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...

Adopting the view that Marx's notion of "commodity" has a wider reach than is usually supposed, and that it is this notion, rather than a "labour theory of value" that is the cornerstone of his economic theory, this paper shows that Marx's account of capitalist exploitation is one that accords...

There is no doubt that the shadow banking system played an important role in the global financial crisis. What is in question is whether it played a causal or merely amplifying role. This paper argues in favour of the latter. Focusing specially on the process of the production of CDOs through...

The legal rule of corporate limited liability is not generally considered to have any fundamental economic significance. This is why the idea of reforming this rule can be raised in discussions concerning corporate accountability and this is why political or administrative difficulties rather...

The rise in the popularity of commercial corporate governance ratings is at once a source of dismay and a cause for alarm: the former because they do not appear to give accurate predictions of corporate performance and the latter because they add to the pressure on corporations to adapt their...

Although the federal funds rate started rising from mid-2004 US long term rates continued to fall. A likely contributory factor to this ‘conundrum’ was the contemporaneous increase in US bond demand. Using ARDL based models, which accommodate structural breaks, this paper estimates the...

With global finance reshaping the world economy, this insightful new book provides a full account of the EU’s financial integration strategy, together with a critical assessment arguing the case for social control over global finance. Written by acknowledged experts in European finance,...

This vital new Handbook is an authoritative volume presenting key issues in finance that have been widely discussed in the financial markets but have been neglected in textbooks and the usual compilations of conventional academic wisdom.