The concept of alliance or preferably ‘alignment’, as I shall explain below – is central to the conduct of international politics, and thus the discipline of International Relations (IR). Duffield et al. (2008: 291) identify that ‘Alliances are one of the most significant phenomena in security studies and world politics more generally’, while Modelski (1963: 773) considers them ‘one of a dozen ...

In this article I locate some of the fundamental problems of self-determination within the context of an evolving international society. First, I argue that one particular manifestation of self-determination, that of national self-determination, is both a solution to the enduring problem of territorial legitimation in international relations as well as the source of subsequent challenges to ter...

When corporate insiders sell their stock in quantities that deviate from firm-specific trends, their trades are more likely to precede bad news over a horizon of several months, but not in the short run. This is consistent with insiders avoiding “suspicious timing” when engaging into “suspicious amounts” of trading, the combination of which would likely result in Rule 10b-5 securities lawsuits....

We show that equity markets are typically two-sided and that trades cluster in certain trading intervals for both NYSE and Nasdaq stocks under a broad range of conditions— news and non-news days, different times of the day, and a spectrum of trade sizes. By “two-sided” we mean that the arrivals of buyer-initiated and seller-initiated trades are positively correlated; by “trade clustering” we me...

We show that geography, through its impact on history, can have important effects on economic development today. The analysis focuses on the historic interaction between ruggedness and Africa’s slave trades. Although rugged terrain hinders trade and most productive activities, negatively affecting income globally, rugged terrain within Africa afforded protection to those being raided during the...