This paper suggests an explanation for the heavy trading volume observed on the US capital markets, the world's largest. Heterodox economic theory puts much of this volume down to speculation. Mainstream theory tends to support this thesis, either directly or indirectly, by giving space to the...

A financial activities tax (FAT) and a financial transactions tax (FTT) are the main alternative ways of recouping some of the public money used to bail out the financial sector after the great crisis of 2007–08. In preparing a common proposal for the European Union, the European Commission...

The voice-exit paradigm continues to serve as the framework for debating key issues in UK corporate governance. That paradigm, however, has become an anachronism with the recent changes in the scale and organisational structure of the UK asset management industry. As a result of these changes...

When the subprime crisis broke out in the summer of 2007, the hedge funds avoided blame by disassociating from those that supplied the subprime-backed products and by disappearing among those that bought these products. This twofold defense strategy has worked to perfection because almost...