Individual Brokers Research Articles

Il parlait assez bien français et plusieurs langues: Foreign Language Acquisition and the Diplomatic Self-Fashioning of Prince Boris Ivanovich Kurakin

Using the example of Prince B. I. Kurakin (1676–1727), the Imperial Russian diplomat who served as extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador to France (1724–1727), this article seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the possible reasons for the adoption of French as the language of international communication in general and eighteenth-century diplomacy in particular. It asks when the Moscow-born Gediminid prince learned to speak French and how this non-native speaker of the language became proficient enough to impress a finicky and fastidious interlocutor like Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755). The author suggests that the answer to these questions lies not in Russia or France, but in Poland and Italy; and not in the halls of formal educational institutions, but in the networks of personal connections that were sustained as much by face-to-face communication as by written correspondence. This brief biographical survey of the development of Prince Kurakin’s “linguistic personality” demonstrates the mediating role of modern, vernacular languages (Russian, Polish, Italian) in the transition from Latin to French as the lingua franca of international diplomacy. It also emphasizes the intimate connection between foreign language acquisition and diplomatic self-fashioning, showing how linguistic knowledge could be instrumentalized for both personal and professional advancement. In doing so, it illustrates the active role that individual brokers – especially, but not exclusively, aristocratic royal servitors with broad linguistic skills and extensive international connections, like Prince Kurakin and the duc de Saint-Simon – played in creating the very notion of an early modern “European” style of diplomacy based on the cultural dominance of the French language.

PELAKSANAAN TRANSAKSI JUAL BELI TANAH DENGAN SISTEM PERANTARA (MAKELAR) BERDASARKAN PERATURAN MENTERI PERDAGANGAN NOMOR 51 TAHUN 2017 TENTANG PERUSAHAAN PERANTARA PERDAGANGAN PROPERTI DI KEC. WATES KULON PROGO

This study aims to know and analyze the process of implementing land sale and purchase using a broker based on the regulation of the minister of trade number 51 of 2017 concerning property trading companies and to find out and analyze the legal responsibilities of the parties if there are legal problems in the future land sale and purchase transaction in Wates sub-district, Kulon Progo Regency. His research methods are empirical juridical based on primary data as well as secondary data. The results showed that based on primary data from interviews with individual brokers in Kulonprogo, it is known that in principle in the process of buying and selling property with the intermediary of brokers, which are individuals or individuals, most of the procedures are almost the same as the processes applied to companies incorporated in the Regulation of the Minister of Trade Number 51 of 2017. It can be seen that the procedure is that the broker generally makes an oral agreement, followed by a written agreement which is generally underhand, providing the choice of location needed by the buyer, verifying data from the landowner to check the authenticity of land ownership; assist the process of transactions with sellers when buyers are interested in buying the desired location; then the broker and seller bring land data to be transacted at the PPAT Notary; Further about the legal responsibility of the parties in the event of legal problems in the land sale and purchase transaction in the future, namely, brokers, and service users should make contracts that affirm the rights and obligations of the parties, in addition to affirming the legal responsibilities that must be borne by the parties in the event of adverse defaults in the future.

Strategies for social engagement: Arts-service organizations as organizational intermediaries

Research on cultural intermediaries has frequently highlighted their roles that shape, regulate, organize, and govern processes of value formation and legitimization in creative economies. Here we move beyond a focus on individual brokers in cultural intermediary occupations to examine cultural intermediary work performed by organizations, focusing on strategies of organizational intermediary work which aim to foster social engagement. Our research study examines the arts-service organization (ASO) sector—member-directed representative professional bodies that serve the interests of their members as well as their artistic discipline and the public—through a quantitative survey mapping the sector in Canada and through semi-structured interviews. In this article, we highlight organizational intermediation strategies in the ASO sector, including fostering diverse representation; reflexivity and learning; and collaboration, discussing challenges and opportunities in these areas. We position the varied strategies of organizational intermediation as one way to communicate the work and worth of developing social engagement, which is often otherwise intangible and challenging to communicate and highlight.

How Washington Okumu Became the Mediator Who Saved the 1994 South African Elections

ABSTRACT Washington Okumu (1936–2016) went to South Africa in April 1994 as part of the Kissinger–Carrington team charged to mediate Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)-African National Party (ANC)/National Party (NP) differences on the interim constitution. A few days after the collapse of that effort he emerged as the individual broker for a behind-the-scenes agreement that brought the IFP back into South Africa’s democratic elections. His appearance was not a fluke. Rather, it was the culmination of a career with a conservative Christian network that was active in track-two diplomacy and constitutional theory from the 1970s through the 1990s. This article looks at this genealogy of compromise and mediation and treats it as a mode of politics in its own right, with interests, a constituency and a strategy. Okumu’s network envisioned South Africa as an interracial Christian society living under a Biblically sound legal system. They did not try to preserve apartheid, but held that federalism, free markets and protection for the heteronormative family were divinely ordained. These concerns provided essential context to Okumu’s appearance and signal a mode of politics that was not interested in either segregation or the project of deracialisation, but he was thoroughly conservative on social and cultural matters.

Broadening our Sight of Leadership Relationships: Moving from Dyads to Triads

In studying social relations, going from dyads to triads has the greatest impact on relational dynamics than any other change in group size. Yet triads are an underutilized unit of analysis in the appraisal of leadership relationships. This paper proposes that triads are a leadership configuration on their own right, which magnifies three leadership relational dynamics otherwise under- emphasized in dyads, groups or networks. These triadic leadership phenomena are: the role co-enactment (where the same person is concurrently a leader and a follower); the mediation of leadership (where one individual brokers leadership across triad constituents); and the skip-level relationships (where two constituents can form coalitions cutting through reporting lines). By utilizing main triadic theories and research this paper analyses these phenomena and their relevance for organizations, proposing four theoretical types of triads, along the assumptions of formality (vertical vs horizontal), and symmetry of relationships (between leader and follower). The contribution to leadership theory is multiple because the triadic phenomena and the triads typology broaden our understanding of leadership away from heroic views onto more pragmatic and context-dependent ones. This paper offers practical insights of leadership as an adaptive activity, where the roles of leader and follower are interconnected, and effectiveness is centered on the capacity to shift roles according to the flow of influence.

The rise before the close: Underwriter trading around SEOs

Abstract We examine the pervasiveness of underwriter price manipulation of rights offerings during the offer period. Underwriters have an economic incentive to manipulate the stock price above the offer price leading up to the closing date of rights offerings to increase shareholder take-up rates and minimize the shortfall they are obligated to acquire. We find that underwritten rights offerings trading just below the offer price in the last five days prior to the closing date experience significantly higher abnormal trading volumes and returns. Using data for individual brokers’ transactions, we show that underwriting brokers engage in abnormal buying of shares trading just below the offer price, leading to significant price impact and increasing the profitability of underwriting activities.

Farmers and Pawns: The Role of Migrants in Agrarian Conflicts and Rural Resistance in Sumatra, Indonesia

Land grabbing in relation to boom-crop production or nature conservation triggers displacement and dispossession of local communities as well as rural resistance often culminating in violent conflicts over land. In Indonesia, company-initiated oil palm production on debatable territories also stimulates migration into these contested rural areas by individual farmers who seek to become part of the boom-crop economy. Based on discussions on land grabbing and land rights this article deals with the appropriation of land by independent migrant farmers and their role as another new party in conflicts over land. The role of rural migrants in land conflicts in Jambi Province, Sumatra is shown through two case studies. The case studies highlight the importance of customary local elites and their strategic employment of social identity and political authority to facilitate land seekers’ access to contested land. The local elites transcend conceptual boundaries to generate a profitable counter-business with a set of individual stakeholders and brokers who profit from the dispossession of the masses. The case studies reveal that the migrants’ presence is essential to rural resistance and a contested resource of economic and political benefit to various stakeholders at the same time.

Underwritten Dividend Reinvestment Plans and Conflicts of Interest

AbstractWe examine conflicts of interests arising from the pricing of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) in underwritten dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs). A DRIP is a type of SEO that enables shareholders automatically to reinvest their dividend entitlements in the issuing company's shares. The underwriters have an incentive to sell stock during the DRIP pricing period in order to hedge price risk and/or to reduce the price at which shares are issued. Using individual brokers’ transactions, we show that underwriting brokers engage in an abnormally high level of selling during the issue pricing period. Comparison of pricing period returns between stocks with underwritten DRIPs and a matched sample of non‐underwritten DRIPs shows that significantly more negative returns accrue to firms that have their issues underwritten.

The 'dark side' of knowledge brokering.

Deploying knowledge brokers to bridge the ‘gap’ between researchers and practitioners continues to be seen as an unquestionable enabler of evidence-based practice and is often endorsed uncritically. We explore the ‘dark side’ of knowledge brokering, reflecting on its inherent challenges which we categorize as: (1) tensions between different aspects of brokering; (2) tensions between different types and sources of knowledge; and (3) tensions resulting from the ‘in-between’ position of brokers. As a result of these tensions, individual brokers may struggle to maintain their fragile and ambiguous intermediary position, and some of the knowledge may be lost in the ‘in-between world’, whereby research evidence is transferred to research users without being mobilized in their day-to-day practice. To be effective, brokering requires an amalgamation of several types of knowledge and a multidimensional skill set that needs to be sustained over time. If we want to maximize the impact of research on policy and practice, we should move from deploying individual ‘brokers’ to embracing the collective process of ‘brokering’ supported at the organizational and policy levels.

온라인 중고거래 중개자에 관한 문제점과 개선방안

The e-commerce market has been more diversified via B2B or P2P, and the size of this market has gradually been expanded as well. A noteworthy phenomenon is the P2P market, which has shown a rapid, approximately 200-fold or more increase in size since 2005. Specifically, the online secondhand-goods market that makes transaction easier and more convenient has attained a fast growth as well, but either sellers or buyers of secondhand goods are properly protected due to a lack of legal regulations on secondhand-goods transaction. The purpose of this study was to examine problems with online secondhand-goods transaction and to suggest some reform measures. There is something wrong with the legal status of brokers for secondhand-goods sales. According to the current law, individual brokers are neither mail-order sellers nor mail-order brokers. So they don't have lots of liabilities, and it means that the burden of risk is all imposed on buyers. Therefore it's suggested that individual brokers should be defined as 'involved operator of electronic commerce' so that proper liability might be imposed on them.

Introduction: Illicit Firearms Market in Europe and Beyond

Introduction: Illicit Firearms Market in Europe and Beyond

A case study of short-sale constraints and limits to arbitrage

This paper uses a unique data set of trades in a unique pair of securities that enables the precise identification of individual broker activity and the trade direction of that activity. We find direct evidence that the imposition (removal) of short-sale constraints limits (generates) trading activity consistent with brokers exploiting apparent mispricing.

Can Investors Benefit from Market Transparency? An Asset Allocation Perspective

We explore the information content of counterparty identities and how their disclosure can be exploited by other investors in a post-trade transparent market. Using data from the Helsinki Stock Exchange, we form dynamic mean-variance strategies with daily rebalancing which condition on the net flow of individual brokers. We find that investors can benefit greatly, up to 36% in annualized risk adjusted returns, from knowing who has been trading. We demonstrate a link between the information content of broker order flow and the sophistication of their clients. Brokers who have clients that trade with a momentum style or who are predominantly institutions or foreign investors have much more informative flow than do others. In the Finnish setting, this means that brokers with large market share have uninformative flows.

Efficiency and Incentives in Residential Brokerage

The literature on broker intermediation in residential real estate has shown positive pricing effects associated with the use of a broker and mixed results as far as the pricing effects of nonstandard commission structures. On the premise that real estate broker incentives emanate from two primary sources, factors that increase broker operating efficiency and negotiable features arising from the relationship between the listing broker and the seller, this study assesses the degree to which these incentives affect the marketing time, probability of sale, and selling price of single-family houses. Of particular interest, this study investigates efficiency and broker intermediation effects on residential property associated with a broker concentrating his listings into a service area. Empirical results show that properties within an individual broker’s GIS-determined service area are more likely to sell, sell faster, and sell with an associated price premium. These effects are more concentrated in the market for higher priced homes. Also, additional compensation favorably motivates the broker with higher-priced properties, but has no effect on the sale of lower-priced properties.

Market Reaction to Regulatory Action in the Insurance Industry: The Case of Contingent Commission

We examine the market's reaction to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's civil suit against mega-broker Marsh for bid rigging and inappropriate use of contingent commissions within a generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) framework. Effects on the stock returns of insurance brokers and insurers are tested. The findings are: (1) GARCH effects are significant in modeling broker/insurer returns; (2) the suit generated negative effects on the brokerage industry and individual brokers, suggesting that contagion dominates competitive effects; (3) spillover effects from the brokerage sector to insurance business are significant and mostly negative, demonstrating industry integration; and (4) information-based contagion is supported, as opposed to the pure-panic contagion.

Institutional Investors, Commission Fees, and Analyst Bias

Anecdotal evidence suggests that institutional investors pressure financial analysts through trading commissions to issue biased opinions in support of their stock positions. We use a unique dataset that identifies mutual fund companies' allocation of commission fees to individual brokers and provide direct evidence in this regard. In particular, we show that analysts are more optimistically biased in their stock recommendations and earnings forecasts for stocks that the mutual funds have taken large positions in when the analysts' brokers receive commission fees from the fund management companies. The relationship is stronger when the commission fee pressure is greater. The market reacts less favorably to strong buy recommendations of analysts facing greater commission fee pressure. The funds also respond negatively to such recommendations in making portfolio adjustments.

Reconciling pool and contract dispatch in open access transmission operations

The dispatch of both suppliers who bid into the pool and of bilateral and multilateral contracts between individual buyers, sellers and brokers are obligations placed on the system operator in an open transmission access environment. During periods of transmission congestion security-driven constraints impose curtailments on all types of transactions. The paper addresses the need to develop methodologies to understand and cope with this problem.

Risk Management by Securities Settlement Agents

As developing countries search for ways to promote capital formation through the establishment of organized exchanges, they will need to pay more attention to the role of risk management in the securities settlement process. The delivery‐versus‐payment (DVP) agents that facilitate the process of exchanging securities for funds in most world markets have both the incentive and comparative informational advantage to monitor, measure, and manage risks inherent in the securities settlement system.Unfortunately, most DVP agents have accomplished this task to date through the cumbersome use of position and net debit limits, capital requirements, and collateral requirements. Such limits and requirements are almost everywhere based on relatively arbitrary criteria that may have no relation to the actual replacement cost, principal, or liquidity risk of the transaction, portfolio, or participant on which they are imposed.To remedy this shortcoming in the current state of risk management at DVP agents, this article holds out the possibility of integrated, comprehensive risk management processes that emphasize and rely on forward‐looking measures of risk for individual brokers and across brokers. Many risk measures could serve the settlement agent's purposes, including “value at risk” (or “VaR”), “below target risk,”“below‐target probability,” and “downside semi‐variance.” The actual summary risk measure used for risk monitoring and control is not as important as the methodology used to generate that risk measure. “The goal of such a process,” as the authors put it, “is to ensure that the risks to which a settlement agent and its residual claimants are exposed are those risks to which the agent's shareholders think they are and want to be exposed.”

Brokers' Recommendations--A Significant Result

In a recently published study in this JOURNAL, Dimson and Fraletti (I986) examined in detail the performance of stocks recommended by a leading broker. They concluded that they 'were unable to detect any significant abnormal performance by the recommended stocks'. Their study of the investment performance of an individual broker was a follow-up study to an earlier investigation (Dimson and Marsh, I984) into the forecasting skills of different financial advisers. What is surprising is that the earlier study had revealed statistically significant evidence of superior forecasting skills by some brokers. In contrast, in this follow-up study, when Dimson and Fraletti investigated, in detail, recommendations made by a broker with above average forecasting skills, they failed to find evidence that this superior forecasting skill resulted in superior investment performance. In this paper it will be argued that, with the sample sizes available to Dimson and Fraletti, then at all plausible levels of the broker's forecasting ability, a rejection of the hypothesis of superior investment performance was almost inevitable. The failure to detect abnormal performance in this case is illustrative of a more general problem with statistical tests of market efficiency. Stock markets are characterised by wide fluctuations in returns relative to the mean return. This results in the power of many statistical tests of market efficiency being weak. A natural consequence is that the statistical evidence is frequently insufficient to reject the null hypothesis that the market is efficient. Thus, when Summers (I986) and Poterba and Summers (I987) re-examined some of the standard tests of weak form efficiency, they concluded that the power of such tests was so weak that unavailably large sample sizes would be required to produce statistically significant positive findings. A similar conclusion would appear to apply to some studies of semi-strong and strong market efficiency. Ashton (I985) re-examined the data used by Jensen (I968) in his study of the performance of mutual fund managers. He concluded that the problem with the study did not arise so much from a misspecification of the null hypothesis, Dybvig and Ross (I985), but rather from the lack of power of the statistical test used. In his analysis oftheJensen study, Ashton (I985) was concerned with the detection of fund managers' ability to time the general rises and falls in the market. In contrast, the Dimson and Fraletti study is concerned with the ability of brokers to select securities which will perform well relative to the market and the analysis just cited does not apply. In this paper, a theoretical model of brokers' forecasts is developed, which enables brokers to identify those shares which will outperform a general market portfolio. This model is then used to derive the expected value and variance of

An Analysis of Stockbrokers' Profit Forecasts

The relative accuracy of profit forecasts was analysed for six firms of brokers. ANOVA was used to look first at performance across industrial sectors, then between industries. Individual broker's forecasts were significantly different in accuracy on the first measure and in general levels of accuracy between industries in the second. When a consensus forecast was calculated this always performed worse than the best individual.