Keynes and the cotton industry: a reappraisal

The paper reinterprets Keynes’s analysis of the crisis in the Lancashire cotton industry in the 1920s. It presents empirical evidence showing that syndicates of local shareholders, but not the banks, were an important brake on firms exiting, at a time when exit barriers were otherwise unproblematic in this competitive industry. Moreover, syndicates milked firms of any profits through dividends, thereby limiting reinvestment and re-equipment possibilities. The case shows that where laissez-faire fails in response to a crisis, the associated response may need to assess both ownership structure and its relationship to competitive industry structure

Prediction of springback in the forming of advanced high strength steel: simulation and experimental study

Dual Phase (DP) steel is categorized as advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) which has tensile strengths ranging from 500 to 800 MPa. DP steel is gaining popularity in automotive applications. It has higher formability than HSLA grades with similar initial yield strengths, but has much higher final part strength. With proper design strategy, Dual Phase (DP) steels offers a great advantage in terms of body weight reduction and crash performance. One of the major constraints in forming AHSS is the occurrence of high springback caused by elastic relaxation after loading, which causes ill-fitting in part assembly and geometric deviation of the intended design. This research focused on finite element (FE) simulation of the sheet forming of dual phase steel and the springback prediction. If springback could be accurately predicted, the forming die could be correctly designed to compensate springback. The material used in this study was DOCOL 800 DP manufactured by SSAB- Sweden with ultimate tensile strength of 870 MPa and thickness of 0.72mm. The plastic behavior of DP800 was presented by exponential based constitutive equation known as isotropic hardening. From tensile test, strain hardening value (n) was 0.308 and strength coefficient (K) was 1319.165 MP. The FE simulations were conducted for tensile test, U-channel forming and springback simulation. These simulations were carried out by using general purpose transient dynamic FE code Lsdyna. The tensile test simulation result indicated the isotropic hardening material model was suitable for DP800 behavior with standard deviation value 62.45 MPa between simulation and experiment. Meanwhile, the springback simulation using U-channel represented the deviation for BHF 10kN, 20kN, 30kN and 97kN were 0.019, 0.071, 0.341 and 0.231. Overall, the result of 20KN BHF applied indicated the minimum springback in the forming of DP800

Banks as ‘fat cats’: Branching and Price Decisions in a Two-Stage Model of Competition

In this paper we develop an empirical two-stage model of competition for the banking industry that incorporates the choice of capacity in the form of new branches. It is estimated using data on Italian banks for the years 1995-2009. The results show that the conduct of banks is significantly more competitive than a Bertrand-Nash equilibrium, and support the rejection of the simple one-stage specification, which underestimates the degree of competition. In the Fudenberg and Tirole (1984)’s taxonomy, banks are found to behave as ‘fat cats’, overinvesting in the branch network so as to keep prices high and accommodate entry.bank branch network; competition; market structure; conduct

When bigger isn’t better : bailouts and bank behaviour

Lending retail deposits to SMEs and household borrowers may be the traditional role of commercial banks: but banking in Britain has been transformed by increasing consolidation and by the lure of high returns available from wholesale Investment activities. With appropriate changes to the baseline model of commercial banking in Allen and Gale (2007), we show how market power enables banks to collect „seigniorage‟; and how „tail risk‟ investment allows losses to be shifted onto the taxpayer. In principle, the high franchise values associated with market power assist regulatory capital requirements to check risk-taking. But when big banks act strategically, bailout expectations can undermine these disciplining devices: and the taxpayer ends up „on the hook‟- as in the recent crisis. That structural change is needed to prevent a repeat seems clear from the Vickers report, which proposes to protect the taxpayer by a „ring fence‟separating commercial and investment banking

Discrete multitone modulation with principal component filter banks

Discrete multitone (DMT) modulation is an attractive method for communication over a nonflat channel with possibly colored noise. The uniform discrete Fourier transform (DFT) filter bank and cosine modulated filter bank have in the past been used in this system because of low complexity. We show in this paper that principal component filter banks (PCFB) which are known to be optimal for data compression and denoising applications, are also optimal for a number of criteria in DMT modulation communication. For example, the PCFB of the effective channel noise power spectrum (noise psd weighted by the inverse of the channel gain) is optimal for DMT modulation in the sense of maximizing bit rate for fixed power and error probabilities. We also establish an optimality property of the PCFB when scalar prefilters and postfilters are used around the channel. The difference between the PCFB and a traditional filter bank such as the brickwall filter bank or DFT filter bank is significant for effective power spectra which depart considerably from monotonicity. The twisted pair channel with its bridged taps, next and fext noises, and AM interference, therefore appears to be a good candidate for the application of a PCFB. This is demonstrated with the help of numerical results for the case of the ADSL channel

A sketch outline for a research report on land tenures for China's rural sector

An outline for a paper on Land Tenures in China's Rural Sector based on ideas derived from evidence presented at the CIRD symposium

Is acting prosocially beneficial for the credit market?

This article argues that behaving prosocially implies more transparent information during the negotiation process of a financial contract and more cooperation among the parties to respect the terms of the contract. For this reason this work considers interest rate on loans and insolvency rate functions of prosocial behaviour along with the traditional socio-economic and financial collaterals. The context of study is Italy and the analysis is developed at a cross-regional level. We collect data from the two reports on “Relatives and Safety Net” produced by the Italian Centre Bureau of Statistics (ISTAT) in 1998 and 2003 and from the reports on “Regional Economics” produced by the Bank of Italy in the same years. A two-period panel model shows two interesting outcomes. Firstly, regions with a higher proportion of prosocial individuals report lower interest rates on loans and insolvency rates. Secondly, when we include the efficiency of legal enforcement, evidence supports the idea that a more efficient legal framework can act as a more reliable transmission mechanism of institutional norms and facilitate the internalisation of social norms