International Conflict of Laws: Limitations Imposed on Effect American Courts May Give to Foreign Confiscations

Where a foreign government purports to confiscate its citizen\u27s assets although located within the United States, the Second Circuit has held that both federal and state courts must deny effect to the confiscation unless it is consistent with United States law and policy. This result obtains because such a confiscatory decree constitutes an act of state within the category of actions deemed by the Supreme Court in Sabbatino to necessitate a uniform federal rule

Adhuc Tacfarinas: the causes of the Tiberian war in North Africa (AD ca. 15-24) and the impact of the conflict on Roman imperial policy

During the reign of Tiberius successive governors of Africa Proconsularis struggled to suppress a serious revolt by a number of semi-nomadic tribes led by Tacfarinas. The conflict can only be explained convincingly as an indigenous act of negative negotiation of the Roman administrative encroachment on tribal territory. An in-depth analysis of the literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence, as well as modern migration patterns, indicates that the rebellion should be perceived as the outcome of cadastral activities, which entailed taxation and confiscations. The actual causes of this rebellion do not support the traditional view of antagonism between agriculturalist and pastoralist communities in North Africa

The Dynamics of Currency Substitution, Asset Substitution and De facto Dollarization and Euroization in Transition Countrieses

This paper presents new evidence on the dynamics of dollarization and euroization for twenty-five transition countries. Estimates of the amount of foreign currency in circulation (FCC) in transition countries are used to develop a new comprehensive dollarization index (CDI) and separate indices of currency substitution (CSI) and asset substitution (ASI). When the CDI is compared to the traditional dollarization index (DI) that relies solely on foreign currency deposits as a proxy for the extent of dollarization, I find that the comprehensive dollarization measure provides a more complete picture of the extent of de facto dollarization and euroization, and that it better reflects the separate influences of currency substitution and asset substitution. I find that the dynamic evolution of currency substitution and asset substitution in transition countries is both more variable and complex than is usually believed to be the case. These new dollarization indicators enable researchers to examine the causes of the dollarization process and its tendency to lead to irreversibility (hysteresis). Moreover, the currency substitution and asset substitution indices shed light on the dynamic consequences of these processes for the effectiveness of monetary policy. Finally, the new estimates of FCC make possible the measurement of effective currency/deposit ratios that can be used to develop new estimates of the size and growth of underground economies in transition countries. Forthcoming Comparative Economic Studies, Fall, 2003dollarization, euroization, transition economies, currency substitution, asset substitution, underground economies, foreign currency, network externalities, irreversibility.

Foreword

Fund investments are very popular in Sweden. However, we have the impression that despite this popularity, the average fund investor in Sweden does not pay much attention to the importance and possible link of fund’s asset composition features (e.g. Asset class, Holdings, and Geo-exposure) to fund’s performance. Instead, S/he relies on factors such as fees, risk levels, historical performance, etc. in her/his investment decisions. Similarly, academic studies mainly focus on attributes such as funds fees, size, and manager’s skill to explain fund’s performance. Thus there are limited premier academic studies on the relationship between fund’s performance and its asset composition features. The main purpose of this study is to investigate possible causal relationship between the performances of funds with their assets composition features. We study the whole population of 346 Swedish listed mutual funds older than five years for the period 2009-2013. The results of the study provides the investors and analysts with additional decision-making and investment-analysis tools to assist them in making more informed judgment on funds and their expected returns. The results are also useful for fund managers to improve their strategies by refining the combinations of their funds’ asset composition attributes in order to improve the absolute risk-adjusted performance of their funds. Our research philosophy has been based on positivism and objectivism along with functionalist paradigm and we have applied deductive approach to test the theories. We have used quantitative method and collected the funds’ data from public business databases and chosen Jensen’s alpha and Treynor ratio as funds’ risk-adjusted performance measures. We performed Correlation tests and Regression with robust techniques on our data to answer the research question from three aspects, namely asset class (equity, bond, and mixed assets); geo-exposures (Sweden, Global, Europe, and Nordic) and Top-ten holdings’ measures (asset concentration and Treynor of each fund’s passive top-ten sub-portfolio). We conclude that correlations between funds’ risk-adjusted performance and assets composition features are likely to exist. Stronger correlations are observed between the explanatory measures and fund’s relative risk-adjusted performance (fund’s Treynor) as compared to fund’s absolute risk adjusted performance (fund’s Jensen’s alpha). Asset concentration in top-ten holdings and bond asset class are more likely to be in casual relationship with fund’s risk-adjusted performance, whereas Treynor ratio of top-ten holdings’ passive sub-portfolio as well as fund’s geo-exposure do not seem to have strong explanatory power for funds’ absolute performance