Given the significant transformations underway in academia, it is pertinent to ask whether the traditional notion of entering the profession in response to a calling is still relevant. This article draws together hitherto unconnected strands of German and Anglo-Saxon literature on callings, then...

Scientific collaboration between Northern and Southern researchers and development programs for research capacity-building have received new attention of practitioners and scholars during the last decades. This essay review takes four recent publications on North-South research cooperation and...

Since the 1980s scholars have been increasingly confronted with expectations to orient themselves toward societal and economic priorities. This normative demand for societal responsiveness is inscribed in discourses aimed at increasing the usefulness, competitiveness, and control of academia....

In the banking sector, the governance is a crucial factor for value creation. The crisis has highlighted the inability of the governing body of the largest banking groups to keep effectively the productive resources, ensuring sound and prudent management. In the light of recent regulatory...

This paper studies the impact of changes in the dynamics ofthe correlation coefficients between asset returns on portfolio choices. Using weekly data from February 2002 to October 2011 on four different European asset classes, we obtain three main results. Firstly, we show that the 2007-2009...

This paper analyzes and measures company performance due to private equity investments in a local economy. Our research aim was to explore in detail whether private equity investments impact profitability variables, and enable businesses to grow and become more efficient. For this purpose, a...

This study sought to identify the main areas of convergence and divergence in the regulation of investment funds in Europe. The analysis considered the progressive integration of markets and further product marketing liberalization. It focused on regulatory operational conditions and controls...

This paper traces the privatization experience of firms in several emerging nations in the Middle East and North African region and explores the relative importance of accounting transparency, institutional development, corporate governance, economic openness of respective countries in affecting...

Italian SMEs go public much less than SMEs located in other European countries, even though their relevance for the national economy is relatively higher in terms of employment and value added. Why do Italian SMEs so scarcely rely on equity as an external source of finance, despite the option of...

Using a large database built from the credit files of UniCredit we focus on loans to small businesses at the peak of the crisis. We study the determinants of the worsening of financial tension up to March 2009 for those customers experiencing (or close to) financial tension already at the end of...