123,168 research outputs found
Finance and its reform : beyond laissez-faire
No full textThat the financial sector should be liberalized was the orthodox view in the mid-1970s, during a pendulum swing toward reliance on the free market. In the early 1980s, the pendulum swung back to the left, based partly on evidence - especially from Latin America - that overly rapid reform had real costs, and partly on an increased appreciation of financial market failure. Blind adherence to free market principles was no longer appropriate. Now a counter-counterrevolution is in sight, with some swing back toward the view that the market makes a mess of it, but the government makes it even worse. The authors agree that market-oriented financial systems appear to do a better job than systems with extensive government involvement, but contend that the assumption that perfect competition will solve all problems in finance - especially in banking - can be dangerous. Information problems, implicit or explicit government guarantees associated with the payments system make banks unique. Governments implicitly recognize banking's uniqueness - few allow just anyone to enter banking - but public pronouncements and observers'recommendations often favor a move to more competition. Perfect competition, however, is optimal under the assumption, among others, of no government guarantee. In fact, most governments differ only in how explicit they are about their deposit insurance schemes. The financial reforms most likely to succeed are those that give banks an incentive to engage in safe and sound banking. When excessive competition is allowed, the charter value of banking diminishes to the point that it is no longer profitable for bankers to behave prudently. A consideration of finance's role, and a look at how reforming economies have fared, suggest also that gradual reform is often to be preferred in this domain. Deregulation of credit markets and interest rates can be counterproductive in unstable macroeconomic conditions and when banks are unsophisticated or have weak balance sheets. And changes in the charter value may evolve only slowly after reform. Faster progress and greater efforts should be made, however, in bank supervision and regulation and in institutional development, including accounting, auditing, legal and judicial reform, and training (of bankers and other finance professionals). In sum, many economies would benefit from less government intervention in financial markets, but the prescription should not be abrupt or total government withdrawal from the financial sector. Rather than intervening heavily in credit allocation decisions, governments should focus on doing what only they can do: providing an enabling environment for the private financial and nonfinancial sectors, and ensuring that financial operations are safe and sound.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring
Money, politics and a future for the international financial system
No full textIn developing the architecture for a financial system, the challenge is to combine deregulation and safety nets against systemic failure with effective prudential regulation and oversight. The author analyzes three approaches to choosing an adequate regulatory framework for a financial system. a) Those most worried about panic and herd behavior tend to favor relatively extensive controls on financial institutions'activities, including controls on interest rates and on the volume and direction of lending. b) Those most concerned about moral hazard advocate abolishing controls and safety nets, seeing the solution is stronger market discipline and reduced powers and discretion for regulators. c) Mainstream opinion advocates a mix of measures, to both strengthen market discipline and improve regulatory oversight. The approach a county opts for depends on 1) which monetary and exchange rate regime it chooses, 2) whether it is more concerned about moral hazard or about panic and herd behavior, and 3) how the politics of reform shape its solutions. The author suggests a scenario for development of the global financial system over the next two or three decades that assumes that the final outcome will resemble the market solution - not because that is the optimal policy choice but because of how political weakness will interact with advances in settlement technology. In the author's scenario, the world moves toward a monetary system in which fixed exchange rate systems or de facto currency competition limit the power of central banks. This limits options for discretionary and open-ended liquidity support to help deal with systemic financial crises. The costs of inflexible exchange rates are moderated by new types of wage contracts, using units of account that are correlated with the shocks a particular industry or kind of contract faces -- thus maintaining the positive aspects of monetary systems with flexible nominal exchange rates. Mistrust in monetary authorities and the emergence of private settlements lead to a return of asset-backed money as the means of payment. The disciplines on financial systems come to resemble somewhat those of historical"free banking"systems, with financial institutions requiring high levels of equity and payments systems protected only by limited, fully funded safety nets.Banks&Banking Reform,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Financial Intermediation,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Macroeconomic Management,Financial Intermediation,Financial Economics
A fattening factor to quantify the accumulation ability of microorganisms under N-starvation
No full textMany microorganisms can accumulate biomass in the form of lipids and polysaccharides, which can be used for biofuels, bioplastics, food and feed. Some innovative bioprocesses exploit the competitive advantage provided by such accumulation ability, mainly under N-starvation, to select high-accumulating strains against biological contaminants, by using uncoupled nutrient feeding. However, there is no general and easily comparable parameter available to compare biomass accumulation ability among different microbial strains, which could measure the competitive advantage. Here, a parameter termed “fattening factor” (ηx) is described to quantify such strain-specific biomass accumulation ability in bacteria, yeasts and microalgae. This parameter measures how many fold a microbial population can increase its biomass just as the result of accumulation. It is derived from considerations about the main metabolic aspects of cells’ response to N-starvation, which induces variations in cell cycle, biomass production and biochemical composition. The fattening factor described here should be easily estimatable in N-starvation for every culturable microbial strain, by measuring the amount of accumulated biomass
Increased rate of penicillin non-susceptible strains of N. meningitidis in Naples, Italy
No full textNeisseria meningitidis is a causative agent of community-acquired sepsis and meningitis in humans. These diseases are associated with high mortality and morbidity if treatment is not started promptly. The empiric antibiotic treatment depends on patient factors and local epidemiology. In the past years, an increased number meningococcal strain with reduced susceptibility to penicillin has also been described. We analysed the susceptibility pattern of 11 N. meningitidis strains isolated between 2013 and 2016. Only three (27%) strains were fully susceptible to penicillin, suggesting that a third-generation cephalosporin, instead of penicillin, as empiric therapy is more reliable when an invasive meningococcal disease is suspected
Il consiglio di amministrazione, la rotazione degli amministratori e la performance dell'impresa: l'esperienza italiana in una prospettiva comparata
No full textTurnpike in infinite dimension
No full textLet Φ be a correspondence from a normed vector space X into itself, let u : X → R be a function, and let I be an ideal on N. In addition, assume that the restriction of u on the fixed points of Φ has a unique maximizer η*. Then, we consider feasible paths (x0, x1,.) with values in X such that xn+1 ∈ Φ(xn), for all n ≥ 0. Under certain additional conditions, we prove the following turnpike result: every feasible path (x0, x1,.) which maximizes the smallest I-cluster point of the sequence (u(x0), u(x1),.) is necessarily I-convergent to η*. We provide examples that, on the one hand, justify the hypotheses of our result and, on the other hand, prove that we are including new cases which were previously not considered in the related literature
Cultivation processes to select microorganisms with high accumulation ability
No full textThe microbial ability to accumulate biomolecules is fundamental for different biotechnological applications aiming at the production of biofuels, food and bioplastics. However, high accumulation is a selective advantage only under certain stressful conditions, such as nutrient depletion, characterized by lower growth rate. Conventional bioprocesses maintain an optimal and stable environment for large part of the cultivation, that doesn't reward cells for their accumulation ability, raising the risk of selection of contaminant strains with higher growth rate, but lower accumulation of products. Here in this work the physiological responses of different microorganisms (microalgae, bacteria, yeasts) under N-starvation and energy starvation are reviewed, with the aim to furnish relevant insights exploitable to develop tailored bioprocesses to select specific strains for their higher accumulation ability. Microorganism responses to starvation are reviewed focusing on cell cycle, biomass production and variations in biochemical composition. Then, the work describes different innovative bioprocess configurations exploiting uncoupled nutrient feeding strategies (feast-famine), tailored to maintain a selective pressure to reward the strains with higher accumulation ability in mixed microbial populations. Finally, the main models developed in recent studies to describe and predict microbial growth and intracellular accumulation upon N-starvation and feast-famine conditions have been reviewed
Pro-atherosclerotic alterations in lipoprotein particle distribution and size are associated with a high triglyceride to HDL-cholesterol (TG/HDL) ratio
No full textAdult and Egg Mortality of Rhynchophorus Ferrugineus Oliver (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) Induced by Thiamethoxam and Clothianidin.
No full textThe red palm weevil (RPW) is the major pest of palms in the Mediterranean region. One of the most interesting control solutions for this pest is endotherapy, comprising injections of biologically active substances directly into the stem of the palm. The objective of the present work was to study the ovicidal and adulticidal properties of two neonicotinoid insecticides (clothianidin and thiamethoxam) under laboratory conditions, to obtain evidence for application of endotherapy in the control of RPW infestations. Our results show that both commercial compounds display a dose-dependent action and exhibit different modes of action: clothianidin is more rapid in its action, but in general is less effective for control of the adult stages, while thiamethoxam is more effective, but its action requires longer to show efficacy. The eggs are much less sensitive to treatments, especially for clothianidin
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