Suchergebnisse

Though designed by a selective group of regulators from the world's largest financial centres, Basel banking standards are being implemented far beyond the financial core, and this is often seen as confirmation of their global relevance. Yet, we show that the implementation of Basel II and III is shallow and highly selective in most countries outside of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Drawing on primary and secondary sources and regression analysis, we attribute shallow and highly selective adoption to the sheer complexity of the standards, and the fact that they need substantial modification before they can be fully implemented, particularly in developing countries. Implementation challenges are compounded by gaps in the financial market infrastructure, notably credit rating agencies, as well as shallow capital markets. Beyond this, we attribute cross-country variation in implementation to differences in the underlying political economy of the banking sector. Countries are likely to pursue relatively high levels of Basel II and III implementation when large foreign and internationally active domestic banks operate in their jurisdiction and when they have a market-oriented approach to the financial sector. Conversely, countries are likely to pursue relatively low levels of implementation when they have few internationally active banks and a more interventionist approach.

Cultural explanations of economic change were largely dropped for a generation, as economists rejected their inconclusiveness and other social scientists labelled them as politically incorrect. Peter Bauer, however, expressed disquiet at the way deep influences like culture were being ignored in economic analysis. This paper discusses why high‐profile attention has now turned back to culture. It does not find the expositions offered to be very persuasive but nevertheless agrees that Bauer's unease was understandable and describes other recent academic studies that are more promising.

Peut-on voir une source de données démographiques dans les 'merchets', ces droits à payer au seigneur médiéval, en Angleterre, par les femmes serves qui veulent se marier? Nous l'examinerons, à partir des archives du prieuré de Spalding, en fonction du débat auquel ce sujet a déjà donné lieu entre historiens, nous référant en particulier aux arguments de R. M. Smith et L. R. Poos. Si certaines séries de 'merchets', telle celle qui a été conservée à Spalding, peuvent fournir quelques indications d'ordre demographique, nous soutiendrons ici que les données tirées des 'merchets' ne sauraient, et de loin, nous documenter sur la plus grande partie des mariages de serfs. On notera d'abord l'irrégularité de la gestion du prieuré et des séries qui la retracent et que, de toutes façons, très peu de mariages de serfs ont donné lieu à enregistrement de ce type. On soulignera ensuite que les serfs qui se marient hors du prieuré, ceux qui s'échappent, ceux qui se remarient et enfin les 'manumissions' contribuent à enlever toute précision aux données des 'merchets' comme indicateur démographique. En général les arguments de Smith et Poos se révèlent justifiés.

Every so often a maverick knight sets off into the dark forest looking for the Holy Grail of "why isn't the whole world developed?" In this book, which has the heavy bibliographical armor of thegenreand 40 pages of appendices too, John Powelson reports on his quest. He claims to have found in a concept called "power diffusion" a significant part of the answer to two related questions: why did the modem economy first appear in northwestern Europe and Japan, and what characteristics of those regions account for their ability to sustain economic growth? Growth is to him the serendipitous outcome of seemingly unconnected events, and he defines sustained growth as that which lasts a century or more.