Cigarette Money and Black Market Prices around the 1948 German Miracle

This paper is an empirical study of the distribution of black prices among 120 Bavarian locations at two dates, the beginning of July, 1947 and the end of June, 1948. It shows huge differences in the liquidity of those goods either when measured with the coefficient of variation or the number of locations in which those goods were traded. The main finding is that liquidity of cigarette was very high either when measured by the coefficient of variation and or the number of counties that traded them. This made them special, even when compared with a pure fiat object such as the US dollar. Consistently with the insights of the modern theory of money, the high liquidity of cigarettes is indicative of its use as money.

The Economics of Badmouthing: Libel Law and the Underworld of the Financial Press in France before World War I

This article analyzes the economics of “badmouthing” in the context of the pre-1914 French capital market. We argue that badmouthing was a means through which racketeering journals sought to secure property rights over issuers’ reputation. We provide a theoretical study of the market setup that emerged to deal with such problems, and we test our predictions using new evidence from contemporary sources.badmouthing, capital market, reputation.

Side-slipping of a radiating particle

Radiation reaction is revisited, first in a new classical aproach, where the physical particle 4-momentum is redefined as the energy-momentum flux across the future light cone and is not parallel to the 4-velocity. Then in a semi-classical approach, it is shown that, when emitting a photon, the particle "side-slips" transversaly to its initial momentum, justifying the non-colinearity between momentum and mean velocity. Side-slipping is finally checked in a pure quantum mechanical treatment of synchrotron radiation.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. presented at the Int. Conf. QEDSP 2001, dedicated to the 90th anniversary of A.I.Akhiezer, Kharkov (Ukraine) Oct. 30 - Nov. 3, 2001 To appear in the proceeding

InSiDDe: A server for designing artificial disordered proteins

InSiDDe (In Silico Disorder Design) is a program for the in silico design of intrinsically disordered proteins of desired length and disorder probability. The latter is assessed using IUPred and spans values ranging from 0.55 to 0.95 with 0.05 increments. One to ten artificial sequences per query, each made of 50 to 200 residues, can be generated by InSiDDe. We describe the rationale used to set up InSiDDe and show that an artificial sequence of 100 residues with an IUPred score of 0.6 designed by InSiDDe could be recombinantly expressed in E. coli at high levels without degradation when fused to a natural molecular recognition element (MoRE). In addition, the artificial fusion protein exhibited the expected behavior in terms of binding modulation of the specific partner recognized by the MoRE. To the best of our knowledge, InSiDDe is the first publicly available software for the design of intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) sequences. InSiDDE is publicly available online

The Economics of Badmouthing: Libel Law and the Underworld of the Financial Press in France Before World War I

This article analyzes the economics of "badmouthing” in the context of the pre-1914 French capital market. We argue that badmouthing was a means through which racketeering journals sought to secure property rights over issuers' reputation. We provide a theoretical study of the market setup that emerged to deal with such problems, and we test our predictions using new evidence from contemporary sources. "A newspaper that wishes to make its fortune should never waste its columns and weary its readers by praising anything. Eulogy is invariably dull—a fact that Mr. Alf had discovered and utilized.” A. Trollope, The Way We Live Now, 1875 "And did you threaten him with the newspapers?” H. de Balzac, La maison Nucingen, 183

The Failure of a Clearinghouse: Empirical Evidence. ECMI Working Paper No. 6 / December 2017

This paper provides the first detailed empirical analysis of the failure of a derivatives clearinghouse: the Caisse de Liquidation, which defaulted in Paris in 1974. Using archival data, we find three main causes of the failure: i) a weak pool of investors, ii) the inability to contain the growth of a large member position and iii) risk-shifting decisions by the clearinghouse. Riskshifting incentives aligned the clearinghouse’s interests with those of the defaulting member, induced delays in the liquidation of the defaulted position and led attempts at privatee This paper provides the first detailed empirical analysis of the failure of a derivatives clearinghouse: the Caisse de Liquidation, which defaulted in Paris in 1974. Using archival data, we find three main causes of the failure: i) a weak pool of investors, ii) the inability to contain the growth of a large member position and iii) risk-shifting decisions by the clearinghouse. Riskshifting incentives aligned the clearinghouse’s interests with those of the defaulting member, induced delays in the liquidation of the defaulted position and led attempts at private renegotiation to fail. Our results hav This paper provides the first detailed empirical analysis of the failure of a derivatives clearinghouse: the Caisse de Liquidation, which defaulted in Paris in 1974. Using archival data, we find three main causes of the failure: i) a weak pool of investors, ii) the inability to contain the growth of a large member position and iii) risk-shifting decisions by the clearinghouse. Riskshifting incentives aligned the clearinghouse’s interests with those of the defaulting member, induced delays in the liquidation of the defaulted position and led attempts at private renegotiation to fail. Our results have implications for current policy debates on the design and resolution of clearing institutions

The price of media capture and the looting of newspapers in interwar France

This paper develops a new insight enabling the empirical study of media capture: minority shareholders of newspapers and readers face similar risks. Both are adversely affected when corrupt insiders use the newspaper for personal profit and receive invisible revenues. This means that relevant data on influence and exploitation of newspaper has been hiding in plain sight in stock exchange or over-the-counter prices, since stock transactions reflect the value of this capture. Empirical data is consistent with increasing levels of looting in France during the 1930s. We provide a comparison with Britain and argue that Britain managed to protect its newspapers better

How the Bank of France increased liquidity at no fiscal risk in the 1800’s

It screened and monitored institutions carefully, with strict internal governance to mitigate moral hazard, write Vincent Bignon and Maylis Avar