;保证担保公示制度的不健全,增加了涉农贷款的风险,亟待建立有效的保证担保公示制度。     

中小非上市公司信用风险的评价研究——基于WEB与FAHP的视角

信用是人类社会最古老的词汇之一,而信用风险的管控是现代社会经济生活关注的核心问题之一。中小企业既是资本主义社会也是社会主义社会向前发展的源驱动力,中小企业的发展离不开现代信用体系的支撑。在文章中,中小企业按其信息的披露程度分为上市公司与非上市公司,相对于中小企业上市公司来说,由于交易的参与人信息不对称,中小非上市公司信用风险评估是交易双方以及各类金融机构最关心和最难解决的难题之一。在现代信息网络技术普遍化的背景下,利用人工以及机器搜索策略,充分挖掘中小非上市公司信息风险元和分类整理,并在此基础之上进行模糊综合评估,最后通过算例说明基于WEB对中小非上市公司信用风险的模糊综合评价的方法行之有效。