Research by Dr Joao Ejarque from the University of Essex has looked at risks for first-time home buyers and the impact on their spending patterns.

Working with the University of Copenhagen’s Dr Søren Leth-Petersen, Dr Ejarque from Essex’s Department of Economics looked at a Danish household panel dataset of information on income, unemployment, assets, mortgage values and particulars on the house.

European researchers have coined the term "Knowledge Angels" to describe those people in information industries who are the most expert, understand innovations in their sector and add the most value to a company. The team proposes new research to help identify such people in the International Journal of Services Technology and Management.

Knowledge, data, information, and innovation have become the major commodities of modern economies, explains Emmanuel Muller an economic scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, in Karlsruhe, Germany. He says that scholars are now taking a keen interest in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS).

It is not easy to predict stock market trends. Two financial researchers at BI Norwegian School of Management have identified a target indicator that can predict future return on shares.

It is by no means a simple matter to say anything with confidence about how the value of a share will develop over time. There is a varied menu of key figures and indicators that are used to consider various investment alternatives.

With the consequences of the current financial crisis spreading to the real economy, lawmakers are exploring new regulations to govern the financial markets. The concern among market participants is that policy-makers do not fully understand how risk management does and should work, and how derivatives can be beneficial.

In the “MIT Roundtable on Corporate Risk Management” that appears in the Fall 2008 issue of Morgan Stanley’s Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, a distinguished group of academics and practitioners assess how risk management affects corporate growth and value.

For many companies, effective corporate risk management begins with an equity cushion in the capital structure. This helps to avoid raising prohibitively expensive capital following an adverse event. Excessive leverage contributed to the problems of many banks, leading to the current industry-wide de-leveraging.