Search results

The purpose of this article is to present the preliminary results of a research project which aspires to identify requirements for risk‐reducing regulatory strategies aspiring to protect children and young people in social networks. It aims to provide an insight into the changing role of law in today's networked society and the innovative regulatory solutions that will be able to deal with the paradigm shift from mass media and passive, vulnerable consumers to media for mass self‐communication and active “prosumers”.

First, the legal impact of social networking sites (SNS) risks for children and young people that have been identified in social science research is assessed, as well as the applicability of existing legal instruments. Second, legal trends in this field and a number of recent (alternative) regulatory initiatives and their implementation are discussed. In a final part, the use of such alternative regulatory instruments and their compliance with the broader legal (human rights) framework are analysed. To conclude, a number of elements for risk‐reducing regulatory strategies for the protection of minors in online social networks are identified.

The first research results point towards the importance of multi‐stakeholder involvement, proportionality of measures, procedural guarantees (such as transparency) and the careful combination of regulatory strategies targeted at illegal as well as harmful conduct and content risks for a balanced protection of minors in social networks.

Although social networks are very popular among young users, the risks that are associated with these networks are not at all or not appropriately addressed by existing legal or regulatory instruments. This article aims to contribute to developing innovative regulatory instruments which are effectively addressing these risks.

In September 2009, G20 representatives called for introducing a minimum leverage ratio as an instrument of financial regulation. It is supposed to assure a certain degree of core capital for banks, independent of the controversial procedures used to assess risk. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper discusses the interaction and tensions between the leverage ratio and risk-based capital requirements, using financial data of the Swiss systemically important bank United Bank of Switzerland.

It can be shown that the leverage ratio potentially undermines risk weighting such that banks feel encouraged to take greater risks.

The paper proposes an alternative instrument that is conceived as a base risk weight and functions as a backstop. It ensures a minimum core capital ratio, based on unweighted total exposure by ensuring a minimum ratio of risk-weighted to total assets for all banks. The proposed measure is easy to compute like the leverage ratio, and also like the latter, it is independent of risk weighting. Yet, its primary advantage is that it does not supersede risk-based capital adequacy targets, but rather supplements them.

Regulating common‐pool resources is welfare enhancing for society but not necessarily for all users who may therefore oppose regulations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the short‐term impact of common‐pool resource regulations on welfare distribution.

The authors model a game of common‐pool resource extraction among heterogeneous users.

It was found that market‐based regulations such as fees and subsidies or tradable quotas achieve a higher reduction of extraction from free‐access than individual quotas with the same proportion of better‐off users. Also, they make more users better‐off for the same resource preservation.

The quota regulation has attractive fairness properties: it reduces inequality while still rewarding the more efficient users.

This study proposes a straightforward set of performance measurements for industrialized nations. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, the paper explores the notion of ranking nations based on food safety performances, beyond benchmarking. The paper appraises how a global comparative analysis could contribute to best practices and continuance improvement in food safety. Second, this paper presents an experiment in which a group of regulators took part in a workshop held in Helsinki, Finland in the Fall 2011.

A session was held in October 2011 in Helsinki, and many countries were invited. A total of 17 countries were represented. The following countries were represented: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the USA. The session was designed to be informative, interactive and flexibly tailored to the delegates' needs and experience. It was also designed to raise awareness and understanding of benchmarking and supra-national ranking systems, what it is and how it can be applied using practical examples from healthcare and across other sectors.

The session also introduced the principles of process thinking and illustrated how process benchmarking can be a useful tool for continuance improvement. The session then built upon the theory presented in the introductory portion by focusing specifically on the essence of ranking indicators. In this session, delegates spent time familiarizing themselves with indicators provided by the University of Guelph, discussing how they might implement it within their individual nations and across the trust as a whole.

The collection of primary data was also debated at the session. Public trust, for example, could easily be an indicator which could be included. Measurement of public trust in food safety might be important for governments. It could provide them with information on the performance of the food safety systems from a consumers' perspective. To be an effective indicator of performance the measurement of public trust in food safety should be liable to change. Therefore, changes in performance of the food safety systems have to be reflected through the measurement of public trust in food safety.

The Helsinki session is believed to be the first international meeting in which benchmarking metrics were discussed in order to rank countries based on food safety risk practices. Ranking programs in food safety remain controversial. Most particularly, risk assessors and the public service remain skeptical about their effectiveness. The Helsinki meeting was not met to alleviate the skepticism around ranking systems, but it did allow many to better appreciate several perspectives from around the world.

This experimental study investigates the connotative (measured) meaning of the concept “auditor independence” within three audit engagement case contexts, including two acknowledged in the literature to represent significant potential threats to independence. The study’s research design utilises the measurement of meaning (semantic differential) framework originally proposed by Osgood et al. (1957). Findings indicate that research participants considered the concept of independence within a two factor cognitive structure comprising “emphasis” and “variability” dimensions. Participants’ connotations of independence varied along both these dimensions in response to the alternative experimental case scenarios. In addition, participants’ perceptions of the auditor’s independence in the three cases were systematically associated with the identified connotative meaning dimensions.

This paper aims to critically investigate the liquidity risk management of Islamic banks and develop an alternative regulatory framework appropriate for liquidity management of these banks.

The specific risk profile of an Islamic bank requires developing a new and more efficient regulatory framework, which relies on risk- sharing and symmetric information among parties. The paper makes a differentiation between small local banks and internationally active Islamic banks and proposes to apply liquidity requirements only for internationally active Islamic banks.

A new proposal for the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) of Islamic banks is developed in this paper towards mitigating risks and concurrently protecting the interests of investment account holders. Minimum and maximum thresholds are proposed for each liquid asset in this new LCR framework. An alternative liquidity approach is discussed to complement the proposal and several policy options are suggested.

As participation banks are exposed to market liquidity and market risks, more high-quality liquid instruments within a risk-sharing regulatory framework may provide the inner adjustment process through which any mismatch regarding maturity, risk, value or linkage with the real economy is corrected systematically. It offers policy implications for regulators, supervisors and international organizations.

INTRODUCTION During the past dozen years a relatively large theoretical literature has grown out of the models proposed by Averch‐Johnson (2) and, to a lesser extent, Wellisz (90). Averch‐Johnson (here‐after A‐J) pointed out the now famous overcapitalization effect‐that a monopoly subject to rate of return regulation has an incentive to use more than the cost minimizing value of capital. The A‐J model was at first regarded as simply a theoretical explanation of what was long thought to be a significant cost of regulation. After languishing in this state for several years, the model achieved some popularity as a vehicle for theoretical explorations of various aspects of rate regulation. To date, the A‐J model has given rise to nearly forty papers on what has come to be called “the theory of regulatory constraint.”

This is the second part of a two‐part paper on the future of electronic payments. Part 1, which was published in the last issue of this journal, examined the various electronic forms of payment that are likely to emerge in the future, and considered some of the main technological and economic factors that will shape this evolution. This second part focuses on major regulatory and institutional issues that will influence the wider acceptance of electronic payment.

The paper aims to explore the “build or lease” dilemma that a new operator faces when it plans to enter a liberalized telecom market. The “build” decision requires the operator to invest in new network infrastructure. The “lease” part involves obtaining access to the subscriber by leasing the access part of the network via local loop unbundling (LLU) and/or by implementing wholesale broadband access (WBA) (also known as bitstream access). Which are the factors that an operator should take into account when it designs a broadband strategy based on LLU and/or WBA? Are there regulatory measures that can affect the outcome of such a strategy? The paper aims to provide specific answers to both questions.

Initially the paper establishes the case that LLU as well as WBA can indeed be considered as a useful instrument during the initial stages of broadband development. Consequently, the paper explores the “build or lease” dilemma by using a cost model created from actual market data that, first, identifies the most crucial parameters for the provision of broadband services via LLU, and, second, analyzes the relation between the operators' cost for full/shared LLU and the relevant cost for WBA deployment. The model is used in several scenarios that examine physical vs distant collocation, number of customers, bandwidth, backhaul links and full/shared unbundling access versus WBA, among other factors.

The cost model shows that there are several factors that should be examined when new entrants design their broadband deployment strategy. In such a case, as an operator establishes market presence, LLU becomes progressively more and more attractive. The paper also discusses how this process can be further accelerated if governments, regulators and operators adopt several additional guidelines with respect to broadband deployment based on LLU and WBA.

The results of the paper guide an operator in the design of a successful broadband strategy based on LLU and WBA.

As far as the authors know, such a cost model is not publicly available in the form of a research paper or otherwise.