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AbstractWhile the growing body of research on non-violent political movements centres on the idea that choosing non-violence tends to produce more favourable outcomes for dissidents, the question of why some non-violent campaigns still fail has not been sufficiently empirically investigated. Building on the extant research on the effects of group dynamics and certain external actors, we examine the role of the natural resource wealth of target states on the outcomes of non-violent campaigns. We hypothesize that the probability that a non-violent movement will fail increases as the target state's natural resource wealth increases. This natural resource wealth could serve to neutralize the potential for support from both domestic and external actors, thereby increasing the risk of failure. The results of our statistical analyses support our hypothesis and suggest that non-violent campaigns are more likely to fail in states with higher natural resource wealth, particularly that which stems from oil.

Urban destruction in the 21st century has already turned out to be different from 20th century experience. Aerial bombardment, which destroyed so many cities in Europe and Asia during two world wars, was based on assumptions about how cities collapse, bringing down economies and regimes with them, and about the superiority of air power as the means of destruction. Both were flawed. In World War II, the destruction of cities was intended to shorten a conflict; in the 21st century, military tactics which concentrate the increased weight, firepower, and effectiveness of military units in urban battles on the ground actually prolong conflict. Evacuation and exile appear to be the main objective: depopulation lowers the human capital of countries and depresses their economies; moreover, the increased number of refugees can be turned into an instrument to exert leverage on other countries, destabilizing regions far removed from the war zone. Cities destroyed in world wars were rebuilt; cities destroyed in today's urban battles, often in fragile, unstable states, may be left in ruins for years, to be replaced by new cities with a change of population. Urban destruction in the 21st century raises questions about how to make cities safer, and about urban relocation and reconstruction.

AbstractIn order to meet their financial goals, investors, whether institutions or individuals, must make asset allocation decisions by balancing their return targets with their tolerance for volatility, their liquidity requirements, and time horizons. Yet even optimal mixes of investments with regard to time horizon, liquidity, and volatility levels are sometimes not adequate to achieve the return objectives of a firm or an individual. Using leverage scales up both returns and risks, introducing the potential for default. When using leverage, either as a fund manager or as an investor into a fund, fully understanding the potential for default is absolutely necessary. Using standard measures of risk and return can be very misleading. Sharpe ratios and information ratios can lead the investor into a state of unwarranted comfort with respect to the probability of losing more than is acceptable. Many traditional measures of risk do not deal with this problem correctly. This paper takes a barrier option theoretic approach to analyzing the potential for losses and the potential for the leveraged investor to be knocked‐out of his position even under circumstances of perfect knowledge of the end return. Thus, it demonstrates the necessity of a more rigorous approach to understanding the risk of any particular style of investment, particularly when dealing with hedge funds.

Carbon roadmaps and pathways are important for describing, planning and tracking the technical, managerial and behavioral changes that are consistent with the Paris Agreement. Nevertheless, roadmaps and pathways for decarbonization often gloss over a fundamental question: 'How do deliberate social transformations happen?' Often the social complexity of transformation processes is downplayed or ignored in favor of technical solutions and behavioral approaches. In this article, I explain why they are incomplete and unlikely to 'bend the curves' to reduce emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. I first discuss the distinction between technical and adaptive challenges and why this is relevant. I then review and describe the dynamics of social change in relation to three related and interacting 'spheres' of transformation: the practical, political, and personal spheres. Finally, I explore how these three spheres can be used to identify leverage points for transformations that support the 1.5°C target.

17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under temporary embargo. ; For moving target defense (MTD) to shift advantage away from cyber attackers, we need techniques which render systems unpredictable but still manageable. We formulate a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) which facilitates optimized MTD capable of thwarting cyber attacks without excess overhead. This paper describes POMDP formulation including the use of an absorbing final state and attack penalty scaling factor to abstract defender-defined priorities into the model. An autonomous agent leverages the POMDP to select the optimal defense based on assessed cyber-attack phase. We offer an example formulation wherein attack suppression of greater than 99% and system availability of greater than 94% were maintained even as probability of detection of attack phase dropped to 74%. ; U.S. Government affiliation is unstated in article text.

AbstractManagers tend to issue equity when a firm is overvalued. Short selling is more frequent among overvalued firms. By conditioning short selling on overvaluation, we show that short selling increases leverage, lenghtens debt maturity, and speeds up adjustment to target leverage. The leverage increase is more pronounced in firms with independent boards and an increased likelihood of misvaluation, is driven by overvaluation relative to long‐run value, and occurs through lower equity issuance and higher long‐term debt issuance. Analyses using the exogenous shock to the short‐selling environment from the US Securities and Exchange's Reg SHO pilot program suggest these results are causal.

AbstractThis study empirically investigates the most typical benefit of being public (i.e., having listed firm status), namely, ease of financing. Applying the Cox proportional hazards model to the data of Japanese public and private firms from 1999 to 2011, I find that being public enhances a firm's responsiveness of debt issuance, debt retirement, and equity increase to the deviation of the actual leverage from the estimated target leverage. I argue that the enhancement in the responsiveness of these financing decisions provides evidence on the ease of financing that results from being public.

This paper examines the impact of trade credit on the speed of capital structure adjustment toward target leverage using an integrated dynamic partial adjustment model. Trade credit is an important substitute for debt financing and gives firms a low-cost means of adjusting leverage toward the target capital structure in China. We measure trade credit by accounts payable. Using the public listed company data from 1998 to 2016, we find that trade credit accelerates capital structure adjustment. The asymmetric impacts on the capital structure adjustment speed in different situations are also evidenced. The positive impact of trade credit on the speed of capital structure adjustment is more pronounced for over-levered firms. The trade credit also accelerates the speed of capital structure adjustment more quickly for high market share firms. Our results imply that firms use trade credit to save cash flow and restore the leverage level to the target capital structure in China.

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the dynamics of capital structure for businesses in China and India. Whether and how they adjust their capital structures to witness the trade-off behaviour in the light of different macro-level factors.


Design/methodology/approach
Firms listed on the National Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange over the period of 2009-2018 are used for the study. System generalized method of moments proposed by Blundell and Bond (1998) is deployed due to the use of dynamic short panel data.


Findings
Indian firms revert to their target leverage ratios at a higher rate as compared to Chinese firms (30 and 20 per cent, respectively). Further, the inflation rate, bond market and stock market development are significant factors impacting leverage in the case of India, whereas bond market development significantly impacts leverage in the case of China. These results are robust across various definitions of leverage and other firm and institutional control variables.


Research limitations/implications
This study has implications for various stakeholders. The study highlights that development in financial markets and economy impact the financing decisions and should be a cause for concern for the financial managers and policymakers. Thus, managers can use the findings of the study if they desire to maintain their target capital structures for better firm valuation and the policymakers can support them in achieving the same. Even, the investors can make informed investment decisions considering macro-level factors impacting firms' financing choices.


Originality/value
It is believed to be the first piece of research effort to consider the novel paradigm of the macro-level factors impacting the target leverage to estimate the adjustment speed. Secondly, it is a pioneering study, which attempts to compare the trade-off behaviour of the top two emerging economies of the world.

Negotiating tactics can often appear harsh, but when the United States Trade Representative (USTR) placed Canada on its Priority Watch List (PWL), the move went beyond the standard give-and-take of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada – a nation that believes in the rule of law – joins China, Algeria, Kuwait and Venezuela, to name just a few, on the PWL list for its alleged "worst" record in intellectual property standards. Granted, Canada has room for improvement in this area, but for the USTR's annual Special 301 report to place it on the PWL is hardly credible. It is no coincidence that Canada, the only G7 country—and virtually the only western country-- to make either the PWL and the USTR's lesser Watch List (WL), is also in the midst of renegotiating NAFTA with the United States and Mexico. The 301 process has always been political to some degree, but using it as a negotiating hammer with which to hit Canada over the head risks devaluing its importance in identifying genuine shortcomings in the IP realm that affect U.S. and Canadian businesses. The report is on target in identifying several IP areas requiring more rigorous attention from Canada, including counterfeit goods in transit and copyright issues. However, the U.S. is also unhappy with changes to Canadian pharmaceutical patent regulations and protectionist matters arising from the Canada-EU Trade Agreement that have to do with European geographical indications. Still, although Canada is not alone in the latter area, no European country is on the WL. Ironically, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's own ranking of 50 world economies on their IP standards shows that Canada improved in four out of six categories, coming in 18th among the 50. Venezuela, with whom Canada shares the notoriety of being on the PWL, was 50th out of 50. Clearly, Canada's new ranking does not reflect reality and is a blatant negotiating tool, but the USTR appears less interested in the collateral damage it may cause as long as the U.S. can get the concessions it wants at the table. This is a game that two can play, however, and Canada's turn at hardball may come if the U.S. decides one day that it wants to rejoin the latest incarnation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, from which it so hastily withdrew when Donald Trump was elected president.