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To explain two papers published by the European Securities and Marketing Authority (ESMA) covering the application of the mar-keting “passport” under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD).

Explains ESMA’s first paper, containing an advice to the European Parliament, Council and Commission (collectively the Trilogue) on the potential application of the AIFMD passport to non-EU Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs) and Alternative in-vestment Funds (AIFs), and a second paper, containing ESMA’s opinion on the current functioning of the AIFMD (currently used by EU AIFMs marketing EU AIFs in the EU) and National Private Placement Regimes (NPPRs, used for marketing by non-EU AIFMs and non-EU AIFs).

The ESMA papers were disappointing because they gave far less guidance and encouragement than anticipated that AIFs located in major jurisdictions such as the US and the Cayman Islands will be any easier to market to EU professional investors in the near future.

AIFMs (both inside and outside the EU) who are already using, or intending to use, the NPPRs should take some comfort that it seems highly unlikely that these regimes will be removed in the near future.

Practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

Value‐at‐Risk (VaR) has become a mainstream risk management technique employed by a large proportion of financial institutions. There exists a substantial amount of research dealing with this task, most commonly referred to as VaR backtesting. A new generation of “self‐learning” VaR models (Conditional Autoregressive Value‐at‐Risk or CAViaR) combine backtesting results with ex ante VaR estimates in an ARIMA framework in order to forecast P/L distributions more accurately. In this commentary, the authors present a systematic overview of several classes of applied statistical techniques that can make VaR backtesting more comprehensive and provide valuable insights into the analytical properties of VaR models in various market environments. In addition, they discuss the challenges associated with extending traditional backtesting approaches for VaR horizons longer than one day and propose solutions to this important problem.

This study aims to investigate the role of firm age in the relationship between CEO characteristics (measured by founder status and civic engagement) and the level of corporate philanthropy which is one of the important components of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices (Carroll, 1991).

Drawing from upper echelons theory, this study argues that firm age functions as a barrier that limits the relationship between CEO characteristics and the level of corporate philanthropy. Moderated regression analysis (MRA) was used to analyze data from 146 publicly traded US firms between 2010 and 2017.

This study verified that there is a significantly positive relationship between CEO civic engagement and the level of corporate philanthropy although the relationship between CEO founder status and the level of corporate philanthropy was not found to be significant. Specifically, the relationship between CEO characteristics and the level of corporate philanthropy was weaker as firms get older. Overall, the results indicate that the organizational inertia of older firms can restrict the effect of CEO characteristics on corporate philanthropy.

This study provides new insight into the underlying mechanisms between CEOs and firm age. This study also suggests that CEOs interpret corporate philanthropy as an important part of their civic engagement which broadly supports business legitimacy for their firm.

This study provides lessons for executive selection and succession decisions toward CSR strategies. Specifically, this study provides a practical foundation of how executives’ civic engagement can be related to corporate philanthropy as an important dimension of CSR practices. Furthermore, this study suggests that shareholders pay more attention to the ultimate decision-maker, the CEO, in an organization as his or her background characteristics can reflect a firm’s social responsibility initiatives, including corporate philanthropy.

This study contributes to on-going scholarly work in the field of strategic leadership and corporate philanthropy literature. In addition, this study provides empirical evidence to the nature of scholarly conversations regarding the role of firm age in shaping the relationship between CEO characteristics and corporate philanthropy.

The purpose of this paper then, is to add to the existing literature on financial contagion. While a vast amount of the debate has been made using data from the late 1990s, this paper differentiates itself by analysing more current data, centred around the most recent global financial crisis, with specific focus on the stock markets of Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Employing Pearson and Spearman correlation measures, the dynamic relationship of the two markets is determined over tranquil and crisis periods, as specified by an Markov-Switching Bayesian Vector AutoRegression (MSBVAR) model.

The authors find evidence in support of the existence of financial contagion (defined as an increase in correlation during a crisis period) for all frequencies of data analysed. This contagion is greatest when examining lower-frequency data. Additionally, there is also weaker evidence in some data sub-samples to support “herding” behaviour, whereby higher market correlations persist, following a crisis period.

The intention of this paper was not to analyse the cause or transmission mechanism of contagion between financial markets. Therefore future studies could extend the methodology used in this paper by including exogenous macroeconomic factors in the MSBVAR model.

The results of this paper serve to explain why the debate of the persistence and in fact existence of financial contagion remains alive. The authors have shown that the frequency of a time series dataset has a significant impact on the level of observed correlation and thus observation of financial contagion.

There has been growing concern among international agencies and the corporate world regarding the question of sustainability and how long we can preserve our planet and ensure just and balanced development for all. Non-governmental organizations, labor leaders, faith-based organizations, religious leaders, and other civil society representatives play a crucial and diverse set of roles in societal development. At the same time, institutions imparting higher education are engaging in debates and quality research work to gauge the need of our current generation with a vision to meet the need of the future generation. Such lofty dreams can only be achieved if we respect the natural systems and the international standards designed to protect the core social and environmental values. Sustainability education is becoming crucial, mainly for students so that they are aware of concepts such as economic prosperity, resource equity, energy uses, and environmental health and concerns (Sengupta, Blessinger, & Yamin, 2019). In this context, the role of higher education along with civil society is critical. Being a part of society, they need to contribute by addressing the common problems so that they make our younger generations aware of the issues and help them create and flourish in an environment and ecosystem which is healthy. There has been a growing appetite among the educational institutions to receive information, examples, and case studies mainly from the environmental and economic perspective which could help the faculty to impart knowledge to the students. The purpose of this book is to explore different angles from sustainability corporate social responsibility and the role of civil society in the context of education. The chapters in this book gives us an insight into the prevalent literature as well talk about interventions and case studies that have contributed toward the growth of this genre. This book will help in reorienting curriculum, develop programs and modules, implement innovative teaching methods, and integrate such topics in their educational programs.

While protests are important for communal and “in the moment” communication, we rely on writing when we want to think more deeply and express concerns and issues in our lives and the lives of others. Writing teachers have a duty to instill in students the impact writing can have on influencing society and its issues. In this chapter, the authors argue for and demonstrate how active citizenship can be encouraged and taught through writing. Inspired by one of the author’s negative police interactions, the authors were compelled to push beyond the protest and begin instructing students in active citizenship through the rhetorical practice of writing. Authors were curious to know how a unit on advocacy writing would influence students’ understandings of using writing to solve social problems. This led to the research question examining how viable an advocacy unit for a first-year writing class is with influencing students’ perceptions of using their voices to advocate for self and for others. To study this question the authors conducted a qualitative classroom inquiry experiment where they collected a variety of data. They examined pre- and post-reflections on advocacy/active citizenship, self-advocacy writing samples, and community advocacy writing samples. Through analysis of these artifacts, this chapter describes how the sequence of writing assignments affected students’ perceptions of themselves as active citizens and the power they have to advocate for change through writing.

The Revolution is 50, Raúl has succeeded Fidel, and many dissidents who participated in the 2002 Varela Project initiative are in jail. What hope for “cambio” (change) in Cuba? Legal dissent – constitutional proposals, a legislative agenda, and grassroots civil rights organizing – may be the key. The Movimiento Cristiano Liberación (MCL), led by the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Oswaldo Payá, presents the strongest challenge to the power of Cuba's 50-year-old Revolutionary government. This dissident group is at the heart of the development of the 2002 Varela Project and forms the core of the leaders arrested in the 2003 Cuban Spring crackdown. This paper traces the history of MCL's “legal dissent” strategy, from the evolution of the Varela Project to their development of an entire legislative agenda, crafted with nation-wide grassroots participation over the last six years since the crackdown. Using data from international NGO surveys conducted within Cuba, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the MCL's proposal vis-à-vis the political and economic concerns and interests of the broader population. Cuba's government seeks to consolidate its rule through its institutions, specifically, through the Cuban Communist Party. It remains to be seen whether the MCL's legal dissent strategy can successfully mobilize a broad segment of the Cuban population, and channel the political aspirations of reformers whose interests are not served under one-party rule.

This paper aims to provide a critical review of the psychopathy literature, with a particular focus on recent research examining the relationship between psychopathy and various forms of criminal behaviour.

The authors provide an overview of the studies conducted to date. To identify relevant published studies for this review, literature searches were completed using Web of Science, Scopus, PsychINFO, and PubMed.

Substantial empirical research exists to suggest that psychopathy is a robust predictor of criminal behaviour and recidivism. Furthermore, considerable support for the assertion that the violence perpetrated by psychopathic offenders is more instrumental than the violence committed by other offenders was found. In addition, some research suggests that the greater use of instrumental violence among psychopathic offenders may be due to the interpersonal/affective traits of psychopathy, and not the impulsive/antisocial traits.

The current paper is the first to provide an in‐depth review of the literature examining the association between psychopathy and criminal offending with a particular focus on violent and homicidal behaviour.

This chapter provides a historical contextualisation of health tracking and public health communication from the post-World War Two development of the welfare state, through the birth of neoliberalism, until today’s individualising practices of digital health tracking and quantification of bodies. Through an examination of these three phases of public health quantification of bodies, encompassing the socio-economic, cultural and political shifts since 1948, combined with the development and wide adoption of digital health and self-quantifying technologies, this chapter traces the changing landscape and the dramatic implications this has had for shifting who is responsible for maintaining ‘good’ health. This chapter illustrates how neoliberal free market principles have reigned over UK public health discourse for many decades, seeing health as no longer binary to illness, but as a practice of individual self-quantification and self-care. In turn, the chapter explores how the quantification and health tracking of bodies has become a dominant discourse in public health promotion, as well as individual citizenship and patient practices. This discourse still exists pervasively as we move into the digital society of the 2020s, through the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond; with public health strategies internationally promoting the use of digital health tools in our everyday, further positioning citizens as entrepreneurial subjects, adopting extensive technological measures in an attempt to measure and ‘optimise’ health, normalising the everyday quantification of bodies.