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The purpose of this postmortem is to assess whether the design, implementation, and maintenance of financial policies during the period from 1996 through 2006 were primary causes of the financial system's demise.

To draw conclusions about the policy determinants of the crisis, the paper studies five important policies: Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) policies toward credit rating agencies, Federal Reserve policies concerning bank capital and credit default swaps, SEC and Federal Reserve policies about over‐the‐counter derivatives, SEC policies toward the consolidated supervision of major investment banks, and government policies toward two housing‐finance entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The evidence is inconsistent with the view that the collapse of the financial system was caused only by the popping of the housing bubble (“accident”) and the herding behavior of financiers rushing to create and market increasingly complex and questionable financial products (“suicide”). Rather, the evidence indicates that senior policymakers repeatedly designed, implemented, and maintained policies that destabilized the global financial system in the decade before the crisis. Moreover, although the major regulatory agencies were aware of the growing fragility of the financial system due to their policies, they chose not to modify those policies, suggesting that “negligent homicide” contributed to the financial system's collapse.

Although influential policymakers presume that international capital flows, euphoric traders, and insufficient regulatory power caused the crisis, this paper shows that these factors played only a partial role. Thus, current reforms represent only a partial and thus incomplete step in establishing a stable and well‐functioning financial system. Since systemic institutional failures helped cause the crisis, systemic institutional reforms must be a part of a comprehensively effective response.

The principal issue that will be considered in this chapter is how the banking sector facilitates the crimes of money laundering and tax evasion. This will entail asking a series of related questions. Does the assistance of the banking sector in financial crime involve a small number of wayward employees at the periphery of banking? Or are multinational financial institutions willing participants in the systemic evasion of global antifinancial crime standards? In exploring these questions, the theory and practice of money laundering will be explored by focusing on the three stages of the money laundering cycle. The global anti-money laundering standards that apply to the banking sector, and the role of bank secrecy in promoting tax evasion, will be examined through a series of case studies. It will be argued that there is strong empirical evidence that the banking sector is a systemic offender facilitating financial crimes, despite the enactment of international and national antifinancial crime standards and criminal prosecutions of financial institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to summarise key findings and recommendations from the “Living in Fear” research project focusing on the experiences of people with learning disabilities and autism related to disability hate crime and the experience of the police in dealing with such incidents.

Methods included: first, a postal survey with 255 people with learning disabilities or autism (or their carers for people with more severe disabilities), of whom 24 also took part in semi-structured interviews; and second, an electronic survey of the knowledge and experience of 459 police officers or support staff.

Just under half of participants had experienced some form of victimisation. The Police reported problems with the definition of disability hate crime and challenges to responding effectively.

A case study from the research highlights some of the key findings and is linked to implications for people with learning disabilities and autism, carers, police and other agencies.

Previous research has highlighted that victimisation is an issue for this group of people, but has never explored the prevalence and nature of such experiences in a representative sample. Neither has previous research brought together the perspectives of so many different agencies to offer recommendations that go across many sectors. The paper will be of interest to people with disabilities and their carers, professionals in health, social care and the Criminal Justice system.

The purpose of this paper is to describe through innovation system foresight and systemic innovation approach to address key systemic issues of European Union (EU) Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) concerning the sustainable development and economic resilience: the authors highlight the need for a systemic approach to innovation policy for the sustainable islands’ growth.

This research focuses on a multiple case study of selected OCTs, members of the Association of the OCTs. Specifically, this paper illustrates the foresight approach implemented in six OCTs in the context of the Territorial Strategies for Innovation project funded by the 10th European Development Fund.

The focus is on innovation system foresight and systemic innovation: the authors argue that key innovation elements of the individual OCTs can be used as crucial components of an emerging innovation system while this specific type of foresight can assist the governments of respective OCTs in the selection and design of specific instruments in relation to the formulation of their innovation strategies and policies.

This paper is based on work undertaken by the Territorial Strategies for Innovation project team during a three-year period dedicated to supporting the governments of OCTs both in defining and in implementing their innovation strategies. Its main contribution is to develop the concept of innovation system foresight and systemic innovation for the OCTs. The work presented here is considered to be of value by highlighting specific innovation elements for achieving sustainable and inclusive growth in OCTs.

The governance of the relationship between humans and the biophysical world has been based on a paradigm characterized by dualistic thinking and scientism. This has led to the Anthropocene. The purpose of this paper is to reframe human-biosphere governance in terms of “cyber-systemics”, a neologism that is useful, the authors argue, not only for breaking out of this dualistic paradigm in human-environmental governance but also of the dualism associated with the use of systems and cybernetics.

In this paper the authors draw on their own research praxis to exemplify how the intellectual lineages of cybernetics and systems have been mutually influencing their doings, and how new forms of governance practices that explore different framing choices might contribute to building innovative governance approaches attuned to the problematique of the Anthropocene, for instance through institutional designs for cyber-systemic governance.

The growing popularity of the Anthropocene as a particular framing for the circumstances, if it is to transformative and thus relevant demands informed critique if it is to help change the trajectory of human-life on earth. The authors offer arguments and a rationale for adopting a cyber-systemic perspective as a means to avoid the dangers in pursuing the current trajectory of our relationship with the biophysical world as, for example, climate change. The essay frames an invitation for a systemic inquiry into forms of governance more suited to the contemporary circumstances of humans in their relationships with the biophysical world.

The research essay challenges many taken-for-granted epistemological assumptions within the cybernetics and systems intellectual communities. A case for radical change is mounted; the means to effect this change, other than through changes in discourse remain unclear though it is apparent that changes to praxis and institutional forms and arrangements will be central.

Cyber-systemic capabilities need to be developed; this requires investment and new institutions that are conducive to cyber-systemic understandings and praxis.

Understanding the global environmental crisis as an emergent outcome of current commitments to dualistic governance choices demands a reframing of much of what humans have done, re-investment in cyber-systemics offers a moral and practical response.

Aims to explore the possibility of developing a neoclassical theory of institutional failure, based on “transaction costs”. Critically assesses the role of institutions in General Equilibrium theory and concludes that, with the exception of the market (price mechanism), this is institution‐free. This is unsatisfactory, given the importance of the firm and the state, in particular, which have received wide attention recently in the theory of transaction costs. It is claimed that General Equilibrium theory can be given microfoundations based on transaction costs. This provides the possibility of a neo‐classical theory of institutional failure. It also has important implications on the nature and scope of economic theory in general and the plan versus markets debate in particular.

The study aims to investigate how pre-commercial procurement (PCP) influences the activities, capabilities and behaviours of actors participating in the innovation process. Unlike much of PCP research underpinned by a market failure theoretical framework that evaluates the additionality of innovation inputs and outputs, this paper focusses on the role and capacity of PCP in addressing systemic failures impeding the process of innovation.

PCP effects on the innovation process were studied through a qualitative study of the UK small business research initiative (SBRI) programme. Data collection comprised 33 semi-structured interviews with key informants within 30 organisations and analysis of 80-plus secondary data sources. Interviewees included executives of technology-based small businesses, managers within public buying organisations and innovation policymakers and experts.

The UK SBRI improves connectivity and instigates research and development (R&D) related interactions and cooperation. Through securing government R&D contracts, small firms access relevant innovation ecosystems, build up their knowledge and capabilities and explore possible routes to market. Public organisations use the SBRI to connect to innovative small firms and access their sets of expertise and novel ideas. They also learn to appreciate the strategic role of procurement. Nonetheless, SBRI-funded small business face commercialisation and innovation adoption challenges because of institutional constraints pertaining to rules, regulations and public-sector norms of conduct.

The study contributes to existing PCP research by demonstrating innovation process-related effects of PCP policies. It also complements literature on small business-friendly public procurement measures by highlighting the ways through which PCP, rather than commercial procurement procedures, can support the development of small businesses other than just facilitating their access to government (R&D) contracts.

The study identifies several challenge areas that policymakers should address to improve the implementation of the UK SBRI programme.

The study demonstrates the effects of PCP on the activities, capabilities and behaviours of small businesses and public buying organisations involved in the innovation process.

This article identifies the institutional factors behind both the emergence of a highly vulnerable financial system and the housing bubble that devastated it. The underlying premise is that the financial crisis was a market failure embedded in and caused by an institutional one. The failing institutions were academic, political and regulatory. The article shows how these institutions were fatally undermined, suggesting limits to the rationalization of finance capitalism. The perspective on financial crisis developed here recognizes the pressing need for reform of the financial markets, and also recommends institutional reforms as critical protections against future system failure.