CREDIT RATING AGENCIES AND THEIR POTENTIAL IMPACT ON DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) play a key role in financial markets by helping to reduce the informative asymmetry between lenders and investors, on one side, and issuers on the other side, about the creditworthiness of companies or countries. CRAs´ role has expanded with financial globalization and has received an additional boost from Basel II which incorporates the ratings of CRAs into the rules for setting weights for credit risk. Ratings tend to be sticky, lagging markets, and overreact when they do change. This overreaction may have aggravated financial crises in the recent past, contributing to financial instability and cross-country contagion. The recent bankruptcies of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat have prompted legislative scrutiny of the agencies. Criticism has been especially directed towards the high degree of concentration of the industry. Promotion of competition may require policy action at national and international level to encourage the establishment of new agencies and to channel business generated by new regulatory requirements in their direction.

FDA Disclosure of Safety and Effectiveness Data: A Legal and Policy Analysis

Syftet med studien är att genom analys av förskollärares berättelser beskriva hur barns sociala samspel och lek kan påverkas och utvecklas. Den empiriska studien baserar sig på åtta intervjuer med förskollärare som delat med sig av sina erfarenheter i sitt arbete med barns lek och sociala samspel. Den tidigare forskningen behandlar begreppen socialt samspel och lek. Vidare redovisas också olika faktorer som kan påverka barns samspelsutveckling i lek. Vi valde att göra en kvalitativ studie med tematisk analys för att besvara våra frågeställningar. Utifrån ett specialpedagogiskt synsätt har vi valt att utgå från tre teoretiska perspektiv, det kategoriska-, det relationella- och dilemmaperspektivet. Den tematiska analysen ledde fram till tre olika huvudteman. Det första temat handlar om hur viktiga pedagogers roll och deltagande är i leken. Det andra temat fokuserar på pedagogers erfarenheter hur lek och samspel kan påverkas utifrån hinder och möjligheter. Det tredje och sista temat behandlar organisationens och miljöns betydelse för utvecklingen i lek och samspel i förskolan

A New Tax Framework: A Blueprint for Averting a Fiscal Crisis

This report presents fiscally responsible recommendations for overhauling the federal tax system and raising the revenues needed to combat mounting federal budget deficits and the fiscal demands presented by an aging society. The proposal calls for a new hybrid federal tax system featuring a phased-in 10 percent Value-Added Tax (VAT) to supplement a reformed and streamlined federal income tax. The report also provides guidance for eliminating, reducing and consolidating special tax preferences. In addition, the report calls for the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and reform of the Estate Tax

Saddam Hussein is “dangerous to the extreme”: The ethics of professional commentary on public figures

People are intrinsically interested in the personalities of public figures such as the celebrities they follow, political leaders, and citizens at the center of newsworthy events. The goal of the present article is to examine the key issues that surround ethical commentary on public figures by psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals. Public commentaries carry with them a host of issues from representing a given discipline such as psychology well, to potentially harming an individual who is discussed, to furthering public education about personality and mental health issues. For this reason such commentary deserves special consideration as to when and how it is appropriate to carry out

Sand in the wheels, or oiling the wheels, of international finance? : New Labour's appeal to a 'new Bretton Woods'

Tony Blair’s political instinct typically is to associate himself only with the future. As such, his explicit appeal to ‘the past’ in his references to New Labour’s desire to establish a “new Bretton Woods” is sufficient in itself to arouse some degree of analytical curiosity (see Blair 1998a). The fact that this appeal was made specifically in relation to Bretton Woods is even more interesting. The resonant image of the international economic context established by the original Bretton Woods agreements invokes a style and content of policy-making which Tony Blair typically dismisses as neither economically nor politically consistent with his preferred vision of the future (see Blair 2000c, 2001b)