Financial intermediation, capital composition and income stagnation: The case of Europe

We look into the role of financial intermediation in inducing the European financial crisis of 2008 by exploring the effects of overall lending, and the allocation of credit to specific categories of borrowers, namely households vs. firms. We find that for the EU26 during the period 1995–2008, excessive household leverage through mortgage lending exerted a “crowding-out” effect on availability of credit to support innovation and productive investment. The crowding out effect ultimately translated into a GDP growth that was decoupled from real household income. In this article we explain that shifting credit towards mortgages and away from corporate projects is consistent with rational behaviour based on historical trends aimed at minimizing short-term risk for each individual bank. Nevertheless, as a whole, the sum of individual risk-reducing attitudes generated a long-term systemic risk

Protein folding in explicit bulk water

Treballs Finals de Grau de Física, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2016, Tutor: Giancarlo FranzeseWater is thought to play a crucial role in the process of cold and pressure denaturation of proteins as it has been experimentally confirmed that an important driving force behind the folding process is the minimisation of the protein’s hydrophobic surface. Water-protein interactions are therefore a vital ingredient for the understanding of such phenomena. In this report, extending previous results calculated in 2 dimensions, we use Monte Carlo simulations of a 3 dimensions coarse-grain protein model in explicit bulk water to show that the changes of water properties at the interface between the solvent and hydrophobic self-avoiding homopolymer e↵ectively lead to a stability region in the temperature-pressure plane in which the protein is folded. We find that the model is able to reproduce and rationalize the protein folding and the protein pressure denaturation at high and low pressure

The uneven geographies of the Olympic carceral : from exceptionalism to normalisation

In recent years a vast academic literature has developed around the concept of ‘militarising’ or ‘securitising’ cities and in particular the policy responses to the occurrence of crime, fear of crime and the evaluation of cities as strategic sites for a spectrum of large-scale increasingly destructive perturbations in everyday urban life, such as riots, protest and acts of terrorism. Increasingly policy interventions in response to such threats have embodied characteristics of the ‘carceral archipelago’ where incarceration techniques and strategies are punitively deployed within public places of the city and embedded within the design of urban space. Such attempts at creating increasingly hyper-carceral spaces have often been supported by an array of legislation and regulation targeting the control of particular activities deemed unacceptable or inappropriate. This paper draws conceptually from the urban security literature noted above and emerging studies within the nascent sub-discipline of carceral geography, and examines their convergence on the issue of Olympic security planning. This highlights the various spatial strategies and imprints that emerge from new conceptualisations and practices of securitisation, and how these might be seen to characterise an increasingly punitive state. Here Agamben's studies of exceptionality are deployed to highlight how ‘lockdown’ security often becomes the ‘normal’ option for Olympic cities, seen as being on the frontline in the war on terror, and how a range of uneven geographies emerge and are sustained in such locations before, during and after the event. Empirically the paper uses data from ethnographic research focusing on the experiences of security preparation for, and post-event legacy of, the London 2012 Olympics. The paper also seeks to highlight how lessons from the military-carceral security strategies deployed in London have been transferred to subsequent host cities of Sochi (2014) and Rio de Janeiro (2016)

Surveillance in Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008: A Comparison of the Olympic Surveillance Modalities and Legacies in Two Different Olympic Host Regimes

All post-9/11 Olympic Games and sport mega events deploy super-surveillance systems, as a future security investment, albeit at the expense of rights and freedoms. This paper compares the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Olympic Games' surveillance systems, to assess their authoritarian effects and legacies in democratic and authoritarian Olympic host regimes. In democratic Greece, memories of the dictatorship have caused reaction and resistance to the perpetuation of the Olympic surveillance systems. In China, the police state has used these systems for Olympic and regime security, reinforcing population and Internet control. Drawing on these two cases, it is demonstrated that post-9/11 Olympic security and surveillance have authoritarian effects, which are dependent on global factors like anti-terrorist and neo-liberal policies, and local factors such as the type of host regime, culture and society. It is also argued that these surveillance systems have an emerging anti-democratic legacy which stretches beyond the hosting of the Olympics.

"Austerity surveillance" in Greece under the Austerity regime (2010-2014)

In this article we have tried to analyze "austerity surveillance" (AS), its features, and its functions under the extreme austerity regime in Greece during 2010-2014, before the election of the leftist government. AS is a specific kind of coercive neoliberal surveillance, which in the name of fighting tax evasion and corruption is targeting the middle and lower economic strata and not the rich upper classes. It is based mainly on "coveillance", i.e. citizen-informers' grassing, public naming, and shaming. Functioning as a domination and disciplinary control mechanism of the entire population, it works within a post-democratic setting without accountability or democratic control. We provide empirical evidence of these features and functions, including some indicative personal testimonies of austerity surveillance subjects. After presenting some cases of electronic surveillance as an indispensable supplement to AS, we then briefly underline the negative personal, and socio-political impact of this surveillance. In conclusion, a tentative assessment is made of AS' efficiency in the Greek case, comparing it with other types of past and present authoritarian surveillance in Greece and in other current surveillance societies, considering also the prospects for its abolition or its reproduction by the new leftist government