The political purpose of the ‘mixed legal system’ conception in the law of Scotland

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Money as a legally enforceable debt

Money is usually regarded as a subject in the domain of economists, but it is really a fundamentally legal notion. In fact, it is a creation of the law. Money is a special object of property, and at the same time a form of debt, enforceable by law which ultimately confers on it the quality of money. The concept of dematerialised property assists in describing the concept of money accurately. The article discusses the different types of money, and the creation of money through central banks and through commercial banks by giving credit. It explores the possible legal foundation of this money creation process. The discussion also looks at the legal regulation of money creation in Germany and presents findings from an interview with a practising commercial lawyer in Germany which confirm the author’s thesis that money is a legally enforceable debt

Scotland's progressive rhetoric: devolution and carer's allowance

The Scotland Act 2016 devolved powers over eleven social security benefits (including Carer’s Allowance) providing Scotland with some, albeit limited, opportunity to differentiate itself in terms of welfare policy progressivity. The Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 set out the strategy for supporting those who limit their employment or educational enrolment due to the responsibility of caring for an adult or child with a health condition. Using a microsimulation of Scottish data from the Family Resource Survey, this article explores the potential impact, on income and poverty rates of carer households, of raising the level of CA by various amounts and by changing the eligibility criteria. It concludes that, while the Scottish Government’s ambitions are too modest to fully support their progressive rhetoric, or to change the overall income inequality landscape, the reforms in targeted policy do make a substantial difference to the lived experience to carers in poverty and, by extension, to the receipt of that care

The marriage of Bourdieu and private ordering on Gretna's football field

This paper presents an in-depth study of the insolvency of Gretna football club. It sets the insolvency within the wider context of the field of football in Scotland and the special rules of the field which apply immediately upon the insolvency of a club and which are arguably at odds with general insolvency regulation in the UK. Insolvency presents a unique opportunity to study fields since it is at this point when there is a shortfall of funds that the field's power relations become most clear and the struggles on the field more visible. In order to provide a more nuanced complex picture of the football field, its actors and regulations, especially those relating to insolvency, this paper draws upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu. It also draws upon the concept of private ordering since the insolvency rules set by the governing body of the Scottish Premier League (a private company) have an impact that extend beyond the members of the League

Exploring key economic sectors and groups of sectors in Scotland; 1998, 2004, 2007

Different methods and criteria exist for determining ‘key’ economic sectors. The Scottish Government identifies a number of ‘key’ sectors, although it is not clear which metrics it used to choose these. It is likely that these sectors are considered to be ‘key’ in delivering the Scottish Government’s policy priorities. This differs from a more formally defined economic approach to determining key sectors. However, even within the economics literature, there are different ways of thinking about which sectors are ‘key’. This short paper presents one approach to determining individual and groups of ‘key’ sectors. We will explain why these approaches are not necessarily equivalent, and what value is added in moving from considering sectors individually to analysing the impact of sectors in groups. We begin with a non-technical overview of the methods we employ, before discussing the database used in this analysis. We then present the results of applying this method for Scotland for three time periods: 1998, 2004, and 2007. We mainly focus on sectoral output, but we also include one set of results which look at key employment sectors. In the discussion of our results we concentrate on two things. First, we are interested in which sectors are identified as important in Scotland in each time period. Second, we investigate how those sectors have changed between 1998, 2004 and 2007

The Effect of Market Entry on Innovation: Evidence from UK University Incubators

This paper investigates the effect of market entry of new firms on incumbent firms' innovative activity measured as patent applications. The basic assumption is that the effect of entry varies by geographical distance between entrants and incumbents due to the presence of localized unobserved spillovers. In order to avoid endogeneity problems commonly associated with the timing of entry and entrants' location choice, I analyze entry induced by the establishment of university business incubators, which are usefully exogenous in time and space. The results show that entry has a statistically and economically significantly positive strategic effect on incumbent patenting which is attenuated by the geographical distance between entrant and incumbent.Patents, market entry, incubators, spillover