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The purpose of this paper is to show that economic policy impacts sovereign debt risk in addition to economic performance.

Regression analysis was employed to determine the factors that contribute to sovereign bond ratings and bond spreads for a sample of 93 countries from 2000 to 2006.

After controlling for common factors like per capita gross domestic production, growth, and political regime, the results suggest that a two unit (or a 2.4 standard deviation) drop in the economic freedom index represents approximately a 50 percent higher cost of borrowing for a country.

The paper contributes to the empirical literature on sovereign credit risk by identifying factors found to be the most significant in determining sovereign credit ratings and bond spreads.

Although many recognize China’s vast market potential, the challenges of doing business in an economy that was largely closed to market forces for a half century must be recognized. This paper examines the role of venture capital in China’s economic development. The potential impact of a healthy venture capital market is immense, but this healthy market is far from the reality in China. The major obstacles that must be addressed include the state control of vital institutions and regulation of economic activity, including restrictions on the flow of capital and currency.

Some economic commentators claim that inequality of wealth or income reduces economic development and growth of GDP. But this is counterintuitive, since economic breakthroughs usually occur by dint of great effort, or discovery, or invention, which brings great wealth to those responsible (think Bill Gates). Nor is this thesis supported by a proper interpretation of the facts of the matter, despite the contentions of several authors in this regard. Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini (1994) (hence, PT) have an interesting thesis. It is that inequality is harmful for economic growth. That is, ceteris paribus, the more equal is the income or wealth distribution, the better are a country's prospects for economic development.

The reason for writing the paper is to cast doubt on the claim that the informational asymmetries uncovered by Bernhardt and Scoones constitute a market failure.

The main method used is to quote these authors, and then critically comment upon their views. The theoretical scope of the paper is the premise that markets are efficient, effective and ethical.

It was found in the course of the work that Bernhardt and Scoones were in error in their contentions.

Suggestions for future research; this paper is but the tip of the iceberg in terms of claims that markets perform badly, and are hence in need of governmental rectification. This entire literature cries out for more critical analysis.

The public policy and practical implications emanating from this paper is that laissez‐faire capitalism is the best way to organize an economy.

What is new in the paper is that the work of Bernhardt and Scoones on informational asymmetries has not before been subject to critical analysis from the perspective of advocates of the free enterprise system. This is valuable, in that, when claims are subject to critique, they become more reliable. It is only through dialogue and debate of this sort that one can get that in closer to the truth.

The much trumpeted ‘information society’ borne by the Internet has been greeted by a confusing mixture of delight and trepidation, not least regarding the attendant implications for children. No clear consensus has emerged among librarians, educators or others as to whether the potential benefits of the system outweigh any risk associated with retrieving potentially harmful material. Presented here is a pilot research study that examines how children use the Internet, and what their opinions of the system are. This was undertaken to inform a research proposal to be submitted to funding organisations. Results of the preliminary fieldwork point to much independent educational use, particularly with regard to project work. Printouts of photographs and documents were prized more than the intangible information itself, so children were not discouraged by the reading level of a text and did not evaluate relevance on this criterion. Leisure use was dominated by game playing. Some children accessed online chat groups, with occasional foul language encountered accepted as a natural, if unwanted, consequence of Internet use. There was little evidence of other potentially harmful or upsetting material being viewed.

The purpose of this study is to examine and identify the predominant themes in the literature on economic freedom. The paper also highlights the key journals, leading authors, top countries and organisations in the literature on economic freedom.

This paper uses the Scopus database to examine 1,512 articles covering the disciplines of economics, finance, business and social sciences from 1942 to 2022. Vosviewer software is used for creating bibliometric networks.

The findings suggest that significant growth in the economic freedom literature has occurred in the last ten years. Considerable attention has been devoted to examining the relationship between economic freedom and growth. The paper also finds that most of the research on economic freedom has been undertaken in the context of developed countries.

This study is one of the first attempts to undertake a bibliometric analysis of economic freedom. The article also highlights the less-researched areas in the literature and thus provides directions for future research.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2023-0690.

Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as residing in Clément Juglar's contribution on commercial crises and their periodicity. It is well known that the champion of this view is Schumpeter, who propagated it on several occasions. The same author, however, pointed to a number of other writers who, before and at the same time as Juglar, stressed one or another of the aspects for which Juglar is credited primacy, including the recognition of periodicity and the identification of endogenous elements enabling the recognition of crises as a self-generating phenomenon. There is indeed a vast literature, both primary and secondary, relating to the debates on crises and fluctuations around the middle of the nineteenth century, from which it is apparent that Juglar's book Des Crises Commerciales et de leur Retour Périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (originally published in 1862 and very much revised and enlarged in 1889) did not come out of the blue but was one of the products of an intellectual climate inducing the thinking of crises not as unrelated events but as part of a more complex phenomenon consisting of recurring crises related to the development of the commercial world – an interpretation corroborated by the almost regular occurrence of crises at about 10-year intervals.

The purpose of this paper is to understand if accounting is an un‐Australian activity, contrasting the notion of the bush and bushman present in popular Australian poetry and cultural myth with the notion expressed by Maltby of the link between the soul of the middle class and the practice of bookkeeping. The paper aims to explore the notion of a tension between what might be seen as indigenous values and the values of Western capitalism.

The paper presents an analysis of Australian poetry to identify in this culturally significant media how the city and the technologies of accounting are negatively contrasted with the bush and the bushman. Since many Australians migrated from European countries, we might expect bookkeeping to claim a foundational place in the Australian soul.

This literature shows bush dwellers as being exploited by those from the city, and city professionals such as the accountant and the lawyer as having lost their sense of self and soul. The sense of “other” reflected by the concept of the bush in Australian literature represents a tension between a structured and ordered European sense of self expressed by Maltby and an archetypical sense of self implied by the character of the bushman and connected to the Australian landscape, with its inherent but little acknowledged debt to the Aboriginal. In this landscape the absence of both accounting and the associated rhetoric of economic rationality allow other forms of rationality to emerge.

This is the first time that poetry has been examined in relation to accounting. It shows a deep insight into the place of archetype of the accountant in Australian cultural identity. In addition it argues that responses to accounting can reflect underlying rhetorics of rationality.

The purpose of this paper is to answer two research questions: How does a self-initiated migrant (SiM)'s talent identity work operate in relation to their culture, the societies in which they live, their interpersonal relationships and their tacit knowledge development? and how can global talent management be re-imagined in light of this?

This co-constructed autoethnography is produced from reflexive, dyadic interviews and text “conversations” with an SiM doing “global talent identity work” and uses narrative analysis to investigate how liminal competence is developed across the life cycle.

This study shows how talent identity work is rooted in the lived, meaningful experiences of individual talent, from childhood to adult life in a pandemic. The authors add to knowledge about COVID-19 experiences of SiMs, uncover poignant examples of the role of migrant ethnic and knowledge discrimination and identify lessons for managerial practice in engendering liminality competence by combining global talent management and knowledge management.

Lessons are drawn for global talent management strategies that appreciate and support individual talent ethnic and knowledge inclusion of underappreciated migrant talent.

Examining the connection between talent identity work and liminality competence, the authors show how an individual's talent might be wasted through different forms of discrimination and highlight how ethnic discrimination during a pandemic points the way to positive changes in talent knowledge management initiatives. This study suggests ways in which ethnic and knowledge discrimination might be addressed through talent management strategies.