An Elementary Primer for Politicians and Potential Chairs on Public Inquiries

There is relatively little central government guidance available on how to set up and run a public inquiry. This short piece seeks to set out the very basic questions that politicians considering creating one—and potential chairs—will need to address. Including, crucially, whether a public inquiry is even the right answer. In the context of the National Health Service, on which this analysis focusses, it also argues that money may be far better spent on applying what is already known from the many previous inquiries—that is, spend it on prevention—rather than waiting to spend it on future similar inquiries that will, more than likely, produce similar findings and recommendations.     

Banking efficiency and its determinants in selected frontier african markets

The degree of banking efficiency is of key importance as this has significant implication on the stability of financial systems and ultimately impacts on an economy. In this paper, we extend the existing literature by measuring the degree of bank efficiency in ten frontier African countries. We also attempt to analyse the determinants of banking efficiency in the sample countries. We employ a bank-level panel data set over the period 2008–2012 to measure banking efficiency in a two-stage procedure. In the first stage, we use the Data Envelopment Analysis technique to estimate technical, pure technical and scale bank efficiency. In the second stage, we use Simar and Wilson (J Econom 136:31–64, 2007) truncated bootstrapping approach to analyse the determinants of banking efficiency. The results of our analysis show that, to a greater extent, banks in the countries studied have efficient banking sectors. The results of truncated regression indicate that bank size is negatively related to banking sector efficiency while the degree of risk is positively related bank efficiency. Overall, the present study provides empirical information that may be used to guide future financial reform policies in the Frontier African countries.     

Like bringing a knife to a gunfight: Why IRC Section 2036 is not the right weapon to combat abusive family limited partnerships

Family Limited Partnerships (“FLPs”), which were once a great estate planning technique, have now become victim to Section 2036 assertions made by the IRS. Over the years, the IRS has struggled to find a means to combat abusive FLPs until the courts began to embrace Section 2036 as a weapon for them to use. Different courts, however, have maintained different rules and have now subjected both abusive and non-abusive FLPs to inclusion of their assets into their gross estates. This has shed light onto the main issue, that is, that Section 2036 is not the appropriate tool to combat abusive FLPs.