Chinese capital flows and offshore financial centers

Abstract

Why is the British Virgin Islands a bigger source of foreign direct investment into China than the USA, the European Union and Japan combined? Why is there 10 times more investment from China in the Caymans Islands than there is in the USA? This paper argues that these flows represent the efforts of Chinese and foreign investors to reduce governance and measurement transaction costs. Investors avail themselves of efficient institutions in offshore centers that are absent locally. These institutional attractions include the ease of raising capital on foreign stock markets, access to reliable courts, and more flexible and sophisticated financial products. Existing explanations of these capital movements, characterizing them as criminal money or tax arbitrage, are insufficient. Evidence is drawn from government statistics, private legal advice and interviews in offshore financial centers.     

British scientists,Lysenko and the Cold War

This study describes the impact of the Lysenko controversy in Britain. In particular, it delineates the way in which it became part of the means by which science and ideologies about scientific work were restructured during the forties and early fifties. As such the Lysenko controversy in Britain had, like its Soviet counterpart, social and political roots and effects.     

Educational economies

Contemporary public discussion of and policy formation with respect to higher education pay scant attention to the history and structure of the modern university. In part this is forgivable, since educational historians deal almost exclusively with schooling to the neglect of any wider assessment of formal education within the public sphere. Nonetheless, personal ‘experience’, much less sheer prejudice, is no substitute for an understanding of ‘higher learning’. This review essay considers the outline history provided by Robert Stevens’ From University to Uni and suggests that we are now entering an era of a ‘postmodern’ university whose purposes are both incoherent and implausible.     

Why reregulation after the crisis is feeble: Shadow banking,offshore financial centers,and jurisdictional competition

A crucial element in the complex chain of factors that caused the recent financial crisis was the lack of regulation and oversight in the shadow banking sector, which is largely incorporated in offshore financial centers (OFCs), but instead of swift and radical regulatory reform in that sector after the crisis, we observe only incremental and ineffective measures. Why? This paper develops an explanation based on a two‐level game. On the international level, governments are engaged in competition for financial activity. On the domestic level, governments are prone to capture by financial interest groups, but also susceptible to demands for stricter regulation by the electorate. Governments try to square the circle between the conflicting demands by adopting incremental and symbolic, but largely ineffective, reforms. The explanation is put to empirical scrutiny by tracing the regulatory initiatives on shadow banks and OFCs at the international level and within the United States and the European Union, where I focus on France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.     

FHA in the Great Recession: Rebalancing Its Role

The Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund has a negative net worth as of FY2012, partly because of the weak economic recovery and partly because its policy has been directed to supporting homeownership at the risk of incurring more defaults. Although recently announced reforms should reduce losses, higher insurance premiums and lower loan-to-value ratios will still be necessary. But FHA faced and survived similar situations before, and should be able to do so again, without draconian limitations on its authority.     

Cambodia and the United Nations - Legal Documents

ABSTRACT

This study examines the evolution of political party finance in Thailand, which has been crucial for party development. The nature of party finance cannot be examined separately from the country's democratization given that the military early on dominated political parties. At the same time, such financing traditionally depended upon either regional factions (for larger parties) or party leaders (for micro-parties), while state funding for parties was nonexistent. The 1998 and 2007 Organic Acts on Political Parties contained finance reforms to strengthen parties, making them more transparent and accountable. Yet these reforms have only been partly successful. Today party leaders, faction leaders, and the military continue to influence party finance. This study addresses the issue of party finance in Thailand by scrutinizing its historical evolution from the dawn of Thai parties and party laws in the 1950s to the present. The authors conclude, first, that the limited nature of party finance laws in the pre-1998 period legitimized military-backed parties while facilitating intra-party factionalism. Second, they contend that despite reforms in party finance laws in Thailand major flaws remain to be corrected.     

Robbing Peter to pay Paul: changing clientelist patterns in East Timor’s 2017 parliamentary elections

This article examines the adverse impact of clientelist relations between political parties and campaign donors on parties’ relations with voters. Clientelism is generally conceptualized as a vertical, pyramid structure, whereby resources are distributed from politicians to voters at the base through brokers or programmatic politics. As Gherghina and Volintiru¹1 Gherghina and Volintiru, A New Model of Clientelism.View all notescontend, what is often overlooked is that in tandem with this vertical relationship with voters there is a complementary horizontal relationship with party donors. Parties with a weak organizational base focus on relations with party donors, such as private contractors, at the expense of their relationship with voters. Drawing on fieldwork conducted during East Timor’s 2017 parliamentary elections, I engage with Gherghina and Volintiru’s framework to argue that a bi-dimensional approach is integral to both understanding electoral outcomes and economic trajectories in developing country contexts. In East Timor, despite a decade of rampant patronage politics, the incumbent CNRT party’s prioritization of their relationship with party donors cost them the election. In turn, this focus on party donors has distorted policy and public spending priorities, with severe implications for future development.     

刍议中小企业融资难的原因及法律对策

中小企业的融资本质上就是通过社会的资金分配制度对其进行社会资金的配给。中小企业融资难问题的解决途径在于从制度的角度型构一种新的社会资金分配制度。我国中小企业融资难既有政府经济职能的因素,又有银行的因素、资本市场的因素及中小企业自身的因素。要建构一个克服中小企业融资难的制度体系,应解决以下四个核心的问题：一是要规范政府在中小企业融资中的功能;二是要构建中小企业的间接融资渠道;三是依法规范资本市场以保障中小企业融资;四是要构建克服中小企业自身局限性的制度体系。     

公共财政立法研究

文章以我国财政体制改革为背景,结合公共财政体制建设,就公共财政的基本内容、公共财政的特点和职能、公共财政的法律特征和立法框架进行了探讨。文章指出国家财政体制改革的目标是公共财政和国家财政的统一,只有把公共财政和国家财政结合与统一起来,而不是将两者矛盾或对立起来,才是具有中国特色的公共财政。     

论公共财政监督与控制——以宪法为视角

从各国宪法制度安排的角度探讨公共财政政策形成过程中的国家权力配置问题,有助于反思国家公共财政监督的制度建构。议会制度产生之初,议会通过控制财政来监控政府,系议会民主性的表现。随着社会发展,公共财政已由议会控制转向实质上由政府掌控,议会对财政控制转而通过立法等法治手段来监督,并不参与实质意义上的议决。在我国人民代表大会的民主功能、监督功能尚待完善的情形下,将公共财政监督制度化、法治化应成为首选途径。只有在此基础之上,公民或者社会组织才能真正有效地参与监督国家的公共财政开支。