Indebted life and money culture: payday lending in the United Kingdom

Critical social scientific research holds that credit–debt is a principal economic and governing relation in contemporary economy and society, but largely neglects money’s role in indebted life. Drawing on qualitative research in the payday loan market in the United Kingdom, the paper shows that borrowers typically relate to loans in monetary rather than financial terms and incorporate them into practices of payment, spending and online banking. To analyse how indebted life is variously experienced and enacted through money, the concept of money culture is developed to refer to money’s culture, money’s meanings and money’s affects. Borrowers enter into and negotiate payday loans through a digitally mediated money culture that both mobilizes and runs counter to money’s powerful fictions as circulating universal equivalent and calculative means of account.     

The Impact of the Housing Bubble on the Growth of Municipal Debt: Evidence from Spain

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the recent Spanish housing boom and the subsequent burst on local public finances. Particularly, we investigate the effect of the rise and later fall in revenue from urban development on local government debt. Using a sample of the Spanish largest municipalities in the period 2003–2011, we find that debt was substituted by revenue from urban development during boom years and this substitution effect vanished after the burst of the boom. Our results also reveal that local public finances have worsened after the burst of the housing bubble since now they have larger current spending and smaller savings.     

Do Electoral Risks Moderate the Effect of Partisan and Electoral Cycles on Debt-Financed Local Spending?

Governments’ use of debt as a political instrument has been widely studied from the perspective of partisan and electoral cycles, mainly concerning central government. On the whole, previous studies have attempted to determine the effects of political ideology and the proximity of elections on the opportunistic use of public spending. The current study aims to broaden the scope of attention to the effect of partisan and electoral cycles on debt, by means of a broader consideration of the motives that lead politicians to take on a deficit and that are usually linked to the associated electoral risk. More particularly, we examine whether, during the electoral period, greater confidence in re-election can modify party behaviour concerning the use of public spending, and if so, whether the change is greater or smaller depending on the ruling party’s ideology. The results obtained show that local administrations need to incur debt, although politicians take on more liability than is appropriate to their demographic and economic characteristics, especially in an election year. It was also found that political stability favours a reduction in the public deficit, a pattern that is maintained in electoral periods. This effect was found to be independent of the partisan cycle.     

‘When we have nothing we all eat grass’: debt,donor dependence and the food crisis in Malawi, 2001 to 2003

In 2002, Malawi faced a devastating food crisis, an event in which hundreds of people died of hunger, while over a thousand succumbed to a country-wide cholera epidemic. By June of that year, over 3.2 million people needed emergency food aid, one-third of Malawi's population. This article assesses the crisis through the lens of donor–government relations. Beginning with the restructuring of the agricultural sector under a World Bank-sponsored structural adjustment programme, a process that discouraged food production by small-holder farmers, the article explains how the Malawian government's reliance on external sources of funding, and its deteriorating relations with key international creditors, rendered it impotent in the face of the oncoming crisis. Having sold its strategic grain reserve (SGR) to service mounting debts, the government could not rein in a food price spiral that peaked in March 2002. Allegations of financial irregularities surrounding the sale of the SGR served to make matters worse. The United States, Britain, Denmark and the European Union cancelled direct development funding and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank suspended Malawi from the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. With limited access to credit, the Government of Malawi could neither re-stock its food reserves nor fund emergency imports in time to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. Relief aid was further delayed by disagreements between the government and key donors and aid agencies regarding genetically modified (GM) food. While accepting Amartya Sen's basic entitlements framework – the 2002 crisis was one of pricing and access rather than absolute shortages of food – the article posits the following theoretical argument: in the context of highly indebted poor countries, it is a government's relationship with its principal donors and creditors that determines the outcome of food crises by shaping the policy responses available both leading up to and during the event.     

厅处科三级干部领导力培训的现状、问题与对策

本文在对某干部研究班的8名领导干部结构化访谈的基础上编制了《领导力培训调查问卷》,以此对400名各级领导干部进行了问卷调查,形成了229份有效问卷。通过问卷调查剖析了我国厅、处、科三级领导干部培训的现状及存在的工学矛盾突出导致领导干部难融入、把增加领导者的知识存量作为领导力提升的着力点、单一的授课形式难以实现教与学的互动和领导力培训效果评价机制亟待建立健全等问题。完善厅处科三级干部领导力培训需要革新领导力培训理念、灵活领导力培训时间、创新领导力课程设置、实行多种互动授课方式和建立健全培训评价机制。     

秦汉律所见“质钱”考辨

关于秦汉律所见"质钱",现有的契税说与抵押(或担保)之钱说,均存在疑点,难以成立。"质"是秦汉律中债的一种担保方式。以《说文》"以物质钱"的解释为据,并参照文献所见南北朝时期有关质钱的记载,可以推测,秦汉律所见"质钱"是因官府(债权人)占有民(债务人)之物以保证其借贷而产生的,是官府在借贷期限届满时所收到的、由民交来的款项(本钱与子钱之和)。中国古代"以物为质"担保制度的出现,因此被提前到战国时期秦律之中。由此可以窥见早期中国法中担保制度及其在当时社会运行实况之一斑。     

Enter the dragon: the ecological disorganisation of Chinese capital in Africa

This article draws on the theory and recent research on ‘ecological disorganization’- defined as ‘the ways in which human preferences for organizing economic production consistent with the objectives of capitalism are an inherent contradiction with the health of the ecological system’- to explore the ‘corporate violence’ apropos of Chinese investment in Africa. In line with other ecological disorganization theorists, we show how the deployment of Chinese capital in Africa structures and reproduces subjectivation, but also how, ultimately, this subjectivation is implicated in Africa’s ecological disorganization.     

Towards a neo-Polanyian approach to money: integrating the concept of debt

Abstract

This paper aims to reconsider Polanyi's approach to money. His best-known writing on money uses is deeply original and presents strong insights that dissociate money from the concept of the market. Polanyi also developed an interesting non-dichotomous understanding of money in his The great transformation. However, taken together, these two contributions lead to some unresolved questions: his critique of the orthodox approach to money is ambivalent; his argument to separate payment from account is weak; and, most important, he ultimately makes an incomplete break with the classical real/monetary dichotomy. This paper proposes a distinction between money as a set of instruments and practices and money as a concept, through the integration of John Commons's concept of debt into Polanyi's framework. This reformulation allows us to resolve Polanyi's unresolved questions while preserving his major contributions, and leads to a more complex understanding of money.     

论代理问题与公司治理

公司治理结构是建立现代企业制度的核心问题之一。代理关系是公司治理问题产生的一个条件，与公司治理存在着密切的关系。代理关系问题产生的最重要的原因是劳动分工，代理收益大于代理成本是代理关系不断得以拓展的前提。所有权主体多元化与经营管理要求一元化存在着矛盾，如果公司进行外部融资，也必然产生了代理问题，并对公司治理产生一定的影响。     

实施环境准则:外交和司法途径

自 1972年联合国人类环境会议以来 ,各国已经建立了地球环境保护工作的准则和框架。本文首先阐述了执行环境准则的意义 ,然后阐述了在国际和国内层面上实施环境法律准则的框架以及奥尔胡斯协定 ,最后阐明了跨国实施环境法准则的含义