Reviewing Directors’ Business Judgements: Views from the Field

Directors take decisions that can have significant impacts on others, as illustrated by the global financial crisis and the collapse of Thomas Cook Group plc. Yet many academics argue that courts should not review or impose liability on directors for poor business judgements. These arguments often rely on untested empirical assumptions about directors’ behaviour and attitudes. Through semi-structured interviews and focus groups, we explored the responses of directors, legal practitioners, company secretaries, and board headhunters to the prospect of judicial review of directors’ business judgements. Our findings challenge orthodox thinking: many directors supported some form of review and the impact of review may not be as great as the literature predicts, nor necessarily detrimental. The debate about whether courts should review directors’ business judgements should therefore move away from reliance on negative empirical assumptions about the impact of review, to clearly articulating, and engaging with, normative positions that underpin opposition to, and support for, review.     

Inequality,the Crash and the Ongoing Crisis

The rise in inequality across many rich nations, but especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, was meant to lead to a bigger economic pie from which all would benefit. In fact, the increased concentration of income over the last three decades has led to more fragile and unstable economies making it a key cause of the 2008 Crash and today's lack of recovery. The evidence of the last 100 years is that models of capitalism that fail to share the proceeds of growth more evenly will eventually self‐destruct. More equal societies have softer business cycles. In contrast, more unequal economies are associated with more extreme cycles—they have exaggerated booms, deeper falls and extended troughs. The scale of inequality is not just an issue about fairness and proportionality, it is therefore integral to economic health.     

GENERATIVE EXPLANATIONS OF CRIME: USING SIMULATION TO TEST CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY*

This study demonstrates that computational modeling and, in particular, agent‐based modeling (ABM) offers a viable compatriot to traditional experimental methodologies for criminology scholars. ABM can be used as a means to operationalize and test hypothetical mechanisms that offer a potential explanation for commonly observed criminological phenomena. This study tests whether the hypothesized mechanisms of environmental criminology are sufficient to produce several commonly observed characteristics of crime. We present an ABM of residential burglary, simulating a world inhabited by potential targets and offenders who behave according to the theoretical propositions of environmental criminology. A series of simulated experiments examining the impact of these mechanisms on patterns of offending are performed. The outputs of these simulations then are compared with several well‐established findings derived from empirical studies of residential burglary, including the spatial concentration of crime, repeat victimization, and the journey to crime curve. The results from this research demonstrate that the propositions of the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, and crime pattern theory provide a viable generative explanation for several independent characteristics of crime.     

Deterring Sex Sales to International Tourists: A Case Study of Thailand,South Korea,and the Philippines

In developing areas, large-scale international tourism often offers a market for illegal goods and services. Unable to directly control sex sales, governments may decide to discourage prostitution by making the industry less profitable. Sex is sold to international tourists in Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines through the oligopolistic hotel/travel agency and competitive streetwalker markets. Applying legal sanctions prices change and sales decrease in both markets. The per unit cost of law enforcement is borne more heavily by customers on the street and by firms in the hotel/agency market owing to the markets' respective inelastic and elastic demand segments. If enforcement against sellers in both markets represents a fixed cost, initially sales will not decline, but firms will experience diminishing profits. The optimum short- and long-run effects result from applying enforcement against firms in the hotel/agency market.     

Fathers,Families and Work: Putting ‘Working Fathers’ in the Picture

This article is a review of Fathers, Families and Work, one of a series of reports published as part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)'s ‘Working Better’ programme. The article examines Fathers, Families and Work in the context of the wider conclusions and recommendations of the ‘Working Better’ programme and considers the extent to which these recommendations will translate into public policy. It concludes that there is a gap between parents' desire for both mothers and fathers to be involved in caring for children and the reality of long hours and inflexible workplaces that limits the time men can spend caring for children.