Signaling Southern sustainability: When do actors use private or public regulatory authority to market tropical commodities?

MARkET AND FUNDING IllIQUIDITy: WhEN PRIVATE RISk BECOMES PUBlIC

The market turbulence that began in July 2007 stemmed initially from credit prospects deteriorating in U.S. subprime mortgages, but quickly spread to other markets. Growing uncertainty surrounding the valuation of structured credit instruments affected their liquidity, leading to difficulties in the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market, where these instruments were partly funded. Illiqui...

Private authority in global environmental politics: Delegation to non-state actors in multilateral environmental treaties

In a recent editorial in the New York Times, David Brooks lamented the growing inability of states to address the world’s problems effectively: “The dispersion of power…means that more groups have effective veto power over collective action. In practice, this new pluralistic world has given rise to globosclerosis, an inability to solve problem after problem” (Brooks 2008). Pundits, policymakers...

Knife-edge or Plateau: When Do Market Models Tip

This paper studies whether agents must agglomerate at a single location in a class of models of two-sided interaction. In these models there is an increasing returns effect that favors agglomeration, but also a crowding or market-impact effect that makes agents prefer to be in a market with fewer agents of their own type. We show that such models do not tip in the way the term is commonly used....

Providing Welfare: The Importance of Public or Private Actors in Welfare State Regimes

Staff culture, use of authority and prisoner quality of life in public and private sector prisons

Drawing on data collected in five private sector and two public sector prisons, this article highlights the complex relationship between prison staff culture and prisoner quality of life. Specifically, it explores the link between the attitudes of prison staff and their behaviour, particularly in terms of their use of authority, and seeks to explain the somewhat paradoxical finding that those p...