Dynamic provisioning: rationale, functioning, and prudential treatment

Current policy debate has renewed interest in countercyclical provisioning policies; dynamic provisions are regarded as a valuable device for pursuing this goal. Last July, Ecofin supported “the introduction of forward-looking provisioning, which consists in constituting provisions deducted from profits in good times for expected losses on loan portfolios, and which would contribute to limiting procyclicalityâ€. This paper describes: i) how dynamic provisions work in a general framework based on expected losses; ii) how they work according to the Spanish system, which is the only real example of countercyclical provisioning; iii) the differences and similarities between the expected loss model and the Spanish approach. Building on proposals currently under discussion in the international community, it also suggests a possible way forward for introducing a system of dynamic provisions that, while meeting the prudential goal of having more conservative provisioning policies, would not clash with accounting standards.dynamic provisions, capital buffers, Basel 2, credit risk, procyclicality

DCOS, a Real-Time Light-weight Data Centric Operating System

DCOS is a Data Centric lightweight Operating System for embedded devices. Despite limited energy and hardware resources, it supports a data driven architecture with provisions for dynamic loadable Modules. It combines these with Real-Time provisions based on Earliest Deadline First with a simple but smart resource handling mechanism. We will give an overview of the capabilities of DCOS and we will describe the basics of the main mechanisms

Access to Specific Provision Employer-Provided Benefits: New Estimates

[Excerpt] Many employers offer some type of health or retirement package, but their provisions vary considerably from employer to employer. Knowing the details of the types of coverage available affords a better understanding of benefits in the workplace. For example, health plans may be prepaid (health maintenance organizations, or HMOs) or fee for service (such as preferred provider organizations, or PPOs), and may or may not offer dental coverage. Defined contribution plans may be structured around company matches on employer contributions or may consist of non-elective employer contributions alone. The Bureau of Labor Statistics refers to these details as plan provisions. This Beyond the Numbers article describes the prevalence with which people working for private employers in the United States are given the opportunity to enroll in health and retirement plans with various provisions—the extent to which they have access to those provisions. But note: just because a worker has access to a given plan does not mean that he or she participates in the plan. Once given access, the worker often must affirmatively enroll in the plan in order to be counted as a participant (and to receive and enjoy the plan’s benefits laid out in its provisions). The rate at which workers enroll in plans to which they are given access is known as the takeup rate. Often, the takeup rate for a plan is less than 100 percent, perhaps because enrolling in the plan requires that the worker incur some cost or because the worker also has access to several alternative plans. As a result, the participation rate—the extent to which workers in the economy participate in plans—is often lower than the corresponding access rate. The analysis that follows explores this dynamic by presenting participation and takeup rates for plan provisions alongside the access rate

Prices versus Quantities versus Bankable Quantities

Welfare comparisons of regulatory instruments under uncertainty, even in dynamic analyses, have typically focused on price versus quantity controls despite the presence of banking and borrowing provisions in existing emissions trading programs. This is true even in the presence of banking and borrowing provisions in existing emissions trading programs. Nonetheless, many have argued that such provisions can reduce price volatility and lower costs in the face of uncertainty, despite any theoretical or empirical evidence. This paper develops a model and solves for optimal banking and borrowing behavior with uncertain cost shocks that are serially correlated. We show that while banking does reduce price volatility and lowers costs, the degree of these reductions depends on the persistence of shocks. For plausible parameter values related to U.S. climate change policy, we find that bankable quantities eliminate about 20 percent of the cost difference between price and nonbankable quantities.welfare, prices, quantities, climate change

Loan loss provisioning in the commercial banking system of Barbados: practices and determinants

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of loan loss provisioning within the commercial banking system of Barbados. It uses questionnaires and interviews to ascertain how banks set their provisional standards and levels. In addition, the results from this approach reveal, for the first time in Barbados, the individual banks‟ procedures for loan loss provisioning. An evaluation of the impact of macroeconomic and bank specific factors on commercial banks‟ provisions utilising panel dynamic ordinary least squares is also undertaken. Both sets of factors are found to influence the level of provisions. In particular, loan loss provisions are heavily dependent upon the performance of the real economy and competition in international markets is shown to have serious implications for the banking sector in both the short and long run. Moreover, this study asserts that larger banks in Barbados are better able to screen loans and avoid defaults.Loan Loss Provisioning; Banking System; Loan Classification

Flexible Service Provisioning with Advance Agreements

In this paper, we develop a novel algorithm that allows service consumer agents to automatically select and provision service provider agents for their workflows in highly dynamic and uncertain computational service economies. In contrast to existing work, our algorithm reasons explicitly about the impact of failures on the overall feasibility of a workflow, and it mitigates them by proactively provisioning multiple providers in parallel for particularly critical tasks and by explicitly planning for contingencies. Furthermore, our algorithm provisions only part of its workflow at any given time, in order to retain flexibility and to decrease the potential for missing negotiated service time slots. We show empirically that current approaches are unable to achieve a high utility in such uncertain and dynamic environments; whereas our algorithm consistently outperforms them over a range of environments. Specifically, our approach can achieve up to a 27-fold increase in utility and successfully completes most workflows within a strict deadline, even when the majority of providers do not honour their contracts

Population-based incremental learning with associative memory for dynamic environments

Copyright © 2007 IEEE. Reprinted from IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of Brunel University's products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to [email protected]. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.In recent years there has been a growing interest in studying evolutionary algorithms (EAs) for dynamic optimization problems (DOPs) due to its importance in real world applications. Several approaches, such as the memory and multiple population schemes, have been developed for EAs to address dynamic problems. This paper investigates the application of the memory scheme for population-based incremental learning (PBIL) algorithms, a class of EAs, for DOPss. A PBIL-specific associative memory scheme, which stores best solutions as well as corresponding environmental information in the memory, is investigated to improve its adaptability in dynamic environments. In this paper, the interactions between the memory scheme and random immigrants, multi-population, and restart schemes for PBILs in dynamic environments are investigated. In order to better test the performance of memory schemes for PBILs and other EAs in dynamic environments, this paper also proposes a dynamic environment generator that can systematically generate dynamic environments of different difficulty with respect to memory schemes. Using this generator a series of dynamic environments are generated and experiments are carried out to compare the performance of investigated algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed memory scheme is efficient for PBILs in dynamic environments and also indicate that different interactions exist between the memory scheme and random immigrants, multi-population schemes for PBILs in different dynamic environments

Optimal Algorithms for Near-Hitless Network Restoration via Diversity Coding

Diversity coding is a network restoration technique which offers near-hitless restoration, while other state-of-the art techniques are significantly slower. Furthermore, the extra spare capacity requirement of diversity coding is competitive with the others. Previously, we developed heuristic algorithms to employ diversity coding structures in networks with arbitrary topology. This paper presents two algorithms to solve the network design problems using diversity coding in an optimal manner. The first technique pre-provisions static traffic whereas the second technique carries out the dynamic provisioning of the traffic on-demand. In both cases, diversity coding results in smaller restoration time, simpler synchronization, and much reduced signaling complexity than the existing techniques in the literature. A Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) formulation and an algorithm based on Integer Linear Programming (ILP) are developed for pre-provisioning and dynamic provisioning, respectively. Simulation results indicate that diversity coding has significantly higher restoration speed than Shared Path Protection (SPP) and p-cycle techniques. It requires more extra capacity than the p-cycle technique and SPP. However, the increase in the total capacity is negligible compared to the increase in the restoration speed.Comment: An old version of this paper is submitted to IEEE Globecom 2012 conferenc

Predatory Exclusive Dealing

While the previous literature on exclusive dealing has been concerned with the question of how exclusive dealing can raise static profits, this paper analyzes the question of how exclusive dealing can be used to predate in a dynamic context. It is shown that exclusive dealing may arise even if it reduces static profits. Exclusivity provisions may not only allow excluding efficient competitors, but indeed are often a cheaper exclusionary tool than predatory pricing. This is the case if the prey's access to finance is not too limited. Furthermore, it is more likely that exclusive dealing is preferable compared to predatory pricing the more market power the predator has with respect to the prey

The right to know: disclosure of information for collective bargaining and joint consultation

The legal obligation on employers to provide information to employees has grown since the early 1970s. At that time, the emphasis was on disclosure for collective bargaining. In the 1980s and 1990s, the emphasis shifted more to disclosure for joint consultation. In the context of new legislation, the possibility of further interventions from Europe, and a greater commitment to openness in other areas of company and public life, disclosure of information for collective bargaining and joint consultation at work is again on the agenda. This article focuses on disclosure for both of these processes. Disclosure for collective bargaining is the most developed and potentially significant area of the law from an industrial relations perspective. Disclosure for joint consultation, however, has been the most dynamic area in recent years. Voluntary information provision by firms has also been a significant part of developing human resource management practice. The paper therefore provides a broad examination of the law on disclosure. The UK provisions are conceptualised as constituting an agenda-driven disclosure model; i.e. the trigger for their use lies within the bargaining agenda. By contrast, the provisions stemming from European initiatives are event-driven; i.e. they are triggered by specific employer initiated events that affect employment contracts in other ways irrespective of the representative context. In the final sections, we attempt a broader evaluation of the intent and impact of the legislation and assess the pros and cons of the different approaches