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The global financial and economic crisis resulting from the US housing crisis has shown that house prices can have far-reaching consequences for the real economy. For macroprudential supervision, it is, therefore, necessary to identify house price bubbles at an early stage to counteract speculative price developments and to ensure financial market stability. This paper aims to develop an early warning system to signal speculative price bubbles.

The results of explosivity tests are used to identify periods of excessive price increases in 18 industrialized countries. The early warning system is then based on a logit and an ordered logit regression, in which monetary, macroeconomic, regulatory, demographic and private factors are used as explanatory variables.

The empirical results show that monetary developments have the highest explanatory power for the existence of house price bubbles. Further, the study reveals currently emerging house price bubbles in Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

The results implicate a new global housing boom, particularly in those countries that did not experience a major price correction during the global financial crisis.

The ordered logit model is an advanced approach that offers the advantage of being able to differentiate between different phases of a house price bubble, thereby allowing a multi-level assessment of the risk of speculative excesses in the housing market.

Prejudice against Jews was part of the landscape in the Union of South Africa long before Nazism made inroads into the country during the 1930s, at which stage Jews constituted approximately 4.6% of the country’s white (or European) population. Aggressive Afrikaner nationalism was marked by fervent attempts to proscribe Jewish immigration. By 1939, Jewish immigration was included as an official plank in the political platform of the opposition Purified National Party led by Dr D.F. Malan, along with a ban on party membership for Jews residents in the Transvaal province. Racial discrimination, in a country with diversified ethnic elements and intense political complexities, was synonymous with life in the Union long before the Apartheid system, with its official policy of enforced legal, political and economic segregation, became law in May 1948 under Dr Malan’s prime ministership. Although the Jews, while maintaining their own subcultural identity, were classified within South Africa’s racial hierarchy as part of the privileged white minority, the emergence of recurrent anti-Jewish stereotypes and themes became manifest in a country permeated by the ideology of race and white superiority. This was exacerbated by the growth of a powerful Afrikaner nationalist movement, underpinned by conservative Calvinist theology. This chapter focusses on measures taken in South Africa by organisational structures within the political sphere to restrict Jewish immigration between 1930 and 1939 and to do so on ethnic grounds. These measures were underscored by radical Afrikaner nationalism, which flew in the face of the principles of ethics and moral judgement.

This two-part exploratory study aims to investigate the perceptions of active lifestyle individuals and general craft beer consumers toward no- and low-alcohol craft beers. The influence of advertising appeals is also tested to determine the effectiveness of value-expressive and guilt appeals in determining switching behaviors.

The first study used a mixed-methods approach to determine perceptions and switching behaviors for active lifestyle individuals. The first part of the study presented respondents with one of three advertisements, the ads were designed to either elicit a value expressive appeal, a guilt appeal or a control. The second part of this study presented respondents with a series of open-ended questions seeking further information on their perceptions and preferences regarding no- and low-alcohol craft beers. The second study assessed perceptions of general craft beer consumers as they related to the three advertisements.

The results of this quantitative studies did not find any significant differences between the three ad slogans; however, the results of the qualitative study do indicate differing perceptions and potential switching behaviors for active lifestyle individuals.

This research advances knowledge on advertising appeals for no- and low-alcoholic craft beers.

Brewers and marketers gain insights into two different consumer groups perceptions and potential switching behaviors toward no- and low-alcohol craft beers.

This research tests how advertising appeals influence perceptions and potential switching behaviors of active lifestyle individuals and general craft beer consumers toward no- and low-alcohol craft beers.

F. A. Hayek’s macroeconomic theory and policy ideas have gained renewed attention since the cheap-money boom until 2007, and subsequent bust, followed the basic Hayekian narrative. Only to a very limited extent, however, do we find Hayek’s ideas on the agenda of mainstream macroeconomic researchers since Robert Lucas’s research program gave way to “Neoclassical” and “New Keynesian” DSGE models. We find examples of deeper interest on the periphery of the mainstream. Hayek’s influence on today’s macroeconomic policy discussions remains similarly limited, although he has become an icon to some opponents of loose monetary policy.

The Daily Telegraph has recently published several articles and a considerable amount of correspondence relating to malt whisky and the tricks of the whisky trade. As is usually the case when a daily newspaper takes up a subject of this kind, a number of well ‐ meaning people make a variety of suggestions as to what ought to be done to secure the purification of the particular Augean stable under discussion and to ensure the reception by the purchaser of the article which he really desires to have. But what ought to be done and what can be done are two very different things, and the question of what it is possible to do in the present state of scientific knowledge—and under the existing law as it is at present administered— is, as a rule, avoided by the writers referred to. It has been suggested, for instance, that it should be made compulsory that all vessels in which spirits are sold should bear a label distinctly stating the exact nature of the contents of such vessels. This would be an excellent suggestion if it could be effectively carried out, but, before this can be done, it is necessary to devise a method of compulsion. A man who sells as malt whisky an article mainly or entirely composed of spirit to which that title should not be applied would not have any very serious scruples as to the truth of the statements which appear on his labels. He must be compelled to act honestly by some sufficient force, and, short of a law which would permit the manufacture and “blending” of whisky to be carried out by certain persons only, according to specified rules, and under strict Government supervision in every case, no legislative enactments whatever would have the effect of preventing the various forms of this particular fraud. At present there are no legal definitions whereby the composition and characters of the articles described as “malt whisky” and “whisky” are laid down, excepting the definitions which may be held to be implied in the application of the 6th section of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1875 to the case. This section requires that an article shall be of the “nature, substance, and quality demanded by the purchaser.” On the strength of this section it is quite unjustifiably assumed that the compulsion referred to can be effectively secured by the operation of the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts. According to our legal system it is essential under the criminal Acts— and the Food Adulteration Acts are criminal Acts—for the prosecuting authority to prove beyond all possibility of question that a person charged with an offence is guilty of that offence, and, in regard to the matter under consideration, it would therefore be necessary to absolutely prove by scientific evidence that any given mixed spirit, for the sale of which as malt whisky a prosecution had been instituted, was not of the nature, substance, and quality of the article demanded. Under the present conditions relating to sampling under the Acts this would be impracticable, except, possibly, on very broad lines; and, assuming that scientific investigation resulted in the possibility of fixing clear and definite points of distinction between the true and the false, there would still be the enormous difficulties and the heavy expenses attending the proving of offences of this character to the satisfaction of the Courts—difficulties and expenses which local authorities cannot fairly be expected to face. If, after the lengthy and expensive investigations that would be necessary, and which could only be properly carried out with Government aid, by a scientific Commission appointed by the Government, it were found possible to establish working definitions and standards, these would necessarily be only applicable to a limited extent, just as is at present the case in regard to milk and butter; while the question of quality can never be dealt with under repressive Acts of, Parliament of any kind. Assuming the establishment of standards of some kind we fully admit the possibility, under altered legal conditions, of checking the grosser forms of whisky sophistication by the employment of legal machinery, as is done with various other products; but vast amounts of various spirit mixtures could still be sold under false names with impunity. We should still have with us the legalised inferiority and the legalised adulteration of comparatively minor type which we have in the case of milk and butter. What is required and what alone can be effective, in dealing with sophistications which the law can never reach, is the provision of adequate and entirely independent guarantees which are based both on permanently‐applied analytical investigations carried out upon quantities of material which are not absurdly limited, and on a system of permanent and independent inspection,—both being supplied by some authority or authorities of sufficient standing. While the statements made by a reputable firm ought to carry weight, and ought, no doubt, to be accepted as valuable so far as they go, there is always necessarily and obviously a great element of weakness in the declarations put forward by a firm with respect to its own products. Particularly in view of modern commercial conditions something very much stronger than a personal asseveration as to the purity and excellence of one's own goods is now in reality required. That this is the case is shown by the fact that the demand for independent guarantees has recently been repeatedly voiced in the general press. The public are badly in want of education on all such questions and the Daily Telegraph is entitled to the thanks of the community for having initiated a discussion which can only be productive of good results in this direction.

The Milk and Cream Standards Committee, of which Lord WENLOCK is Chairman, have commenced to take evidence, and at the outset have been met by the difficulty which must necessarily attach to the fixing of a legal standard for most food products. The problem, which is applicable also to other food materials, is to fix a standard for milk, cream and butter which shall be fair and just both to the producer and the consumer. The variation in the composition of these and other food products is well known to be such that, while standards may be arrived at which will make for the protection of the public against the supply of grossly‐adulterated articles, standards which shall insure the supply of articles of good quality cannot possibly be established by legal enactments. If the Committee has not yet arrived at this conclusion we can safely predict that they will be compelled to do so. A legal standard must necessarily be the lowest which can possibly be established, in order to avoid doing injustice to producers and vendors. The labours of the Committee will no doubt have a good effect in certain directions, but they cannot result in affording protection and support to the vendor of superior products as against the vendor of inferior ones and as against the vendor of products which are brought down by adulteration to the lowest legal limits. Neither the labours of this committee nor of any similar committee appointed in the future can result in the establishment of standards which will give a guarantee to the consumer that he is receiving a product which has not been tampered with and which is of high, or even of fair, quality.