Explore the vast range of titles available.

Corruption and thefts of public assets harm a diffuse set of victims, weakens confidence in public institutions, damages the private investment climate, and threatens the foundations of the society as a whole. In developing countries with scarce public resources, the cost of corruption is an impediment to development: developing countries lose between US

Corruption and thefts of public assets harm a diffuse set of victims, weakens confidence in public institutions, damages the private investment climate, and threatens the foundations of the society as a whole. In developing countries with scarce public resources, the cost of corruption is an impediment to development: developing countries lose between US$20 to US$40 billion each year through bribery, misappropriation of funds, and other corrupt practices. Corruption is by no means a \"victimless crime.\" This study aims to explore the standing of States and Government entities as victims and the possible recourse to private actions to redress public wrongs. States and Government entities may act as private litigants and bring civil suits to recover assets lost to corruption. The goal of this work is to promote knowledge and understanding as well as to increase the use of civil remedies and private lawsuits to recover stolen assets in the context of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) offences. The UNCAC, the global standard for the fight against corruption, does not contain a legal definition of corruption itself but lists an array of offences, including public and private sector bribery and the embezzlement of public and private sector funds. The study will mainly focus on these two types of corruption, namely bribery and embezzlement of funds. This study is not intended in any way to minimize the importance of criminal proceedings and confiscation in addressing acts of corruption. Rather, it will show that civil law remedies can effectively complement criminal penalties by attacking the economic base of corrupt activities both in the public and the private sectors. In fact, given the magnitude of the challenges, all avenues of asset recovery, be they criminal or civil, should be explored simultaneously in order to tackle corruption from each and every angle and achieve the goals of deterrence and enforcement. Hence, while criminal law expresses society's disapproval of the corrupt acts and aims at dissuasion, punishment, and confiscation of illicit proceeds, civil law focuses on victims' interests and aims at compensation and restitution. These procedures may occur sometimes in parallel, sometimes sequentially. An effective response to corruption very often requires concomitant use of both criminal and civil law remedies to achieve the desired result.

PurposeThis paper presents an integrated overview of the empirical literature on the impact of all forms of unconventional monetary policy on macroeconomic variables and on markets.Design/methodology/approachThis survey covers the findings concerning portfolio rebalancing, signaling, liquidity, bank lending and confidence channels.FindingsThe positive effect of QE announcements on stock and bond prices seems to be unified across studies. A contagion effect from US QE to other emerging markets is identified, while currency devaluation is present in most cases for the country that its central bank adopted such policies. Moreover, impacts of non-conventional practices on GDP, inflation and unemployment are examined. The studies presenting weak instead of strong positive effects on inflation are more, and these studies, also, present weak positive effects on GDP growth.Originality/valueBased on the large body of research on non-conventional action taking, this is the first survey including effects of each country that adopted quantitative easing (QE) measures and that provides results from every methodology employed in order to estimate unconventional practices' impacts.

The operation of the portfolio balance channel has been emphasized by monetary policymakers as a key channel through which quantitative easing (QE) policies work. We assess whether the investment behavior of insurance companies and pension funds in the United Kingdom during the global financial crisis was consistent with such an effect by analyzing both sectoral and institution-level data. Our results suggest QE led to institutional investors shifting their portfolios away from government bonds toward corporate bonds but did not lead to a shift into equities.

We study the convergence of European bond markets and the anchoring of inflation expectations in the euro area from 1993 to 2008, using high-frequency bond yield data for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain; some smaller euro-area countries; and a control group comprising the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden. We find that Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) led to substantial convergence in euro-area sovereign bond markets in terms of interest rate levels, unconditional daily fluctuations, and conditional responses to major macroeconomic announcements. Our findings also suggest a substantial increase in the anchoring of long-term inflation expectations since EMU, particularly for Italy and Spain. Finally, we present evidence that the elimination of exchange rate risk and the adoption of a common monetary policy were the primary drivers of bond market convergence in the euro area, as opposed to fiscal policy and the loose exchange rate peg of the 1990s.

The potential for rare macroeconomic disasters may explain an array of asset-pricing puzzles. Our empirical studies of these extreme events rely on long-term data now covering 28 countries for consumption and 40 for GDP. A baseline model calibrated with observed peak-to-trough disaster sizes accords with the average equity premium with a reasonable coefficient of relative risk aversion. High stock-price volatility can be explained by incorporating time-varying long-run growth rates and disaster probabilities. Business-cycle models with shocks to disaster probability have implications for the cyclical behavior of asset returns and corporate leverage, and international versions may explain the uncovered-interest-parity puzzle. Richer models of disaster dynamics allow for transitions between normalcy and disaster, bring in postcrisis recoveries, and use the full time series on consumption. Potential future research includes applications to long-term economic growth and environmental economics, and the use of stock-index options prices and other variables to gauge time-varying disaster probabilities.

This study examines the performance of fifty global exchanged-traded funds (ETFs) traded on US stock exchanges. Specifically, it refers to the period following the end of quantitative easing, which took place in 2014. Therefore, the data, on which the study is based, refer to the period from 24/10/2014 to 24/09/2018 and they are expressed in a weekly frequency. By employing the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), we evaluate the performance of fifty ETFs according to their rating by the MorningStar. Their performance was measured using Sharpe and Treynor ratios as well as Jensen’s alpha and the betas and a/b measures. The results of the study indicate that the examined ETFs show selectivity skills and present bearish behaviour in relation to the market during QE-tapering.

The U.S. Federal Reserve responded to the great recession by implementing quantitative easing, or large-scale asset purchases, when its conventional policy rate reached the zero lower bound. We assess the international spillover effects of this quantitative easing program on the Canadian economy in a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) framework, by considering a counterfactual scenario in which the Federal Reserve's long-term asset holdings do not rise in response to the recession. We find that U.S. quantitative easing boosted Canadian output, mainly through the financial channel.

Purpose This paper aims to constitute to the first empirical work that investigated the effects of US unconventional monetary policy shocks on Islamic equities. Design/methodology/approach The authors used the spread between sovereign (term spread) and corporate (corporate spread) yields as proxies of unconventional monetary policy in times that FED implemented different rounds of large-scale asset purchasing programs. Findings This paper demonstrates that monetary policy shocks have significant effects on Islamic equities. The analysis showed substantial evidence that the corporate spread innovation was reflected as a positive signal in Islamic equity markets and has a larger impact on Islamic low leverage equities than term spread. Originality/value The objective of this paper is to shed some insight into the effects of US unconventional monetary policy on low leverage financial assets. It is hypothesized that during this period, specifically from November 2008, unconventional monetary policy and zero bound interest rates have been implemented in the US economy. However, the strength of effects of this range of policies on Islamic financial products is unidentified.

This paper describes the causes and consequences of Ireland's economic crisis in the context of the policy solution implemented to contain that crisis: protracted fiscal austerity. I describe the causes of the recent crisis in Ireland and look at the logic of austerity with a simple model. I compare the current crisis to the crisis of the 1980s, when fiscal austerity was touted as the trigger for the Celtic Tiger. I discuss the measures implemented to date in the current crisis, tracing their effects on sectors of Ireland's macroeconomy. I show that Ireland is not the role model for austerity policies.