The Persistent Limits of Fraud Prevention in Historical Perspective

Fraud has been ubiquitous throughout history, and so have the methods of fraud prevention. History demonstrates that no anti-fraud measures have fully succeeded in eliminating deceptive market behavior. Instead, this Essay uses evidence from premodern England to argue that societies and individual contracting parties balance tolerating a certain amount of fraud against the costs of fraud prevention

‘Writes a fair hand and appears to be well qualified’ : the recruitment of Bank of England clerks, 1800-1815

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedThe financial strains of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had a significant impact on the Bank of England. In its position as banker to the state and manager of the state’s debt, it experienced a significant increase in workload and thus was forced rapidly to expand its workforce. From a complement of around 300 in the mid-1780s, the number of clerks employed had increased to over 900 in 1815. Using a unique set of records preserved in the Bank’s archives, this article investigates the backgrounds and skills of the men recruited during the expansion of the early nineteenth century. It finds a significant gap between the skills required by the Bank and the skills possessed by its potential workforce.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

In search of a working notion of lex sportiva

The emergence of a lex specialis regime and its interaction with the established, governing lex generalis in their overlapping spheres of application is always an intriguing legal relationship to explore. In this article, the focus will be on the development of legal principles and rules that have been/can be collectively described as lex sportiva. However, it is notable that those involved in the consideration, usage and application of this notion have not agreed as to the scope and delimitation of the concept. It is debated whether lex sportiva exists in the first place, its legal sources and its purpose. The risk is for the concept becoming redundant when not vilified as a hidden strategy to exclude non-sports-related law from the ambit of sport. Through an examination of the different propositions to the framework of the term, this article will shed light on the existence, utility and limits of the development of this conceptualisation

The Effect of Poverty on Childhood Obesity

Over the last decade, childhood obesity in the United States has increased almost threefold as the national poverty rate has remained relatively constant. While governmental aid programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have sought to support impoverished families by providing funds which can be spent at grocery stores, these programs are ineffective in preventing childhood obesity. This study will attempt to explain the relationship between poverty and obesity across the 50 U.S. states and District of Columbia by constructing several regression models. In addition to the primary explanatory variable, poverty, other control variables included in this model will be median household income, welfare recipients per capita, healthcare expenditure per capita, unemployment rate, rate of food insecurity, and education level. Because nutritious food tends to be more expensive, low-income households may resort to cheaper, yet unhealthier food options. For this reason, childhood obesity and poverty are hypothesized to have a positive relationship