Hager, ‘What Happened to the Bondholding Class? Public Debt, Power and the Top One Per Cent’

Abstract In 1887 Henry Carter Adams produced a study demonstrating that the ownership of government bonds was heavily concentrated in the hands of a ‘bondholding class’ that lent to and, in Adams’s view, controlled the government like dominant shareholders control a corporation. The interests of this bondholding class clashed with the interests of the masses, […]

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The Buy-to-Build Indicator: New Estimates for Britain and the United States

The Buy-­to-­Build Indicator New Estimates for Britain and the United States JOSEPH A. FRANCIS October 2013 Abstract This note presents new long-term estimates of what Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler have named the ‘buy-­to-­build indicator’, which is calculated as the value of mergers and acquisitions as a percentage of gross capital formation. Keywords Britain, buy-to-build […]

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McMahon, ‘The Rise of a Confident Hollywood: Risk and the Capitalization of Cinema’

Abstract This paper investigates the historical development of risk in the Hollywood film business. Using opening theatres as a proxy for future expectations, the paper demonstrates how, from 1981 to 2011, Hollywood has improved its ability to predict the financial rankings of its films. More specifically, the Hollywood film business has become better at predicting […]

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Francis’ Buy-to-Build Estimates for Britain and the United States: A Comment

Francis’ Buy-to-Build Estimates for Britain and the United States A Comment SHIMSHON BICHLER and JONATHAN NITZAN October 2013 Abstract Comments on Francis’ new estimates of the buy-to-build indicator for the United States and Britain. These estimates offer a welcome correction, modifications and additions to the U.S. numbers that we first presented in 1999 and later […]

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Brennan, ‘The Power Underpinnings, and Some Distributional Consequences, of Trade and Investment Liberalisation in Canada’

Abstract Criticism of trade and investment liberalisation (TAIL) in North America has drawn attention to weak economic performance, wage-profit redistribution, social dumping and fiscal pressure on government programmes as evidence that the TAIL regime has failed to deliver on some of its key promises. This criticism has been unable, however, to establish satisfactory conceptual and […]

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