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Governments are challenged to make an innovation-friendly climate while simultaneously ensuring that business development remain sustainable. Criminal use of the technology—terrorist financing and money laundering—challenges long-run business viability via risk of massive investment flight and public distrust of new players entering the market. Sustainable business models are those that base regulation on a careful risk-based analysis. This study identifies the perceived risks and compares them with the actual level of risk for each category of mobile phone financial services. The comparison reveals that the perceptions do not weigh up to the reality. Based on fieldwork in seven locations where the technology has taken off, this paper finds that providers apply measures that are consistent with international standards to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. It identifies the sometimes non-traditional means the industry uses that both mitigate the risks and are in line with good business practices. Acknowledging that mobile phone financial services are no riskier than other channels, governments are called to treat them as an opportunity to expand access to finance.

Ex situ seed banking was first conceptualized and implemented in the early 20th century to maintain and protect crop lines. Today, ex situ seed banking is important for the preservation of heirloom strains, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration, and diverse research applications. However, these efforts primarily target microalgae and terrestrial plants. Although some collections include macroalgae (i.e., seaweeds), they are relatively few and have yet to be connected via any international, coordinated initiative. In this piece, we provide a brief introduction to macroalgal germplasm banking and its application to conservation, industry, and mariculture. We argue that concerted effort should be made globally in germline preservation of marine algal species via germplasm banking with an overview of the technical advances for feasibility and ensured success.

At the beginning of the 1990s, a massive speculative asset bubble burst in Japan, leaving the nation's banks with an enormous burden of nonperforming loans. Banking crises have become increasingly common across the globe, but what was distinctive about the Japanese case was the unusually long delay before the government intervened to aggressively address the bad debt problem. The postponed response by Japanese authorities to the nation's banking crisis has had enormous political and economic consequences for Japan as well as for the rest of the world. This book helps us understand the nature of the Japanese government's response while also providing important insights into why Japan seems unable to get its financial system back on track 13 years later. The book focuses on the role of policy networks in Japanese finance, showing with nuance and detail how Japan's Finance Ministry was embedded within the political and financial worlds, how that structure was similar to and different from that of its counterparts in other countries, and how the distinctive nature of Japan's institutional arrangements affected the capacity of the government to manage change. The book focuses in particular on two intervening variables that bring about a functional shift in the Finance Ministry's policy networks: domestic political change under coalition government and a dramatic rise in information requirements for effective regulation. As a result of change in these variables, networks that once enhanced policymaking capacity in Japanese finance became \"paralyzing networks\"--with disastrous results.

The steady growing of online financial services due to the vanishing of on-site banking offers is changing the socio-economic framework individuals make financial decisions in. Financial literacy as an essential part of basic education is therefore also subject to changes. In order to investigate the individual competence of the respondents with regard to financially determined life situations, a digital questionnaire survey with integrated simulation sequences was conducted. For this purpose, a testing instrument (FILSA—Financial Literacy Study of Adults) has been developed to measure the financial literacy of adults. The validity of the construct including its five content areas was tested and the relationships between the manifest exogenous variables and financial literacy were mapped in a structural equation model. It introduces the participants (N = 212) to various financial problems and offers specific aids for founded decision-making. The study’s evaluation system takes into account the participants’ individual behavior in three case studies as well as the impact of attitude and socio-demographic factors on their decisions and behaviors, such as gender, age, and their degree of internet affinity. FILSA examines how adults make decisions with regard to finances and what benefit or impact online tools and financial advisors have on the decision-making process. Furthermore, it is possible to develop concepts for self-learning that are comprised in online tools for decision-making.

Judicial review of the Federal Reserve (Fed) is uncommon. But this does not mean that courts play no role in constraining the Fed. The law, and the way that the Fed expects courts to apply it, creates the boundaries within which the Agency operates. Understanding courts' treatment of the Fed, then, is necessary to understand the constraints on Fed decision-making. This is particularly true in our current jurisprudential and macroeconomic landscape, in which the Court has become more skeptical of agency action, and the Fed has intervened in the economy in increasingly dramatic ways. If (or when) a collision occurs, what result? This Note provides a comprehensive overview of judicial review of the Fed: when it occurs and what happens when it does. Where judicial review is available, courts take a narrow view of the Fed in any given dispute, applying different degrees of deference depending on whether the Fed is acting as regulator, lender, or monetary-policy maker. Recently, though, Fed actions have blurred the lines between these roles. Courts have so far largely declined to review these types of actions, avoiding the doctrinal dilemma. But if – or when – they do, precedent will not provide a helpful guide. Rather than continue along this categorical path, courts should apply a unified framework, considering Fed actions in the context of the Fed's unique institutional position within the federal bureaucracy. The past two decades have ushered in a new age of central banking. A new approach to judicial review of central banking should follow.

ECB officials have recently poured scorn on the notion that the ECB could introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the Eurozone, with one labelling such an initiative as “economically inefficient and legally untenable.” This article assesses the justifications for these claims from legal and economic perspectives. It finds that, based upon prevailing ECB policies and the myriad options available for CBDC design, such claims are flawed. The article further explains that the ECB’s reticence to consider the introduction of CBDC may impair the development of payments systems and obstruct financial inclusion.