Business, Economics & Finance

Professor Jacob Hariri and Professor Asger Wingender, both at the University of Copenhagen, recently noticed that in most countries outside Europe and North America, economic development lags far behind government access to highly sophisticated weapons. The professors draw lessons from history and their extensive statistical analyses to warn that such an imbalance makes repression cheaper and easier, and democracy less likely to emerge.

The anonymous leak of the Panama Papers in 2016 revealed how the exceptionally wealthy (such as politicians, celebrities and business leaders) hide their money and exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. Dr Kimberly Kay Hoang is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and after six years of research, hundreds of interviews and travelling 350,000 miles, she published Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets. She uncovered the mechanisms behind the movement of money into and out of Southeast Asia, and how that money travels all over the world.

Patents, or holding the intellectual property rights to an invention, can be of great importance to a company, as they allow them to sell their product in a specific market with reduced competition. Dr Ian Maxwell has recently considered the patents filed by Chinese entities in Australia, looking in particular at the recent growth in the number of these patents being filed. He considers the interplay between patents and political rulings and provides several insightful statistics about these Chinese-owned Australian patents.

Former President Donald Trump promised to bring jobs back to the U.S., arguing that the trade deficit was responsible for slow economic growth and costing the economy jobs. While the Trump administration popularised the issue, historically, the broad impact of trade deficits has been contentious. Dr Jon Neill is a Professor of Economics at Western Michigan University. His computational modelling has shown that U.S. residents would experience a slight loss if consumer goods currently being imported from countries like China, were produced domestically instead. His calculations question whether the net benefit from trade with low-wage countries is warranted, given the distributional impact of that trade.

The ski industry currently faces a number of challenges, including climate change, falling demand and lift ticket prices. Dr Iveta Malasevska, a senior researcher at Eastern Norway Research Institute based at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, is collaborating with colleagues on a project called ‘Innovative Pricing Approaches in the Alpine Skiing Industry’. The team is examining pricing analytics at ski resorts in Norway intending to develop optimal pricing schemes to address the challenges faced by alpine ski resorts and improve their long-term financial performance.

While a well-developed financial system can contribute to economic prosperity, if it grows too large or is inadequately regulated it may actually cause more harm than good – adversely affecting socio-economic outcomes and people’s wellbeing. This is one of the key conclusions of a recent survey of the literature in which we document the role of the financial system in society’s development. We find that the trend towards financialization, observed over the past four decades, has gradually transformed modern finance from ‘hero’ to ‘villain’.

Although there have been many recent studies investigating gender differences in business settings, the complex factors behind these differences remain poorly understood. Dr Jennifer E. Jennings, a Professor at the University of Alberta, has been conducting extensive research focusing on gender and entrepreneurship, to better understand the impact that an entrepreneur’s gender can have on their confidence, opportunities, leadership styles, organisational practices, and innovativeness. Her work sheds a new and informative light on the gendering of entrepreneurial activity.

In 2013, the Chinese Government launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive global infrastructure-building initiative, to increase trade by connecting cities within and across continents. The initiative is redefining globalisation, urbanisation, regionalism, and development. Professor Xiangming Chen has released a policy expo-book (sponsored by the Regional Studies Association) that traces out the changing economic, social, and spatial fortunes of the regions connected to the initiative. In this timely book, the author outlines a modern, fresh and factual account of an outward-looking China ushering in a new era of globalisation through a variety of widespread and far-reaching trans-boundary economic and infrastructure connectivities.

Like living organisms, human organisations have evolved throughout history, with new forms emerging and transforming in various settings. Examples include the coevolution of capitalism and state formation, and modern capitalism’s relationship with science. Professor John Padgett at the University of Chicago and Professor Walter Powell at Stanford University set out to discover how new firms, organisations, and institutions come to be. In a landmark book, a decade in the making, they appropriate ideas and concepts used to explain the origin of life, to help explain the emergence of new organisations and markets.

The UK’s recent decision to exit the European Union has shone a spotlight on the role of identities in shaping people’s economic and political decisions. Dr Kai Sebastian Gehring is a senior researcher in Economics at the University of Zurich, who investigates group identities and the distribution of resources, and how they affect political stability and conflict.

The 20th century brought significant improvements in income and health of citizens across many countries worldwide. Dr Daniel Gallardo Albarrán (University of Wageningen) and Professor Herman de Jong (University of Groningen) have used a comprehensive framework addressing many dimensions of human development, to take a new and closer look at changes in economy and health during the first half of the 20th century.

Hookah smoking is the least regulated tobacco form. It is rapidly gaining in popularity to the extent that we are now facing a contemporary epidemic of tobacco abuse. Of particular concern is the level of usage among youth and young adults. Professor Mary Rezk-Hanna from the University of California, Los Angeles works with a group of scientists who aim to drive policy regulation of tobacco and alternative tobacco products, including hookah smoking, by investigating their health effects on the cardiovascular system.

Frugal innovation is the art of using limited resources and ingenuity to sell products that are affordable for more people. Alongside his collaborators, Dr Henning Kroll of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research explores the many benefits of this...

  How can jurists hold people legally accountable for their actions if there is no one, certain and ‘objective’ way of reading the law’s rules? How can we award monetary damages or send people to prison if legal rules have multiple meanings and numerous ways of...

The choices we make in various situations have collective effects on the patterns of overall movement in conflict and cooperation. Dr Tarun Sabarwal at the University of Kansas is investigating the ways in which the overall pictures produced by these behaviours can be...

Corruption in governments affects all aspects of daily life. A society’s health, prosperity and even trust in others are all impacted by the integrity of administrations. Professor Bo Rothstein, co-founder of the Quality of Government Institute at the University of...