Financial Entanglements Research Articles

Gifting books, bribing elites, reaching the masses: Italian fascist propaganda in Turkey, 1923–38

This article explores Fascist Italy’s attempts in the interwar era to influence Turkish perceptions of fascism and Italy. The techniques to be reviewed include interviews by diplomatic personnel, the gifting of books, film screenings, the sending of photographs and captions to Turkish outlets, and the use of intermediaries. The article will focus on Yunus Nadi’s [Abalıoğlu] financial entanglement with the fascist regime in 1931 and 1932. It will throw light on how documents in the Italian state archives illustrate that Cumhuriyet’s coverage of fascism was influenced by financial considerations. The discussion will also seek to highlight the Turkish service of Radio Bari, the Arabic broadcasting of which dominated discussions in the literature. The conclusion will review the methods and consider why some, such as the use of local ‘fascist’ groups, proved unsuccessful in Turkey, whereas others, like radio, offered much promise in reaching out to the wider public.

Psychedelics in PERIL: The Commercial Determinants of Health, Financial Entanglements and Population Health Ethics.

The nascent for-profit psychedelic industry has begun to engage in corporate practices like funding scientific research and research programs. There is substantial evidence that such practices from other industries like tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals and food create conflicts of interest and can negatively influence population health. However, in a context of funding pressures, low publicly funded success rates and precarious academic labor, there is limited ethics guidance for researchers working at the intersection of clinical practice and population health as to how they should approach potential financial sponsorship from for-profit entities, such as the psychedelic industry. This article reports on a reflective exercise among a group of clinician scientists working in psychedelic science, where we applied Adams' (2016) PERIL (Purpose, Extent, Relevant harm, Identifiers, Link) ethical decision-making framework to a fictionalized case of corporate psychedelic financial sponsorship. Our analysis suggests financial relationships with the corporate psychedelic sector may create varying degrees of risk to a research program's purpose, autonomy and integrity. We argue that the commercial determinants of health provide a useful framework for understanding the ethics of industry-healthcare entanglements and can provide an important population health ethics lens to examine nascent industries such as psychedelics, and work toward potential solutions.

Quantum Entanglement of the Brain, Dynamics of Information, and Intelligent Finance

Our research forms two directions, the first considers two approaches to the brain, one based on classical mechanics, the second using quantum physics, the second direction of research refers to the dynamics of0 information as an interaction between differential geometry, mathematical statistics, probability theory. and quantum mechanics which led to the construction of classical and quantum information geometry. Financial entanglement is multidimensiona in time and space, dynamic, less understood and interesting because it functions in real life, like the brain. Neuroscientists who focus on mathematical frameworks for how the brain’s shape affects its activity—an area of mathematical neuroscience called neural field theory  will begin to understand the relationship between brain shape, structure, and function in yet another way. Analysis of research into the geometry of the brain’s contours, that is, the way in which brain activity resonates over and through its architecture, is perhaps more significant than the connections between neurons. Research by scientists from the University of Sydney and Monash University showed that the overall shape and geometry of the human brain – its contours and curvature – has a greater influence on brain dynamics than the internal connectivity of brain cells (Our brain shape influences how it works, 2023) in short, Australian scientists indicate the possibility of predicting brain function directly from its shape. “We have long thought that specific thoughts or sensations elicit activity in specific parts of the brain, but this study reveals that structured patterns of activity are excited across nearly the entire brain, just like the way in which a musical note arises from vibrations occurring along the entire length of a violin string, and not just an isolated segment,” (Dr J. Pang,2023).”We found that eigenmodes defined by brain geometry – its contours and curvature – represented the strongest anatomical constraint on brain function, much like the shape of a drum influences the sounds it can make” (A. Fornito, 2023). “Using mathematical models, we confirmed theoretical predictions that the close link between geometry and function is driven by wave-like activity propagating throughout the brain, just as the shape of a pond influences the wave ripples that are formed by a falling pebble” (A. Fornito, 2023).

Defaulting Debtors, American Public Opinion, and U.S. International Relations, 1900 to 1940

In the first half of the twentieth century, debt played an unexpectedly large role in shaping public views of American foreign relations. Debt—specifically, the public debt of other sovereign states—seems far removed from the everyday experience of Americans seeking credit from butchers and grocers or, in the global arena, decidedly dull in contrast to headlines about wars and assassinations. Yet if articles in thousands of local newspapers are an indicator, before World War I millions of Americans had been exposed to detailed coverage of the problematic indebtedness of the nearer nations of Latin America. To engaged readers in every corner of the United States, the financial entanglements of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Honduras must have been a familiar trope—a sign of weakness if not immorality—and, as the policy of Dollar Diplomacy emerged after 1904, a harbinger of U.S. intervention.

Sozialdemokratie Global. Willy Brandt und die Sozialistische Internationale in Lateinamerika

The culmination of two decades’ research, Sozialdemokratie Global. Willy Brandt und die Sozialistische Internationale in Lateinamerika is a high-level, political history of the Socialist International (SI) under Brandt’s presidency (1976–1992). Rother elevates Brandt’s SI engagement in a field of political history and biography dominated by attention to earlier periods. The book combines a chronological account of relationships among Latin American and Caribbean reform parties and European democratic socialists in the 1970s and 80s with case studies of practical SI involvement in regional conflicts (Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Falklands/Malvinas). Framed by a biographical orientation towards key actors and a concise summary and assessment of how increased attention to the SI in Latin America might illuminate modes of thinking about Cold War politics and diplomacy beyond national governments, each section converges on an image of the SI as exemplary of an emerging arena of loosely coordinated political action parallel to foreign policy classically conceived. Rother attends productively to the challenges of approaching the SI as a unified political actor. The organization’s ‘diffuse edges’ (p. 30), financial entanglement with and dependency on national party structures and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, and repeated failure to come to consensus around foundational documents, complicate but never negate its status as a recognized player in an era of political globalization.

The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster: How Globalized Trade Led Britain to Its Worst Defeat of the First World War, by Nicholas A. Lambert

In February 2022, Turkey closed the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits to all military vessels. Meanwhile, with Russia and Ukraine responsible for 30 per cent of the wheat traded globally, the anticipated disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of its neighbour has led to a 50 per cent price increase for this vital foodstuff in trading in Chicago. Such is the nature of the interconnections of this trade that repercussions are reported for Australia (anticipating a bonanza), Egypt (resorting to food protectionism to protect its population), and unrest is feared in the Middle East and North Africa. Here is a vivid and unwelcome demonstration of enduring strategic considerations that lie at the heart of Nicholas Lambert’s excellent new book. It situates British decision-making in the First World War in the context not simply of the shifting obligations of alliances and the calculation of how best to deploy military and naval assets, but also the dangers arising from financial entanglements with Russia and the risk of social unrest from price inflation.

The South’s Forgotten Fire-Eater: David Hubbard and North Alabama’s Long Road to Disunion by Chris McIlwain

Reviewed by: The South’s Forgotten Fire-Eater: David Hubbard and North Alabama’s Long Road to Disunion by Chris McIlwain William L. Barney The South’s Forgotten Fire-Eater: David Hubbard and North Alabama’s Long Road to Disunion. By Chris McIlwain. Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2020. 288 pp. $27.95. ISBN 978-1-5883-8411-9. The South’s Forgotten Fire-Eater ably fulfills its goal of using the life of David Hubbard as a window into studying “the troubled birth of Alabama, its intermittent economic development, and its lengthy radicalization process” (ix). In doing so, it offers much to the student of Alabama history, especially in its treatment of the often neglected pre-1850 period dominated by issues related to banking and boom and bust economic cycles. It is less successful in adding to our understanding of secession sentiment in North Alabama. Born in Virginia in 1792, Hubbard emigrated to Tennessee with his family and there joined militia forces under Andrew Jackson. A wound he suffered in the battle of New Orleans was a valuable asset when he settled in North Alabama after the War of 1812 and plunged into the pursuits that consumed him until his world came crashing down in the Civil War – land speculation, politics, and populist appeals to non-slaveholders that combined a fervid defense of slavery with attacks on haughty aristocrats. Beginning with the uproar over nullification in the early 1830s, he never missed an opportunity to stake out an increasingly radical stance on behalf of southern rights. Hubbard was the driving force behind the building of the Tuscumbia, Courtland, and Decatur Railroad in North Alabama, the first railroad west of the Allegheny Mountains. Like other internal improvements funded by the legislature when times were flush, the railroad was undercapitalized and fell into chronic debt when credit markets collapsed in the next financial panic. The same was true of [End Page 176] Hubbard’s efforts to strike it rich by speculating in Native American land acquired by whites in a series of questionable, if not fraudulent, treaties. Working through surrogates in the legislature, he was able to stay one step ahead of his creditors and establish himself as a cotton planter with an enslaved work force. Positioning himself as a Calhoun Democrat, he served in both houses of the Alabama legislature and twice was elected as a congressman. Always tailoring his stand on state and national economic issues to best protect his precarious financial entanglements, he was viewed as too much of an economic maverick by the state’s planter elite to be included in their inner circle. Few of Hubbard’s personal papers have survived, and McIlwain had to rely mainly on legislative debates and newspaper accounts to piece together Hubbard’s life story. This results in extremely detailed descriptions of legislative maneuverings and overly long quotations that at times slowed the narrative down to a crawl. Another consequence was the gap between Hubbard’s economic activities and his political radicalism on sectional issues. Just what meaning and identity Hubbard found in assuming the role of the fire-eater is never systematically analyzed. Was it political opportunism, an attempt to link his public stand with the ambitions of other slaveholders who had enough wealth and power to want more and hence demanded no checks on the South’s quest to carve out limitless opportunities for the expansion and prosperity of slavery? This is a question that McIlwain leaves unanswered and perhaps could not answer. What is clear is that Hubbard, like countless other fire-eaters, agitated in relative obscurity compared to a William Lowndes Yancey, who could rely on his spell-binding oratory to gain a following, or a Robert Barnwell Rhett, who had a public platform for his views in the Charleston Mercury. For all his railing against the exclusion of Kansas as a slave state and proclaiming the South’s destiny to expand slavery to the tropics, Hubbard operated most effectively in the shadows as he prodded the legislature to stake out the most radical stance against alleged northern aggressions. [End Page 177] Whether, as suggested by McIlwain on several occasions, Hubbard served as a mentor to the post-nullification...

Asian American Cultural Critique at the End of US Empire

AbstractSharpening contradictions in US–China economic interdependency has created a crisis and an opportunity for Asian American cultural critique. A crisis in that it is plainer than ever before that antiracism and anti-imperialism do not necessarily align; an opportunity in that US and China’s financial entanglements have fueled a boom in the Asian American novel as a lively genre of the transPacific credit economy. At the very least, this makes for the new social relevance of Asian American novel criticism.

The effects of an old-age allowance programme on intergenerational interactions in Taiwan: Heterogeneous effects by adult children’s motives for giving

AbstractThis study examines the effects of an old-age allowance programme in Taiwan, the Senior Citizens Welfare Living Allowance (SCWLA), on intergenerational financial transfers, living arrangements and contact, as well as the heterogeneity of its effects by adult children’s five types of motives for giving: altruism, exchange, reciprocity, affection, and sense of responsibility. Using 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2006 data from the Panel Study of Family Dynamics, we employed a difference-in-difference individual fixed effect model to compare the outcomes across the treatment (aged 65 and older) and comparison groups (aged 55 to 64) before and after the introduction of SCWLA. Our results indicate that SCWLA crowds in intergenerational contact but does not significantly change financial transfers and co-residence patterns. The increase in intergenerational contact is primarily driven by adult children having lower motives for giving. This suggests that old-age allowances may reduce financial entanglement between adult children and older parents and change the social norm by raising “low motivators’” awareness, respect and concern for elderly. Providing public transfer to the elderly should not be hampered by the fear of distorting family support functions.

Ensure compliance with a formal, robust conflict of interest policy

Despite the advice of nearly all good governance advocates, many nonprofits still do not have a robust conflict of interest policy in place. Because the IRS and some state governments require nonprofits to have a written policy of one form or another, all charities have at least something in writing that addresses the issue. But many nonprofits have what amounts to the bare minimum—a written form that is passed around at board meetings for signature, with directors stating they have no conflicts. That's a far cry from what experts recommend, which typically involves at‐length examinations of each director's outside activities and business and financial entanglements that could herald potential conflicts.

Ensure compliance with a formal, robust conflict of interest policy

Despite the advice of nearly all good governance advocates, many nonprofits still do not have a robust conflict of interest policy in place. Because the IRS and some state governments require nonprofits to have a written policy of one form or another, all charities have at least something in writing that addresses the issue. But many nonprofits have what amounts to the bare minimum—a written form that is passed around at board meetings for signature, with directors stating they have no conflicts. That's a far cry from what experts recommend, which typically involves at‐length examinations of each director's outside activities and business and financial entanglements that could herald potential conflicts.

Financial conflicts of interest between pharmaceutical companies and the authors of urology clinical practice guidelines in Japan.

In Japan, the authors of urology clinical practice guidelines (UCPG) used in patient-centered care are often targeted by pharmaceutical companies with financial payments. However, the financial relationship between UCPG authors and pharmaceutical companies remains unclear. This study aimed to determine the characteristics of industry payments to physicians that may influence recommendations in UCPG and to assess the transparency of payment disclosure. We considered 193 UCPG authors receiving payments from 79 companies between 2016 and 2017 and the 13 UCPG published by the Japanese Urological Association between 2015 and 2018. We determined 2-year combined mean and median payments to authors, total company payments, and associations between author attributes and payment values using multivariate negative binomial regression. Also, we assessed the extent of the financial disclosure policies among the 13 UCPG. Overall, 171 (88.6%) authors received payments with a combined value of $6,169,333. Median and mean payments were $7147 (interquartile range, $1512-$44,807) and $31,965 (standard deviation, $51,684), respectively. University professors working on multiple UCPG with new drug approvals were associated with higher payments. Twelve (92.3%) UCPG failed to disclose financial conflicts. While it remains unclear whether financial entanglements improperly influence the contents of UCPG, most Japanese authors received substantial payments from pharmaceutical companies with little or no disclosure. Because insufficient transparency in disclosure of these financial entanglements may compromise the integrity of UCPG, more rigorous regulation and greater disclosure of financial conflicts of interest are needed.

Sovereign Debt in the Making: Financial Entanglements and Labor Politics along the Belt and Road in Laos

abstract This article examines the contingent and contentious processes through which debt is created to finance major infrastructure projects. I contend that practices aimed at structuring credit relations into debt-financed projects often have important, unexpected, and underrecognized implications on the ground. My argument is illustrated through an analysis of the cascading impacts resulting from the making of a China–Lao sovereign debt agreement to fund the trans-Laos railway, an infrastructure project that is part of the broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The failure of the government to deliver the promised credit on time had multiscalar financial ramifications. Chinese enterprises that had been contracted to implement the railway were coerced into funding construction themselves, and the ensuing financial turmoil exacerbated the exploitative conditions experienced by construction laborers. As Lao laborers sought to resist exploitation in the form of delayed and denied wage payments, they were gradually substituted by their more vulnerable Chinese counterparts. Dynamics in the making of BRI-induced Lao sovereign debt therefore rendered some perceived beneficiaries of the interstate financial arrangement, such as Chinese enterprises and workers, its victims. I argue that the contradictory realities of this high-profile financial deal demonstrate the need for more grounded inquiries into the politics of sovereign debt making.

Brexit for finance? Structural interdependence as a source of financial political power within UK-EU withdrawal negotiations

For most analysts, Brexit reveals the highly contingent power of finance and the clear limits to its ability to influence crucial policymaking outcomes. By contrast, I contend that UK-EU negotiations demonstrate the unique capacity of finance to secure substantial commercial protections relative to all other business sectors and that the structural sources of the City’s political power remain exceptionally robust. Elaborating a notion of ‘structural interdependence’, the paper demonstrates how policy officials on both sides came to perceive that the future prosperity and stability of their economies relied upon maintaining open trading relations in financial services. This necessitated broad continuity in access to London’s deep financial markets for EU firms and preservation of the City’s leading role in the UK growth regime. In establishing these claims empirically, I document an extensive range of contingency measures designed throughout December 2018-April 2019 that would function to protect the financial industry from economic disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The outcome illustrates how finance benefits from a form of structural power that does not require instrumental mobilisation, but rather shapes policy decisions on the basis of deeply entrenched and commercially vital cross-border financial entanglements.

Gifts, reciprocity and ethically sound ethnographic research: a reflexive framework

Purpose Within organizational ethnography, getting access to relevant field sites often requires us to draw on personal and professional networks. Likewise, externally funded research is no longer a rarity. The question is what such financial and social ties mean for our research practices as organizational ethnographers and for our interactions with and descriptions of the field. The purpose of this paper is to address this question and to develop our understanding and practice of organizational ethnography by expanding the methodological literature on research ethics as well as our tools to evaluate research quality. Design/methodology/approach Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multinational pharmaceutical corporation, and building on previous literature on ethics and quality in qualitative research, this paper introduces a reflexive framework for understanding our personal and financial entanglements in the field and the possible impact of such entanglements on our research findings and representation of informants and events. Findings Drawing on anthropological theory of reciprocity and gift-giving, the paper argues that social and financial entanglements with the field will urge the ethnographer to reciprocate; e.g. by thinking twice about unflattering representations and criticism of those with whom we are entangled. However, the paper further argues that such reflections are an important part of conducting ethically sound ethnographic research. Originality/value Rather than subscribing to an illusion of independent research, this paper demonstrates how we as organizational ethnographers get entangled with the fields that we study and what implications this might have for our practices and representations of these fields.

Swiss Federalism. The Transformation of a Federal ModelVatter, AdrianLondon, Routledge (2018), 286 p., ISBN 978‐1‐138‐29427‐1

Swiss Federalism. The Transformation of a Federal ModelVatter, AdrianLondon, Routledge (2018), 286 p., ISBN 978‐1‐138‐29427‐1

Laboratoire Déberlinisation – Art, Finance, and the Legacies of Colonialism in Contemporary African Art: An Interview with Mansour Ciss Kanakassy

Mansour Ciss Kanakassy (b. 1957) is a Berlin-based Senegalese artist whose practice addresses the legacy of colonialism in contemporary Africa, in particular as it is expressed in the financial systems of the former Francophone colonies of West Africa, where the currency, the CFA franc, historically tied to the French franc, is now pegged to the euro. The acronym CFA originally stood for Colonies Françaises d'Afrique – French Colonies of Africa – and now Communauté Financière Africaine – African Financial Community. In 2001, Ciss Kanakassy created the Laboratoire Déberlinisation (Déberlinisation Laboratory), a multifaceted project that traces contemporary African issues to the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, which divided Africa among the great powers of Europe. The project, which includes the creation and circulation of a pan-African currency, the AFRO, and an international travel document, the Global Pass, has been extensively exhibited throughout Africa and Europe, and in China. In this interview, we discuss the origins of the Laboratoire Déberlinisation and the role of the AFRO in understanding the financial entanglements of neocolonialism.

Critical discernment in collaboration with private partners.

Welcome to the University of Rummidge , the fictional university campus novelist David Lodge described in the trilogy Changing Places , Small World and Nice Work . These novels are a must-read for everybody who has qualms about scholars and industries becoming bed partners. It is the 1970–80s and government urges universities and industries to collaborate. It is as if you ask a fish and a bird to build a car. Lodge humorously describes how these two seemingly incompatible worlds get to know and even appreciate each other without losing a critical distance, understanding the mechanisms that drive both worlds. The recognition of the qualities and contribution of all parties involved is possible because people meet. The ‘industry’ becomes Vic Wilcox, the ‘academic’ has a name: Robyn Penrose. Visiting the world of the University of Rummidge does not result in an unreflective embrace of financial entanglement of academy and industry but gives a discerning perspective on the intricacies of a research world where academic freedom is confined by directives from the outside world, e.g. government policies. The novels equally challenge supporters of collaboration and objectors to these types of partnerships. Four decades later, the novels have not lost any of their topicality. We continuously engage ourselves in exploring how to provide and present excellent research in a world where funding is not merely driven by academic curiosity. There is abundant evidence of how ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. In health research, ‘He who pays’ is usually identified to be the pharmaceutical industry or food industries (see Razum et al.). Public funding agencies seem to remain exempt of a similar scrutiny even though their agendas are not free of embracing …

Financial Entanglement: A Theory of Incomplete Integration, Leverage, Crashes, and Contagion

We propose a unified model of limited market integration, asset-price determination, leveraging, and contagion. Investors and firms are located on a circle, and access to markets involves participation costs that increase with distance. Due to a complementarity between participation and leverage decisions, the market equilibrium may exhibit diverse leverage and participation choices across investors, even though investors are ex-ante identical. Small changes in market-access costs can cause a change in the type of equilibrium and lead to discontinuous price changes, de-leveraging, and portfolio flow reversals. Moreover, the market is subject to contagion, in that an adverse shock to investors in a subset of locations affects prices everywhere.

Financial Entanglement: A Theory of Incomplete Integration, Leverage, Crashes, and Contagion

We propose a unified model of limited market integration, asset-price determination, leveraging, and contagion. Investors and firms are located on a circle, and access to markets involves participation costs that increase with distance. Due to a complementarity between participation and leverage decisions, the equilibrium may exhibit diverse leverage and participation choices across investors, although investors are ex ante identical. Small changes in market-access costs can cause a change in the type of equilibrium, leading to discontinuous price changes, deleveraging, and portfolio-flow reversals. Moreover, the market is subject to contagion—an adverse shock to investors in some locations affects prices everywhere. (JEL D83, G11, G12, G32, G35)