Latest Research Blog Posts

Assessing the Potential for a Local Land Value Tax in Wales

Publication date: 4 May 2020

Tax Havens: Public vs Private (unlisted) Firms’ Corporate Tax Avoidance

By Mahmoud Abdelkader, Danial Hemmings and Aziz Jaafar

The use of tax havens to avoid taxes has come under increased public and political scrutiny, especially since the release of the Panama and Paradise papers – one of the biggest data leaks in history. These leaks revealed how large numbers of wealthy individuals and multinational companies (such as Apple, Nike and Facebook) use complex corporate structures to secretly transfer wealth to tax havens in order to reduce the overall amount of tax they pay.

Publication date: 11 February 2020

The rise of the SPAC – Should we be worried?

By Dr Danial Hemmings and Professor Aziz Jaafar

Companies looking to list their shares on public stock exchanges used to have to conduct an Initial Public Offering (IPO) – not so now in the age of the ‘SPAC’. Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are listed shell companies, formed usually by private equity firms, who seek to use investors’ capital to acquire an unlisted company. The acquired company (i.e. the ‘target’) inherits the SPAC’s listed status without having to conduct an IPO. Crucially, the target company is undetermined at the time the SPAC is created – therefore investors will have no idea in which company they are eventually investing in! If they don’t agree with the proposed deal, however, they can as shareholders vote to reject it, and have their investment returned.

Publication date: 25 November 2019

Ambidexterity – the next phase of leadership?

The golden age of stability and predictability that was the third quarter of the 20th century has abruptly drawn to a close, succeeded by a period of heightened uncertainty referred to as the new age of uncertainty. This new age is characterised by a fast-paced, technology driven and ever-competitive business environment where innovation has become an essential strategy vital to firm performance, growth and survival (Bagheri, Mitchelmore, Bamiatzi and Nikolopoulos, 2018). Leadership and innovation as a result have become critical concepts in academic research...

Publication date: 31 October 2019

“Tell me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are”

A significant proportion of the world’s population still lacks access to credit. According to World Bank Findex Database, over 1/7 billion adults worldwide do not even have access to a basic bank account and often crucial services such as credit or insurance. This clearly impacts the level of investments in those countries and in general their economic growth. At a more micro-level, this means exclusion of potentially productive individuals from economic activities. 

Publication date: 26 September 2019

Realising the Circular Economy (CE)

“Learn how to see, realise that everything connects to everything else” Leonardo de Vinci

Businesses are largely shaped by two important events in human development history; 1) industrial revolution and 2) globalization. Societies evolved, economic development brought prosperity but at the expense of nature and its finite resources (Cain and Hopkins 2016; McDonough and Braungart 2002; Allen 2003). 

Publication date: 15 July 2019

Where did Welsh advertisements go?

Decades ago brands such as Guinness, Ovaltine and Marks & Spencer created unique monolingual Welsh advertisements to be placed in magazines and Welsh newspapers. Today they are not advertising even bilingually in Wales. Moreover, there is a dearth of research into bilingual advertising in the Welsh context. It could be argued that in this technological age, it is easier than ever to advertise in Welsh, or bilingually, but there are not many examples.

Publication date: 17 June 2019

Would alcohol warning labels effectively communicate the risks associated with alcohol consumption?

A recent study by Hydes et al. (2019) suggests that cancer risk in ‘cigarette terms’, consuming a bottle of wine is equivalent to 5 (10) cigarettes for men (women) per week.  This raises the question as to whether the public need to be better informed on the risks associated with drinking alcohol? Find out more...

Publication date: 30 April 2019