ASSESSING COMPLIENCE WITH CORPORATE GOVERNANCEPRINCIPLES IN CASE OF ROMANIAN FINANCIAL INVESTMENT COMPANIES

Corporate governance includes structures that combine relationshipsbetween parties who invest resources and persons that monitor and manage businesses.These relationships are both formal, defined by rules and regulations and informal,materialized in business practices or ethical codes. The paper intends to assess thecompliance level with corporate governance principles in case of Financial InvestmentCompanies as institutional investors traded on Romanian capital market (BucharestStock Exchange). The research methodology mainly consists in processing data obtainedfrom questioners addressed to these investment companies as well as observingcorporate governance statements issued by each of these entities. As presented in theconclusion section, the authors reached valuable conclusions regarding a satisfactorycompliance level with corporate governance requirements that apply to FinancialInvestment Companies.Financial Investment Companies, corporate governance, principles, ethical codes,regulations

The Unificatory Power of Scientific Realism

The no-miracles argument (Putnam, 1975) holds that science is successful because successful theories are (approximately) true. Frost-Arnold (2010) objects that this argument is unacceptable because it generates neither new predictions nor unifications. It is similar to the unacceptable explanation that opium puts people to sleep because it has a dormative virtue. I reply that on close examination, realism explains not only why some theories are successful but also why successful theories exist in current science. Therefore, it unifies the disparate phenomena

Scientific Antirealists Have Set Fire to Their Own Houses

Scientific antirealists run the argument from underconsideration against scientific realism. I argue that the argument from underconsideration backfires on antirealists’ positive philosophical theories, such as the contextual theory of explanation (van Fraassen, 1980), the English model of rationality (van Fraassen, 1989), the evolutionary explanation of the success of science (Wray, 2008; 2012), and explanatory idealism (Khalifa, 2013). Antirealists strengthen the argument from underconsideration with the pessimistic induction against current scientific theories. In response, I construct a pessimistic induction against antirealists that since antirealists generated problematic philosophical theories in the past, they must be generating problematic philosophical theories now

The present state of legislative theory and a proposal for remedying its sad condition

Draft document from the Seidman's Legislative Theory course at Boston University about the current state of legislative theory and recommendations on how to improve this process

Assessing Investment and Longevity Risks within Immediate Annuities

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a pensioner’s point of view, thus far there have been few contributions considering annuities from the provider’s perspective. In particular, to date there are no surveys of the general risks within annuity books. The present paper aims at filling this gap: Using a simulation framework, it provides a long-term analysis of the risks within annuity books. In particular, the joint impact of mortality risks and investment risks as well as their respective influences on the insurer’s financial situation are studied. The key finding is that, under the model specifications and using annuity data from the United Kingdom, the risk premium charged for aggregate mortality risk seems to be very large relative to its characteristics. Possible reasons as well as economic implications are provided, and potential caveats are discussed

Proposal for creating an International Legislative Policy and Drafting Program

A proposal for BU to create an International Legislative Policy and Drafting program as part of the Law School

Materials for the Workshop on a Participatory Process for Transforming Policy into Law

A draft report and outline on a workshop for finding a participatory process for turning policy into law, taught by Ann and Robert Seidman