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Managers and corporate directors need to recognize two key behavioral impediments that obstruct the process of value maximization, one internal to the firm and the other external. I call the first obstruction behavioral costs. Behavioral costs, like agency costs, tend to prevent value creation. Behavioral costs are the costs associated with errors that people make because of cognitive imperfections and emotional influences. The second obstruction stems from behavioral errors on the part of analysts and investors. These errors can create gaps between fundamental values and market prices. When they do, managers may find themselves conflicted, unsure of how to factor the errors of analysts and investors into their own decisions. Proponents of value based management emphasize that with properly designed incentives, managers will maximize the value of the firms for which they work. As such, either they treat behavioral costs as simply another form of agency costs, or they deny the relevance of cognitive errors. In contrast, proponents of behavioral finance argue that behavioral costs are typically large, and cannot be addressed though incentives alone. This is not to say that incentives are immaterial. On the contrary, incentives are of critical importance. The point, however, is that there are limits to incentives. If employees have a distorted view of what is in their own self-interest, or if they have a mistaken view of what actions they need to take in order to maximize their self-interest, then incentive compatibility, although necessary for value maximization, will not be sufficient.

International audience; The IASB’s post-implementation review of IFRS 13 Fair Value Measurement motivates our analysis of the evolution of the value relevance of fair value (FV) levels over time on banks that report under IFRS and U.S. GAAP. For both sets of standards, results provide evidence that is consistent with (1) an increase in value relevance across all three FV levels over time, and (2) a convergence of the value relevance of the three FV levels over time. However, FV levels exhibit systematically higher value relevance under U.S. GAAP compared to IFRS. Such gap has closed to some extent since the enactment of IFRS 13. This evolution is likely due to learning about FV accounting and changes in financial reporting regulations that increased disclosure requirements. These findings confirm the IASB’s conclusions that FV levels’ disclosure is useful to users of financial statements, but also emphasizes preparers and investors’ learning over time.

Although shame and guilt are often conceived as adverse sentiments in criminal contexts, defendants’ expressions of remorse may actually act as an effective “therapeutic tool” in the legal process in order to reduce negative emotions, decrease future recidivism, and increase both community and victim healing, as well as rehabilitation. As such, evaluations of remorse should be integrated into decision-making processes at different stages of the criminal-legal process. The current chapter discusses the potential role of remorse, as a form of “therapeutic guilt,” in the context of probation officer decision-making and the relevance of remorse to their pre-sentencing reports and sentencing recommendations. We argue that probation officers should evaluate, recognize, and adopt the therapeutic value of remorse as a type of “reintegrative shaming” that can provide genuine evidence of their clients’ potential for restoration and reintegration into the community. Ultimately, this chapter provides recommendations and a framework for probation officers on how to best recognize and assess true remorse, understand its therapeutic relevance within the Therapeutic Jurisprudence framework, and how it may be integrated into their reports and decision-making in sentencing moving forward.

The article examines the violations of the rules of organization of production and quality control of medicines in the United States of America. The author presents an analysis of the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration. The paper considers statistical data relating to the most common claims made against pharmaceutical companies. Specific cases of fraud in the health care industry are cited. The relevance of the problem of fabrication of medical products is disclosed. On the basis of the study the need for an effective mechanism of production of medicines is substantiated.

Enforcement of labor laws is inherently challenging and seriously lacking. Literature in this area has focused on proposing and examining legislative solutions and ways to make the work of enforcement agencies more effective. Without detracting from the importance of these aspects, we argue that courts have a role to play in improving compliance as well. We begin by reviewing three bodies of literature that explain how the law can be shaped to induce compliance: economic analysis (including behavioral law and economics); behavioral ethics; and the expressive function of the law. For each of these theories, we show the relevance for labor law. We then move to consider some specific contexts within labor law in which judges, in particular, can influence compliance. Relying on examples from Israeli case-law, we show that courts already take such considerations into account, and we argue that they should do so explicitly and more consistently. We discuss judgments that can be understood as an attempt to raise awareness to the law; the need to balance between ambiguity and specificity when judicially developing the law, to improve compliance; the possibility of using a third party to pressure others into compliance; and ways to induce compliance through remedies. We then reply to a possible critique that judges lack the legitimacy to take compliance considerations into account in their judgments.

This paper studies the role of schools' we-mentality in shaping students' civic outcome. A school's we-mentality is important for the students' perception and education of sense of community. It is measured with an automated content-analysis approach applied to the schools' general principle. Conducting a survey in 13 German schools with 488 students, we find that stronger we-mentality is associated with more students being engaged in local civic activities. Moreover, students that exhibit stronger trust in others and are willing to engage with new and unknown tasks show more positive attitudes towards civic issues. The results hold relevance for the educational design of schools in fostering adolescents' civic education and participation.

The existence of Local governments in Nigeria, albeit its importance, has been leveled in such a way that it has lost its relevance. The main purpose of the Local government serving as a grass root government has been clipped by various reasons which could be linked with the intentional frustration of Local governments by State governments As a result, there is a need for the reawakening of Local governments in Nigeria. Among other recommendations, this paper recommends that state government should adhere to court judgement in ensuring the independence of Local governments.

Baghjan Gas Leak Case in Assam has again showed the devastating impact of anthropogenic activities for economic development on the natural ecosystem. The case is about a leakage of an oil well under the ownership of Oil India Limited (OIL) which has subsequently led to severe damage to the ecosystem of the nearby areas along with causing the death of many livestock and individuals. This case is not the only instance where human greed for material development has led to the loss of the ecosystem rather there were many such instances in the past like- Bhopal Gas Tragedy, Oleum Gas Leak Case, etc. after which the Central Government in India was forced to pass the Public Liability Insurance Act of 1991 for implementing a new kind of insurance called the Environmental Liability Insurance for ensuring the security of both the present and the future generations from harmful activities possessing the potential of grave ecological damage on the lines of Sustainable Development. This paper will therefore focus on the relevance of Environmental Liability Insurance (ELI) in India to mitigate the consequences of harmful anthropogenic activities for eco-restoration.

This chapter addresses the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications for the field of dispute resolution. In recent decades, digital technology has re-shaped alternative dispute resolution into online dispute resolution (ODR). In the last few years, ODR has spread to courts, further blurring boundaries between formal and informal dispute resolution, as well as between online and offline avenues of redress. More recently, AI has begun to infiltrate dispute resolution, mostly in the realm of AI-based prediction. With the maturing of ODR and the spread of AI, we can expect the overlap between the two to further evolve in both private and public dispute resolution, giving rise to a new form of dispute resolution, AI-DR. AI is increasingly being employed in a variety of legal and ADR settings and its role can be expected to grow further in the near future. The questions that remain open are the design choices that will be made with respect to AI and the means that will be employed to maximize its contribution and curb the challenges associated with AI-based decisions, recommendations, and predictions. Dispute resolution processes need not only to be efficient but to be fair, trustworthy, and accountable and must be perceived as such if they are to sustain their legitimacy and fulfill their societal role. In the sections that follow, we describe the relevance and current use of AI in dispute resolution, while drawing on particular examples to illustrate the promise and limitations of such use, which can be expected to expand dramatically in the next decade.

The relevance of the research is determined by the fact that it is necessary to differentiate the possibility of applying rights-terminating facts not only in general constructs of the civil branch of legislation but also in a number of private practices of sub-industries regulating general socio-economic relations. Such differentiation can contribute to the sustainable development of the civil sector of legislation. The aim of the article was to show new constructions in connection with the judicial system and the system of socio-economic forecasting. The main importance of legal consists in the fact that they can be applied in general in the category of civil law and at the same time their role as regulators of the civil branch of legislation is minimized or does not work at all. In this regard, for the termination of legal relations, mainly general constructs of juridical facts without formalization for industry values are used. Such constructions contribute to equality between members of society, which in turn contributes to its development and well-being. It is found that the main task of the formation of the practice of applying rights-terminating facts is to determine the limits of liability of industry-specific legislation. The practical significance of the research is determined by the fact that for the first time the aspects of sectoral planning of the system of application of rights-terminating facts are revealed. The developed model can be applied both in the process of adjudication and in the process of socio-economic development programmers. The novelty of the research is determined by the fact that in the literature, aspects of the formation of industrial legislative grounds for the application of local juridical facts are shown for the first time.

On 17 March 2021, the European Commission put forward its Proposal for a Regulation on Digital Green Certificates, which would facilitate European Union (EU) cross-border movement during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Regulation on the EU Digital COVID Certificate was adopted on 14 June 2021 and it will start to apply from 1 July 2021. This article examines the main declared goals of the new Regulation-the first being that Digital COVID Certificates facilitate safe cross-border movement, the second being that they preclude more restrictive national measures, the third being that they prevent discrimination and the fourth being that they coordinate Member States' actions. In so doing, it highlights the main benefits and weaknesses of the Regulation, but it also goes beyond the Regulation by tackling broader questions of EU law that will be of relevance even once the pandemic is over. In this respect, the paper highlights the importance of science in assessing the proportionality of pandemic-related measures and of choosing the least restrictive and the most individualised options when restricting free movement due to public health reasons. It also identifies the effects EU certificates will have on Member States' regulation of national COVID-19 certificates, notably those designed for other purposes than cross-border travel, and it shows that there is a thin line between the EU's and national competences in this area. © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

A number of recent scientific articles have studied the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm’s performance, though not all came in the scope of international entrepreneurship (IE). Researchers often test mediating or moderating variables that help explain this relationship. The extensive academic findings lead us to a wide range of mediating/moderating variables and to a lack of consensus in this domain. This study is in scope of IE literature, and it aims to provide new and robust insights supported by consistent empirical findings and to adopt this structural-model approach as a reference in the absence of academic consensus. Specifically, the paper examines the contribution of intrapreneurship to both the firm’s international orientation (IO) and performance in light of the IE guidelines. To this end, we examine how the EO of Portuguese exporters influences corporate performance taking into account the meditating effect of their IO on the EO – performance association through structural equation modeling. Results confirm that IO positively and significantly mediates the relationship between EO and corporate performance. EO and IO were also found to have a direct and positive effect on corporate performance. These findings confirm the relevance of intrapreneurship and international commitment to a better organisational performance and gives us empirical support to conclude that effort taken in these domains could enhance the exporters’ performance. Moreover, this study makes an empirical and theoretical contribution to the IE topic and therefore aims to be a reference to the literature in this domain.

Research Objetives: The objetive of this article was to verify the perception of Online Congress participants about the benefits and burdens of this modality. Metodology/Approch: A Survey was aplied to colect and verify the study issue, and a data analisys through descriptive statistics of variables, test of means and factor analysis of data. Originality/Relevance: The study seeks to identify the advantages and disadvantages of Online Congress participation, due to the increasing interest of the scientific community to participate in the modality of distance events. Main results: After the data analisys of the sample, it was possible to verify that the Online Congress participation is positivily affected by the variants costs reducing, time saving, distance reducing and sheltering a bigger number of members, and the variable impersonal nature negatively influences participation, and the findings are consistent, corroborating the influencing factors found in academic studies. Theoretical/methodological contributions: This study contributes to the academy on the importance of Online Congresses for the dissemination of knowledge, and as a theoretical framework, since only few studies on this theme were identified.

This chapter identifies two of the key elements in accountable artificial intelligence infrastructure globally -ethical modelling and responsible data. The chapter takes a global perspective and highlights issues of particular relevance to countries which were already in humanitarian crises, such as food insecurity and conflict, explaining how these play into the way in which epidemiological models should be constructed. Furthermore, it examines vulnerability from the perspective of aid recipients and migrants, to evoke the type of guidelines and laws that should be taken into account for data protection and privacy.

The paper is dealing with the problem of Data Privacy Drawbacks in India with relevance to the issues in three separate aspects, precisely, Technical, Legal & Political. Improvement in technology such as Portability, Data Processing, Cloud infrastructure, etc. has lead to unpredictable problems. One of the crucial issues is the menace to the privacy of citizens of a country. Nowadays, we can reach any kind of info related to anyone from anywhere at any time but this has led to the emergence of new challenges. Globalization has doubled the adoption of modern technologies in the world. As the need of technologies is increasing in the world so is the threat to privacy, separate legalized structure systems like the DPA act 1998 of the United Kingdom, or Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 of USA, etc. However, in India, there is no such thorough legalized structure that is concerned with privacy issues, which is why these issues are not dealt with rightly in the country. Thus, in order to control serious computerized attacks, the Information Technology Act of 2008 is referred to. The formation of such Acts has become extremely necessary in today’s world for Data Protection & Privacy for people.

This chapter explores the main justice dimensions of European private law (EPL). Should EPL be an agent of justice? And, in practice, is EPL sometimes – or even very often – a source of injustice? What would a minimally just EPL look like? Which reforms might be undertaken to overcome any existing justice deficit in EPL? These are some of the main questions central to this chapter. The chapter distinguishes three different types of justice, ie social justice, interpersonal justice, and discusses their respective relevance, first, for private law in general, and then specifically for the private law of the EU.

We examine whether financial statement note disclosures play an enhanced role in value relevance when the placement of line items among financial statements becomes more standardized and prominent. Specifically, we consider the setting of ASU 2011-05, which removed the option for firms to report other comprehensive income (OCI) in the statement of changes in stockholders’ equity. We report two main findings. First, using a larger sample and longer time period than early studies examining ASU 2011-05, we document that, relative to firms that were unaffected by the OCI reporting mandate, firms that changed OCI placement away from the statement of changes in stockholders’ equity exhibited greater increases in OCI value relevance after ASU 2011-05 became effective, in line with the FASB’s stated goal of raising the prominence of items reported in OCI. Our findings contradict the seemingly puzzling findings of early studies, which documented an incremental decrease in OCI value relevance for these firms. Second, we find that this incremental positive effect for firms that changed OCI placement is enhanced when OCI-related note disclosures are more specific, contain more numerical information, are more readable, are more stable from year to year, or are shorter in length. Collectively, our findings suggest that financial statement placement and note disclosure characteristics interact in a manner such that when financial statement line items influence valuation to a greater extent through more prominent placement, the qualitative characteristics of accompanying note disclosures tend to assume this role more prominently as well.

The use of macro-econometric modelling technique has become a norm for policy decisions in central banks and in particular, the Bank of Sierra Leone. This study has leveraged on the technicalities of scientific and artistic approaches of assessing risks around point / baseline forecast; this in general makes it more convincing for probability confidence bands to be used in explaining uncertainty that surround point forecast in particular. In the case of this study, the use of the Box-Jenkins ARIMAX model has made it possible to highlight the relevance of Composite Leading Indicator (CLI) like Exchange Rate in alerting signals about early turning point of inflation outcome, both in terms of the uncertainty and risks surrounding its projections. With the derived (scientific) probability distribution of risks (30%, 60% and 90%), it was possible for the study outcome to unearth vast amount of information from the Inflation Fan Chart, particularly with respect to the art of providing balanced assessment of policy framework needed to communicate the BSL’s price stability objective. While the use of Fan Chart is hailed as a very relevant tool, the paper also recommend the use of other model approaches like Scenario and Sensitivity analysis, also considered relevant in providing leading evidence of balancing risks surrounding macroeconomic outlook.

The concept of conflict resolution rests today on an impressive body of literature because of the serious consequences of conflicts in societies. In recent years, states have been faced with serious conflicts, ranging from strikes to armed conflicts. This has prompted various stakeholders including international organizations, state entities and non-governmental organizations to engage in systematic means of resolving these disputes. Sadly, despite the many measures taken to address conflicts, they continue to emerge and many of them turn violent. The crisis that has plagued the two English speaking regions of Cameroon (popularly called the “Anglophone crisis”) has brought about unanticipated deaths and disaster in the country. Although many steps have been taken to address the problem, it is still persistent. This paper utilizes a doctrinal study to arrive at the finding that addressing the root cause of the conflict, and considering the relevance of culture and religion in conflict resolution would increases the chances of resolving the conflict.

Deposit insurers operate within an ever-evolving global financial system. This Policy Brief offers an overview of five emerging issues that are expected to significantly affect the activities of deposit insurers in the near future – climate change, utilisation of financial technology (‘fintech’), Covid-19 policy implications, deposit insurers’ role in resolution, and cross-border considerations. These issues were selected for inclusion based on their relevance to the operations of deposit insurers, connection to the IADI Core Principles for Effective Deposit Insurance Systems, and relative weight assigned in recent dialogue within the international community.Following a description of each of the issues, this Policy Brief explains why these issues are relevant to deposit insurers and identifies relevant global and regional policy initiatives. Deposit insurers may wish to consider these five emerging issues within the context of their own domestic policy settings, and to calibrate their response accordingly.

A blockchain is a time-stamped series of immutable record of data that is managed by a cluster of computers not owned by any single entity. Each of these blocks of data is secured and bound to each other using cryptographic principles. Bitcoin is the most popular example that is intrinsically tied to blockchain technology. It is also the most controversial one since it helps to enable a multibillion-dollar global market of anonymous transactions without any governmental control. Hence it has to deal with a number of regulatory issues involving national governments and financial institutions. Since blockchain technology only creates an infrastructure or medium enabling a variety of applications, it is yet to stir up much regulatory controversy in and of itself. This is as opposed to, say, crypto-assets, which may disrupt traditional value-transfer systems and have governments around the world scrambling to understand their legal consequences. Legal frameworks are based on national borders, it is highly relevant from a legal perspective especially in the countries in which any legal act has been performed; it is relevant to understand which law applies and which government has the authority to enforce the law. However, the actual relevance of the law remains limited.

The European Data Protection Board issued its first Binding Decision on 9 November 2020 in a case in which the Irish Data Commissioner (DPA) was lead enforcement authority. In the judgment of the Irish DPA, a fine of up to EUR 275,000 was appropriate, taking into account all relevant circumstances, including aggravating and mitigating factors. Several other national DPAs raised objections, including the German DPA, which thought that a fine of up to EUR 22 million was relevant, on the basis that it should be 'dissuasive' and therefore 'must be high enough to make data processing uneconomic and objectively inefficient'. Under the DGPR, the EDPB considered all objections, and rejected a surprising number as not satisfying the 'relevant and reasoned' standard. The EDPB issued a binding decision that a sanction must be 'deterrent' and required The Irish DPA to revise its fine. The Irish DPA issued a fine of EUR 450,000. This paper highlights the major rift in theory and practice between different approaches to the effects, if any, of financial sanctions. The case raises fundamental issues over the consistency and coherence of EU enforcement policy, and the level of confidence that may be placed in it. It identifies a conflict between traditional concepts of deterrence, effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions, and outcome-focused achievement of compliance. It also raises an underlying conflict between pure economic theory on the effectiveness of penalties and the relevance of the findings on behavioral science on how to affect future behavior.

As well as considering the current implications of measures that have been instigated to address the impacts of the pandemic, drawing from past and current lessons from selected jurisdictions, this paper also considers why the transition to a net zero carbon economy may prove more challenging than may first appear. However, jurisdictional differences and historical developments will play a part in determining how sustainable certain implemented policies and measures are – as well as in facilitating a transition to normality. The paper also aims to highlight not only the growing importance of the roles of central banks in financial stability, in particular with reference to the management of risks associated with climate risks, in managing financial stability risks, but also place an emphasis on longer term perspectives and a need to incorporate greater uncertainty elements, particularly consequential of COVID impacts, in monetary policy setting instruments. In respect of longer term perspectives, the relevance and importance of other financial sector regulators, namely the insurance and securities sectors, in managing other forms of risks, namely, liability risks, will be considered. The paper adopts a predominantly qualitative based and interdisciplinary approach to the study. Reasons for adopting this approach will be highlighted later in the paper. As a result, the literature review section will focus on conceptual and theoretical aspects – as opposed to predominantly empirical related data. In consolidating on those conceptual aspects of the framework already introduced under the literature review section, namely definitions ascribed to physical and transition risks, the next section illustrates how the above primary source related categories extend to a far reaching third category which presents fundamental relevance, not only in terms of climate risks, but also in respect of uncertainty, third party liability – and particularly for non common law jurisdictions which do not recognize principles of tort law which deals exclusively with related principles and concepts of remoteness of damage, foreseeability and the neighbor principle introduced through the leading case of Donoghue v Stevenson. These principles are linked to liability risks whereby the insurance sector will increasingly have an important role to play, in respect of addressing climate risks, in years to come. In highlighting and illustrating the issues and arguments, particularly those relating to sustainable finance, monetary policies and climate risks, as well as the links between monetary policy responsibilities and the need to mitigate financial stability risks attributed to climate risks, reference will be made to evidence and discussions, as well as analyses and results obtained from the “Climate Risk Europe Virtual Week”, September 2021, as well as other reports and analyses documented in the manuscript and highlighted in the references section of this paper. This paper is also unique because it highlights the need for interaction with legal disciplines, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to addressing economic issues. The pandemic is indeed also unique since it is not merely a financial and economic pandemic, but also a medical pandemic. As such, a mere economic perspective, cannot resolve all issues at hand. It will demonstrate that depending on the structure of financial regulation which operates in different jurisdictions, as well as whether common law principles of tort law apply in these jurisdictions in addressing liability risks, it will be feasible, realistic and possible to break the tragedy of the horizon.

Individuals expose personally identifying information to access a website or qualify for a loan, undermining privacy and security. Firms share proprietary information in dealmaking negotiations; if the deal fails, the negotiating partner may use that information to compete. Regulators that comply with public transparency and oversight requirements can risk subjecting algorithmic governance tools to gaming that destroys their efficacy. Litigants might have to reveal trade secrets in court proceedings to prove a claim or defense. Such “verification dilemmas,” or costly choices between opportunities that require the verification of some fact, and risks of exposing sensitive information in order to perform verification, appear across the legal landscape. Yet, existing legal responses to them are imperfect. Legal responses often depend on ex post litigation remedies that are prohibitively expensive for those most in need, or that fail to address abuses of information entirely. Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs)—a class of cryptographic protocols that allow one party to verify a fact or characteristic of secret information without revealing the actual secret—can help solve these verification dilemmas. ZKPs have recently demonstrated their mettle, for example, by providing the privacy backbone for the blockchain. Yet they have received scant notice in the legal literature. This Article fills that gap by providing the first deep dive into ZKPs’ broad relevance for law. It explains ZKPs’ conceptual power and technical operation to a legal audience. It then demonstrates how, and that, ZKPs can be applied as a governance tool to transform verification dilemmas in multiple legal contexts. Finally, the Article surfaces, and provides a framework to address, the policy issues implicated by the potential substitution of ZKP governance tools in place of existing law and practice.

This paper traces the evolution of John Maynard Keynes’s theory of the business cycle from his early writings in 1913 to his policy prescriptions for the control of fluctuations in the early 1940s. The paper identifies six different “theories” of business fluctuations. With different theoretical frameworks in a 30-year span, the driver of fluctuations—namely cyclical changes in expectations about future returns—remained substantially the same. The banking system also played a pivotal role throughout the different versions, by financing and influencing the behavior of return expectations. There are four major changes in the evolution of Keynes’s business cycle theories: a) the saving–investment framework to understand changes in economic fluctuations; b) the capabilities of the banking system to moderate the business cycle; c) the effectiveness of monetary policy to fine tune the business cycle through the control of the short-term interest rate or credit conditions; and d) the role of a comprehensive fiscal policy and investment policy to attenuate fluctuations. Finally, some conclusions are drawn about the present relevance of the policy mix Keynes promoted for ensuring macroeconomic stability.

The amount of insurance premiums collected within the European Union places this market among the world leaders. Although insurance regulation is still partly national, the European Union's effort to introduce harmonized rules between the Member States has intensified since the financial crisis. This essay intends to highlight the global relevance assumed by the regulatory framework of the European Union. The introduced set of rules arises from the principles established internationally and, in turn, influences these principles. Thus, the EU regulatory framework on insurance is relevant to understand the potential evolution of the international standards on insurance. The analysis focuses on the rules protecting the policyholders, as this is the main objective of the insurance regulation and supervision of the European Union. Therefore, this study examines the recent Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) salient features in light of the overall regulatory framework governing the insurance business in the European Union. In addition, the study also tests the resilience of new rules to the COVID-19 pandemic and digital transformation, which were not at the core of the IDD.

This study investigates how voluntary cybersecurity risk management (CyRM) assurance affects non-professional investors’ judgments and decisions. The study also examines how the value relevance of CyRM assurance is altered when having such assurance is expected/unexpected. Employing an experimental approach, we find that after a cyber-breach occurs, companies previously engaging in voluntary CyRM assurance receive more favorable investor assessments of management credibility and, in turn, higher stock valuations. We also find that investors’ assessments of management credibility and stock valuations are more extreme for companies that engage (do not engage) in CyRM assurance in industries where such assurance is not (is) the norm. This study begins to address the question of whether there is a demand for CyRM assurance offered by audit firms, particularly given lingering concerns in research and practice as to the viability of IT-related assurance services. Our research reinforces the profession’s position that management and boards need to recognize that cyber risk will differ by industry and that investors will react to violations of implicit industry standards for cyber risk management. The results also demonstrate the value to management credibility of having prior CyRM assurance after a cyber-breach; the reputation and damage control is important for both management and the company.

This paper investigates the value relevance of acquired intangible assets using a comprehensive hand-collected dataset for 1,647 publicly listed US-firms from 2002 to 2018. This dataset allows us to disentangle acquired intangible assets into different classes (e.g., tech-, customer-, contract-, and marketing-intangible assets) and their respective economic lifetimes (i.e., definite vs indefinite useful lives) to test their relevance for equity investors. We predict and find positive associations for nearly all intangible assets, however with different economic significance. In particular, tech- and customer-related intangible assets are priced by equity investors. Furthermore, we find that definite intangible assets are more relevant than indefinite intangibles. These results are helpful for firms and their equity investors to understand the economic impact of intangible assets. Finally, the findings are particularly important for regulators given the recent proposition of the Financial Accounting Standards Board to subsume customer-related intangible assets and non-compete agreements into goodwill. While our results suggest that customer-related intangible assets are priced significantly by equity investors, this is not the case for non-compete agreements.

Islamic inheritance is a branch of Islamic Jurisprudence, though very important and so complicated. It is the first knowledge to be lost in Islam. Accounting is versatile in application and academic and professional accountants have not yet developed keen interest in linking it to Islamic inheritance. This study intends to link the major branches of accounting to Islamic inheritance. The study shows the need for the emergence of Islamic inheritance accounting, since the branches of accounting have been found to be highly relevant. Thus, it calls on academics and professional accountants to embark on researches that adequately link Islamic inheritance and accounting.

InPelham, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the German Federal Constitutional Court reached diametrically opposing conclusions on the relevance of freedom of art in copyright law. The different stances permit a speculative prediction – they can have immediate consequences for the predictable challenges against the new platform liability regime, and its associated dangers of widespread filtering and blocking. The article discusses the numerous constitutional implications, with specific attention given to the respective interests affected by the new regime (authors, exploiters, users, platforms) in light of the divergent approaches from the perspective of what appears to be two rather conflicting constitutional cultures: specific perceptions of fundamental rights and proportionality under German law versus an approach tending to emphasise market integration under the EU legal order. Recent assertions by the German Federal Constitutional Court redistributing the division of competences between national and EU law permit the prediction of a disturbing future collision course between the two systems, with potentially massive implications for EU copyright law by and large.

Recently, the Supreme Court found that a person has a Fourth Amendment right to privacy in historical cell phone records because of the comprehensive nature of the compilation they provide. As with detailed, encyclopedic GPS information, the nature of these chronicles of their users’ lives implicates privacy despite the traditional notion that a person lacks a privacy interest in his or her location or movements. The comprehensive nature of that location information also led to the Court’s rejection that the information lost its private nature because it was in the hands of a third party. The view that individual pieces of information which would not implicate privacy transform into a “mosaic” when compiled into a broad picture of an individual’s life over a span of time, was first expressed by the Supreme Court in 1989 in the context of a FOIA exemption. The Court found that, despite the fact that individual items of a person’s “rap sheet” are publicly available, their combined power when gathered together into a single, comprehensive dossier deserves privacy protection. These decisions have direct relevance to privacy in another realm that is being tested by changes in technology: civil discovery. Here too the nature of discovery itself is very different from a pre-digital set of communications or files in the hands of a litigant. Discovery now includes information prepared automatically by a device that the litigant wears or carries. It includes records of all manner of interactions with websites and applications, and implicates health, finances, sexuality, and other aspects of a litigant’s life. In addition, there is clear precedent for protecting civil discovery when requests implicate federal statutory protections like FOIA’s exemptions. This article analyzes caselaw reaching back to the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to find a strong precedent for protection of privacy in discovery based on Supreme Court doctrine and public policy represented in federal and state statutes. The article traces this history to current subjects of e-discovery – cell phone data, social media content, wearable devices and so on – whose scope and subject matter implicate broad privacy concerns. Recent Supreme Court doctrine adopting the mosaic theory of privacy has direct application to discovery requests for modern digital chronicles of a person’s life.

Why do some societies embrace innovative technologies, policies, and ideas, while others are slow to adopt, or even resist, them? We focus on features of an innovation that are expected to affect the incumbent elite's economic activities, and hence the elite's reaction. The elite can choose whether to appropriate the innovation for itself; encourage its adoption; tax, regulate, or limit or block it. Six features of the innovation affect the elite response: i) whether it is easy to replicate; ii) whether it complements or competes with the elite's sources of income; iii) whether its impact is broad or narrow; iv) whether it is loca- tion-dependent, and v) concealable; vi) whether it requires large xed costs. Some of these factors have been considered in other work; here we assess them together. We provide illustrative evidence of the relevance and generality of the model to understand the fate of a variety of innovations.

This is a review of Katherine B. Forrest’s new book When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, and Executioner. The book does an excellent job discussing issues of fairness and racial disparities from the use of artificial intelligence risk assessment tools (hereinafter “AI”) for decisions such as pretrial release and likelihood of recidivism. This is a timely topic as the technology is currently a tipping point. While Europe has begun to implement protections for defendants regarding AI, the U.S. is increasing its reliance on AI without such safeguards. This review includes a discussion on the topics of how AI compares to human judge predictions and decisions, fairness and racial outcomes, how recidivism is frequently misunderstood and its relevance, how human decisions are inextricably intertwined with AI, and the proper understanding of an AI’s “error rate.”

Does the composition of governance affect firm outcomes? We exploit the timings and thresholds of a gender quota in boards of directors and supervisory boards to causally determine the impact of a change in leadership on performance. Using a novel design and data on boards, we find that firms forced to comply with the 2011 gender quota in France increased their profit margin by 5.4 percent relative to firms with unchanged boards thereby limiting diminishing profitability. We identify a shift in their cost structure away from excessive purchasing of services such as out-sourcing and sub-contracting. The decision to only marginally increase this expenditure is more optimal as their revenue grows. We show that our effects are nearly entirely explained by the first newcomer in the board. The persistence of our estimates provide evidence for its role in updating knowledge and suggest the relevance of governance heterogeneity for performance.

Achmea is a seminal case on intra-EU bilateral investment treaties, which will have wider effect on EU external relations law. The judgment has triggered the renegotiation of all intra-EU bilateral investment treaties (BITs), and is one in a long strand of cases in which the Court has interpreted the principle of autonomy of the EU legal order. In Achmea, the Court reinstates the claim against international law and, more specifically, against the judicial control of external judicial views. The case is closely connected to the subsequent Opinion 1/17, and was expected to anticipate the results thereof in terms of the compatibility of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) proceedings with the principle of autonomy. The aim of this chapter is to study the relevance and consequences of Achmea for the EU legal order in general and EU external relations in particular. The ‘blind autonomy’ which the Court has purportedly resorted to in Achmea may be difficult to maintain in all practical situations. Inevitably, some exceptions will be necessary to accommodate ‘reasons of policy’, which are already appearingat both judicial and legislative levels. The former includes Opinion 1/17. At the legislative level, four Member States have refrained from signing the Agreement for the termination of Bilateral Investment Treaties between the Member States of the European Union (‘Termination Agreement’) following the Achmea judgement. These exceptions lead in the direction of an asymmetric conception of autonomy in EU law, which strongly contrasts with the ‘totalitarian vision’ endorsed by Achmea.

This post includes the Table of Contents, Introduction, and first three Chapters -- (1) Stipulations and Judicial Notice (2) Relevance (3) Unfair Prejudice -- of an innovative, new, low-cost Evidence casebook intended for use in American law schools.

The incentive compatibility of Bitcoin mining is vital for maintaining the network trustworthy and immutable - its empirical composition, however, remains widely opaque. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that leverages innovation driven convergence to reconstruct market conditions. The theoretical implications are corroborated with empirical evidence using numerical simulation and a set of 10,000 random samples. The results quantify large variation in miners' profits and costs but demonstrate that the observed behavior is consistent with the proposed theory. Lower bound estimates indicate that the fixed costs required for a majority of computing power can be astoundingly small (e.g., $2.55 million in May 2020) when adverse events coincide. This pronounces the relevance of cyclical patterns when assessing the stability of proof-of-work consensus.

The EU has progressively introduced antidiscrimination enforcement measures like the duty to set up Equality Bodies (EBs) that applies to the ground of racial or ethnic origin, among others. Until recently, however, EU law only envisaged vague standards for EBs that allowed a wide range of national configurations. Building on international benchmarks, this paper draws a set of dimensions considered necessary to improve promotion-type EBs responsiveness to discrimination. These dimensions are applied to the British and Spanish EBs to illustrate how the gaps left by EU law may lead to the design of ineffective bodies. The paper argues that EBs can contribute to effectively tackling discrimination if they are designed to be responsive at individual and systemic levels. The 2018 EU Recommendation on Standards for EBs makes a step forward in that direction, but its practical relevance may be limited by its non-binding nature.

The German Federal Constitutional Court’s climate decision provides a nuanced acknowledgment of climate change’s constitutional relevance. In this article, the author critically assesses how the Court innovatively sought to capture the intergenerational equity dimension of climate mitigation through a combination of negative and positive duties stemming from constitutional law. The article demonstrates how despite progressive findings on intergenerational equity and the innovative invocation of negative duties, the operative part of the decision turned out to be rather limited. Because of remaining uncertainties about the allowable national carbon budget the Court was unable to require the legislator to enact a stricter reduction path. The author argues that the Court could have narrowed remaining uncertainties, without engaging in judicial activism, by adopting an international and constitutional minimum approach to calculating the national budget and by adjusting the burden of proof. Finally, the article highlights how the German legislator by going beyond what was required by the Court ‘trapped’ itself on an ambitious reduction path, opening opportunities for future constitutional complaints.

This study assesses the relevance of mobile phone technology in complementing gender inclusive education (i.e. primary, secondary and tertiary) to promote public accountability (i.e. involving horizontal, vertical and diagonal accountability dynamics). The study utilizes the generalized method of moments (GMM) technique to establish the empirical evidence based on 48 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2005–2018. The following findings are documented from the linkages between mobile phone technology, inclusive education and public accountability. First, the interactions between mobile phone technology and inclusive education promote public accountability. Second, with regard to net effects, while unexpected negative signs are established, the corresponding positive interactive effects indicate that enhancing the penetration of mobile phone technology beyond some critical thresholds ensures positive net effects. Hence, policy makers should ensure that mobile phone technology penetration exceeds the established thresholds in order for gender inclusive education to positively affect public accountability.

This chapter’s main objective is to reconstruct the patterns of formation and development of the Italian constitutional order post World-War II. The intention is to track whether there is an ‘Italian’ way to constitution-making and to assess, in comparative constitutional terms, to which family it belongs. In order to provide some background, a methodological engagement with Bruce Ackerman’s work and the American School of development will kick off the chapter. Hence, the basic unit of constitutional regime will be adopted and the focus will be, mostly, on the function of political parties. Then a brief reconstruction of the pre-1948 constitution-making experiences will be provided, with particular attention paid to the pathway of transformation adopted by the Fascist Party. In sections 3 and 4, the constituent phase of the republican constitution and its development in the following decades will be tracked by emphasising the role of political parties. The intention is to prove that this experience was an instantiation of a revolutionary type of constitution-making. In section 5, an hypothesis about the constitutional relevance of recent informal mutation (i.e., non-revolutionary) will be put forward.

Problem Definition: When selling multiple products with different feature combinations over a short selling season, a seller often adopts a "reactive'' upgrade policy by offering a free upgrade to the next-price-level product "only after'' a customer's preferred product is out of stock. However, when customer preference is heterogeneous for different feature combinations, some unyielding customers may reject free upgrades. In this paper, we consider a new "proactive'' upgrade policy under which the seller may offer free upgrades ``even before'' a product is out of stock. Academic/Practical Relevance: The proactive upgrade policy enables the seller to strategically keep some units of a product in reserve to secure future sales of this product for those unyielding customers. However, the value of proactive upgrade policy over the traditional reactive upgrade policy remains unclear. Methodology: We use the Multinomial Logistic Model to determine the "upgrade acceptance probability'' of each arriving customer, so that we can formulate the proactive upgrade policy problem as a finite horizon dynamic program with an embedded Markov Decision Process, and we determine the optimal proactive upgrade policy. Results: By exploiting the underlying mathematical structure, we prove that the optimal value function possesses the "anti-multimodularity'' property so that the optimal upgrade strategy under the proactive upgrade policy is governed by two state-dependent thresholds: one threshold dictates when to offer proactive upgrades, and the other threshold dictates when to offer reactive upgrades. We also show that the proactive upgrade policy can create significant value over the reactive upgrade policy when the next-price-level product has similar consumer utility or when the price sensitivity is intermediate. Managerial Implications: We identify the conditions under which the proactive upgrade policy provides significant value over the traditional reactive upgrade policy. These results can be useful for sellers who sell variants of similar products with different feature combinations to customers with heterogeneous feature preference.

This paper examines the impact of accounting conservatism and auditing conservatism on earnings quality. Four proxies were used to measure earnings quality; persistence, accrual quality, value relevance and smoothness. We use the published annual reports of all the listed firms in the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) for the 6-year period from 2012-2017 to assess the interplay between accounting conservatism, auditing conservatism and earnings quality. The result reveals a positive and significant effect of auditing conservatism on earnings quality but no significant effect of accounting conservatism on earnings quality in terms of smoothness of earnings. This implies users tend to rely on auditors’ reports when assessing earnings quality. Our results are robust to the inclusion of four control variables; size of the firm, risk, audit firm size and industry type, the use of an additional analysis of one special case of auditing conservatism and earnings quality, and tests of potential relationship between auditing conservatism. The findings have implications to regulators when formulating standards and guidelines, auditors in the course of an audit, investors in reviewing the financial statements, and preparers when preparing their financial reports. The study recommends that the Omani stockholders as well as international stockholders rely heavily on auditing conservatism which means that stockholders are prepared to receive modified audit reports.

Friedrich A. von Hayek’s (1899-1992) view of competition as a discovery process is well known but little used. His central thesis is that a competitive pricing system is the most effective way to coordinate economic activity and economise on the information held by market participants in a world of generalised ignorance and change. But do the tremendous advances in computing and data management undermine Hayek’s claim that the market is superior? Does his focus on prices make his view of competition less relevant to the digital economy? Even Hayek had doubts. Unlike most ‘Austrian economists’ Hayek saw a need for antitrust to deal with the exclusionary abuses of ‘non-privileged monopolies’ and restraints of trade. Yet the conceptual basis for this is vague and it jars with Hayek’s view of liberal market law as spontaneously created. Here I critically assess Hayek’s views on competition, monopoly and antitrust, and their relevance to the ‘digital economy’.

Narratives impact people’s opinions on relevant policy issues, and their political context may influence these effects. Indeed, some specific contexts may be more easily swayed by certain stories that provide explanations for current social and economic phenomena. We explore this issue by considering the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment that creates the ideal conditions for existing narratives to gain momentum and spread. In particular, we run a survey experiment in the US by exposing subjects to two media-based popular explanations on the causes of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lab narrative attributes the upstart of the pandemic to human error and scientific misconduct in a laboratory in China, while the Nature narrative describes the genetic and biological causes of the virus. We find evidence that subjects’ beliefs on the origins of the disease are influenced by the narrative they are presented with. Moreover, the Lab narrative leads subjects living in Republican leaning states to express less favorable opinions about trade openness and the relevance of climate change relative to those living in Democratic leaning states. Thus, our findings provide support for the idea that recalling stories that are part of larger narratives can lead to divergence of opinions on crucial issues leading to an increase in policy polarization. Finally, we explore the underlying features of social contexts associated with US states’ political orientation, that moderate the impact of narratives on policy opinions.

An attempt to answer the applicability of Doctrine Priority in the inter se distribution of Liquidation proceeds among the Secured Creditors under the Waterfall mechanism envisaged under IBC.

This Article argues that the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body (AB), or a successor body, must become more transparent in justifying its decision to rely (or not) on prior decisions. The AB’s practice of precedent — which the United States cited as a cause of its decision to paralyze the AB by blocking new appointments — is similar to how it has approached “likeness” in nondiscrimination cases. It placed a lot of weight on whether two cases (or products) are sufficiently similar to be compared, and it spent relatively less time substantively justifying its treatment of prior cases. Because the WTO does not have a system of stare decisis, the AB and WTO panels generally must explain why they find prior decisions persuasive, rather than simply relying on similarity to justify carrying prior interpretations forward. The Article begins by examining and evaluating the results of a new study from Jeffrey Kucik and Sergio Puig, the first study to use a large dataset to study the AB’s use of precedent. The Article then advances a framework for how WTO dispute panels should evaluate the relevance of prior cases in future disputes. The proposed approach would treat the comparison of cases as merely a threshold inquiry. If two cases are sufficiently alike and one party contests the applicability of the prior decision, then a tribunal must substantively justify its treatment of the prior decision in light of a variety of factors. In some instances, the result may be that the AB or a panel acknowledges that a prior interpretation was wrong and should not be followed. Openly analyzing the persuasive value of prior cases, and acknowledging when those cases should not be followed, would better promote the goals of relying on prior decisions — promoting predictability, transparency, and coherence in the law’s application — as compared to deference to prior decisions based only on the similarity of two disputes.

The research presented here summarizes the first stage of a large bilateral (Israeli and Indian) academic effort. This scholarly endeavor involves an attempt to explore the impact of the Indian Mandatory CSR (MCSR) law from both practical and theoretical perspectives. We look at this unique legislation as a “pilot” scheme that challenges traditional terminologies such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), with its basic precondition of voluntarism (“beyond compliance”), Corporate Philanthropy, and the role of taxation between the two. Our focus in this study is on the concept of CSR and on a thematic discussion of the literature review’s findings. The two other themes are left for future investigation. The systematic review includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of 47 academic papers regarding MCSR in India. The results provide significant background information for intended further research on the subject matter. For example, 72% of the studies were conducted by Indian scholars, suggesting that the MCSR is not an attractive research topic, possibly because Western researchers do not view it as relevant. Another finding is that most of the studies reviewed (63%) were qualitative, perhaps indicating that they are focused more on managerial interviews, other reviews, and legal articles, and less on financial performance or other statistical measures. Qualitatively, the leading themes were that MCSR is debated as a form of taxation, the 2% spending cap that became a ceiling, the limits of the “comply or explain” approach, corporate fraud, MCSR’s relevance to SMEs, the director’s duties to the stakeholders and last, geographical inequality.

The fraught question of the rights and liabilities of "non-signatories" in arbitration continues to exercise courts and commentators. The Supreme Court, as part of its endless fascination with the arbitral process, recently made its own contribution in the Outokumpu case. Outokumpu seemed to raise a wide variety of issues---the signature requirement of the New York Convention, the rights of third parties under the Convention, the relevance of "equitable estoppel," and the applicable law that governs that issue. In a dispiritingly unadventuresome opinion, a unanimous Court decided few of these---yet what the Court gives us is clearly in line with current jurisprudence and with the ALI's recent Restatement project on international commercial arbitration, This short piece was written as a contribution to a festschrift in honor of Professor George Bermann---who, in addition to his extensive body of work, has been the guiding force behind the Restatement and so instrumental in bringing it to fruition.

IPR is very relevant for the growth of the economy. Nowadays the success of any organization is determined by the number of patents it holds. Protection of the Intellectual Property Right is very important for the growth of the economy. India signed the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspect of the Intellectual Property Rights) agreement in the year 1994 which came into effect from 1st January 1955. Since then the Intellectual Property Rights of India has gone through many changes. One such change was the introduction of the Customs Act in 1960, which empowers the custom authorities to check the cross-border infringement of any type of Intellectual Property rights. This power seems not in compliance with Article 51 which requires the member countries to check the cross-border infringement only in respect of pirated trademark and infringed copyright. This paper deals with how custom authorities had hindered the movement of goods which will aggravate the blockage of the growth of the economy.This paper further deals with the case of Ramkumar, Bhogilal and Ericsson and the recent amendment to the Intellectual Property Right (Amendment) 2018 Rules.