The increasing interdependence of firms and individuals throughout the world facilitates the development of the crowdlending market. Crowdlending is an emerging source of financing involving open calls to the public, generally via internet, to finance with loans individuals or companies (Meyer, 2007). The major role of crowdlending activities has been to bring new energy to a global economy that is unable to catch its breath following the recent financial crises (Berger, 2009). North America leads the world in crowdlending volumes, representing 58% of the world's market. But the global strong growth is due, in part, to the rise of Asia as a major crowdlending player with 21% of the world's market, putting the region slightly ahead of Europe (Pignon. 2015). As of today, Switzerland has not adopted specific regulation governing the practice of crowdlending, but the regulator has issued a fact sheet on this topic, informing the stakeholders of the crowdlending industry that some of their activities may be subject to banking regulation (Dietrich, 2015). In this context, this article get a general overview of the regulations adopted abroad, in particular in the USA and in the European Union, where countries such as the UK or France chose to adopt a more detailed regulation, some with financial limits applicable to crowdlending campaigns or with specific requirements regarding who would be authorized to invest in crowdlending campaigns or soft regulation in the form of Best Practices.
Since almost thirty years, three dimensional virtual reality, which required expensive and cumbersome equipment, has raised interest as it allows users to feel immersed in virtual environments. Recently, affordable head mounted displays have revived the hope that virtual reality might really be up for a breakthrough. This research looks into the sense of presence perceived by users of these new affordable devices. All the participants in this research experienced a high sense of presence for two different devices. Although on average, participants were only moderately inspired in suggesting possible future uses of the technology, marketing students were much more creative.
How established is the horizontal permeability between modes of vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland? Formally encouraged by the Swiss law on VET, horizontal permeability refers to transitions across VET modes, i.e. between dual and school-based VET. This paper first discusses why horizontal permeability is indeed relevant and then empirically examines the horizontal permeability of the Swiss VET system for a given occupation – commercial VET. The latter is the largest VET domain in Switzerland and, importantly, a domain in which school-based VET is well established. The empirical analysis uses panel data following a cohort for over 10 years in the Canton of Geneva. Results show that going from school-based to dual VET within commercial VET increases chances to earn a qualification, however students changing modes lose half a year in the process. These findings suggest that, at least in commercial VET, horizontal permeability is only partial.
