Philip Ernstberger analyses in his three essays different topics of financial pathologies. Thereby, changes in fundamentals as well as information are considered as the driving force for the behavior of speculators and investors. The first essay deals with currency crises, in which the central bank, through setting the interest rate, steers the economy and defends against speculators. The secon…
The book examines the role of credit rating agencies (CRAs) in the subprime mortgage crisis. The CRAs are blamed for awarding risky securities ℓ́ℓ3-Aℓ́ℓ investment grade status and then failing to downgrade them quickly enough when circumstances changed, which led to investors suffering substantial losses. The causes identified by the regulators for the gatekeeper failure were conflic…
Castells in Africa: Universities and Development collects the papers produced by Manuel Castells on his visits to South Africa, and publishes them in a single volume for the first time. The book also publishes a series of empirically-based papers which together display the multi-faceted and far-sighted scope of his theoretical framework, and its fecundity for fine-grained, detailed empirical in…
This volume presents comparisons of adult education and lifelong learning with a focus on educational policies, professionalization in adult education, participation in adult learning and education, quality in adult education, and educational guidance and counselling. The essays are based on comparisons discussed at the international Winter School «Comparative Studies in Adult and Lifelong Lea…
Reforms to improve poor people’s access to justice and to promote their legal empowerment comprise the latest trend in legal development cooperation. This volume answers a number of basic questions about this new trend, such as access to justice and legal empowerment entail and its importance; the obstacles the poor and marginalised face in seeking justice and empowerment through the legal sy…
This volume brings together an international team of scholars to debate Cicero's role in the narrative of Roman law in the late Republic – a role that has been minimised or overlooked in previous scholarship. This reflects current research that opens a larger and more complex debate about the nature of law and of the legal profession in the last century of the Roman Republic.
The contributions to this essential volume critically examine ideas on customary land tenure in Ghana. They analyse the relations between the customary and statutory tenure and the institutional interactions between the state and traditional authorities in land administration, addressing issues of power, economic interests, transparency, accountability, conflicts and notions of social justice, …
These farmers have been working this land for generations. But they have no papers. So the government may clear this land for a project. People fear they will be chased away.” Such stories can be heard every day in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They demonstrate the insecurity of rural smallholders who are threatened with eviction without proper compensation. The ‘project’ may be large-s…
Most of the world's estimated 1.4 billion poorest people are still rural. Yet the majority lack ownership (or any secure rights) to the land that is their principal source of livelihood. Although land law and related reforms have transformed the lives of millions of families by providing secure land rights, not all such efforts have succeeded. Over the years, the conventional wisdom concerning …
This book is an ambitious study of how Islamic law traditions have been incorporated into the national legal systems throughout the Muslim world. Both puritan Islamists and Western alarmists tend to oversimplify and misrepresent the role and position of sharia. In response, this book takes stock of the actual legal positions, putting them into their socio-political and historical contexts. The …