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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

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Five important facts about the Irish economy

By Donal Donovan
After many years of extraordinary success the dramatic collapse of the Irish economy in 2008 was unprecedented in the history of post-war industrial countries. Who and what was responsible for the demise of the poster boy “Celtic Tiger?” What lessons can be learned form the Irish debacle and can the Tiger come roaring back?

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Reinvention of hybrid business enterprises for social good

By Eric W. Orts
On 1 August 2013, Delaware became the nineteenth state in the United States to adopt a version of a benefit corporation statute, which is designed to expand the range of legitimate purposes undertaken by business firms to include the interests of employees, environmental sustainability, and other nontraditional social goals beyond the traditional objective of profit-making for owners and investors.

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The trouble with Libor

By Richard S. Grossman
The public has been so fatigued by the flood of appalling economic news during the past five years that it can be excused for ignoring a scandal involving an interest rate that most people have never heard of. In fact, the Libor scandal is potentially a bigger threat to capitalism than the stories that have dominated the financial headlines.

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Social video – not the same, but not that different

By Karen Nelson-Field
Why is it when a new media platform comes along that everything we know about how advertising works and how consumers behave seems to go out the window? Because the race to discovery means that rigorous research with duplicated results are elusive.

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Pension fund divestment is no answer to Russia’s homophobic policies

By Edward Zelinsky
A group of California state senators, including senate president pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, has called for California’s public employee pension plans to protest Russia’s homophobic laws and policies by ceasing to make Russian investments. While the senators are right to denounce Russia’s assault on human rights, they are wrong to call for the divestment of the Golden State’s public pension funds.

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Can supervisors control international banks like JP Morgan?

By Dirk Schoenmaker
The dramatic failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008 has raised the question whether national supervisors are able to effectively control international banks. The London Whale, the notorious nickname for the illegal trading in the London office of JP Morgan, questions the effectiveness of international supervision.

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Eight years later

By Karl Seidman
At the eighth anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and triggered the series of infrastructure failures that flooded the city, there are many signs of New Orleans’ progress in rebuilding and remaking itself. First and foremost is repopulation. Although still well below its pre-Katrina total of 455,863, New Orleans’ population continues to grow. 

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Unconventional monetary policy

By Christopher Bowdler and Amar Radia
Central banks in advanced economies typically conduct monetary policy by varying short-term interest rates in order to influence the level of spending and inflation in the economy. One limitation of this conventional approach to monetary policy is the so called lower bound problem. If the central bank were to try to set short-term interest rates much below zero, then households and companies would choose to hold money in the form of currency instead of depositing it in banks.

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Zeroing in on zero-hours work

Stephen Fineman
The growth of zero-hours work contracts has grabbed the headlines recently. The contracts offer no guaranteed work hours and can swing between feast (over work) and famine (literally nil hours). Employees are expected to be available as and when needed; if they refuse (which in principle they can) they risk being labelled as unreliable and overlooked the next time round.

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Five important facts about the Russian economy

By Michael V. Alexeev
Churchill once famously said that Russia was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” While this definition was based mainly on Russia’s behavior in international politics in the late 1930s, it could also apply it to Russia’s economy today.

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Spain’s unemployment conundrum

By William Chislett
There is only a glimmer of light in Spain’s long unemployment tunnel after five years of recession. This is because a new economic model has yet to emerge to replace the one excessively based on the property sector, which collapsed with devastating consequences.

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The fall of the Celtic Tiger – what next?

By Donal Donovan and Antoin E. Murphy
Traditionally the Irish, who can sing the dead to sleep, have been good at organising wakes. The financial wake of 2008 is another matter. 2008 will be known as the year that initiated the great Irish financial crisis, just as 1847 has gone down as “Black 47”, the year when the Great Irish Famine peaked.

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The federalist argument for the Multi-State Worker Act

By Edward Zelinsky
The Multi-State Worker Act (the current version of the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act) would, if enacted into law, prevent states from taxing non-resident telecommuters (like me) on the days such telecommuters work at their out-of-state homes. Can someone who values the states and their autonomy (also like me) favor the Act?

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Things to do in Orlando during AOM2013

By Kathleen Tam
The 73rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management is taking place in Orlando this year. The conference provides a forum for sharing research and expertise in all management disciplines through invited and competitive paper sessions, panels, symposia, workshops, speakers, and special programs for doctoral students.

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Oil and threatened food security

Today, debate in the West remains largely focused on energy security and decreased dependence on foreign oil, but in the Middle East, an equally threatening crisis looms in a shortage of food and water. Ahead of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association & CAES Joint Annual Meeting (4-6 August 2013 in Washington, D.C.), we present a […]

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