The new face of developing country debt

Developing country debt has been a major preoccupation for development policy makers and practitioners since the debt crisis of 1982. It is a major obstacle to economic and social progress in developing countries. After the resolution of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the debt relief initiatives for low-income countries of 1997–2006 concerns about developing country debt seem to have receded. However, there are a growing number of problems that warrant concern, including the accumulation of domestic debt, short-term debt and private non-guaranteed debt, and increasing recourse by low-income countries to international capital markets. At the same time developing countries have strengthened their capacity to oversee and analyse their debt portfolios. Nonetheless, significant weaknesses remain in debt management capacity at the national level. Moreover, the activities of ‘vulture funds’ and the lack of a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism reveal major shortcomings in the international institutional architecture that need to be addressed urgently.     

合同债权与仲裁条款转让的再审视——基于实体法、程序法和冲突法的视角

合同转让时,尤其是合同权利转让时仲裁条款是否随之转让的问题,是近年来国际商事仲裁领域的一个重要话题。目前,国内理论界的主流观点以及司法实践支持仲裁条款自动转让。但仲裁条款自动转让的理论依据并不充分,也未解决所有问题,而且对于仲裁条款转让的论证仅仅限于国内法上的视角,并未考虑国际合同转让中仲裁条款的效力和相关的法律冲突与法律适用等问题。本文旨在从实体法、程序法和冲突法的多维角度,进一步探讨合同仲裁条款转让的理论和实践问题,并对当前国内外的立法与实践进行评判,以期进一步完善我国国内的法制和实践。     

关于我国赌博问题的现状及对策探讨

当前赌博违法犯罪活动在我国呈蔓延之势,这不仅直接危害人民群众的切身利益,而且严重影响了社会稳定,阻碍了国家经济的发展和民族的振兴,已经成为一个严重的社会问题。文章结合我国赌博问题的现状,分析了赌博屡禁不止的原因,并论述了综合治理赌博问题的对策。     

Losing out on substance but winning procedurally? The European Parliament and accountability in crisis legislation

Recent studies have found that the European Parliament (EP) had limited substantive influence on the European Union’s response to the European debt crisis. It has been argued that Parliament compensated this loss by expanding its oversight powers over executive bodies in the implementation of crisis legislation. This article systematically assesses the conditions under which the EP has been successful in increasing its account-holding powers, using new data on the accountability provisions included in economic and financial legislation put forward between 2009 and 2014. It is found that Parliament has indeed been more likely to gain oversight powers in crisis legislation. Levels of accountability are also higher in package deals and more salient legislation. The findings here provide a more nuanced picture of Parliament’s inter-institutional gains and losses in recent years and give more insight into the EP’s account-holding role.     

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.     

赌博违法犯罪行为辨析

赌博是常见的违法犯罪活动.通过对赌资数额如何认定、涉赌交通工具如何处理、赌资较大的标准、为涉赌人提供资金行为定性、携巨款参赌行为性质认定、赌博罪与非罪的界限进行分析,进而明晰涉赌违法犯罪活动的司法实务.     

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。