Structured to Survive

THE International Monetary Fund’s recent meeting in Tokyo focused on the continuing deterioration of the global economy. In the second quarter of 2012, G7 economies registered mere 0.1 percent growth on average, while EU output contracted.     

Why FDI into China Outperformed the World

WORLD foreign direct investment (FDI) fell significantly in 2012. Global data are unavailable for the second half of the year, but United Nations Conference on Trade and Development statistics show that FDI fell by eight percent worldwide in the first six months to US $668 billion. Many large economies suffered severe declines-FDI into the U.S. fell by 39 percent and into     

The New Realities of China-U.K. Relations

BRITAIN＇s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne concluded substantive economic agreements with China during his October visit to Beijing. They include giving London-based financial institu- tions the right to invest up to RMB 80 billion （US $13 billion） in Chinese securities. Chinese banks will also be permitted to set up wholesale banking branches, rather than just subsidiary companies, in London. This will enable them to tap their huge parent banks＇ financial standing to meet capitalization and reserve requirements. Owing to previous restrictions, Chinese banks had preferred to base their European operations in Luxembourg rather than London.     

Time to Tolk of Slowdown

THE recent publication of America＇s second quarter GDP data, following that for China, makes it possible to accurately compare the recent performance of the world＇s two largest economies and the results are extremely striking. In the last year the slowdown in the U.S. economy has been far more serious than in China. Therefore while both economies are being adversely affected by current negative trends in the world economy, China is dealing with these much more successfully than the U.S. In light of media discussion about China＇s economic ＂slowdown＂ it is equally important that attention is paid to understanding why the U.S.＇s own economic slowdown is much worse than China＇s when confronted with similar global economic trends.     

Global Banks as Global Sustainability Regulators?: The Equator Principles

Banks might now seem odd candidates for the role of global sustainability regulator. Nonetheless, in limited areas of their operation, where global banks kept risk on their balance sheets and were financially exposed to many types of risk often otherwise treated as “externalities,” banks began to enact policies to encourage what they construe as “sustainable” banking. A small number of these banks have started to extend these principles of responsible action more broadly, across many of their business lines, as conditions of lending to their corporate clients. To this extent, it is possible to talk about (some) global banks as global sustainability regulators. The “law of unintended consequences” as used in the legal literature almost always refers to the unintended negative consequences of a regulation or policy. In this article, however, we discuss a potentially positive unintended consequence of the deregulatory and privatization trend of the 1980s and 1990s that was fueled by neoliberal political commitments: some private banks have taken a leadership role in regulating development. Specifically, these banks are enacting policies that attempt to mitigate the potentially negative social and environmental consequences of infrastructure development in politically unstable or environmentally fragile landscapes. The vehicle for doing this is a voluntary agreement called the Equator Principles (EPs). The article describes and analyzes the EPs and reports the initial results from an interview‐based study of the various EPs stakeholders, including bankers, government officials, lawyers, consultants, and critics from nongovernmental organizations. We address—from the perspective of these stakeholders—such questions as why the participating banks decided to join the EPs, what effects, if any, the EPs are having on development practice, and whether the EPs will ultimately prove to be more than a public relations exercise.     

Intended Consequences: Jurisdictional Reform and Issue Control In the U.S. House of Representatives

The power of congressional committees rests in large part on their ability to set the legislative agenda in particular issue areas. But how do committees acquire their issue jurisdictions? Existing research points to informal committee turf wars— not collective reforms—as the roots of jurisdictional allocations (King 1994, 1997). Yet the House of Representatives has made nearly 150 formal changes to its committees' jurisdictions since 1973. We investigated the effects of one prominent instance of extensive jurisdictional changes, the Bolling‐Hansen reforms of 1975, and found that this body of reforms advanced collective goals of improved policy coordination and enhanced information sharing.     

DOES MARRIAGE REDUCE CRIME? A COUNTERFACTUAL APPROACH TO WITHIN‐INDIVIDUAL CAUSAL EFFECTS*

Although marriage is associated with a plethora of adult outcomes, its causal status remains controversial in the absence of experimental evidence. We address this problem by introducing a counterfactual life‐course approach that applies inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to yearly longitudinal data on marriage, crime, and shared covariates in a sample of 500 high‐risk boys followed prospectively from adolescence to age 32. The data consist of criminal histories and death records for all 500 men plus personal interviews, using a life‐history calendar, with a stratified subsample of 52 men followed to age 70. These data are linked to an extensive battery of individual and family background measures gathered from childhood to age 17 — before entry into marriage. Applying IPTW to multiple specifications that also incorporate extensive time‐varying covariates in adulthood, being married is associated with an average reduction of approximately 35 percent in the odds of crime compared to nonmarried states for the same man. These results are robust, supporting the inference that states of marriage causally inhibit crime over the life course.