This paper describes the major issues in the clearing of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives and the current regulative initiatives aimed at removing the market opaqueness. The core of the paper is the comparison of the US Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). The similarities and the major differences of these two regulative approaches are emphasized. The major similarities between EMIR and the Dodd-Frank Act relate to the mandatory clearing for standardized contracts, the scope of the derivatives covered, the exemptions from clearing for end-users and the reporting of cleared and uncleared derivative transactions by nearly all financial counterparties. The major differences arise with the restrictions on bank proprietary trading, with separation of derivative trading activities from commercial banking activities, with central counterparties (CCP) ownership rules and with the establishment of mandatory exchange trading requirement.

In Professor George Judge's pursuit of information recovery and isolating causality in noisy effects observational data, there is a critical distinction between deductive and inductive empirical analysis. For the former, we bring together a synthesis of the literature that has emerged since Koopmans' measurement with theory philosophy. For the latter, we present a host of methodologies that attempt to isolate the causal mechanisms existing in patterns revealed in noisy measurement data. The deductive focus is limited by available theoretical constructs, whereas the inductive focus is fraught with data mining complications, ultimately finding its potential validation in forecasting.

Throughout much of the developed world, macroeconomic policies afforded a unique period of macroeconomic stability in the two decades following World War II. As a result, concern regarding the macroeconomic linkages with food and agricultural systems largely disappeared. In the early 1970s, with the major changes in monetary policies and central bank behavior, macroeconomic linkages were once again recognized as prime factors complicating the performance of the agricultural and food systems. The roller coaster ride that agriculture experienced over the 1970s and 1980s has been significantly influenced by macroeconomic and international linkages (Rausser et al., 1966). Agriculture's prosperous condition in the 1970s was followed by a recession in the 1980s. This more recent history stands in sharp contrast to the basic stability of the 1950s and 1960s. It is also important to recall that this roller coaster experience of the 1970s and 1980s is not unprecedented. For example, the period from 1900 through 1950 is surprisingly similar to the 1970s; and the late 1920s through the 1930s have some basic characteristics of the 1980s.