Public debates in our societies are marked by appeals to tradition, religion and even manipulative uses of 'post-truth'. This book argues that the antidote to such tendencies can only be public reasoning. We can find the resources to build what I call the public perspective if we make two commitments: to respect people as free autonomous agents and to endorse a shared ethics of beliefs. An ethics of belief is a set of epistemic and moral rules that inform the beliefs that we bring to the public forum and make possible discussion and confrontation on a terrain that is adequately public. The epistemological aspects cannot be severed from the political commitments that motivate public justification in the first place. An ethics of belief shields us against two temptations: on the one hand, to abandon reason and claim that all sorts of beliefs and opinion should weigh into public reasoning; or, on the other, to appeal to objective reasons only, independently of whether people recognise them as such or not.

Public debates in our societies are marked by appeals to tradition, religion and even manipulative uses of 'post-truth'. This book argues that the antidote to such tendencies can only be public reasoning. We can find the resources to build what I call the public perspective if we make two commitments: to respect people as free autonomous agents and to endorse a shared ethics of beliefs. An ethics of belief is a set of epistemic and moral rules that inform the beliefs that we bring to the public forum and make possible discussion and confrontation on a terrain that is adequately public. The epistemological aspects cannot be severed from the political commitments that motivate public justification in the first place. An ethics of belief shields us against two temptations: on the one hand, to abandon reason and claim that all sorts of beliefs and opinion should weigh into public reasoning; or, on the other, to appeal to objective reasons only, independently of whether people recognise them as such or not.

This book analyses the connections between the banking industry in Europe and the companies it finances. Ferretti specifically studies how these bonds have evolved over time and questions whether now is the time for a change in the relationship's dynamics. Chapters discuss the role of bank lending in firms' financing during the recent financial crisis, as well as issues in credit risk management. The discussion also examines regulatory requirements impacting banks and firms (Basel III) and how they intersect with banks' internal purposes. Moreover, the book explores how the financial crisis has impacted the relationship between banks and businesses, and seeks to identify the strengths and weaknesses inherent to it. Through this timely discussion, Ferretti looks to the future of the relationship between banks and non-financial organizations to see how they can be revitalised, adapted and reimagined in a post-crisis economy.

This book focuses on several topical issues related to the operational risk management in bank: regulation, organisation and strategy. It analyses the connections between the different key-players involved in the operational risk process and the most relevant implications, both operational and strategic, arising from the implementation of the prudential framework.

This book analyses the connections between the banking industry in Europe and the companies it finances. Ferretti specifically studies how these bonds have evolved over time and questions whether now is the time for a change in the relationship's dynamics. Chapters discuss the role of bank lending in firms' financing during the recent financial crisis, as well as issues in credit risk management. The discussion also examines regulatory requirements impacting banks and firms (Basel III) and how they intersect with banks' internal purposes. Moreover, the book explores how the financial crisis has impacted the relationship between banks and businesses, and seeks to identify the strengths and weaknesses inherent to it. Through this timely discussion, Ferretti looks to the future of the relationship between banks and non-financial organizations to see how they can be revitalised, adapted and reimagined in a post-crisis economy.

This book provides the foundational knowledge essential for comprehending the functioning of financial markets and institutions and their current challenges. First, the book provides a general overview on the functioning of the EU financial system, examining financial markets and financial intermediaries’ features and activity and their contribution to economic growth. It also outlines the evolution of the EU integration process, giving an overview of the most important regulatory steps related to the banking and financial system culminated in the creation of the Banking Union. Banking activity is also examined in the most important business areas: commercial versus investment banking. Lastly, the book introduces two important phenomena, which are currently characterizing the financial environment: FinTech and sustainable finance. Both FinTech and sustainable finance represent significant opportunities for the market and the operators, even if the challenges and risks associated are also relevant. This underlines the need to understand their intensity and their potential impact on the functioning of the financial system as a whole.

From the spread of kleptocracy in Venezuela at the expense of the country's economy, to President Trump's appointment of family members to high-ranking White House positions, to President Lukashenko's desperate stranglehold on power in Belarus, across the world political corruption is rampant-indeed practically too ubiquitous to keep track of. As these examples illustrate, political corruption is often associated to a variety of instances of abuse of power that either derive from a vicious trait of individual character, or develop within deeply dysfunctional institutions. To Emanuela Ceva and Maria Paola Ferretti, however, this piecemeal view is inadequate: individual and institutional instances of political corruption have a common root that we can understand only by treating corruption and anticorruption as a matter of a public ethics of office. Political corruption is the Trojan horse that undermines public institutions from within via an interrelated action of officeholders. Even well-designed and legitimate institutions can veer off track if the officeholders fail through their conduct to uphold a public ethics of office accountability. This book offers an analytically rigorous definition of political corruption. It also investigates the common normative root of its two manifestations-corrupt individual character, and corrupt institutional mechanisms-as a relationally wrongful practice that consists of an unaccountable use of the power of office by officeholders in public institutions. From this perspective, political corruption must be understood from within, for it is an internal enemy of public institutions that can only be opposed by mobilizing the officeholders to remain accountable and mutually answerable for their conduct. In this way, anticorruption calls on the officeholders' responsibility to work together to maintain an interactively just institutional system.