Uncertainty Across the Pond: An Evaluation of Equity Market Returns and Currency Fluctuations in Reaction to Key Brexit Events

The citizens of the United Kingdom shocked the world on June 23rd, 2016 when they voted in favor of leaving the European Union. The 3-year aftermath of the Referendum has created a large amount of uncertainty regarding the future of the United Kingdom economy and its post-Brexit relationship with the European Union. The purpose of this research is to explore how the financial markets react to Brexit news headlines, compare the returns of European and non-European exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and currencies, identify common themes, and ultimately shed light on how investors weigh-in on the interconnectedness of the UK, the EU, and the broader global markets. After researching the major milestones in the development of Brexit, twenty-three different events were selected for this study. To look at the financial market’s reaction, UK, EU, Germany, United States, and South African ETFs and currency returns in response to Brexit news were recorded. The results show that positive Brexit news headlines are a universal benefit but generate higher returns for the European Union and Germany as opposed to the United Kingdom itself, and that shared negative returns affect the United Kingdom to a greater extent. Investors are pricing in the uncertain and negative implications of Brexit to the point where the United Kingdom has limited upside and plenty of downside within the realms of the financial markets

Democracy and Digital Authoritarianism: An Assessment of the EU’s External Engagement in the Promotion and Protection of Internet Freedom. College of Europe EU Diplomacy Paper 01/2020

The past decade has seen a gradual global increase in digital authoritarianism. Internet shutdowns, online censorship, mass surveillance and violations of privacy rights have all become more frequent in parts of the world where citizens are not guaranteed sufficient digital rights. The task of defending, promoting and protecting internet freedom is becoming increasingly relevant for the European Union (EU) − for internal digital and cybersecurity policies as well as for the EU’s external promotion of democracy and human rights. Whilst much has been written about the various internal policies which establish and protect internet freedom within the European Union and its member states, the EU’s external engagement in this field remains critically under-researched. To what extent does the EU engage externally in the promotion and protection of internet freedom? This paper answers this question by covering a wide variety of policy fields including human rights and democracy promotion, digital policy, enlargement and neighbourhood policy, development cooperation and trade policy. Whereas the EU faces a limited opportunity to shape global norms with regard to internet freedom or to change the course of digitally authoritarian states, it has demonstrated several strengths which deserve not to be overlooked. These include, for example, the externalisation of internal data protection and policies and the provision of direct support and protection for civil society. Despite facing significant obstacles, the promotion and protection of internet freedom has become an important area of the EU’s external action which is only set to become more relevant in the coming years

Organic in Europe: Recent Developments

In 2017, the European organic food and farming sector continued to excel both in terms of organic production and market growth. Data for 2017 (for full data see page 216) shows the European organic food market recording significant growth – increasing by more than ten percent to 37.3 billion. At the same time, the organic sector faces a number of challenges, notably that the growth rates in organic area, in spite of recent stronger growth, continues to lag behind the dynamic growth seen within the organic food market (Figure 68). A major milestone in 2018 was the publication of the new European Union rules on organic production and labelling of organic products in May, and in June 2018, the European Commission launched its proposal for the Common Agricultural Policy for the period 2021 to 2027

The Long Road to Uluru and Beyond

This paper explores the significance of the Uluru Statement from The Heart and its place in the post settlement Indigenous journey. It is also relevant to the nation’s journey towards reconciliation. The initial rejection of the Uluru Statement by the Government was a blow to indigenous Australians, and an examination of the reasons for opposing a constitutional enshrined Voice to Parliament is needed. It is argued that the Voice to Parliament is of value both symbolically and practically. Understanding the reasons why some sections of the Australian community find any constitutional recognition proposition difficult is a key to successfully achieving such recognition

Moving beyond the ‘crisis’: Recommendations for the European Commission’s communication on migration. EPC Discussion Paper, 9 DECEMBER 2019

The year 2015 marked the arrival of an unprecedented number of migrants and refugees in the EU. Soon politicians, policymakers and the press dubbed these events a ‘migration crisis’. With the steep increase in public attention putting migration at the very top of the political agenda, right-wing populist parties saw their chance to capitalise on voters’ concerns in a vast majority of EU member states

The Enigma of Digitized Property A Tribute to John Perry Barlow

Compressive Sensing has attracted a lot of attention over the last decade within the areas of applied mathematics, computer science and electrical engineering because of it suggesting that we can sample a signal under the limit that traditional sampling theory provides. By then using dierent recovery algorithms we are able to, theoretically, recover the complete original signal even though we have taken very few samples to begin with. It has been proven that these recovery algorithms work best on signals that are highly compressible, meaning that the signals can have a sparse representation where the majority of the signal elements are close to zero. In this thesis we implement some of these recovery algorithms and investigate how these perform practically on a real video signal consisting of 300 sequential image frames. The video signal will be under sampled, using compressive sensing, and then recovered using two types of strategies, - One where no time correlation between successive frames is assumed, using the classical greedy algorithm Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) and a more robust, modied OMP called Predictive Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (PrOMP). - One newly developed algorithm, Dynamic Iterative Pursuit (DIP), which assumes and utilizes time correlation between successive frames. We then performance evaluate and compare these two strategies using the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) as a metric. We also provide visual results. Based on investigation of the data in the video signal, using a simple model for the time correlation and transition probabilities between dierent signal coecients in time, the DIP algorithm showed good recovery performance. The main results showed that DIP performed better and better over time and outperformed the PrOMP up to a maximum of 6 dB gain at half of the original sampling rate but performed slightly below the PrOMP in a smaller part of the video sequence where the correlation in time between successive frames in the original video sequence suddenly became weaker.Compressive sensing har blivit mer och mer uppmarksammat under det senaste decenniet inom forskningsomraden sasom tillampad matematik, datavetenskap och elektroteknik. En stor anledning till detta ar att dess teori innebar att det blir mojligt att sampla en signal under gransen som traditionell samplingsteori innebar. Genom att sen anvanda olika aterskapningsalgoritmer ar det anda teoretiskt mojligt att aterskapa den ursprungliga signalen. Det har visats sig att dessaaterskapningsalgoritmer funkar bast pa signaler som ar mycket kompressiva, vilket innebar att dessa signaler kan representeras glest i nagon doman dar merparten av signalens koecienter ar nara 0 i varde. I denna uppsats implementeras vissa av dessaaterskapningsalgoritmer och vi undersoker sedan hur dessa presterar i praktiken pa en riktig videosignal bestaende av 300 sekventiella bilder. Videosignalen kommer att undersamplas med compressive sensing och sen aterskapas genom att anvanda 2 typer av strategier, - En dar ingen tidskorrelation mellan successiva bilder i videosignalen antas genom att anvanda klassiska algoritmer sasom Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) och en mer robust, modierad OMP : Predictive Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (PrOMP). - En nyligen utvecklad algoritm, Dynamic Iterative Pursuit (DIP), som antar och nyttjar en tidskorrelation mellan successiva bilder i videosignalen. Vi utvarderar och jamfor prestandan i dessa tva olika typer av strategier genom att anvanda Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) som jamforelseparameter. Vi ger ocksa visuella resultat fran videosekvensen. Baserat pa undersokning av data i videosignalen visade det sig, genom att anvanda enkla modeller, bade for tidskorrelationen och sannolikhetsfunktioner for vilka koecienter som ar aktiva vid varje tidpunkt, att DIP algoritmen visade battre prestanda an de tva andra tidsoberoende algoritmerna under visa tidsekvenser. Framforallt de sekvenser dar videosignalen inneholl starkare korrelation i tid. Som mest presterade DIP upp till 6 dB battre an OMP och PrOMP