Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
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.
By Heidi Moawad
As a medical student, you are the future of health care. Despite the persistent negativity about the state of health care and the seemingly never-ending health care crisis, you have astutely perceived the benefits of becoming a physician.
By William Chislett
The installation of a concrete reef by Gibraltar in disputed waters off the British territory, which is designed to encourage sea-life to flourish, was the final straw for Spain, which has long claimed sovereignty over the Rock at the southern tip of the country.
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.
By Matthew Flinders
The 29 August 2013 will go down as a key date in British political history. Not just because of the conflict in Syria but also due to the manner in which it reflects a shift in power and challenges certain social perceptions of Parliament.
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.
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.
By Jennifer Moore
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 do not justify missile strikes in Syria. The humanitarian principle of distinction requires that military force is used without indiscriminately targeting civilians, but does not sanction the use of force itself. International humanitarian law thus governs the conduct of war but not its initiation.
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.
By Kathleen M. Heide, PhD
It hardly seems like 24 years since Jose and Kitty Menendez were shot to death by their two sons, Lyle and Eric. It was a crime that shocked the nation because the family seemed “postcard perfect” to many observers. Jose was an immigrant from Cuba who worked hard and became a multi-millionaire. He married Kitty, a young attractive woman he met in college, who was also hardworking. They were the parents of two handsome sons.
From global climate change to “fracking,” energy-related issues have comprised a source of heated debate for American policymakers. Needless to say, assessing the economic and environmental consequences of certain developmental shifts is often fraught with difficulty, particularly when considering existing national and international frameworks.
By Kevin G. Welner
Rarely is anything as highly valued yet poorly managed as the creation of education policy in the United States. Year after year, and lawmaker after lawmaker, evidence has been ignored in favor of a hunch, an ideology, or the latest quick-fix scheme.
By Michael Weiner
The activity has many names: “rough and tumble,” “boy,” “physical,” “aggressive.” We see it everywhere, on playgrounds, in homes, at schools. With early childhood education literature rife with new research, we recognize that this type of play activity is developmentally essential for children.
The likelihood of a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians has always been negligible in the absence of a determined outside mediator. Indeed, the recent resumption of direct negotiations that have been suspended for almost three years is due solely to the determined efforts of the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry. So, why has the Obama administration chosen to dig in now? And so what?
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.
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.