Monte Carlo simulation for radiative kaon decays

For high precision measurements of K decays, the presence of radiated photons cannot be neglected. The Monte Carlo simulations must include the radiative corrections in order to compute the correct event counting and efficiency calculations. In this paper we briefly describe a method for simulating such decays.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

Why are Switzerland's Foreign Assets so Low? The Growing Financial Exposure of a Small Open Economy

Switzerland’s international investment position shows a puzzling feature since 1999: Large and persistent current account surpluses have failed to boost the value of Swiss foreign assets. In this paper, we link this pattern to the substantial increase in the leveraging of Switzerland’s international assets and liabilities over the last twenty years, which we document in detail. We estimate the impact of exchange rate and asset prices movements on Swiss net foreign assets, and show that they led to substantial valuations losses since 1999, accounting for between one-quarter and one-half of the gap between the net foreign assets and cumulated current account flows. We show how these adverse valuation effects have erased Switzerland’s advantage in terms of the yield on its net foreign asset position

The Role of Macroprudential Policy for Financial Stability in East Asia’s Emerging Economies

This paper analyzes the role and scope of macroprudential policy in preventing financial instability in the context of East Asian economies. It analyzes the behavior of the housing market in a dynamic setting to identify some of the factors responsible for the volatility of housing markets and their susceptibility to boom-bust cycles, which it identifies as a key source of financial imbalances in these economies. It then discusses the causal nexus between price and financial stability and the roles and complementary nature of macroprudential and monetary policies in addressing aggregate risk in the financial system. The paper identifies currency and maturity mismatches, which contributed to the 1997 - 1998 Asian financial crisis, as ongoing concerns in these economies although the high levels of reserves in the region now act as a buffer

Commercial Bank Innovations in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Finance: Global Models and Implications for Thailand

In Thailand, the government has long recognized the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the economy and has given a large amount of financial support to this sector. Still, SMEs are not able to catch up with larger enterprises and the constraints to SME financing remain the main topic of policy discussion today. Against this background, the important issue for Thailand may not be about the lack of financial assistance per se but about how to design an appropriate market-friendly business model and supporting scheme to help SMEs gain access to credit on a sustainable basis. Given the success of microfinance around the world, a large number of commercial banks have made a profitable business out of this sector. This paper explores various business models by commercial banks in microfinance and provides policy implications for Thailand. By making use of commercial banks' competitive advantage, Thailand can create a more market-friendly environment for SME financing. This will also ensure that lending to small-business clients is not a burden to the government and is self-sustaining in the long run

Advanced Virgo Plus. Future perspectives

While completing the commissioning phase to prepare the Virgo interferometer for the next joint Observation Run (O4), the Virgo collaboration is also finalizing the design of the next upgrades to the detector to be employed in the following Observation Run (O5). The major upgrade will concern decreasing the thermal noise limit, which will imply using very large test masses and increased laser beam size. But this will not be the only upgrade to be implemented in the break between the O4 and O5 observation runs to increase the Virgo detector strain sensitivity. The paper will cover the challenges linked to this upgrade and implications on the detector’s reach and observational potential, reflecting the talk given at 12th Cosmic Ray International Seminar - CRIS 2022 held in September 2022 in Napoli

Measurement of D+- and D0 production in deep inelastic scattering using a lifetime tag at HERA

The production of D-+/-- and D-0-mesons has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 133.6 pb(-1). The measurements cover the kinematic range 5 < Q(2) < 1000 GeV2, 0.02 < y < 0.7, 1.5 < p(T)(D) < 15 GeV and |eta(D)| < 1.6. Combinatorial background to the D-meson signals is reduced by using the ZEUS microvertex detector to reconstruct displaced secondary vertices. Production cross sections are compared with the predictions of next-to-leading-order QCD, which is found to describe the data well. Measurements are extrapolated to the full kinematic phase space in order to obtain the open-charm contribution, F-2(c (c) over bar), to the proton structure function, F-2