Religious Minorities and Freedom of Religion or Belief in the UK

By particular reference to the polity of the UK, this article discusses issues and options for groups identified as "religious minorities" in relation to issues of "religious freedom". It does so by seeking to ensure that such contemporary socio-legal discussions are rooted empirically in the full diversity of the UK's contemporary religious landscape, while taking account of (especially) 19th century (mainly Christian) historical antecedents. It argues that properly to understand the expansion in scope and substance of religious freedom achieved in the 19th century that account needs to be taken of the agency of the groups that benefited from this. Finally, it argues this history can be seen as a "preconfiguration" of the way in which religious minorities have themselves acted as key drivers for change in relevant 20th and 21st century UK law and social policy and could continue to do so in possible futures post-Brexit Referendum.N/

Learning from experience leading to engagement: for a Europe of religion and belief diversity

The Religious Diversity and Anti-Discrimination Training Program provides a remarkable opportunity for participants of all walks of life to share opinions, concerns and needs of a variety of very real and practical issues such as the role of religion in education, accommodating religious practice in the work place, adapting social services to religio-cultural needs and limitations, engaging minorities in community development, negotiating the use of public space, gender relations, etc. Not only do participants report that the training influences their own roles in local decision-making, but the issues which they raise can be very informative for policy-makers. This Policy Brief, based upon feedback gathered systematically from participants and trainers, provides new insights and ideas to European policy-makers on emerging issues and possible interventions that need to be considered.CEJ

Technical trading rules in the European Monetary System

Using the genetic programming methodology developed in Neely, Weller and Dittmar (1997), we find trading rules that generate significant excess returns for three of four EMS exchange rates over the out-of-sample period 1986-1996. Permitting the rules to use information about the interest rate differential proved to be important. The reduction in volatility resulting from the imposition of a narrower band may reduce trading rule profitability. The currency for which there was least evidence of significant excess returns was the Dutch guilder, which was also the only currency that remained within a band of 2.25% throughout our sample period. Our results cannot be duplicated by the moving average or filter rules commonly used by technical analysts or by two trading rules designed specifically to exploit known features of target zone exchange rates. The observed excess returns cannot be explained as compensation for bearing systematic risk.Foreign exchange ; European Monetary System (Organization)

Predictability in international asset returns: a reexamination

This paper argues that inferring long-horizon asset-return predictability from the properties of vector autoregressive (VAR) models on relatively short spans of data is potentially unreliable. We illustrate the problems that can arise by re-examining the findings of Bekaert and Hodrick (1992), who detected evidence of in-sample predictability in international equity and foreign exchange markets using VAR methodology for a variety of countries over the period 1981-1989. The VAR predictions are significantly biased in most out-of-sample forecasts and are conclusively outperformed by a simple benchmark model at horizons of up to six months. This remains true even after corrections for small sample bias and the introduction of Bayesian parameter restrictions. A Monte Carlo analysis indicates that the data are unlikely to have been generated by a stable VAR. This conclusion is supported by an examination of structural break statistics. Implied long-horizon statistics calculated from the VAR parameter estimates are shown to be very unreliable.Econometric models ; Foreign exchange ; Forecasting

Technical analysis and central bank intervention

This paper extends the genetic programming techniques developed in Neely, Weller and Dittmar (1997) to show that technical trading rules can make use of information about U.S. foreign exchange intervention to improve their out-of-sample profitability for two of four exchange rates. Rules tend to take positions contrary to official intervention and are unusually profitable on days prior to intervention, indicating that intervention is intended to check or reverse predictable trends. Intervention seems to be more successful in checking predictable trends in the out-of-sample (1981-1996) period than in the in-sample (1975-1980) period. We conjecture that this instability in the intervention process prevents more consistent improvement in the excess returns to rules. We find that the improvement in performance results solely from more efficient use of the information in the past exchange rate series rather than from information about contemporaneous intervention.Banks and banking, Central ; Foreign exchange

Religion and belief in Higher Education: the experiences of staff and students

This report presents key evidence from ‘Religion and belief in higher education: researching the experiences of staff and students’, a research project commissioned by ECU. The research methods used for this project took into consideration institutional contexts and backgrounds to religion or belief issues to ensure sensitivity to the issues involved. The project utilised the experience of the project stakeholder group in designing all research approaches.Equality Challenge Uni

Endogenous realignments and the sustainability of a target

We examine the effects of endogenously determined realignment expectations in a model of a target zone with sluggish price adjustment. We allow these expectations to be based on a policy rule that generates an increasing probability of realignment as output moves away from full employment. We find that for realistic parameter values, even relatively small misalignments of the currency band lead to strongly skewed conditional distributions for the nominal exchange rate, thus generating pressures for realignment. We show that the reason for this is that the speed of adjustment in the absence of realignments is rather slow. Further, we find that the existence of an equilibrium path for the exchange rate depends on the responsiveness of realignment expectations to economic fundamentals. Paradoxically, higher credibility may increase the probability that a target zone will collapse. This feature of the model provides a possible explanation for the crisis within the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS. A policy of monetary accommodation to real shocks can alleviate the problem but severely constrains a country?s ability to pursue counterinflationary measures within the band.Credit ; Foreign exchange rates

Central bank intervention with limited arbitrage

Shleifer and Vishny (1997) pointed out some of the practical and theoretical problems associated with assuming that rational risk-arbitrage would quickly drive asset prices back to long-run equilibrium. In particular, they showed that the possibility that asset price disequilibrium would worsen, before being corrected, tends to limit rational speculators. Uniquely, Shleifer and Vishny (1997) showed that “performance-based asset management” would tend to reduce risk-arbitrage when it is needed most, when asset prices are furthest from equilibrium. We analyze a generalized Shleifer and Vishny (1997) model for central bank intervention. We show that increasing availability of arbitrage capital has a pronounced effect on the dynamic intervention strategy of the central bank. Intervention is reduced during periods of moderate misalignment and amplified at times of extreme misalignment. This pattern is consistent with empirical observation.

The politics of fear: Religion(s), conflict and diplomacy

As historical phenomena, religions (as well as ideologies) have played varied and often ambiguous roles in the context of international relations, violent conflicts, peace-making and diplomacy (Ferguson, 1977; Haynes, 1988), and especially so at the interface between civilisations informed by Christianity and those informed by Islam (Armstrong, 1988; Partner, 1997). This paper focuses on aspects of those roles as the context for these has changed over the past half a century within the context of a broader setting shaped by what has come to be known as the “politics of fear” (Furedi, 2006), originally shaped by the threat of nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction and now by the threat of global terror attacks.N/

The emerging inter-faith context In society and religious education.

The chapter explores the emerging inter-faith context in England, including the explicit inter-faith initiatives associated with this context, as both of these have interfaced with the development of school-based Religious Education since 1970. It does this through an overview of the changing religion and belief landscape of England as this gave birth to the emergence of early inter-faith initiatives and what might be called a new inter-faith “imaginary". It then traces the impact of a diverse religion and belief England on the development of Religious Education discussing how far via the engagement of schools, universities and communities there has been an interaction or parallelism of development between inter-faith context, inter-faith initiatives and Religious Education. It then outlines and discusses how more inclusive approaches to Religious Education have been resourced, including in relation to national inter-faith initiatives leading into debate about the relationship within Religious Education between religion and belief, the secular and a broadening understanding of “world religions”. Finally, the present and future of Religious Education in England is critically explored in relation to how it is situated within what might be called a "three dimensional” social and religious interface between Christianity, secularity and increasing religious plurality.N/