Suchergebnisse

We report new evidence on the bank and institutional determinants of Islamic bank capital ratios in 28 countries between 1999 and 2013. Overall, we find that smaller, more profitable, and highly liquid Islamic banks are more highly capitalized. Additionally, improvements in the economic and financial environments and market discipline within a country correspond with higher Islamic bank capitalization. The results shed light on the impact that Sharia'a law restrictions have on Islamic banking capitalization. Our findings are most robust to banks that choose to hold capital well in excess of that required by regulators, consistent with traditional capital structure theory. Our results highlight the role that stable economic and political systems play in improving bank capitalization and reducing financial sector risk. By reducing political instability and corruption, improving legal systems, and encouraging access to capital markets, policymakers may incentivize managers to make financing decisions that increase the capitalization of the Islamic banking industry in developing countries.

One interpretation of the evidence on how people actually behave is that they sometimes/often do not have well-defined preferences. Although this makes public policy based on preference satisfaction problematic, it does not count against policy intervention per se. This paper argues instead that it shifts the object of intervention to the rules that constrain and enable action (away from the outcomes arising from those actions). This is the constitutional approach to public policy. Drawing on the constitutional tradition in political theory that values individuals for their individuality, the paper develops an argument for a Basic Income and a constitutionally constrained tax system. The key feature of this system is its simplicity. This should appeal on behavioural grounds to anyone who is concerned with using the tax and benefit system in public policy and not just those who are persuaded by the argument here for the constitutional approach to public policy.

Abstract
FASHION VICTIMS: THE DANGERS OF DRESS PAST AND PRESENT, ALISON MATTHEWS DAVID (2015) London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 225 pp., ISBN: 9781845204495, h/bk, £25, $40
BRAND/STORY: CASES AND EXPLORATIONS IN FASHION BRANDING, JOSEPH H. HANCOCK, II (2016) 2nd ed., New York and London: Fairchild Books, 240 pp., ISBN: 9781501300028, p.bk, £60.00
DIGITAL TEXTILE PRINTING, SUSAN CARDEN (2016) London, UK: Bloomsbury, 144 pp., ISBN: 9781472535672, p/bk, $34.95
THE LOST ART OF DRESS: THE WOMEN WHO ONCE MADE AMERICA STYLISH, LINDA PRZYBYSZEWSKI (2014) New York: Basic Books, 347 pp., ISBN: 9780456036714, h/bk, $28.99
DRESS HISTORY: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, CHARLOTTE NICKLAS AND ANNEBELLA POLLEN (2015) 1st ed., London: Bloomsbury Academic, 215 pp., ISBN: 9780857856401, h/bk, $110; ISBN: 9780857855411, p/bk, $29.95
FASHION'S DOUBLE: REPRESENTATIONS OF FASHION IN PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM, ADAM GECZY AND VICKI KARAMINAS (2015) 1st ed., London: Bloomsbury Academic, 176 pp., ISBN: 9780857857118, p/bk, $29.95

Why, as a comparativist, did I find it compelling to carry out field research in over 20 countries on five different continents? Because comparative politics should be question-driven, not driven by methodology or existing data. Good questions led to new countries. My book on how Brazilian civilian elites were complicit in coups led to a comparative book on how to transform such civil–military relations in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. My colleague Juan J Linz and I broadened the scope of questions of democratic transition theory by adding post-communist countries to the transition set. New questions and relevant new countries continue to emerge. What to do if more than one nation exists in a polity pursuing 'nation-state' policies? I helped create the concept of 'state-nation' and documented how 'multiple but complementary identities' were fostered in India. How did polities that respected the 'twin tolerations' emerge in Muslim-majority Indonesia, Senegal, and Tunisia?

Using two longitudinal panel datasets of Chinese manufacturing firms, we assess whether state ownership benefits or impedes firms' innovation. We show that state ownership in an emerging economy enables a firm to obtain crucial R&D resources but makes the firm less efficient in using those resources to generate innovation, and we find that a minority state ownership is an optimal structure for innovation development in this context. Moreover, the inefficiency of state ownership in transforming R&D input into innovation output decreases when industrial competition is high, as well as for start-up firms. Our findings integrate the efficiency logic (agency theory), which views state ownership as detrimental to innovation, and institutional logic, which notes that governments in emerging economies have critical influences on regulatory policies and control over scarce resources. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on state ownership and firm innovation in emerging economies.

Why do some Americans feel more patriotic than others? We argue that feelings of national pride are reinforced by cues from people's political and social environments. When Americans reside in contexts that align with their values, traits, and civic orientations, they are more likely to express pride in their country. We consider both civic and ethnic pathways to patriotism. We expect that minorities and those who particularly value political equality will feel increasingly patriotic as the racial and ethnic diversity of their state climbs. For those who see politics through a partisan lens, we expect that environments defined by political competition will enhance feelings of national pride. We test our theory using data from the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES). We find that Americans are more likely to say that they feel love for their country when they reside in political contexts congruent with their values and approach to citizenship.

We examined how compassion can alleviate employees' negative emotions, behaviors, and thoughts. On the basis of self-regulatory resources theory, we hypothesized that there would be relationships between the 2 mediating variables of self-esteem and self-efficacy, and the dependent variables
of anxiety, burnout, workplace deviance, and intention to quit. We collected data on these variables from 284 nurses, who work in a stressful job that necessitates compassion from colleagues, to test our theoretical model. The results revealed that compassion alleviated negative emotions (anxiety
and burnout), behavior (workplace deviance), and thoughts (intention to quit), with both self-esteem and self-efficacy having mediating effects. Thus, we demonstrated the specific path through which compassion can have positive effects on an organization's employees. We discuss the observed
relationship between compassion and self-regulation, and theoretical contributions regarding differences between self-esteem and self-efficacy, as well as between anxiety and burnout.

Historically, governments have adopted legalized, integrated, and global rules to govern oligopolistic industries, such as shipping, chemicals, and industrial production. By contrast, they have adopted nonbinding and unintegrated rules and institutions to govern competitive industries, such as energy, agriculture, and mining, at the national or subnational scale. Considering that competitive producers face greater barriers to political collective action, what explains the form of global governance across these sectors? This article demonstrates that oligopolistic producers are more intensively and extensively regulated than competitive markets because producers in oligopolistic industries can more cost-effectively alter markets to meet environmental goals. Therefore, despite their political influence, oligopolies are regularly called upon to initiate and sustain market transformation on a global scale. New qualitative evidence from two treaty regimes governing different types of markets supports this theory, as well as new quantitative data on the full range of global environmental treaty regimes since World War II.

Alcohol use is associated with impaired decision making and unwanted sexual outcomes, but emerging adults generally perceive the co-occurrence of alcohol use and sexual behavior positively. The current study examined perceived links between alcohol use and sexual experiences. Data were from 279 college students using stratified random sampling with replacement (56% female, 25% Hispanic/Latino, 22% African American, 28% Asian American/Pacific Islander, and 51% European American; M = 19.95 [0.43] years old). We coded participants' responses to an open-ended question about how their alcohol use and sexual feelings were related. Students generally perceived that alcohol is facilitative of sex or has no effect. The most common responses were that alcohol leads to arousal and disinhibition. Almost no students mentioned alcohol's impact on contraceptive use or sexual assault. Results differed by gender, prior sexual behavior, and heavy drinking. We interpret results in light of alcohol myopia theory and discuss implications for prevention.

Based on agenda-setting, priming and issue ownership theory, we know that issue ownership and party visibility in the news can be used as strategies to affect electoral support. Thus far, it is, however, unclear whether these effects are independent or work interactively. This study aims to fill this gap. We focus on the Partij voor de Vrijheid, the prominent Dutch right-wing populist party, and draw upon an experimental design in which we exposed a sample of Dutch voters ( N = 600) to media coverage on one of four issues – an owned issue, an unowned issue, an issue owned by another party and a contested issue – featuring either a party cue or not. The results indicate that the impact of issue coverage is moderated by party cues: attention to owned issues and unowned issues increases support only when party cues are present. Attention to contested and trespassing issues does not increase support.

This paper examines the relationship between financial market regulation, country governance and efficiency of commercial banks in East Asian economies during the period 2001-2008 using a two-stage estimation technique. In the first stage, we employ a non-parametric approach-Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-to estimate the banks' cost and profit efficiency scores and then Tobit estimation to analyze the impact of financial market regulations and country governance on bank efficiency. The results suggest that commercial banks in East Asia are relatively profit efficient rather than cost efficient. The findings show that countries with more financial freedom and independence are more cost efficient. Moreover, government effectiveness is found to be positively related to bank efficiency. Consistent with economic theory, corruption is negatively related to bank efficiency. Therefore, this study reveals the importance of financial market regulations and country governance as catalysts for efficient banking operations in East Asian economies.

Does the current account improve or deteriorate following a monetary policy expansion? We examine this issue theoretically and empirically. We show that a standard open economy DSGE model predicts that the current account response to a monetary policy shock depends on the degree of economic regulation in different markets. In particular, financial (product market) liberalisation makes it more likely that the current account deteriorates (improves) following a monetary expansion. We test these theoretical predictions with a varying coefficient Bayesian panel VAR model, where the coefficients are allowed to vary as a function of the degree of financial, product and labour market regulation on data from 1976 Q1-2006 Q4 for 19 OECD countries. Our empirical results support the theory. We therefore conclude that following a monetary policy expansion, the current account is more likely to go into deficit (surplus) in countries with more liberalised financial (product) markets.

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETS) promise much in the ability to rapidly deploy a wireless network in a fashion where no prior planning is needed and the network can be running efficiently and with high security within minutes. Natural disaster response, military, education and business provide areas where MANETS can offer significant advantages in communication where infrastructure networks may take days to set up or may be impossible to implement. This research reviews a selection of MANET protocols to show the progression of the research and the issues that are yet to be addressed. It discusses the challenges to researchers in improving ad hoc schemes to the point where they work in theory and in practice. Areas are highlighted that pose the most significant challenges to developing new security protocols and some food-for-thought is given for those who wish to contribute to this growing area of importance for wireless communication.

El artículo presenta una discusión de la literatura crítica sobre la obra de Hannah Arendt, a partir del reconocimiento de la importancia del vínculo entre teoría e historia en la producción de la autora. El análisis se centrará en la noción de poder y su relación con la reflexión sobre la polis, con el fin de sugerir algunas posibles líneas de investigación que resultan particularmente proficuas para la comprensión de la relación entre filosofía y política en el pensamiento de la autora. ; This paper aims to discuss some of the critical interpretations of Hannah Arendt's thought, focusing on the relation between theory and history in her writings. The analysis point out the connection between the notion of power and the reflection on the Greek polis, suggesting some possible research lines that seem particularly interesting to find out the tension between philosophy and politics in Arendt's work.

In this chapter, we review land market institutions in the European Union (EU) and their potential impact on land markets. We first review land tenure-/ownership regulations and find that they vary heavily across EU Member States. Four types of tenure-/ownership measures are implemented in the EU: to protect the tenant, to protect the owner, to protect the (non-farm) land owner, and to prevent land fragmentation. We then examine EU land-related environmental regulations whose general objective is to address land market failures linked to externalities and the provision of public goods. Despite possibly reducing private benefits of land owners or users, environmental regulations may generate welfare gains to society by improving the environmental services on land. Finally, we investigate how area-based subsidies affect land prices. These subsidies are empirically found to be partially capitalized into land values, albeit at a lower rate than suggested by theory.