This paper investigates the relation between risk taking and market power in the US banking sector by introducing the effect of geographical spillovers caused by the transmission of risk taking among banks. For this purpose, we use spatial econometrics. Our results support a negative relation between risk taking and market power. The transmission of risk taking causes significant geographical spillovers, which increases the magnitude of the relation under analysis here.

The informal sector in cities of the developing world is often analyzed from the prism of urban poverty, social exclusion and limited social integration, and lack of power. While such issues have commanded considerable attention in development literature, contribution of the sector to urban governance and barriers to its social participation in the urban governance process appears to have received relatively little epistemological treatment.

Aba is a politically volatile, economically vibrant but environmentally poor city that is a microcosm of social conditions in the Nigerian urban informal economy. Hence, this study interrogates the social sustainability of waste picking in the city, using a hybrid of political economy and sustainable livelihoods frameworks to explicate social conditions of labour in the waste economy in relation to state/institutional policies. A mixed-methods approach was utilised, and findings indicate that a cocktail of conditions affect waste picking.