Engineering the Financialization of Urban Entrpreneurialism: The JESSICA Urban Development Initiative in the European Union

Urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban governance are assuming new forms under finance‐dominated accumulation. We examine and contribute to theorizing the mechanisms through which urban governance is financialized, taking as a case study JESSICA, one of the European Union's initiatives to implement an ‘urban sensitive’ policy for sustainable and integrated development. Like other initiatives promoting financialization, JESSICA deploys the logic of finance to select and fund urban social initiatives and development projects on the basis of their potential return on investment (ROI). Understanding this process requires placing questions of political economy—how urban governance is shaped by the broader political‐economic context—with questions of governmentality—how stakeholders are enrolled in and come to take for granted new governance initiatives. Following the multi‐scalar institutional infrastructure is crucial to understanding how this works. Taking a relational multi‐scalar approach, we trace how changes at the supranational scale filter down to shape urban policy selection and performance in Sofia, Bulgaria, where we document how ROI calculations conflict with social welfare priorities. Contrasts between the trajectory of financialization of urban governance in the European Union and the United States demonstrate how this is geographically variegated, shaped by the broader context/conjuncture within which such financialization is embedded.     

论法律不完备性与政府介入期货市场

在期货市场上，法律不完备性问题表现得较为突出，法律对于侵害行为的阻吓作用非常有限、期货市场法律的不完备性，主要取决于期货市场的特点和性质。政府采取相关的监管方式管理期货市场非常必要，监管的介入需要满足标准化和损害（外部性）足够高的条件。政府管理期货市场立法和法院执法的作用不可或缺，但更主要的是采用监管的方式。     

经济全球化对我国投资条约缔约实践的影响

经济全球化背景下国际投资规则呈现自由化、多边化的发展态势，中国在日益激烈的吸引外资的竞争中应该积极参与区域投资条约，制定参与WT0框架下多边投资条约的战略。     

Bankruptcy laws and debt renegotiation

This paper analyzes the effect of the toughness of bankruptcy law on the number of liquidations in a simple model of borrowing and lending with asymmetric information, where the creditor cannot credibly commit to liquidate the firm if the default occurs. In our setting we consider a bankruptcy law to be a one-dimensional variable that influences creditor's expectation value of collateral. We find that there is an interval of the bankruptcy law, where the number of liquidations decreases in the toughness of the bankruptcy law. We also find that if the liquidation costs are high, softer bankruptcy law is preferred.     

Competition Policy: What are the Costs and Benefits of Measuring its Costs and Benefits?

Summary  Competition authorities are increasingly measuring the effects of their enforcement actions, seeking a robust justification for the proliferation of competition policy. We highlight the importance of identifying the right counterfactual against which to measure effects, and set out the relevant categories of costs and benefits. We then explore how a balance can be struck between the benefits and inherent limitations of these measurement exercises. Relatively crude analyses of cartel action benefits can be sufficient to achieve public legitimacy for competition policy. Assessing the effects of merger and conduct inquiries is often ambiguous, but could be used to improve decision-making processes. Director and Managing Consultant, respectively, at Oxera, Oxford and London. The valuable comments of Fod Barnes, Kerry Hughes and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors alone.     

Family and sex-specific U.S. immigration from Europe, 1870–1910: A panel data study of rates and composition

This paper develops and estimates models of family and sex-specific emigration, as well as the sex composition of this emigration, from 12 European source countries to the U.S. for the period 1870–1910. The models are based on the distinction between economic migrants (males, single females, and some married females) and tied or trailing migrants (females) and are estimated with panel data, including data that relate to the occupational/industrial structure of male and female economic activity in source countries. Hausman-Taylor instrumental variable estimates suggest that although both males and females responded to labor-market signals, males were more responsive than females to per capita GDP differences. Moreover, compared to the rest of Europe, Ireland, and Scandinavia were the sources of many young, single male, and female migrants, who responded strongly to gaps in economic opportunities. In fact, much of the European response to such gaps appears to be due to migrants from Ireland and Scandinavia. Females tended to originate in English-speaking countries and countries that were agriculturally oriented. Service and manufacturing jobs in source countries discouraged the migration of females relative to males. Males tended to follow recent migrants more than females, but females responded more to long-term influences as measured by stocks of migrants from their source countries who had previously settled in the U.S. Countries with high birth rates had relatively fewer female emigrants, whereas those with high rates of natural increase 20 years earlier experienced relatively more male emigration. Intact families, other family members (including family-strategy male migrants and trailing female migrants), and single males and females responded strongly to economic incentives, but the singles were most responsive followed by family-strategy males.     

A note on the existence of unique equivalent martingale measures in a Markovian setting

Simple sufficient conditions for the existence of a unique equivalent martingale measure are provided. Furthermore, these conditions give us a handle on situations where an equivalent martingale measure cannot exist. The existence of a unique equivalent martingale measure is of relevance to problems in mathematical finance. Two examples of models for which the question of existence was unresolved are studied. By means of our results existence of a unique equivalent measure up to an explosion time is proved.     

营销角度的特许经营及其竞争法上的思考

特许经营是一种新型的销售方式,作为企业分销系统的构成要素,能够起到降低风险,沟通生产与消费的作用。然而在实际经营过程中也会出现许多诸如指定购买与搭售、联合定价、独占经营等违反竞争法的问题。为适应不断变化的竞争形势,应从竞争法的层面上对其加以规制。     

CREDIBILITY, MACROECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALS AND MARKOV REGIME SWITCHES IN THE EMS

The main objective of this paper is to use the Markov regime‐switching modelling framework to describe and analyse the credibility of a number of countries participating in the European Monetary System during 1980–1998. Our credibility indicator, based on Hughes Hallet et al.'s (1997) methodology, is subject to discrete regime shifts and is made dependent on macroeconomic fundamentals. We carry out extensive testing to assess the specification of the Markov regime‐switching model and the potential existence of permanent breaks. A contribution of our paper is the specification of a multivariate Markov switching model that allows us to examine whether macroeconomic variables have asymmetric effects on credibility. Another contribution is the specification of a regime‐switching model with time‐varying transition probabilities, which enables us to determine whether changes in macroeconomic variables can trigger switches between the low and high credibility regimes. We find strong evidence of regime switching behaviour in all countries. Both the level of credibility and the transition probabilities display an asymmetric response to changes in macroeconomic variables, with the stance of fiscal policy exerting the most systematic influence in all countries.     

The European high-speed train network: Predicted effects on accessibility patterns

The principal aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the future European high-speed train network on accessibility, by reducing time distance between places and modifying their relative location. We compare the current situation with that foreseen for the year 2010, according to the Outline Plan of the European High-Speed Train Network, in order to analyse which areas will most benefit from construction and improvement of the infrastructure. It is hypothesized that the high-speed train will certainly bring the peripheral regions closer to the central ones, but will also increase imbalances between the main cities and their hinterlands. A weighted average distance indicator is applied for this purpose. This measure identifies the spatial distribution of accessibility in the area of study, emphasizing the infrastructure effects, and locates accessibility changes at the European level. A Geographic Information System (GIS) has been used to carry out this study.