Mitigating Procyclicality due to Minimum Capital Requirements in the Swedish Banking Sector

This study explores methods for mitigating procyclicality due to calculations of minimum capital requirements to cover credit risk. The basis for calculations are provided by the Basel Committee in the Basel accords and the main concern is that they could strengthen the amplitude of economic cycle fluctuations. Our study constructs a portfolio that aims to replicate the Swedish market for corporate lending by using external Probability of Default data for Swedish companies in the span of 2005-2013. The data is used together with the Basel guidelines for calculations to compute the corresponding minimum capital requirements series, which in turn is used in testing four different options to prevent the apparent procyclical behaviour. The evaluation of the options is conducted by comparing the root-mean-square deviations of the adjusted series with respect to the Hodrick-Prescott trend of the unadjusted series. It turns out that adjusting the input with logistic regression or the output with a business multiplier are the best performing options, where the latter is favoured due to its simplicity in implementation. Key Words: Credit Risk, Procyclicality, Regulatory Capital, Minimum Capital Requirements, Basel III, Economic Cycles, Probability of Defaul

Osäkerhet i förorten - En kritisk diskursanalys av Aftonbladets rapportering av säkerheten i Biskopsgården

During the last few years Gothenburg in Sweden has been crippled by a vast number of social and criminal injustices. Among them are shootings, murders and the increasingly poor social welfare for the inhabitants. One of the areas that have taken the hardest toll by this is Biskopsgården. Besides being havocked by shootouts between local gangs, murders being the rule rather than exception, it also have to cope with very high rates of unemployment, a bad housing situation and a deeply rooted disconnection from the rest of society. With the application of ”Human security”- theories, bred from the field of critical security studies, I used a critical discourse analysis to pinpoint the effect that the reporting of the largest national news provider, Aftonbladet, had on the discourse surrounding the urban area of Biskopsgården. By applying a variation of narrow and broad definitions of security, my results have shown that many different threats to security have, and still do, affect the lives of the inhabitants

Improvement in survival of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in relation to age, gender, International Prognostic Index and extranodal presentation: a population based Swedish Lymphoma Registry study

Our aim was to describe a large population-based cohort of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) during the last decade, evaluating possible improvement in survival and to identify subgroups in need of novel treatment strategies. The study population encompassed all patients diagnosed with DLBCL in Sweden from 2000 through 2010. Altogether 5349 patients were identified. There was no increase in incidence for females, but for males there was an estimated yearly increase in incidence by 0.019 per 10 000. When adjusted for age and gender, the improvement in overall survival for the whole group was estimated at 4.5% per year, most prominent in the age group 60-78 years, and in patients with good performance status. In this large dataset, we were able to detect a clear improvement in overall survival in DLBCL, although restricted to specific prognostic subgroups, and to identify specific disease presentations that significantly affect overall survival

Beyond Crowdsourcing: Working With Donors, Student Fieldworkers, and Community Scholars to Improve Cultural Heritage Collection Metadata

Utah State University Libraries (USU) employs community-based crowdsourcing metadata practices that provide in-depth, collaborative strategies that go beyond more commonly used collecting methods. Improved metadata quality is a result of working closely with donors, community scholars, students, and the public to describe cultural heritage collections fairly and thoroughly. This article provides an overview of successful ways to collaborate with those outside of traditional library units to create more diverse, equitable and inclusive descriptions of archival resources

Utah State University - University Libraries Metadata Application Profile for CONTENTdm Digital Collections, version 2.0

The Utah State University Libraries Digital Collections Application Profile outlines the metadata fields, mappings, definitions, and resources used to assign metadata for digital collections in the USU CONTENTdm repository. Utah State University is a collection partner of the Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL). Therefore, this profile pulls substantially from the MWDL application profile 3.0, which is available at this URL: https://github.com/mountainwestdl/mwdl-map/wiki/MWDL-Metadata-Application-Profil

Mot ett mål utan karta - En studie av hur förvaltningen styrs genom miljökvalitetsmålet Giftfri miljö

År 2010 fastslogs de idag gällande 16 nationella miljökvalitetsmålen i Sveriges riksdag. Bland dessa är Giftfri miljö kanske ett av de mest komplexa målen att uppnå. Vi har med hjälp av beprövade teorier om förvaltningsstyrning inordnat de offentliga styrdokumenten direkt anknutna till miljömålet i styrningsdimensioner för att avgöra vilken typ av styrning som utspelar sig från regering och riksdag till central, regional och lokal förvaltningsnivå och hur den har påverkat respektive aktör. Vi har kunnat se, trots försök att precisera styrningen, att de dokument som ligger till grund för arbetet lämnar oväntat stort spelrum för styrda aktörer att tolka enligt egna preferenser och prioriteringar. Baserat på styrningsanalysen har vi med grund i aktuell miljöpolitisk konstruktiv teori diskuterat miljökvalitetsmålet Giftfri miljös inverkan i förvaltningen och begrundat alternativa lösningar såsom gränslös liberal demokrati och utökade mänskliga rättigheter

MARC-y MARC and the Coding Bunch

MARC records were identified, isolated from the other search results, then analyzed and individually coded. Coding identified where search terms appeared in a record, determined whether search terms were present in full or in part within those fields, and ascertained what prominent categories of fields were missing from records. Analysis of results ultimately showed that including notes and summaries into catalog records is important for content retrieval, while subject headings were not as impactful for access, but may be valuable to a subset of users who take the additional step of viewing the complete records

Analyzing Discoverability in an MPLP World: How Levels of Description Impact Findability

Libraries and archives have differing opinions on how much effort to put into content description. Yet, descriptive practices meant to reduce processing time and increase exposure to collections can have unintended impacts on long-term user discovery. This project tests minimal and full description to determine the effects on discoverability

On Your MARC, Get Set, Code!

How are MARC records performing in our search environment? This presentation will look at the process and results of a research project that analyzed how users’ search terms matched up with MARC fields, as well as how and where MARC records were displayed in search results lists. Presenters will discuss the process, the results of the project, and outline how attendees can implement similar research projects at their institutions, including tools and techniques they can use to analyze how their own records are surfacing in a search environment