Do exchange rate regimes affect the role of central banks as banking supervisors?

We investigate the effect that exchange rate regimes have on the degree of central bank involvement in banking supervision. Using both de jure and de facto exchange rate regimes, we find that, conditional on several other factors affecting supervisory power allocation, policymakers are more willing to delegate this task to central banks when the latter are pegging their currency to some kind of parity. This evidence is confirmed when instrumental variables are added, in order to account for possible endogeneity. Results suggest that exchange rate regime features can mitigate the trade offs that political authorities face in evaluating the possibility of assigning supervision to monetary authorities.     

The Politics of ‘Third Country Equivalence’ in Post-Crisis Financial Services Regulation in the European Union

After the global financial crisis, the European Union has adopted a new regulatory approach towards foreign countries by making use of equivalence rules in finance. Why? This paper argues that it is the EU’s attempt to restore financial stability in its territory and maintain the competitiveness of its financial industry. However, this ‘old’ dilemma between stability and competition in financial regulation is further complicated in a regional jurisdiction, such as the EU, because different regulatory paradigms play off in the dilemma.     

Demographic and clinical characteristics of 1092 consecutive police custody mental health referrals

The 43 police forces in England and Wales have made over 13 million arrests in the last decade. Yet, despite this high volume criminal justice system activity, and evidence of substantial health morbidity across the criminal justice pathway, mental health services in police custody have only been patchily developed, and the literature in this area is limited. Referrals (n = 1092) to a pilot mental health service operating across two police stations in a London borough were examined over an 18-month period in 2012/2013. The referred group had high levels of mental health and substance misuse problems (including acute mental illness, intoxication and withdrawal), self-harm, suicide risk and vulnerability (including intellectual disability), with some important gender differences. Although this work has limitations, the findings are broadly consistent with the small existing literature and they confirm the need for services that are sufficiently resourced to meet the presenting needs.     

Posting of workers across the EU: an empirical investigation

This paper investigates the effects of the intra-European posting of workers on domestic labour markets in the years 2007–2009. Instrumental variables related to neighbouring countries’ populations are used to address the endogeneity between posting and labour market features. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that an intensification of posting inflows is not likely to displace domestic workers, at any educational levels. Instead, an increase in posting from abroad may raise domestic labour costs. No significant effects are found on sending country labour market variables. Results point towards the development of possible synergies between domestic and posted workers, so that posting can actually improve labour efficiency and put upward pressure on labour costs.     

Markers of chronic alcohol use in hair: comparison of ethyl glucuronide and cocaethylene in cocaine users

Two direct ethanol metabolites, namely ethyl glucuronide (EtG) and cocaethylene (CE), in the hair of cocaine (COC) users were compared in this study. Hair samples (n=68) were submitted to the determination of EtG (by liquid chromatography-electrospray-tandem mass spectrometry) and of COC and metabolites, including CE (by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry). Quantitative and qualitative results were compared. No quantitative correlation was found between EtG and CE, as well as between EtG and the cocaethylene concentration divided by the concentration of COC and its metabolites (benzoylecgonine and ecgonine methylester, as COC equivalents). Nevertheless, many factors are supposed to affect the amount of the two substances incorporated in the hair matrix, such as the subject's habits in ethanol and COC use, genetic variability in the metabolism of both substances, and the different chemical and physical properties of EtG and CE. When establishing a cut-off of 4 pg/mg for EtG and of 200 pg/mg for CE, 47 samples tested positive for EtG and 41 samples tested positive for CE; 12 samples out of the 47 EtG-positives tested negative for CE (25%), whereas 6 samples out of the 41 CE-positives tested negative for EtG (15%). According to these data, EtG appears to be a more sensitive and specific marker of non-moderate alcohol users than CE.     

Comparison of Different Swabs for Sampling Inorganic Gunshot Residue from Gunshot Wounds: Applicability and Reliability for the Determination of Firing Distance

This study concentrates on samples of bare pork skin, with and without bristles, and dried bovine ribs shot with a semi‐automatic pistol to find the best methodology and sampling surface in the search for inorganic gunshot residues (IGSR). Four quadrants of known surface areas were sampled at different distances from the bullet's hole with different swabs: tapes in graphite, Leukosilk® white tape, 3M® transparent tape, and a cotton swab to assess the technique able to collect the highest amounts of IGSR with the lowest contribution of the blank. The cotton swab wet in 10% HNO₃ gave the best results. The highest amounts of IGSR, measured by ICP‐OES and MS, were detected on a surface of 3‐cm radius from the bullet's edge. The amount of metals collected decreased with the firing distance between 20 and 60 cm. The procedure was efficient for sampling different tissues like skin and bones.     

Epistemic contestation and interagency conflict: The challenge of regulating investment funds

Scholarship on regulating global finance emphasizes the importance of national and bureaucratic interests, but less attention has been devoted to epistemic sources of regulatory conflict. We address this by analyzing the failure of regulators to agree tougher rules for large investment funds after the 2008 crisis. The article suggests this outcome was the result of epistemic contestation between prudential regulators and securities regulators, rooted in divergent interpretive “frames.” We show that US and EU prudential regulators pushed for entity-based regulation of investment funds by escalating the issue to global standard-setting bodies. But this was successfully resisted by securities regulators that exercised epistemic authority through recursive practices—appeals to expertise, jurisdictional claims, and alliance building—to defend their transaction-based approach. The article demonstrates how an interpretivist perspective can provide new insights into inter-agency conflict and regulatory disputes in other policy fields.     

Part-Time Work,Gender and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from a Developing Country

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between part-time work and job satisfaction in Honduras. In contrast to previous work for developed countries, this paper does not find higher job satisfaction among women working part-time. Instead, for both women and men, job satisfaction is higher when in full-time work, although this finding is stronger for men. Consistent with an interpretation of working part-time as luxury consumption, the paper finds that partnered women with children, poor women or women working in the informal sector are more likely to report higher job satisfaction when working full-time than single women, partnered women without children, non-poor women or women working in the formal sector.     

Choosing between the government and the regions: An empirical analysis of the Italian constitutional court decisions

In this article the extent to which political variables can explain the behaviour of constitutional judges in Italy when dealing with conflicts between the central government and regions is explored. Two competing hypotheses are tested. One hypothesis argues that one should expect some alignment between the political preferences of the judges and the success of the central government primarily due to the appointment mechanism. The other hypothesis suggests that there should be no systematic alignment between the political preferences of the judges and the success of the central government. Unlike previous literature, the empirical results presented in this article seem to confirm that when the Rapporteur and the court's majority are allegedly affiliated with the Prime Minister's coalition, the odds of success of the Prime Minister go up.