This book investigates the potential of the Spanish Sociedades Laborales (SLs) as an instrument of active labour market policy for re-turning the unemployed to the labour market and also the transferability of the scheme to other EU Member States. Spanish Sociedades Laborales (SLs) – mostly small and micro enterprises – are a qualified form of conventional corporation, majority-owned by their permanent employees. Unemployed persons can capitalise their unemployment benefits as a lump sum t...

Consumer (co-)ownership in renewable energy (RE) is essential to the overall success of Energy Transition. In June 2018, the European Union agreed on a corresponding enabling framework as part of a recast of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II). The transposition of these comprehensive rules – in particular those on local RE communities – requires developing, implementing and rolling out business models that broaden the capital participation of consumers. The challenge is to include mun...

The fifth installment of the Fisher Investments On series is a comprehensive guide to understanding and analyzing investment opportunities within emerging markets. Growing in relative importance in recent years, emerging markets offer dynamic and unique opportunities. Fisher Investments on Emerging Markets can benefit both new and seasoned investors, covering everything from regional basics to country-specific insights to practical investing tactics, including common pitf...

Emerging markets in real estate investing have been an increasing focus for institutional real estate investors worldwide. Part of the Fabozzi series, this book is an insightful overview of international real estate focusing on three of the BRICs: China, India, and Brazil. The authors provide a framework for thinking about these dynamic markets characterized by youthful populations, extraordinary demand, capital inefficiency, and aspiration. Also discussed are the sociopolitical issues, po...

Business scandals are always with us from the South Sea Bubble to Enron and Parmalat. As accounting forms a central element of any business success or failure, the role of accounting is crucial in understanding business scandals. This book aims to explore the role of accounting, particularly creative accounting and fraud, in business scandals. The book is divided into three parts. In Part A the background and context of creative accounting and fraud is explored. Part B looks at a series of...

This is the long-awaited third edition of this highly regarded comparative overview of corporate law. This edition has been comprehensively revised and updated to reflect the profound changes in corporate law and governance practices that have taken place since the previous edition. These include numerous regulatory changes following the financial crisis of 2007-09 and the changing landscape of governance, especially in the US, with the ever more central role of institutional investors as ...

In its new and developing role as a "knowledge bank," the World Bank can offer its clients much more than new financing (loans, guarantees or grants). It can also offer access to recent developments in international best practices, provide new knowledge sharing opportunities and facilitate the exchange of new ideas in a variety of fields. It can also use this new capacity to help local institutions address strategic and operational challenges. To that end, this book brings together the result...

The book covers a wide range of topics of relevance to policymakers in countries that have sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and those that receive SWF investments. Renowned experts in the field have contributed chapters. The book is organized around four themes: (1) the role and macrofinancial linkages of SWFs, (2) institutional factors, (3) investment approaches and financial markets, and (4) the postcrisis outlook. The book also discusses the challenges facing sovereign wealth funds in the com...

What promise did Sequoia Capital recognize in SKS microfinance (India) that it had also seen in Apple, Oracle, and Google?Why would Vodafone help distribute money via cell phones for millions of Kenyans?How did a Mexican retailer create a financial-services empire, Banco Azteca, that would serve eight million borrowers in five years?From its origins as a nonprofit poverty alleviation strategy, microfinance has become a viable business model for providing financial s...

International policies towards protecting intellectual property rights have seen profound changes over the past two decades. Rules on how to protect patents, copyright, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property have become a standard component of international trade agreements. Most significantly, during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (1986-94), members of what is today the World Trade Organization (WTO) concluded the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Pro...

This book presents some basic theoretical concepts of public finance with a particular emphasis on its impact poverty reduction. Eight case studies from Latin America and Africa illustrate how these concepts are applied in practice and the implementation issues that emerge.

The wave of liberalization that swept world markets in the 1980s and 90s altered the ways that governments manage their economies. Reinventing State Capitalism analyzes the rise of new species of state capitalism in which governments interact with private investors either as majority or minority shareholders in publicly-traded corporations or as financial backers of purely private firms (the so-called “national champions”). Focusing on a detailed quantitative assessment of Brazil’...