Paul M. Architzel, Dan M. Berkovitz, Gail Bernstein, Seth Davis and Ted Serafini
To analyze the differences between the SEC’s newly adopted final business conduct rules for security-based swap dealers and major security-based swap participants under Section…
Abstract
Purpose
To analyze the differences between the SEC’s newly adopted final business conduct rules for security-based swap dealers and major security-based swap participants under Section 15F(h) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the parallel rules promulgated under the Commodity Exchange Act by the CFTC with respect to swap dealers and major swap participants.
Design/methodology/approach
This article discusses select rules under each regulatory regime and highlights the major differences and potential effects of each.
Findings
This article concludes that while the SEC’s intent was to harmonize its final rules with the parallel CFTC rules, there are substantive differences between the two sets of rules that firms should consider when deciding how to structure their security-based swap dealer activities.
Originality/value
This article contains insightful analysis of the newly adopted SEC Business Conduct Rules and highlights some of the ways firms will likely be affected moving forward.
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Paul M. Architzel, Gail C. Bernstein and Mahlet Ayalew
The Dodd-Frank Act added a number of prohibited trading practices on futures markets and swap execution facilities. In May 2013, the CFTC issued guidance on how it intends to…
Abstract
Purpose
The Dodd-Frank Act added a number of prohibited trading practices on futures markets and swap execution facilities. In May 2013, the CFTC issued guidance on how it intends to interpret these prohibitions. Persons trading on these facilities should understand the guidance and how it affects their trading activities. This article aims to focus on the issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The article analyzes the prohibitions and the CFTC's related guidance using a question and answer format to make it accessible to affected market participants.
Findings
The new trading prohibitions include spoofing, violating bids and offers, and recklessly disregarding an orderly close. Different standards of scienter (state of mind) apply to each. Intent is required to violate the anti “spoofing” provision; recklessness is required to violate the disregarding the orderly close provision, but no finding of intent is required for violating bids or offers. The CFTC will evaluate the facts and circumstances at the time of the conduct and look at the available information and what the person knew or should have known.
Practical implications
The Guidance is applicable to all persons who trade on futures markets or on the coming swap execution facilities (SEFs). In particular, persons trading on these facilities should be aware that certain trading practice prohibitions may be violated without a finding of intent.
Originality/value
The antidisruptive prohibitions and guidance are new. Market participants will need to understand and take care to ensure that their trading conduct does not run afoul of these new provisions of the Act and the Commission's interpretive guidance thereunder.
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Douglas J. Davison, Thomas W. White, Gail C. Bernstein, Michael R. Dube and Arian M. June
The purpose of this paper is to point out similarities and differences between the CFTC's and the SEC's final whistleblower incentive and protection rules, both recently adopted…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to point out similarities and differences between the CFTC's and the SEC's final whistleblower incentive and protection rules, both recently adopted as mandated by the Dodd‐Frank Act.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper explains the purpose of the rules, a dissenting CFTC vote concerning internal reporting, and a few notable differences between the CFTC's and the SEC's rules, and recommends compliance measures that companies should take.
Findings
Given the incentives that both agencies' programs give to whistleblowers to report violations directly to the regulators, a company subject to either program would be well advised to enhance its culture of compliance, bolster its internal reporting processes, and encourage employees to utilize internal reporting mechanisms.
Originality/value
The paper provides expert guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.
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Samezō Kuruma's career as a Marxist economist spans a period of roughly six decades, stretching from the beginning of the 1920s, when Marxism was quickly taking root in Japan, up…
Abstract
Samezō Kuruma's career as a Marxist economist spans a period of roughly six decades, stretching from the beginning of the 1920s, when Marxism was quickly taking root in Japan, up to the early 1980s, when the nearly hegemonic influence Marxist scholars had enjoyed in the postwar period was on the wane.1 Kuruma was born in 1893 in Okayama prefecture, west of Osaka. As the eldest son of a prosperous paper merchant, Kuruma was expected to take over the business one day, which did not interest him. Although not eager to become a capitalist, the study of capitalism attracted Kuruma early on, spurred by reading The Wealth of Nations at the age of seventeen. In 1914, Kuruma entered prestigious Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University), where he had intended to study economics but switched to political science after finding the economics courses uninteresting.2 Graduating in the spring of 1918, he found a job working for Sumitomo Bank in Osaka. Kuruma had been assured that the job would afford him an opportunity to pursue economic research, perhaps related to China, but his duties turned out to be far more mundane. He soon realized that he was not at all suited to a career in banking.
Gail Thornburg and W. Michael Oskins
Describing musical pieces, whether sound recordings, scores, librettos, videos, has always involved cataloger interpretation and judgment. There is considerable variation in…
Abstract
Purpose
Describing musical pieces, whether sound recordings, scores, librettos, videos, has always involved cataloger interpretation and judgment. There is considerable variation in records created for exactly the same item. And there is never “proof” that two records which seem to describe the same item actually do. This paper aims to address this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper describes some of the challenges encountered in developing software for matching music records, and some approaches to making the software reliable.
Findings
The paper finds that matching can be used successfully to create GLIMIR clusters in the WorldCat database. Work is needed in several areas to complete the implementation, but intermediate results are promising.
Originality/value
This implementation will allow end‐user applications to collocate resources, to improve discovery and delivery in a complex bibliographic universe
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Michele Alacevich, Pier Francesco Asso and Sebastiano Nerozzi
This paper discusses the American debate over price controls and economic stabilization after World War II, when the transition from a war economy to a peace economy was…
Abstract
This paper discusses the American debate over price controls and economic stabilization after World War II, when the transition from a war economy to a peace economy was characterized by bottlenecks in the productive system and shortages of food and other basic consumer goods, directly affecting the living standard of the population, the public opinion, and political discourse. Specifically, we will focus on the economist Franco Modigliani and his proposal for a “Plan to meet the problem of rising meat and other food prices without bureaucratic controls.” The plan prepared by Modigliani in October 1947 was based on a system of taxes and subsidies to foster a proper distribution of disposable income and warrant a minimum meat consumption for each individual without encroaching market mechanisms and consumers’ freedom. We will discuss the contents of the plan and its further refinements, and the reactions it prompted from fellow economists, the public opinion, and the political world. Although the Plan was not eventually implemented, it was an important initiative for several reasons: first, it showed the increasing importance of fiscal policy among postwar government tools of intervention in the economic sphere; second, it showed a third way between direct government intervention and full-fledged laissez faire, in tune with the postwar political climate; third, it proposed a Keynesian macroeconomic approach to price and income stabilization, strongly based on econometric and microeconomic foundations. The Meat Plan was thus a fundamental step in Modigliani’s effort to build the “neoclassical synthesis” between Keynesian and Neoclassical economics, which would deeply influence his own career and the evolution of academic studies and government practices in the United States.
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Michael S. Minor, Tillmann Wagner, F.J. Brewerton and Angela Hausman
Local and regional entertainers typically perform without a star performer or national recognition. These performers are often an incidental backdrop for the festivities. Is…
Abstract
Local and regional entertainers typically perform without a star performer or national recognition. These performers are often an incidental backdrop for the festivities. Is audience satisfaction with the group more than a summation of the satisfaction with individual performers; do factors surrounding the performance aid in determining audience satisfaction? Answers to these questions may allow event planners to engage performers likely to increase event success. This paper develops a model of audience satisfaction with live performances, which began using a theory developed by Grove et al. in 1992. This theory was modified as a result of further conceptualization, qualitative data analysis, and survey results. Results suggest consumers judge performances as the sum of several components, including both elements of the performance and the setting.