This paper analyzes the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on sovereign bond returns of 25 emerging markets from 1993 to 2016. Under a BIT, foreign investors can use an international arbitration scheme to enforce compensation claims against the domestic government in case of direct or indirect expropriation. We focus on the so far unexplored effects of legal risk associated with BITs on sovereign creditworthiness. We find small unconditional effects of BITs on sovereign bond returns. Taking the heterogeneity of BITs and political regimes into account, we find robust and strong negative effects. In countries with high political risk of expropriation (measured by low executive constraints), we find that the implementation of investor-friendly BITs is associated with a significantly negative impact on sovereign bond returns, accounting for roughly 15% of bond returns’ standard deviation.

"Nietzsche and aristocratic ranking" tries to address and interpret relatively incoherent topic of the higher man and, specifically, aristocratic ranking. Basic concepts of Nietzsche's thoughts are shown through the thesis, specifically from Genealogy of Morality, The Dawn or The Gay Science. Some of those concepts are listed as follows: morality of custom, gradation, individual, autonomous individual, noble or blond beast and these concepts are then intertwined with aristocratic ranking. By that not only those basic concepts are clarified, but especially aristocratic ranking as such. Thesis aims to interconnect each of these motives and take interpretation to some important motives of Will to Power, which then helps the reader to understand broader context. Aristocratic ranking is shown as integral part of Nietzsche's thoughs and is then implied as inherent part of all basic motives that Nietzsche's work imply.

Thesis (M. Com. (Economics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / The main aim of the study is to analyze determinants of sovereign credit ratings (SCRs) for Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, namely Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. The analysis is based on the SCRs given by Standard and Poor’s (S&P). The selected explanatory variables are gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, inflation, external debt, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and control of corruption for the period 1990-2016, based on annual data. The panel root test results, namely IPS, LLC, ADF Fisher and PP Fisher, show that GDP per capita, external debt and FDI are stationary at 5% level of significance. The Hausman test results indicates that the identified explanatory variable explains 80% of SCRs. The model observed a positive relationship between SCR, inflation and control of corruption. It also observed a negative correlation between SCR, GDP per capita, external debt and FDI. The Pedroni residual cointegration test results indicate that there is no long-run relationship among variables and no autocorrelation as shown by serial correlation LM test results. The study recommends that the selected member states of SADC develop strategic plans for reducing budget deficits. This will help countries to manage their debts, especially foreign currency denoted debt and to attract foreign investment. Keywords: Sovereign credit ratings, fixed effects model, random effects, Hausman test.

Peiwei Li Abstract: This paper is to investigate whether the Eurozone crisis brings similar effects to the economic growth of two groups of the EU's peripheral countries, including the PIIGS and the CEE countries. Greece, Ireland and Portugal from the PIIGS group; and the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland from the CEE group are selected as the researched countries in this paper. In order to quantify how the Eurozone crisis affects the economic growth of these two groups of countries, this research utilises the statistical software STATA to operate a panel regression model with country and time fixed effects. The employed panel data contains selected indicators of the six researched countries over 2004-2018. Indicators that may affect economic growth of countries during the Eurozone crisis includes current account balance, FDI inflows, debt, exports and unemployment. Apart from the generation of overall results for all the six countries over 2004-2018, this paper generates a dummy variable "eurozone" to divide the researched countries into two groups. Therefore, it compares the results of each group. The research period also be equally divided into three stages: 2004-2008, 2009-2013 and 2014-2018, which represent for pre-crisis period, crisis period and post-crisis period. The divided periods are used to...

[pt] Muitos pesquisadores acreditam haver relação entre os mercados de dívida externa soberana e corporativa. Esta idéia é corroborada pela observação em países desenvolvidos, cujos mercados de títulos privados são frequentemente acompanhados de ativa negociação e emissão de títulos do governo. A literatura acadêmica sobre o tema sugere que títulos soberanos possuem um papel de referência para a determinação do valor dos ativos corporativos. Em um contexto de mercado favorável para o Brasil, caracterizado pela obtenção do grau de investimento e captações externas frequentes, com custos cada vez mais baixos, analisamos o impacto que uma emissão soberana exerce sobre a liquidez de títulos de empresas brasileiras emitidos no exterior. A principal hipótese é que lançamentos soberanos contribuem para o aumento da liquidez ao reduzir o risco de seleção adversa associado à assimetria de informações. Constatamos que as emissões do governo diminuem o yield spread e bid-ask spread dos títulos corporativos de forma significativa. Esse resultado indica que títulos soberanos atuam como benchmarks e contribuem para o estabelecimento e crescimento do mercado de dívida externa corporativa. / [en] Many researchers believe there is a relationship between sovereign and corporate foreign debt markets. This idea is supported by the observation in developed countries, whose corporate bond markets are often accompanied by active trading and issuance of government bonds. The academic literature on the subject suggests that sovereign bonds have a reference role in the valuation of corporate assets. In a context of favorable market for Brazil, characterized by the investment grade status and regular external funding with lower costs, we analyze the impact a sovereign issue has on the liquidity of securities issued by Brazilian companies in the international market. The main hypothesis is that sovereign issuances contribute to increased liquidity as reduce the risk of adverse selection associated with asymmetric information. We note that government issues lowers the yield spread and bid-ask spread of foreign corporate bonds significantly. This result indicates that sovereign bonds act as benchmarks and contribute to the establishment and growth of the foreign corporate debt market.

This thesis deals with digital identity wallets as digital identification means, through a legal and technical perspective, within the field of legal informatics. The 3rd of July 2021 the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 as regards establishing a framework for a European Digital identity, also known as the eIDAS II-regulation. The eIDAS II-regulation is at this moment being negotiated on EU-level and has not yet been adopted. In the eIDAS II-regulation the digital identity wallets were presented. These wallets en-able citizens and other residents to authenticate, and share electronic documents and identification data, with a relying party. The purpose of the digital identity wallets is to create a harmonized identification solution that will function within all member states of the EU. The thesis will concentrate on the relationship between the legal aspects of the eIDAS II-regulation and the technical solutions presented in the regulation. The eIDAS II-regulation covers a vast variety of legal and technical solutions, however the thesis will only focus on the electronic identification, authentication, and the sharing of electronic documents through the wallet. Furthermore, the thesis will analyse which data can be stored in the wallet according to the eIDAS II-regulation and what legal and technical solutions are proposed to enable shar-ing, and controlling the accuracy, of the data. The relationship between eIDAS II-regulation and GDPR will be discussed and analysed in the end of the thesis. This discussion gives the reader an understanding of how the regulations will integrate with each other and how eIDAS II-regulation is affected by the GDPR. The conclusion of the thesis is that the eIDAS II-regulation, thus the digital identity wallets, is a step in the right direction to create a harmonized regulation for digital identities, however there are certain legal problems that should be ad-dressed to make the digital identity wallets a secure and user-friendly solution. These legal problems with the digital identity wallets could be solved with the right technical specifications. Some of these technical specifications will be pre-sented and discussed in the thesis.

[pt] As migrações são movimentos populacionais presentes desde o início da humanidade e foram responsáveis pode moldar a sociedade. Os migrantes precisam e devem ser acolhidos com dignidade, todavia é importante analisar as causas de sua migração como forma de garantir que as pessoas só migrem no exercício de sua livre escolha. Nenhum ser humano deve ser forçado a migrar, a sair do seu país para buscar condições de vida dignas, se expondo aos inúmeros riscos e problemas oriundos desse tipo de migração. A responsabilidade de proteger tem potencial para ser uma ferramenta útil na prevenção de migrações forçadas considerando a segurança humana como uma meta a ser garantida e a soberania como uma responsabilidade e não, um direito absoluto do soberano. Além disso, a segurança humana, através da análise das situações inerentes à sua ausência é um importante sistema de alerta precoce visando a uma atuação com menos efeitos colaterais pela detecção de inseguranças humanas nos estágios iniciais. Embora seja importante a análise ainda que sucinta de alguns casos específicos onde a responsabilidade de proteger tenha sido, ou não, utilizada, o enfoque será prognóstico e focado na potencialidade dos conceitos e princípios, mesmo que nas situações pretéritas eles tenham sido mal utilizados. Como se demonstrará, muitos dos problemas na aplicação da responsabilidade de proteger são oriundos de questões políticas e não, do instituto em si. / [en] Migrations are population movements that exists since the beginning of humanity and were responsible for shaping the society. Migrants need and should be welcomed with dignity, but it is also important to analyze the causes of their migration as a way of ensuring that people only migrate at their free agency. No human being should be forced to migrate, to leave their country in order to seek for a decent living condition, exposing themselves to the numerous risks and problems that this type of migration brings with it. A study of how the responsibility to protect can be an useful tool to prevent forced migrations taking human security as a goal to be guaranteed and sovereignty interpreted as a responsibility, not an absolute right of the sovereign. In addition, human security through the analysis of situations inherent to its absence will be considered as an important early warning system in the search for a way of action with fewer side effects by detecting human insecurities in the early stages. A briefly analyze of some specific cases where the responsibility to protect has been used or not, is important. However, the focus will be prognostic with focus on the potential of the concepts and principles, even if in the past they have been misused. As will be shown, many of the problems in applying the responsibility to protect came from political issues rather than from the concept itself.

In recent years, state governments, exemplified by Mississippi, have significantly expanded their online service offerings to reduce costs and improve efficiency. However, this shift has led to challenges in managing digital identities effectively, with multiple fragmented solutions in use. This paper proposes a Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) framework based on distributed ledger technology. SSI grants individuals control over their digital identities, enhancing privacy and security without relying on a centralized authority. The contributions of this research include increased efficiency, improved privacy and security, enhanced user satisfaction, and reduced costs in state government digital identity management. The paper provides background on digital identity management in the public sector, discusses existing practices, presents the SSI framework as a solution, and outlines potential future research areas.

[pt] Neste artigo estudamos o impacto de surpresas monetárias sobre um conjunto de preços de ativo no mercado financeiro Brasileiro. Devido a fatores institucionais que impedem a identificação deste impacto através de associações entre o choque monetário e variações de preços de ativos em pequenos intervalos ao redor de anúncios de política monetária, utilizamos uma abordagem de estudo de eventos em frequência diária, controlando por fatores domésticos e externos que afetam os preços de ativos relevantes. Os resultados indicam que a surpresa monetária contracionista possui um impacto negativo significativo sobre retornos da bolsa de valores, e o impacto sobre a curva de juros é positivo, atingindo um máximo ao vértice de 6 meses. Diferente de grande parte da literatura focada ao Brasil, os resultados apontam a uma apreciação do Real em reação a esta surpresa monetária contracionista, o que é consistente com reações de moedas de países desenvolvidos a surpresas monetárias. Por mais que obtenhamos um regime no qual a taxa de câmbio não reage significativamente à surpresa monetária, não há forte evidência de que a causa por trás deste regime é de natureza fiscal. / [en] In this paper we study the impact of monetary surprises on a class of asset prices in the Brazilian financial market. Due to institutional factors that prevent identification of this impact through the association between the monetary surprise and asset price movements in short windows around monetary policy announcements, we use an event study framework at daily frequency, controlling for both domestic and foreign factors that may affect the asset prices under analysis. We find that a surprise monetary tightening has a strong negative impact on stock market returns, and its effect on the yield curve is positive and hump-shaped, reaching a maximum on the 6 months yield. Unlike most of the previous literature focused on Brazil, we find that the Brazilian Real appreciates in response to this monetary tightening, which is consistent with the reactions found for currencies of developed economies. Moreover, while we obtain a regime in which the exchange rate is irresponsive to the monetary surprise, the evidence supporting a fiscal cause behind this regime is not strong.

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