Managing risks of capital mobility

Inherent in pursuing openness to international capital flows is an awareness that it brings both benefits and risks. Much of the current debate is about how best to balance them. Major benefits for developing countries include access to a broader menu of investment sources, options, and instruments, as well as enhanced efficiency of domestic financial institutions and the discipline of capital markets in conducting domestic macroeconomic policy. By easing financing constraints, the greater availability of international finance can extend the period for implementing needed adjustments. From the perspective of emerging market economies, the author highlights two sources of risk: the host governments'policy of liberalizing capital controls before having established the macroeconomic, regulatory, and institutional foundations required for capital openness. A shift in foreign leaders'and investors'sentiments and confidence, not necessarily related to a particular country's long-term creditworthiness. Risk management demands judicious strategies for both corporate and financial institutions and national policy. At the institutional level, with the advances in technology and communications, financial risk management practice has improved significantly in recent years through the use of statistical models, such as value at risk, computer simulation, and stress testing. At the national level, with the worldwide trend toward democracy, the author argues that managing the risks of financial openness will require developing national mechanisms through which to provide insurance to citizens-through the marketplace or through redistributive policy-and thus to avert political pressure for capital controls. To succeed, open democratic societies have to balance the threat of capital exit, made easier by the opening of capital markets, with the political voice of citizens-demanding protection through redistribution, social safety nets, and other insurance-like measures. These insurance measures have been critical increasing the tension between politics and financial openness in OECD countries. Indeed, cross-country empirical analysis confirms that countries that spend a large share of their GDP on social needs (education, health, and transfer payments) are more open to free international capital flows, and also score high on measures of political and civil liberty.Capital Markets and Capital Flows,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Economics,Settlement of Investment Disputes

FastM: Design and Evaluation of a Fast Mobility Mechanism for Wireless Mesh Networks

Although there is a large volume of work in the literature in terms of mobility approaches for Wireless Mesh Networks, usually these approaches introduce high latency in the handover process and do not support realtime services and applications. Moreover, mobility is decoupled from routing, which leads to inefficiency to both mobility and routing approaches with respect to mobility. In this paper we present a new extension to proactive routing protocols using a fast mobility extension, FastM, with the purpose of increasing handover performance in Wireless Mesh Networks. With this new extension, a new concept is created to integrate information between neighbor wireless mesh routers, managing locations of clients associated to wireless mesh routers in a certain neighborhood, and avoiding packet loss during handover. The proposed mobility approach is able to optimize the handover process without imposing any modifications to the current IEE 802.11 MAC protocol and use unmodified clients. Results show the improved efficiency of the proposed scheme: metrics such as disconnection time, throughput, packet loss and control overhead are largely improved when compared to previous approaches. Moreover, these conclusions apply to mobility scenarios, although mobility decreases the performance of the handover approach, as expected

Virtual Erasmus - A new chance not only for Europe

Virtual Mobility among two or more educational institutions offers students a virtual trip abroad. There is an opportunity to acquire a number of ECTS-points at one of the foreign partner institutions or through a joint activity which are counted to the student’s degree at his/her home university. This paper is based on the research conducted among ERASMUS coordinators within the EU. The research was part of the MoreVM project which aims at facilitating the virtual mobility, encouraging participation and enhancing efficiency of virtual mobility in higher education. The central focus was on the position of the virtual mobility coordinator, if such exists. There will be an overview of the main research findings reflecting the present situation in managing the virtual mobility. We hope that sharing good experience including the MoreVM project results will increase the development of the virtual mobility which will get similar attention and success as Erasmus physical mobility. Virtual mobility could be a valuable example also for countries outside of European Union.virtual mobility, management, e-learning, Erasmus mobility

Managing the complexity: decision making process on sustainable mobility

Starting from the literature on decision processes in public choices, aim of the paper is to suggest an integrated methodology to get a choice as much as possible shared and participated joining two different approaches. On one hand there is the “classic†or top-down approach based on statistical data analysis and handling, having as target the definition of some synthetic indicators. On the other hand there is a bottom-up approach based on the Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) logical framework and on citizens participation. Particularly the paper will apply the above mentioned methodology to face the theme of sustainable mobility showing at the end the results obtained in the analysis of the 13th District of the Municipality of Rome. The choice of sustainable mobility as a target of decision process lies on the fact that actually it is included with a high priority in the agenda of European institutions and (local and national) administrative governments. The proposed model does not provide a solution, but rather defines a process that is able to recognize the particularities of different territorial contexts to yield appropriate, case specific solutions.

Youths on labour market.Features. Particularities. Pro-mobility factors for graduates. Elements of a balanced policy for labour migration

The youths’ labour market, and especially insertion employment has a series of particularities defined by aspects such as: flexibility, efficient employment, interest for career but also informal employment, external mobility, including brain drain, segmentation, employment precariousness, income disadvantages, etc. Therefore, also the labour market policy and particularly managing labour mobility especially through the economic and social effects that might be triggered on the local labour market in the origin country, presents a special importance under the conditions of the economic turnaround stage, by promoting new and sustainable jobs, based on knowledge and competences. In the present paper an analysis is made about the youths’ labour market features, and the outcomes of an empirical analysis about graduates’ migration propensity are presented. Suggestions are made for developing a balanced policy for youths’ labour mobility to the benefit of the country of origin.youth employment, labour force mobility, labour migration/mobility management

Bowel problems and coping strategies in people with multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a common neurological disease, estimated to affect 100,000 people in the UK. Bowel symptoms are reported to be common in MS, with constipation affecting 29-43% and faecal incontinence affecting just over 50%. Both have an impact on quality of life. Very little is known about how people with MS manage their bowels and the effectiveness of different interventions. We conducted a 2-part survey of people with MS and bowel problems. MS Society members were invited to participate in an online survey: 155 replied. 47 people additionally filled in a more detailed postal questionnaire. In this self-selected sample, 34% spend more than 30 minutes a day managing their bowel. Managing bowel function was rated as having an impact equal to mobility difficulties on quality of life. Respondents used a wide range of strategies to manage their bowel but few were rated as very helpful. There is a need for high quality research on all aspects of managing bowel dysfunction in MS in order to improve patients' quality of life