Capital Regime Research Articles

Financial Nature of Crypto-Assets and Impact on the Italian Share Capital Regime

Financial Nature of Crypto-Assets and Impact on the Italian Share Capital Regime

The Moderating Effects of Capital Regulation and Supervisory Power on the Risk-Sensitivity of Bank Capital Requirements

Based on bank data from 61 of the largest banks in Asia and the Middle East, this paper presents an analysis of the effects that capital regulation and stringent supervisory actions have on the extent to which bank capital requirements are risk sensitive. While bank-specific factors, namely banks’ buffer, deposit, loans and supervisory power, are statistically-significant, there is no clear evidence to prove that capital regulation and GDP growth rate affect the risk sensitivity of banks. Using a robust one-step system GMM estimator, our results indicate that stricter supervisory power combined with capital regulatory regimes does enhance the risk sensitivity of banks. Our findings have two policy implications. First, the extent to which risk-based capital requirements are effective at controlling bank risk acts independently of the capital requirements set by authorities. Second, bank-specific factors have a more significant impact on risk at the bank level than external factors. To supervise and manage bank-risk level, there is a distinct requirement, at least in emerging economies, for regulators to monitor the operation and performance of banks in addition to verifying their compliance with capital requirements.

Pharmacy in Latvia during the occupation regime of Nazi Germany (1941-1945).

The study covers the period of World War II after shift of occupational powers in Latvia when Soviet occupation was replaced by the occupation regime of Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941 and retained until first half of 1945. Due to this shift gradually Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Belarus were merged into a single administrative area and designated as "Ostland". Soviet officials left the pharmaceutical industry, which they had tried to apply to the communist ideology from June 1940 to June 1941 creating confusion and chaos. The renewed Pharmacy Board of Latvia had to deal with the restoration of supervision and a partial return from the communist to the capitalist regime. The research provides an insight to adaptation and development of the pharmaceutical industry in Latvia during Nazi Germany occupation regime, highlighting as essential indicators the administrative operation of Pharmacy Board of Latvia and its cooperation with German authorities, the availability of medicines, process of reprivatisation of pharmacies and changes in the number of pharmaceutical employees. The research issue raised is topical, since it is this period that reflects the industry's ability to adapt and perform work in fundamentally different and severe circumstances, which include both resource deficits and the transition from one regime to another. The collected evidence shows the efforts to stabilize the pharmaceutical industry in many terms. One example was the attemptions to ensure the rational dispensing of medical products to the pharmacies and hospitals, with the greatest degree of austerity, because the supply and consumption of medication was extremely complex issue throughout the war.

Reading with the Runaways, or namesakes in diaspora on Sunjeev Sahota’s the year of the Runaways: A novel

ABSTRACT Through a series of fragments, vignettes, and a montage, this essay explores the underlying crises of contemporary capitalism and the nation-state as presented in Sunjeev Sahota's 2015 novel The Year of the Runaways. The essay examines the novel's innovative Anglo-Punjabi diglossia as an index of social contradiction and political crisis in the wake of immigration and nationalist reaction in the U.K. It lays out as well the competing pressures that serve to catalyze the production of new diasporic subjectivities and the adoption of non-traditional social practices among Sahota's characters. Along the way, the essay delves into the significance of naming and its relationship to identity via the discourse of the name (nam) in Sikh scripture. The final fragments elaborate upon the opening of new possibilities of selfhood for Sahota's central characters. This opening is premised on, and yet reach beyond, abstract labor-power under capitalist regimes of accumulation and Indian caste and gender norms.

Is an oligopolistic banking system more resilient and at what cost? A study of the competitiveness of the Canadian banking structure

The Canadian banking system, like its Australian counterpart, is often credited for weathering the 2007/8 financial crisis effectively. The oligopolistic rent is overlooked, as a necessary price for the resiliency of the system. In this paper, the authors discuss that the resilience was due to the banks’ ability to pass on the cost of the crisis and the following regulations to the end users of their products and services, and their ability to alter products and services to maximise profitability. In a competitive market, positive economic profit is supposed to erode over time, especially following major events such as the 2007/8 crisis. This did not happen for Canadian banks; therefore, arguably, there was an ‘implicit bailout’ in Canada whose cost was not borne by the taxpayers (as in the case of an explicit bailout) but by the end users of the banking services and products (the payers of the oligopolistic rent). This may reoccur in the aftermath of the COVID crisis, and the perceived resilience may win out over competition. The authors also theorise the diversification benefit vs the systemic risk trade-off with an increasing bank size. The diversification benefit can increase, but at a decreasing rate as a bank grows, whereas systemic risk increases at an increasing rate. Therefore, there exists a point where the systemic risk outweighs the diversification benefit as a bank continues to grow. The authors find that the standardised capital regime not only diminishes the banks’ competiveness against their internal ratings-based (IRB) counterparts but also forces them into the riskier segments of the market and diminishes their ability to diversify. The authors make a case that a banking environment that promotes competition is desirable to increase the utility of the system without sacrificing safety and soundness. As a matter of fact, increased competition can increase stability while reducing the undesired implicit public subsidy of private enterprise.

On possible transformation of everyday life in North Korea via referencing other East Asian socialist nations in transition

ABSTRACT Without direct fieldwork access, one can nevertheless imagine what possible changes can happen in the everyday life of North Koreans, by references with conditions elsewhere in East Asia which resonates with current conditions in North Korea. First, the division between North and South Korea can be referenced with the other instances of nations divided by a communist and a capitalist regime; namely, the present China and Taiwan and the previous North and South Vietnam. In contrast to these references to possible routes to reunification, it also can be referenced to instances of peaceful separations, such as the case of Malaysia and Singapore. Second, now that a nascent private market economy has been introduced, the experiences of Vietnam and China in marketizing their respective centrally planned economy can serve as references to imagine the possible economic transformation of North Korea. Third, the penetration of imported media/popular cultures into North Korean media consumption may stimulate new aspirations of local population for a different material future, as it has done in other parts of East Asia. Drawing on the experiences of other East Asian nations as reference points, potential and possible changes in the everyday life in North Korea can be imagined.

Assimilation and Partition: How Settler Colonialism and Racial Capitalism Co-produce the Borders of Indigenous Economies

The history of colonialism in Canada has meant both the partition of Indigenous peoples from participating (physically, politically, legally) in the economy and a relentless demand to become assimilated as liberal capitalist citizens. Assimilation and segregation are both tendencies of colonization that protect the interests of white capital. But their respective prevalence seems to depend on the regime of racial capitalism at play. This paper examines the intersection of settler colonization and racial capitalism to shed light on the status of Indigenous economic rights in Canada. I ask, to what extent are Indigenous peoples understood to have economic rights—defined here as the governing authority to manage their lands and resources—and, how we can we analyze these rights to better understand the conjoined meanings of colonialism and capitalism as systems of power today? In this paper, I look at two sites to address this problem: first, I examine how the Supreme Court of Canada has defined the “Aboriginal right” to commercial economies since the patriation of Aboriginal rights into the Constitution in 1982; and, second, I examine how these rights are configured through state resource revenue-sharing schemes with First Nations, in particular from extractive projects, over the past few years. Each case study provides critical material for analyzing the economic opportunities available to First Nations through democratic channels of state “recognition,” as well as when and why tensions between state policies of segregation and assimilation emerge.

Industrial possibilities and false necessity: rethinking production, employment and labor dynamics in the global economy1

AbstractMuch of contemporary comparative political–economic thinking about global industrial production accepts the following claims (a) that manufacturing is destined to leave rich political economies for lower wage ones; (b) that global industrial production is hierarchically structured with higher value operations concentrated in the rich countries and intermediate component production distributed across increasingly specialized clusters in emerging political economies; (c) that digital technological advance, automation and massive platform firms are ushering in a new historical regime of capitalism that is generating high rates of inequality and threatens to thoroughly degrade work for less educated and less skilled workers all over the globe. This article argues that these three arguments are deeply flawed because they present only a partial picture of contemporary global industrial dynamics. They exclude from view many concurrent developments that suggest that alternative political and economic practices and trajectories are possible. And they downplay the role that politics and struggle have played and can play in the constitution of the political economy. By deconstructing these three arguments, this article attempts to recover possibility from the constraints of false necessity in thinking about global industrial production dynamics.

История развития образования в Чешской республике и Казахстане (1990-1999 годы): сравнительно-исторический анализ

The objective of the article is to examine patterns of similarities and differences across educational reforms in the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan in post-socialist context. The study conducted a comparativehistorical analysis of the development of education systems in Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic in the 1990s when there was a transition of these countries from the socialist to the capitalist regime. The comparative historical analysis of the educational reforms of these two countries identified a number of similar patterns and considerable differences in the development of their education systems due to many contextual and structural factors and historical prerequisites. The comparative analysis demonstrated that both in the educational systems of the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan democratization, humanization and differentiation were taken as main principles of the reforms, but these processes developed in the different level and directions. As a result, it was stated that both the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan intended to democratize educational systems in post-socialist context. While the Czech Republic tended to decentralize and diversify the school system, delegating the practical implementation of educational policies to various organizations and lobbying groups, however, Kazakhstan maintains a highly centralized system from top to bottom, which leaves little administrative, financial, managerial, executive authority for the low structures of the state apparatus and the public, which limits the system to strict planning and standards.

De-signare o el cálculo discursivo

Profesiones de nuestro tiempo como el diseño y sus variaciones —arquitectónico, industrial, gráfico, etc.— tienen un lugar en la estructura del discurso. La cadena de la producción es el ámbito explícito en que se empalman las lógicas de dichas profesiones, así como su carácter anticipatorio, proyectivo y de cálculo. Sabemos que el sobrino de Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, encontró los métodos con los cuales instrumentalizar el discurso analítico y, podríamos decir, instalar, a su vez, los engranajes que hoy en día garantizan el circuito del régimen capitalista. ¿En qué medida el estadounidense de origen vienés contribuyó en la construcción de los textos que hoy organizan el quehacer de estas disciplinas? Nos proponemos en el texto abordar algunas cuestiones relacionadas.

The Cost of Bank Regulatory Capital

The Basel I Accord introduced a discontinuity in required capital for undrawn credit commitments. While banks had to set aside capital when they extended commitments with maturities in excess of one year, short-term commitments were not subject to a capital requirement. We use this difference to infer the price banks are willing to pay to reduce regulatory capital, and to ascertain the role capital regulation plays on the composition of credit in the economy. Our results show that following Basel I, short-term commitments increased as undrawn fees declined (relative to those of long-term commitments). These results are robust and appear to be driven by the Basel I Accord: they are more prevalent among low-capital banks and do not hold in several placebo tests. We estimate that banks are willing to pay at least $0.05 to reduce regulatory capital by one dollar. While this inferred cost might appear to be low, our results show that the relative decline in short-term commitment prices induced by Basel I triggered a large shift in quantities, underscoring the sensitivity of credit to regulatory capital regimes.

Contested and Cemented Borders: Understanding the Implications of Overseas Indian Citizenship

Abstract Although the Person of Indian Origin (PIO) and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) schemes have existed for some time, they began to serve a political and economic purpose for the Republic of India with the arrival of the twenty-first century. The OCI status asserts “Indianness” as a legible quality in diasporic memory. It does the work of cementing political Indo-Pakistani and Indo-Bangladeshi borders, while coopting the language of transnationalism to bolster the fundamentally nationalist regime of capitalism at work in the Republic of India. The goal of this regime is to promote a functionally nationalist, and thus, anti-transnational reality. As more generations of South Asians live and grow up abroad, creating a legible “Indianness” functions as a service to the capitalist Indian economy. These individuals abroad are encouraged to identify as diasporic “Indians” who must engage with their “motherland.” Thus, the transnationalist discourse of decreasing territoriality is exploited by the Indian state to serve goals that function in ideological opposition to transnationalism. As this discourse of legible “Indianness” becomes more successful, there will be increasing incentives for the ruling party in India to further privilege OCIs. In the end, the language and capital of the OCIs affirms the powers of capitalism contemporary Indian nation-state.

Graduated In/Visibility: Reflections on Ku’er Activism in (Post)Socialist China

Abstract Grounded in my activist labor over the past few years, this article delineates the current state of Ku’er (queer)1 politics in (post)socialist China. I contribute to the discussion of GLBTQ politics in a non-Western context by asking questions about the ways in which the power of the state is negotiated by activists.2 I join a conversation with Shirinian about the possibility and the consequences of being seen.3 I begin my reflections with an overview of GLBTQ activism in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, focusing on China where my activist and scholarly work is based. Following a discussion of specific socialist and authoritarian legacies, I argue that queer activism in China has adopted a framework I call “graduated in/visibility” in order to organize and navigate repressive policies. This scheme of visibility affords queer people the ability to mobilize, but it is not without drawbacks. Indeed, in the final section, I consider the purpose and the politics of visibility in relation to what has been called “global neoliberal queering.”4 Further, I ask what the desire for visibility, acceptance, and assimilation mean in the context of an authoritarian capitalist regime. My intention is not to brand China as “bad capitalism” or a “backward society,”5 nor am I embarking on a detailed political analysis of the Chinese Communist Party and its sexual politics after the opening the country. Rather, I attempt to highlight the importance of activist knowledge in the context of emerging studies of Third World sexuality,6 which is unfortunately shaped by the coloniality of power, global capitalism, and imperialism.7

What socioenvironmental impacts did 35 years of export agriculture have in Mexico? (1980–2014): A transnational agri‐food field analysis

AbstractIn this article, I propose to study environmental degradation and the deterioration of the health of workers and other inhabitants in regions of Mexico where intensive fruit and vegetable production for export has been developed. My proposition is that to understand the unsustainability of such agricultural practices in all their complexity, it is necessary to analyse historically the total agri‐food field of relations established by producers, distributors, and consumers in codependency with the natural environment. This analysis of the agri‐food field allows a multidimensional and multiscale study to be conducted of the hierarchical distribution of power and of economic benefits among the different social actors of the food system. This analysis also allowed us to study the development of the capitalist regime without going into the dichotomy of centre and periphery and to propose that it is a decentralized process with a multiplicity of locations that operates on the basis of mutual associations and influences between human and non‐human elements, with the active participation of a great variety of independent, collective, and institutional actors who have differentiated motivations, ranges of power and scales of value. The case study of Mexican export agriculture was the result of long‐term research based on a wide review of regional studies, field work statistics, and archives in Mexico and the United States. This cross‐border study makes it possible to identify asymmetrical transnational relations in a context in which the Mexican government has renounced its territorial and agri‐food sovereignty and Mexican consumers face greater vulnerability.

Deeper Histories of Dispossession: The Genealogy of “Proletarian” Relations in Iceland

“Proletarian” relations are generally understood in terms of capitalist dispossession. However, a deeper historical approach to class relations in Iceland reveals the fundamental role of monopolization and labor insecurity across capitalist and pre-capitalist political economies. During the first settlement of Iceland in the late 9th century A.D., land was freely available to colonists, but by the late 17th century, over 95% of all farming properties were owned by landlords. Landlords and tenants frequently negotiated new leases, effectively creating a dispossessed, insecure, and mobile class of tenant farmers. Using the millennium-long history and archaeology of farmsteads in Skagafjorður, northern Iceland, we then outline (1) how it is that these “proletarian” relations came about in the first place, (2) how they were maintained, and, finally, (3) how Iceland’s “transition to capitalism” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was less the creation of a uniquely proletarian class than a migration of long-dispossessed labor under new capital regimes.

Capital Allowance and Companies Income Tax Act in Nigeria

This paper discusses the implications of capital allowances for companies’ income tax purposes in Nigeria. Capital allowance scheme is one of the potentials for improving tax revenue generation in Nigeria. It is a latent value adding mechanism to a business, and a form of based erosion tax sharing (BETS) model that depletes expected tax effect on a business and shifts it to the taxpayer for incurring qualifying expenditure in respect of certain assets. It is an inbuilt expansionary tax fiscal policy that has the capacity to boost economic growth and prosperity. Yet, this scheme over time has been undermined, misused and abused by the relevant quarters. This study tends to rekindle the need and opportunity available in religious implementation of capital allowance regime. It is an investment and industrial output growth; and when it is properly employed, industries will grow to prosperity. In addition to its benefits, it complements the effort of the government in attracting foreign direct investments and to attaining national economic objectives. This paper employs descriptive study and secondary data collection methods to examine the conceptual and regulatory provisions, among other issues concerning the system of capital allowance. Findings from the study confirm that effective implementation of capital allowance scheme can deepen tax compliance culture, increase tax revenue performance and enhance investment in productive non-current assets of companies in Nigeria. Also, it affirms a clear distinction between capital allowance and capital gains tax for companies as well as deducts that there is a reducing effect of different forms of capital allowances on arriving at total profits for company income tax purposes in Nigeria, except for balancing charges. Hence, it is just and reasonable to conclude that a strong and positive connection does exist between capital allowance and tax compliance, tax revenue collection and economic growth and prosperity in Nigeria. Among other recommendations, this paper proposes that management of relevant tax authority should put stringent measures to ensure that all capital allowances claimable are verifiable, justifiable and reasonable as well as meet the regulatory conditions as provided by the extant tax legislations.

Шизоанализ, маржинализм, фурьеризм (о двух дополнительных ресурсах для понимания экономических взглядов Делёза и Гваттари)

This article analyzes how two theories, both emerging in the nineteenth century—Fourierism and marginalism—influenced the economic views of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Despite the fact that explicit recourse to those theories in Capitalism and Schizophreniais merely sporadic, the implicitly inherent interrelation between these ideas and a schizoanalyst view of economics turns out to be rather substantial. First, marginalism is concerned with a “logic of the (pen)ultimate,” within the framework of which a distinction between a limit and a threshold is introduced. This distinction is important for understanding how the “apparatuses of capture,” which subjugate desiring-production to the despotic, and later to the capitalist regime, function. Second, Fourier’s “gigantism,” mentioned by Deleuze and Guattari, turns out to be an anticipation of their own theory of the “desiring machine” synthesis not only as to its general intention, but also as a detailed social mechanics, built upon the engagement of “distributive passions.”

“One Belt One Road” and the geopolitics of empire

ABSTRACTThe Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a grand design proposed by China in 2013, aims at a fundamental geopolitical remapping. Coping with modern geopolitics that the Western world has championed, BRI attempts to overturn the relationship between land and sea, replacing the Pacific Ocean with Eurasia in the center. This shift creates different spatial conception from the one that accompanied modern nomos. By creating infinitely expandable and connectible space with no boundary between inside and outside, BRI resonates with Empire Discourse. Its ultimate destination is to connect China’s historical civilization with Chinese socialism, and then to bring to completion of the mission of overcoming the capitalist system. However, it is doubtful whether Chinese socialism, having empire as its soul and BRI as its body, can be a solid alternative to the capitalist regime. Empire-BRI discourse loops ceaselessly double in upon itself within the self-centered circuit despite its insistence on going beyond modernity.

From rice fields to financial assets: Valuing land for microfinance in Cambodia

This paper explores how rural land in Cambodia has been incorporated into global networks of finance capital through the technical and political processes of turning land into a financial asset. Since the 1990s, the Cambodian government and international development institutions have issued land titles to people to formalise land ownership and increase people's access to formal credit. At the same time, Cambodia's commercial microfinance industry has rapidly grown to become one of the largest markets in the world per capita. The industry has expanded in part because microfinance institutions use land title for collateral on household loans as a method to manage the financial risk of their foreign investors and shareholders. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research conducted withACLEDABank, Cambodia's largest provider of microfinance loans, to examine how the rural land market and microfinance sector are assembled together. I argue that microfinance markets in Cambodia depend on credit officers establishing a capitalist regime of land value. To do so, credit officers engage in daily bricolage, using technologies of representation and data inscription, to create new grids of land evaluation that allow people to treat their land as a financial asset. I also argue that collateral is a kind of technology of control that reworks and respatialises household social reproduction for the benefit of financial accumulation. This paper thus contributes to our theoretical understanding of how land, labour, and finance capital are assembled together, and the political economic ramifications of such an assemblage.

The Croatian path from socialism to European membership through the lens of technology transfer policies

The transition from a socialist economy to one of capitalism brought, to many countries that had previously been socialist, a drastic decline in their technological competences, technological transfers, and research activities after the 1990s. This research seeks to assess whether or not the policy of technology transfer practised during the socialist era improved for these countries following their entry to a capitalist regime and their subsequent joining of the European Union, and whether or not these two processes (which historically coincide for many previously socialist countries) correlate. Croatia is used as an example of a typical transition country possessive of a specific type of market socialism, with controversial outcomes arising from its particular transition process in comparison to its peers. Despite the assistance of the European Union, which helped many new members from socialist backgrounds to recover their economies by upgrading their technological capabilities, this research reveals that technology transfer in less technologically developed countries is unfolding very slowly. Technological transfer occurs as a highly contextual phenomenon, dependant not only on the structure of the economy and technological and research capacities, but also on the political economy and the type of capitalism. This research identifies the three phases of the evolution of university technology transfer: science based models in socialism; endeavours towards an innovation based model throughout the transition period; and the bureaucratic model, driven by the EU cohesion policy and facilitated through access to the European Structural Funds. This research points out that bureaucratic-driven types of technology transfer should be coupled with nationally concerned actions on overall economic and political reforms in order to gain efficient results from their technology transfer efforts.