A failure in providing human rights is generally due to at least four factors: bad governance, vested interests, cultural factors and poverty. We cannot eliminate human rights violations without a local countervailing power sustained by good governance. Local entrepreneurs, who are essential for...

Congress must be applauded for the corporate governance reforms enacted in Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, although some areas involving Banks and Brokerage houses need further reform. This paper argues that we need to cancel the spirit of the 1999 repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act by forcing...

Many of us in the anticorruption community have been calling for better enforcement of quot;Conflict of Interestquot; provisions of existing laws, ban on shell corporations, especially those in money laundering havens. It is clear that if these had been followed, Enron fraud might have been...

In this paper we examine estimation risk in the well-known Morningstar mutual fund star rating system. We show that due to using a system that rates funds regardless of age differences, Morningstar has created a situation where the estimates upon which younger funds ratings are based have...

This paper addresses three rarely examined empirical issues relating to corporate boards using a sample of 157 firms over the period 1974 to 1983. First, various effects of increasing the proportion of quot;outsidersquot; on the board of directors are examined. We utilize survival (or...

Karl Pearson developed the correlation coefficient r(X,Y) in 1890s vastly underestimates dependence between two series. Vinod(2014} develops new generalized correlation coefficients so that when r*(Y|X) r*(X|Y) then X is the "kernel cause'' of Y. Vinod (2015) reports simulations favoring kernel...

While most commentators seem pessimistic about solving current economic problems exhibiting gloom and doom, I argue that concerted monetized government spending (without any debt or taxes to match) by Euro-zone, US and Japan can quickly help reduce many of the current imbalances in the world...

The worldwide reach, size ($50B) and durability (since 1960) of Madoff's alleged Ponzi is attributed to the high reputation of Jewish money managers, serious regulatory lapses including incompetence and possible conflicts of interest by FCC, SEC and other regulators and auditors. Madoff seems to...

US treasury secretary Mr. Paulson has proposed a bold plan to rescue the world financial system, which involves a taxpayer bailout of over $700 Billion. The Wall Street investment banks are disappearing and unbelievable changes occurring are somewhat similar to the great depression. This short...

A central issue for managers or investors in portfolio management of assets is to select the assets to be included and to predict the value of the portfolio, given a variety of historical and concurrent information regarding each asset in the portfolio. There exist several criteria or models to...