The Role of Competition in Determining Corporate Governance Outcomes: Lessons from Australia's Corporate Governance System

Successive waves of corporate collapse in every decade of Australia's history suggest that there is a significant unresolved corporate governance problem in Australia. Corporate collapse has been followed by reform but with little effect on the overall pattern of collapse and reform every decade. This article suggests that one of the elements which entrenches corporate governance problems in Australia is the competitive environment in which companies operate, which currently is not regulating management. It is argued that this anti-competitive environment has two significant effects. First, key shareholders have retained controlling blocks of shares as the benefits of control and the costs of unconstrained management are high in such distorted markets. Secondly, management skills have stagnated, so that bad management and regular management failure have become features of the corporate governance system.     

Crime,deportation and the regulation of immigrants in Canada

Criminality is now one of the most frequently used provisions for deporting non-citizens from Canada. Individuals who are convicted of crimes outlined in current immigration policies can find themselves subject to deportation proceedings after they have served their sentences unless they are eligible to make an appeal and can do so successfully. This paper examines 177 reported immigration appeal hearings in Canada involving non-citizens who are ordered deported on the basis of criminality. Using documentary analysis along with basic statistics to analyze the appeal hearing decisions, I demonstrate how gender and racial ideologies shape the outcome of these decisions. Theories of moral regulation, social control and governmentality are employed to develop an understanding of the state's treatment of immigrants. That a significant number of immigrants in this study were not deported, but were granted stays with strict conditions highlights how deportation hearings are one mechanism for differentiating between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ immigrants. This study illustrates how, through the use of racial and gender ideologies, deportation practices are as much about differential exclusion as they are about enforced assimilation. Concerns around criminality rationalizes the ongoing regulation and surveillance of immigrants and the threat of deportation ensures their compliance.This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC Grant No. 31-632203). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the British Society of Criminology Annual Meetings in Bangor, Wales, July 2003 and at the Canadian Law and Society Association Annual Meetings in Halifax, Canada, June 2003.     

A Theoretical Analysis of Alcohol Regulation and Drinking-Related Economic Crime

Alcohol consumption is widely believed to influence criminal activity, and numerous sociological, criminological, and psychological studies demonstrate an apparent positive correlation between drinking and crime. Using a multiattribute model of offender and victim behavior, this study examines the theoretical effects of changes in the price of alcohol on the incidence of crimes committed for economic gain. It is shown that in the general case price effects do not result in an unambiguous decrease in the rates of crime or victimization even when the models are constructed to impose a bias towards the finding of a causal negative price effect. Using a modified model of the drinking offender that imposes even further structure on the model, it is shown that the realization and magnitude of a negative equilibrium alcohol price effect will likely depend upon the implementation of complementary alcohol control policies. The implications of the theoretical analysis to policy implementation and empirical research are also considered.     

行政决策的裁量性质及规制动因

为应对社会变迁中的治理困境,行政机关的决策活动越来越多地被赋予了广阔的裁量空间,形成裁量目的手段式的规制技术有别于传统行政裁量的要件效果模式,同时,行政决策与传统行政活动在功能任务类型、合法化逻辑、公共利益客观性等方面的差异也决定了两者迥异的裁量属性.但行政决策中形成裁量的法律规制要区别于传统的行政裁量,重点在于克服民主正当性缺失、实现利益衡量的公正、纠正系统性偏见以及裁量基准的创新.     

网络游戏经济性规制析论

网络游戏自产生以来,它在给玩家带来休闲娱乐的同时,也产生了一些消极影响。如何促进网络游戏的健康发展,除采用法律规制、行政规制、社会性规制方式之外,本文认为,网络游戏主要是一种市场现象,应当以经济性规制工具为主要手段,利用价格杠杆调节网络游戏市场的供需平衡,积极培育和引导理性的消费观念,发挥网络游戏行业自律组织的沟通和协调作用,加大对违规违法行为的查处力度,鼓励和扶持优秀作品,也是推动网络游戏健康发展的重要保障。     

Law,culture and massively multiplayer online games

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are now a major international phenomena. Millions of people can play together online, readily navigating boundaries between nations, languages and legal jurisdictions. The communities around some of these games are huge, of a size equivalent to a large city or small nation. This article explores three themes, labelled for conceptual purposes ‘games as legal spaces’, ‘games need lawyers’, and ‘lawyers need games’. It argues that games are inherently legal spaces, infused with legal-ness in a variety of ways; that more direct engagement from the legal community would be of tremendous value in making these systems, and the entertainment spaces which they regulate, ‘better’; and that we have a great deal to learn about law and about the regulation of the online space from games. The article concludes with the proposition that there is an opportunity for impactful knowledge exchange between legal scholars, MMOG developers and publishers, and the gaming community.     

Britain's smart meter programme: A case study in privacy by design

Following requirements in the 1996 EU Energy Efficiency Directive, member states are developing programmes to encourage the installation of ‘smart’ power meters that record much larger quantities of data about power usage than traditional meters. These data can reveal a great deal of information about individual household activity, leading privacy regulators to call for privacy to be ‘designed in’ to these systems. The British smart metering programme has given some attention to this privacy by design process. This article assesses its effectiveness in this case, using documentary analysis, participant observation, and follow-up interviews with a range of stakeholders. It finds that decisions made early in the British programme had negative privacy impacts that have only been partially remedied by the later development of detailed rules on the processing of smart meter data by energy suppliers and distributors. The article also considers broader lessons for the privacy by design approach.     

平台经营者超高定价的反垄断法规制

淘宝商城事件折射了平台经营者定价的现实困境:双边市场的交叉网络外部性和互补性等经济特点决定了平台经营以不对称定价为基本特征,但从法律角度看,实施免费策略的一边市场可能涉嫌掠夺性定价,而回收总经营成本的另一边市场又可能涉嫌超高定价。如何在分享平台经营降低交易成本、提高消费者福利等正面经济效应的同时,恰当界定这种新型经营者的权利、义务边界,避免其市场力量的不当利用,是平台经营者定价反垄断法规制中需要考虑的核心问题。     

非法集资行为刑法规制的立法完善

随着社会经济的发展,非法集资行为在司法实践中频频发生,这种不合法的融资行为严重影响我国的金融市场秩序,扰乱国家对金融市场的监管.而刑法对此规定还存在着“社会公众”界定不清、“非法占有为目的”界限模糊等问题.文章认为,应将非法吸收公众存款罪进行立法重构,并废除集资诈骗罪的死刑.     

When do autonomous banking regulators promote stability?

Can autonomous banking regulatory agencies reduce the odds that a country will suffer a crippling banking crisis? We investigate the impact that agencies charged with banking regulation and prudential supervision can have on financial stability in the banking sector. We argue that the potential benefits of autonomy are hard to realise because banking regulators face incentives to shirk in their mandate to secure banking stability. These incentives are strongest in political systems with high numbers of veto players, where the autonomy of a banking agency is difficult to undo even if the agency is derelict in promoting banking sector stability. We test an implication of this argument, namely, that the probability of bank crisis onset should diminish with the level of autonomy of the banking agency, but only in polities with low numbers of veto points. We base our analysis of this conditional hypothesis on an original dataset of 79 countries observed between 1971 and 2009 that captures the degree of autonomy of banking agencies from political principals. Our findings confirm that the impact of banking agency autonomy on the risk of bank crisis onset is conditional on the political structure in which the agency is embedded.