This paper explores the dynamics underlying integration of the international grain markets of the nineteenth century. It demonstrates that ‘deep’ integration implied changes to market structures, firm strategies and the commodity being marketed. Coordination within grain markets occurred at...

This paper discusses the problem, implied by Arrow’s fundamental paradox of information, of how to make money from news. To earn money from important news, news traders need to tell the potential buyer what it is, yet once they have revealed it, the buyer no longer needs to pay. This paper...

We examine real business cycle convergence for 41 euro area regions and 48 US states. Results obtained by a panel model with spatial correlation indicate that the relevance of common business cycle factors is rather stable over the past two decades in the euro area and the US. Ongoing business...

The September 2008 collapse of the Lehman Brothers group marked the nadir of the global financial crisis. While the regulatory aftermath has been extensively debated, the effects of the case law that arose from the insolvency have not. This paper explains the need to redress the balance. It...

In contemporary times, hundi has collected countless labels; the international press has spurned innumerable villainous descriptions, the bulk of which have helped to perpetuate a dense fog of notoriety. The critical problem lies in definition. As there is an incomplete understanding of hundi's...

The investment climate of a region reflects the location specific factors that provide opportunities and incentives for firms to invest, create jobs, and expand. A good investment climate removes unjustified costs, risks, and barriers to competition and encourages firms to invest and undertake...

Of the transnational advocacy campaigns so far leveled at international financial institutions and practices, that to reduce the debt owed to creditor country governments and multilateral financial institutions has often been presented as the most successful. Building on the work of Eurodad and...