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...

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’...

This book addresses the phenomenon of mergers that may result in non-coordinated effects in oligopolistic markets. Such cases are sometimes referred to as "non-collusive oligopolies", or "gap cases" and there is a concern that they might not be covered by the substantive test that some Member States use for merger assessment. Ioannis Kokkoris examines the argument that the European Community Merger Regulation (Regulation 4064/89) did not capture gap cases and considers the extent to which ...

For decades, workers’ capital stewards have invested wisely to provide a secure retirement for millions of people around the world. This money – our money – represents an enormous share of economic and capital market wealth. It has seeded and grown innumerable innovative industries that have had far-reaching impacts. However, the 2008 financial crisis has seriously threatened these trusted assets and drained away prosperity.In response, a growing number of investors are moving towards resp...

New legislation concerning corporate governance - notably the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, and the UK's Companies Act - means new duties and benchmarks for directors and senior managers, particularly those with cross-jurisdictional responsibilities.  With commentary from the World Bank, BP, 3i, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Watson Wyatt, The Handbook of International Corporate Governance looks at shareholders' rights, directors' responsibilities, issues relating to control and disclosure, and t...

Taxation, like politics, is the art of the possible--yet most public finance texts ignore the critical role played by tax administration in restoring macroeconomic balance and promoting equity and efficiency. This volume, edited by Richard M. Bird and Milka Casanegra de Jantscher, fills a gap in the literature by linking tax policy and tax administration reform and exploring ways to improve taxpayer compliance.