Financial Crises In Spain: Lessons From The Last 150 Years

The financial disturbances that originated in the US in the second half of 2007 are the latest in a series of episodes in various regions of the world in recent years. However, financial crises are not unique to current financial systems, history being full of banking and exchange rate crises. Are crises alike? Do they share similar features or, on the contrary, are they strikingly distinct? Have they become more frequent, longer-lasting and more severe since the 20th century? Are we now living in a more vulnerable financial world? What does history tell us when comparing past and present crises? This paper chooses to address some of these questions for the case of Spain. The objective of this paper is to study the financial crises that have occurred in Spain over the last 150 years. Data are revised and different indicators constructed to identify financial crises. We consider all types of crises, namely currency, banking, stock market and debt crises and all their possible combinations, estimate their frequency by period and measure their length and depth. The Spanish case is compared to the results obtained for multi-country analyses in order to test whether the general conclusions obtained in those papers hold for one sole country. Finally, we perform an analysis of the main financial crises in order to establish hypotheses that could be tested in future research.financial crises, currency, banking, stock market and debt crises, Spanish banking history.

Financial crises and financial reforms in Spain : what have we learned?

Like the rest of the world, Spain has suffered frequent financial crises and undergone several changes in its regulatory framework. There have been crises that have been followed by reforms of the financial structure, and also troubled financial times with no modification of the regulatory and supervisory regime. In various instances, regulatory changes have predated financial crises, but in others banking crises have occurred without reference to changes in the regulatory regime. Regulation and supervision has been usually absent in the XIXth century, while in the XXth century policy makers have been more active and diligent. Moreover, all major financial crises have been followed by intense financial restructuring, although as elsewhere banking restructuring and interventions not always have been successful (in fact, the cases of failures and mixed results overcome the successful cases). The paper provides a short history of the major financial crises in Spain from 1856 to the present, and also reviews the main financial reforms and the distinctive regulatory regimes that have been in place in this last 150 years time span

Evaluation of the Magnetic Field Generated by the Inverter of an Electric Vehicle

In hybrid and electric vehicles, passengers sit very close to an electric system of significant power, which means that they may be subjected to high electromagnetic fields. The hazards of long-term exposure to these fields must be taken into account when designing electric vehicles and their components. Among all the electric devices present in the power train, the electronic converter is the most difficult to analyze, given that it works with different frequencies. In this paper, a methodology to evaluate the magnetic field created by a power electronics converter is proposed. After a brief overview of the recommendations of electromagnetic fields exposure, the magnetic field produced by an inverter is analyzed using finite element techniques. The results obtained are compared to laboratory measurements, taken from a real inverter, in order to validate the model. Finally, results are used to draw some conclusions regarding vehicle design criteria and magnetic shielding efficiency

Energy Storage Systems for Electric Vehicles: Performance Comparison based on a Simple Equivalent Circuit and Experimental Tests

The decision to select the most suitable type of energy storage system for an electric vehicle is always difficult, since many conditionings must be taken into account. Sometimes, this study can be made by means of complex mathematical models which represent the behavior of a battery, ultracapacitor or some other devices. However, these models are usually too dependent on parameters that are not easily available, which usually results in nonrealistic results. Besides, the more accurate the model, the more specific it needs to be, which becomes an issue when comparing systems of different nature. This paper proposes a practical methodology to compare different energy storage technologies. This is done by means of a linear approach of an equivalent circuit based on laboratory tests. Via these tests, the internal resistance and the self-discharge rate are evaluated, making it possible to compare different energy storage systems regardless their technology. Rather simple testing equipment is sufficient to give a comparative idea of the differences between each system, concerning issues such as efficiency, heating and self-discharge, when operating under a certain scenario. The proposed methodology is applied to four energy storage systems of different nature for the sake of illustration

REST service testing based on inferred XML schemas

The concept of service oriented architecture has been extensively explored in software engineering, due to the fact that it produces architectures made up of several interconnected modules, easy to reuse when building new systems. This approach to design would be impossible without interconnection mechanisms such as REST (Representationa State Transfer) services, which allow module communication while minimizing coupling. . However, this low coupling brings disadvantages, such as the lack of transparency, which makes it difficult to sistematically create tests without knowledge of the inner working of a system. In this article, we present an automatic error detection system for REST services, based on a statistical analysis over responses produced at multiple service invocations. Thus, a service can be systematically tested without knowing its full specification. The method can find errors in REST services which could not be identified by means of traditional testing methods, and provides limited testing coverage for services whose response format is unknown. It can be also useful as a complement to other testing mechanisms

Sistema de pruebas de servicios REST mediante análisis de esquemas inferidos

A lo largo de los últimos años, el paradigma de la arquitectura orientada a servicios ha tenido una gran expansión gracias a la expansión de las tecnologías web e internet. Las ventajas de esta arquitectura se basan en ofrecer diseños modulares con poco acoplamiento entre sí, lo que permite la creación eficiente y sistemática de sistemas distribuidos. Para que este tipo de arquitectura sea posible, es necesario dotar a los servicios de interfaces de interconexión que permitan encapsular los servicios al mismo tiempo que faciliten el uso de los mismos. Existen varias tecnologías para definir estos interfaces. Entre ellas, los servicios REST, o REpresentional State Transfer, están logrando cada vez más aceptación. Esto se debe principalmente a su capacidad de escalabilidad y la uniformidad de sus interfaces, que permite una mayor separación entre los consumidores y los servicios. De hecho, compañias como Yahoo, Google o Twitter definen interfaces REST de acceso a sus servicios, ya se para consultar mapas (GoogleMaps), imágenes (Flickr) o el correo, permitiendo a terceros desarrollar clientes para sus servicios sin tener que involucrarse en su producción