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Men are often considered by the health care system to be a disengaged accessory when it comes to family planning. In reality they act as an equal part in the reproductive equation. Despite qualitative research suggesting some men currently do take primary responsibility for family planning, men are further marginalised being classed as an irrational variable in large national datasets. Reports ignore men in general by failing to record basic demographics, for example, age is not captured and ethnicity has two options: white and non-white. This leaves little ability to analyse men's family planning knowledge, attitudes and beliefs. Technological advancements have resulted in new forms of male contraceptive methods reaching phase III testing (from pills to gels), and the market is moving towards diversified options that will allow even more men to take primary contraceptive responsibility. Other advancements include the sexual enhancement product Viagra becoming available over the counter, and reproductive wellbeing apps have been created to allow men to test their fertility at home. Without research to understand the ever-changing landscape for men we are ill-prepared to understand what these new products and advancements mean for men's role. Using various forms of publicly available online data and previous empirical research, this chapter will review men's response to new contraceptives, sexual enhancement products, and reproductive wellbeing apps. The results will be discussed in relation to updating the Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) Theory, the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the integrated developmental and decision-making contraceptive models used by health psychologists.

In some contexts, this illiquidity of executive stock options is referred to as non-transferability. In others, the problem is cast in terms of the highly concentrated portfolios that managers hold, an implication of which is that managers could not trade the options to diversify. The notion of option liquidity usually conjures up images of trading pits at the Chicago Board Options Exchange or other exchanges. The existence of an active trading pit gives a powerful visual image of liquidity, but, as evidenced by the success of electronic options exchanges such as New York's International Securities Exchange and Frankfurt's EUREX, a trading pit is hardly a requirement for liquidity. The existence of a guaranteed market for standardized options as implied by options exchanges (whether pit-based or electronic) further gives a misleading appearance of high liquidity. There is also a very large market for customized over-the-counter options. It is a misconception to think that these options are not liquid when they are simply not standardized. If an investor can create a highly customized long position in an option, that investor should be able to create a highly customized short position in the same option at a later date before expiration. If both options are created through the same dealer, they will usually be treated as an offset, as they would if they were standardized options clearing through a clearinghouse. If the two transactions are not with the same dealer, they would both remain alive, but the market risks would offset. Only the credit risk, a factor we ignore in this paper, would remain. Hence, these seemingly illiquid options are, for all practical purposes, liquid.²

This investigation set out to uncover whether CSR appeals – socially and/or environmentally oriented efforts promoted as part of a corporation’s advertising campaign – present a fruitful strategy for pharmaceutical manufacturers. This study investigates whether consumers in the two countries are similar with regards to (1) attitudes toward CSR engagement (2) perception of the social engagement of a company (3) perceived product/cause fit and (4) evaluation of CSR versus non-CSR appeals in OTC pharma ads. A field study was conducted (483 subjects; non-student sample) to explore how a standardized promotional message with or without a CSR appeal is perceived in a cross-cultural setting. Results indicate that consumers’ response (with regard to attitudes toward CSR, perceived social engagement by a company, perceived product-cause fit, as well as ad evaluation) all varied by country. Consumer responses were only tested with regard to a fictitious product as well as for one product category. Overall results suggest that CSR messages resonated more with some consumers than with others and, thus, may need to be tailored by market. Apart from a very small number of investigations, neither consumer evaluations of over-the-counter (OTC) drug ads in general, nor responses to CSR ad appeals in particular, have been explored. Thus, this investigation’s primary goal is to explore responses toward CSR messages in non-prescription drug ads in the United States and Brazil.

In terms of notional value outstanding, derivatives markets declined in both over-the-counter and exchange-traded transactions during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis (GFC) period, as counterparty and credit concerns became pre-eminent. However, during the 2010–2011 second stage of the GFC, markets rebounded and by June 2011 outstandings reached new levels which highlight the importance these contracts continue to play in the day-to-day risk management and trading activities of corporations and financial intermediaries. The bulk of the contracts traded are interest rate-related instruments and are denominated in either US dollars or Euro. Credit-related instruments remain an important market segment, although outstandings remain at pre-crisis period levels. Of particular concern for regulators is the role of non-bank financial intermediaries, which are the main counterparty to derivatives transactions. While their share of the market remains unchanged over the last decade, outstandings overall have increased more than fourfold. The present volume considers the issues that participants face in today's derivatives markets including the potential impact of derivatives on economic stability, pricing issues, modelling as well as model performance and the application of derivatives for risk management and corporate control.

This paper explores dividend announcements based on information hypothesis. We explore in particular whether or not information signaling theory existed in Taiwan. We also explore the free cash flow hypothesis. In order to eliminate affecting factors, we target companies with irregular dividends as research samples, just like those with specially designated dividends (SDD). We examine whether or not those proceeds may be deemed as future earnings prospection. In this paper we study mainly dividend announcements made during stockholder’s meetings of the companies listed in the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) or R.O.C. Over-the-Counter Securities Exchange (ROSE). We apply event study as means of analyzing abnormal returns of the companies. In addition we use the GARCH model with traditional ordinary least square to estimate the market model. The results indicate that SDDs are considered positive signals by the national exchange, TSE. In addition, we also show that the first-time SDD does transmit a positive signal to the market regarding the firm’s future cash flow, and that the SDD of no payment in the previous three years is negative. Furthermore, we prove that low Q firms have greater market reaction than high Q firms in announcement period. The free cash flow hypothesis and firm size effects could not be verified in Taiwan.

The increased use of checks in nonlocal payments at the end of the nineteenth century presented problems for their clearing and collection. Checks were required to be paid in full (at par) only when presented directly to the drawn-upon bank at its counter. Consequently, many, primarily rural or small-town, banks began to charge remittance fees on checks not presented for collection in person. Such fees and the alleged circuitous routing of checks in the process of collection to avoid them were widely criticized defects of the pre-Federal Reserve payments system. As the new Federal Reserve established its own system for check clearing and collection, it also took as an implicit mandate the promotion of universal par clearing and collection. The result was a bitter struggle with non-par banks, the numbers of which initially shrunk dramatically but then rebounded. A 1923 Supreme Court decision ended the Fed’s active (or coercive) pursuit of universal par clearing, and non-par banking persisted thereafter for decades. Not until the Monetary Control Act of 1980 was universal par clearing and true monetary union, in which standard means of payment are accepted at par everywhere, achieved.

This paper examines the role of structured products in the 2008–2009 financial crisis. The growth of asset securitization has allowed loans that used to be funded by traditional intermediaries, including commercial banks, to be funded in securities markets. As credit-related services became unbundled, layers of transactions were added to the financial intermediation process. These layers were added as structured products, e.g., credit default swaps, in the over-the-counter market. This paper looks at the evolution of credit markets and the importance of using off-balance-sheet-based measures as an alternative in assessing the financial sector.

Social scientists have long been interested in how political institutions affect economic performance. Nowhere are these effects more apparent today than in the current U.S. financial meltdown. This article offers an analysis of the meltdown by showing how government regulation among other things helped cause it. Specifically, the article shows how regulatory reforms closely associated with neoliberalism created perverse incentives that contributed significantly to the increased lending in the mortgage market and increased speculation in other financial markets even as such behavior was becoming increasingly risky. The result was the failure of mortgage firms, banks, a major insurance company, and eventually the market for short-term business loans, which triggered a general liquidity crisis thereby thrusting the entire economy into a severe recession. Implications for future research are explored. The article also offers a few policy prescriptions and an assessment of their political viability going forward.

While China is currently moving toward the full development of its own financial derivatives markets, to date, China's experience with these has been a negative one. This paper examines the importance to China of developing a fully integrated financial derivatives market from both the economic and financial market perspectives. It examines the best way forward for derivative trading, both market based and over-the-counter, and the types of products best suited to both, given the current state of the Chinese financial markets. Consideration is given to market structure, regulation, trading and settlement systems and international cooperation.