Corporate market responsibility for orderly financial markets: systemic risk and regulation following Citigroup, sovereign funds, and the credit crunch

How are companies responsible for helping to ensure orderly financial markets? In economic theory, the question is redundant, because orderly markets result from normal business activity, with support from regulators. Within the last few years, however, several episodes have suggested differently. Citigroup investment bank was fined for destabilising bond markets, despite being absolved of criminal conduct. Sovereign wealth funds were compelled to sign a code-of-conduct, to safeguard "free and open markets", despite having brought economic benefits globally. The US and UK governments described the most profitable financial decade in generations as an "age of irresponsibility", after it led to a crisis. These three episodes are the empirical focus of this thesis. The thesis develops a grounded theory of corporate market responsibility (CMR)- an expectation by regulators and other actors that firms will help to regulate systemic risk in financial markets through discretionary activities that supplement regulatory requirements. This expectation explains the controversies, and may help us to anticipate and understand similar episodes in future. Further, it is argued that observing CMR conduct - which relates to risk management, investment policy, and proactive improvement - decreases regulatory risk for financial firms, while not observing it increases regulatory risk. The primary reason for this is that CMR conduct is perceived to reduce systemic risk, and state actors regard market governance as a shared responsibility with firms. In addition to framing these controversies, CMR theory contributes to our understanding of several concepts in decentralised governance and regulatory capitalism. It illustrates a substantive model of meta-regulation - that is, the regulation of corporate self-regulation. As such, it illustrates substantive limits for private authority and its legitimacy. The observation of CMR also reveals new dimensions of sociological processes in financial governance, particularly markets' social embedded ness, and actors' reliance on performative market models. Finally, CMR illustrates a governance model combining incentives with ethics, as regulators seek to de-legitimise regulatory arbitrage by firms. The analysis concludes by arguing that CMR is increasingly relevant for other substantive contexts such as the hedge funds industry and private markets like 'dark pools'

The significance of sample mass in the analysis of steroid estrogens in sewage sludges and the derivation of partition coefficients in wastewaters

Optimization of an analytical method for determination of steroid estrogens, through minimizing sample size, resulted in recoveries >84%, with relative standard deviations <3% and demonstrated the significance of sample size on method performance. Limits of detection were 2.1–5.3 ng/g. Primary sludges had estrogen concentrations of up to one order of magnitude less than those found in biological sludges (up to 994 ng/g). However, partition coefficients were higher in primary sludges (except estriol), with the most hydrophobic compound (ethinylestradiol) exhibiting the highest Kp value, information which may be of value to those involved in modeling removal during wastewater treatment

Corporate market responsibility for orderly financial markets: systemic risk and regulation following Citigroup, sovereign funds, and the credit crunch

How are companies responsible for helping to ensure orderly financial markets? In economic theory, the question is redundant, because orderly markets result from normal business activity, with support from regulators. Within the last few years, however, several episodes have suggested differently. Citigroup investment bank was fined for destabilising bond markets, despite being absolved of criminal conduct. Sovereign wealth funds were compelled to sign a code-of-conduct, to safeguard "free and open markets", despite having brought economic benefits globally. The US and UK governments described the most profitable financial decade in generations as an "age of irresponsibility", after it led to a crisis. These three episodes are the empirical focus of this thesis. The thesis develops a grounded theory of corporate market responsibility (CMR)- an expectation by regulators and other actors that firms will help to regulate systemic risk in financial markets through discretionary activities that supplement regulatory requirements. This expectation explains the controversies, and may help us to anticipate and understand similar episodes in future. Further, it is argued that observing CMR conduct - which relates to risk management, investment policy, and proactive improvement - decreases regulatory risk for financial firms, while not observing it increases regulatory risk. The primary reason for this is that CMR conduct is perceived to reduce systemic risk, and state actors regard market governance as a shared responsibility with firms. In addition to framing these controversies, CMR theory contributes to our understanding of several concepts in decentralised governance and regulatory capitalism. It illustrates a substantive model of meta-regulation - that is, the regulation of corporate self-regulation. As such, it illustrates substantive limits for private authority and its legitimacy. The observation of CMR also reveals new dimensions of sociological processes in financial governance, particularly markets' social embedded ness, and actors' reliance on performative market models. Finally, CMR illustrates a governance model combining incentives with ethics, as regulators seek to de-legitimise regulatory arbitrage by firms. The analysis concludes by arguing that CMR is increasingly relevant for other substantive contexts such as the hedge funds industry and private markets like 'dark pools'

Supplying new cocoa planting material to farmers: a review of propagation methodologies

The review, coordinated by Bioversity International, presents an impartial, evidence-based review of cacao propagation methods, to serve as a basis for the assessment and implementation of strategies for providing farmers with quality planting materials, adapted to current and future needs (cultural, institutional, technical, environmental and financial). It describes the various propagation methods available for the production and supply of large numbers of cacao plants to growers. It is hoped that the result of the efforts of the key authors provides a basis to build on for case-specific recommendations. As the supply of new improved planting material to farmers is at the heart of improving cocoa productivity and modernizing the crop, we hope that the information in the review will make its way into national cocoa plans, and help to make cocoa farming more attractive and more sustainable

Bloch Brane

We investigate a system described by two real scalar fields coupled with gravity in (4, 1) dimensions in warped spacetime involving one extra dimension. The results show that the parameter which controls the way the two scalar fields interact induces the appearence of thick brane which engenders internal structure, driving the energy density to localize inside the brane in a very specific way.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures; some misprints corrected, to appear in JHE

Organic film thickness influence on the bias stress instability in Sexithiophene Field Effect Transistors

In this paper, the dynamics of bias stress phenomenon in Sexithiophene (T6) Field Effect Transistors (FETs) has been investigated. T6 FETs have been fabricated by vacuum depositing films with thickness from 10 nm to 130 nm on Si/SiO2 substrates. After the T6 film structural analysis by X-Ray diffraction and the FET electrical investigation focused on carrier mobility evaluation, bias stress instability parameters have been estimated and discussed in the context of existing models. By increasing the film thickness, a clear correlation between the stress parameters and the structural properties of the organic layer has been highlighted. Conversely, the mobility values result almost thickness independent

Lorentz-violating effects on topological defects generated by two real scalar fields

The influence of a Lorentz-violation on soliton solutions generated by a system of two coupled scalar fields is investigated. Lorentz violation is induced by a fixed tensor coefficient that couples the two fields. The Bogomol'nyi method is applied and first-order differential equations are obtained whose solutions minimize energy and are also solutions of the equations of motion. The analysis of the solutions in phase space shows how the stability is modified with the Lorentz violation. It is shown explicitly that the solutions preserve linear stability despite the presence of Lorentz violation. Considering Lorentz violation as a small perturbation, an analytical method is employed to yield analytical solutions.Comment: (9 pages, 11 figures

Comprehensive evaluation of the linear stability of Alfvén eigenmodes driven by alpha particles in an ITER baseline scenario

The linear stability of Alfvén eigenmodes in the presence of fusion-born alpha particles is thoroughly assessed for two variants of an ITER baseline scenario, which differ significantly in their core and pedestal temperatures. A systematic approach based on CASTOR-K (Borba and Kerner 1999 J. Comput. Phys. 153 101; Nabais et al 2015 Plasma Sci. Technol. 17 89) is used that considers all possible eigenmodes for a given magnetic equilibrium and determines their growth rates due to alpha-particle drive and Landau damping on fuel ions, helium ashes and electrons. It is found that the fastest growing instabilities in the aforementioned ITER scenario are core-localized, low-shear toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes. The largest growth-rates occur in the scenario variant with higher core temperatures, which has the highest alpha-particle density and density gradient, for eigenmodes with toroidal mode numbers . Although these eigenmodes suffer significant radiative damping, which is also evaluated, their growth rates remain larger than those of the most unstable eigenmodes found in the variant of the ITER baseline scenario with lower core temperatures, which have and are not affected by radiative damping

Sensitivity of alpha-particle-driven Alfvén eigenmodes to q-profile variation in ITER scenarios

A perturbative hybrid ideal-MHD/drift-kinetic approach to assess the stability of alpha-particle-driven Alfv�n eigenmodes in burning plasmas is used to show that certain foreseen ITER scenarios, namely the MA baseline scenario with very low and broad core magnetic shear, are sensitive to small changes in the background magnetic equilibrium. Slight variations (of the order of ) of the safety-factor value on axis are seen to cause large changes in the growth rate, toroidal mode number, and radial location of the most unstable eigenmodes found. The observed sensitivity is shown to proceed from the very low magnetic shear values attained throughout the plasma core, raising issues about reliable predictions of alpha-particle transport in burning plasmas