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This paper explores the financialization of pensions in four European welfare states: the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. In these welfare states, financial markets and financial actors have become increasingly important for pension provisions. Pension financialization is a variegated phenomenon, involving changes in funding mechanism, plan design, financial management and the centrality of funded pension schemes in the political economy. Nationally-specific configurations of these dimensions have created distinct patterns of pension financialization in the four cases. I argue that each pattern is the outcome of specific sticking points for policy reform that have emerged out of the institutional context of the national pension system. Locating these institutional sticking points helps identify common mechanisms of pension financialization across cases that are characterized by empirical variegation. ; Este artículo analiza la financiarización de las pensiones en cuatro estados de bienestar europeos: el Reino Unido, Alemania, los Países Bajos y Suecia. En estos estados de bienestar, los mercados y actores financieros se han vuelto cada vez más importantes en la provisión de las pensiones. La financiarización de las pensiones es un fenómeno varia-do, que implica cambios en el mecanismo de financiación, el diseño del plan, la gestión financiera y la centralidad de las pensiones de capitalización en la economía política. Las configuraciones nacionales específicas de estas dimensio-nes han creado patrones distintos de financiarización en los cuatro casos. Sostengo que cada patrón es el resultado de puntos de conflicto específicos para la reforma de dichas políticas, que han surgido del contexto institucional del sis-tema nacional de pensiones. La localización de estos ele-mentos de referencia institucionales ayuda a identificar me-canismos comunes de financiarización en todos los casos, que se caracterizan por una variedad empírica.

Financialisation and the Pension System: Lessons from the United States and the Netherlands The articles explores the financialisation of private pensions in the United States and the Netherlands. It proposes two distinct arguments. First, the article shows that both the American and the Dutch pension systems stand out internationally for their high degrees of capitalisation and the absence of substantive investment restrictions for pension funds. The article posits that both pension systems are highly financialised, yet the process of financialisation has proceeded along different historical paths and within different institutional contexts. Secondly, the article maintains that the financialisation of pension systems is accompanied by its own political dynamics. In both political economies, different groups of actors (employers, labour unions, financial professionals) have made claims over the growing concentration of pension assets. Here, particular emphasis is given to the role of the state. It shows how since the mid-1970s, both American and Dutch pension funds have altered their investment strategies, abandoning public debt as the dominant investment category. The article explains this change in terms of the rising popularity of modern portfolio theory and the immense growth of pension capital in need of new investment options. As austerity politics have made governments more dependent on financial markets, pension funds have become more assertive in leveraging their assets and demanding political reform which are in the interest of the financial industries. Financialisation has thus fundamentally altered the balance of power between the state and financial market actors.

The landscape of the South African mining industry has changed significantly over the past twenty years and has in recent times attracted attention by calls for nationalization of the industry. One of the proposed areas to address the concerns resulting in these calls for nationalization has been to consider whether the South African mineral royalty regime can be improved. The objective of this article is to evaluate whether the South African royalty regime effectively balances the objectives of the stakeholders in the industry and to recommend improvements where this balance may not be achieved. The analysis performed indicated that the introduction of the royalty regime increased the overall government take from the mining industry significantly and that the competitiveness of the South African mining industry as an investment destination need to be assessed. It was further found that the linkage between the royalty formula and the income tax legislation distorts the royalty levied in relation to the mineral resources that are depleted. It is submitted that the regime can be improved by defining a profitability indicator specifically for the purposes of determining mineral royalties. Lastly, it is recommended that measures to improve accountability in respect of the utilization of the royalties collected need to be considered as the lack of such measures may contribute to the perception that the nation does not receive its fair share of the mineral wealth. ; http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ojs/index.php/JABR/article/view/7770/7834 ; http://www.cluteinstitute.com/journals/journal-of-applied-business-research-jabr/

The landscape of the South African mining industry has changed significantly over the past twenty years and has in recent times attracted attention by calls for nationalization of the industry. One of the proposed areas to address the concerns resulting in these calls for nationalization has been to consider whether the South African mineral royalty regime can be improved. The objective of this article is to evaluate whether the South African royalty regime effectively balances the objectives of the stakeholders in the industry and to recommend improvements where this balance may not be achieved. The analysis performed indicated that the introduction of the royalty regime increased the overall government take from the mining industry significantly and that the competitiveness of the South African mining industry as an investment destination need to be assessed. It was further found that the linkage between the royalty formula and the income tax legislation distorts the royalty levied in relation to the mineral resources that are depleted. It is submitted that the regime can be improved by defining a profitability indicator specifically for the purposes of determining mineral royalties. Lastly, it is recommended that measures to improve accountability in respect of the utilization of the royalties collected need to be considered as the lack of such measures may contribute to the perception that the nation does not receive its fair share of the mineral wealth.

The landscape of the South African mining industry has changed significantly over the past twenty years and has in recent times attracted attention by calls for nationalization of the industry. One of the proposed areas to address the concerns resulting in these calls for nationalization has been to consider whether the South African mineral royalty regime can be improved. The objective of this article is to evaluate whether the South African royalty regime effectively balances the objectives of the stakeholders in the industry and to recommend improvements where this balance may not be achieved. The analysis performed indicated that the introduction of the royalty regime increased the overall government take from the mining industry significantly and that the competitiveness of the South African mining industry as an investment destination need to be assessed. It was further found that the linkage between the royalty formula and the income tax legislation distorts the royalty levied in relation to the mineral resources that are depleted. It is submitted that the regime can be improved by defining a profitability indicator specifically for the purposes of determining mineral royalties. Lastly, it is recommended that measures to improve accountability in respect of the utilization of the royalties collected need to be considered as the lack of such measures may contribute to the perception that the nation does not receive its fair share of the mineral wealth

The African continent contributes approximately 12% of the world's oil production. Despite this wealth, many citizens of oil-rich African countries live in poverty, often because their governments do not collect sufficient compensation for the depletion of oil resources to fund national development or do not utilise compensation collected for the benefit of the people. In this article the extraction tax regime to collect compensation on Angola's oil resources is compared to the regimes in other oil-rich countries to identify aspects from which Angola can learn with regard to the compensation systems of those countries. It is concluded that Angola may be able to improve its extraction tax regime by learning from governance measures over natural resource funds in Norway and Canada, by implementing measures to increase its oil royalty income in times of economic prosperity and by defining deductible costs more specifically in its production-sharing agreements. ; http://reference.sabinet.co.za/webx/access/electronic_journals/jefs/jefs_v5_n1_a9.pdf

Critiques Wouter van der Brug's (2003) analysis of support for the new Dutch political party Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF), which concluded that support for the LPF was based on policy preferences. Van der Brug argues that his empirical tests reveal that policy opinions, rather than cynicism, motivated those who supported the LPF. Generally, political preferences voiced through voting have been tested against political efficacy, & political cynicism as well, as an explanatory variable, rather than the opposite approach. The soundness of van der Brug's theoretical arguments for a "policy voting model" & the accuracy of turning the causal chain around & of his resulting empirical evidence are questioned. The data presented support the argument that political cynicism had more discriminating power than the issue of immigration for LPF voters. 2 Tables, 5 References. L. A. Hoffman