Search results

There is a perception in the United States that campaign contributions equate with vote buying. Outright vote buying is illegal, but many citizens believe that loopholes in campaign contribution laws allow some to buy votes while perpetuating a façade of legitimacy. Both federal and state laws attempt to regulate campaign contributions, but many of those have been limited by the Supreme Court’s ruling that campaign spending is considered free speech (Buckley vs. Valeo, 1976). Without the ability to limit campaign spending, the amount of money it takes to run a campaign, particularly a presidential campaign, has increased substantially. This had led to an increase in the use of bundling by presidential campaigns, with the winners often rewarding their bundlers. It has also led to an increase in outside independent organizations, known as Super PACs, with an unlimited ability to raise and spend money. This creates an additional problem as a small percentage of wealthy individuals constitute the vast majority of campaign contributors, leading to the perception that politicians cater to the elite. Whether a politician is affected by these factors or not is hard to prove, but it still leaves a perception by voters that their votes are less influential than large campaign contributors and there is always a risk that a vote has been bought.

Purpose – This chapter examines the application of the concept of maslahah in household debt management.

Methodology/approach – A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches is employed. Questionnaires were used for data collection.

Findings – Malaysian Muslims become indebted for four main purposes: buying their first car, their first home, helping family members, and financing their studies. Thus, Muslims principally borrow funds to fulfil their dharuriyyat (essentials) and hajiyyat (complementary) needs, and in some cases, they borrow for tahsiniyyat (luxury) purposes.

Research limitation/implications – The respondents of this research are working Muslims in the Klang Valley, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Practical implication – This study helps Islamic finance institutions to develop better products to offer customers. Its results can also give a real picture about borrowing activities to the Credit Counselling and Debt Management Agency.

Originality/value – Prior studies have mainly examined household debt management. This study surveys local Muslims’ household borrowing pattern to understand the nature of personal debt management and then analyses these data against the concept of maslahah. This will enrich the currently available literature.

The experience of the 1990s renewed economists’ interest in the role of credit in macroeconomic fluctuations. The locus classicus of the credit-boom view of economic cycles is the expansion of the 1920s and the Great Depression. In this paper we ask how well quantitative measures of the credit boom phenomenon can explain the uneven expansion of the 1920s and the slump of the 1930s. We complement this macroeconomic analysis with three sectoral studies that shed further light on the explanatory power of the credit boom interpretation: the property market, consumer durables industries, and high-tech sectors. We conclude that the credit boom view provides a useful perspective on both the boom of the 1920s and the subsequent slump. In particular, it directs attention to the role played by the structure of the financial sector and the interaction of finance and innovation. The credit boom and its ultimate impact were especially pronounced where the organization and history of the financial sector led intermediaries to compete aggressively in providing credit. And the impact on financial markets and the economy was particularly evident in countries that saw the development of new network technologies with commercial potential that in practice took considerable time to be realized. In addition, the structure and management of the monetary regime mattered importantly. The procyclical character of the foreign exchange component of global international reserves and the failure of domestic monetary authorities to use stable policy rules to guide the more discretionary approach to monetary management that replaced the more rigid rules-based gold standard of the earlier era are key for explaining the developments in credit markets that helped to set the stage for the Great Depression.

Over the last decades, the Czech health care system has undergone significant reforms. Regardless of its good performances in terms of health care spending and improved population's health, the sustainability and functionality of the Czech system still faces important challenges. It is particularly vulnerable to economic shocks and an ageing society; it suffers from inefficiencies in hospital management and experiences profound changes in the health workforce. To tackle these problems, policy makers have been working to reform the system, but these challenges have not yet been overcome. The present chapter provides an overview of selected reforms and their outcomes. First, we describe the main features of the health care system in the Czech Republic. Then, we discuss its main sustainability problems and the policy interventions that have been implemented to tackle these problems with a particular focus on evidence provided by the health economics literature on the actual effects of the reforms.

This chapter seeks to place the Paris agreement on anthropogenic greenhouse gases (COP21) in a wider picture on how the global solar photovoltaic (PV) market has been created and shaped over decades. The chapter discusses the role of solar PV actors, as well as other actors in the market-shaping process. The aim is to show how the COP21 can be interpreted in a wider historical perspective.

The chapter builds on expert interviews conducted after the COP21, as well as secondary data on historical studies on evolution of solar energy markets in various countries.

Although scientists and entrepreneurs have been important in creating and shaping the global solar PV market, it is noted that other actors have also had an influence on the market development. Particularly, politicians are seen as playing a crucial role through legislation and funding. Unfortunately for the solar PV market, support has fluctuated over time. The COP21 provides a clear pathway for positive support, and it is expected to bind governments for pro-solar politics even during low prices of fossil fuels and economic downturn.

The chapter provides an overview of what has happened in the history of global solar PV market. It gives reasoning as to why the COP21 is important in securing support for the solar PV market. Thus, it can provide reasoning as to why the COP21 can make a difference.

This is the first academic study that portrays the COP21 against historical evolution of the global solar PV market.

The current crisis in the mortgage securitization industry highlights significant failures in our models of how markets work and our political will, organizational capability, and ideological desire to intervene in markets. This article shows that one of the main sources of failure has been the lack of a coherent understanding of how these markets came into existence, how tactics and strategies of the principal firms in these markets have evolved over time, and how we ended up with the economic collapse of the main firms. It seeks to provide some insight into these processes by compiling both historical and quantitative data on the emergence and spread of these tactics across the largest investment banks and their principal competitors from the mortgage origination industry. It ends by offering some policy proscriptions based on the analysis.