Scale economies and technological change in Federal Reserve ACH payment processing

An analysis of the contribution of scale economies, technological change, and falling input prices to the absolute reduction in the real processing costs of an ACH transfer over the 1979-94 period.Clearinghouses (Banking)

Estimates of scale and cost efficiency for Federal Reserve currency operations

Meeting the currency demands of depository institutions, businesses, and consumers costs the Federal Reserve more than half a billion dollars each year, yet, very little research has been devoted to understanding what factors affect such costs. The authors estimate a cost function in order to obtain estimates of scale and cost efficiency for this service. They find that as in other paper-based technologies, such as checks, scale economies are achieved at a relatively low level of output, implying that currency services are not a natural monopoly. They also provide estimates of facility-specific marginal costs and returns to scale measures that could be used to improve resource allocations. Lastly, they find that the average processing facility operates at more 80 percent of the efficiency of the “best practice” facility, comparable to cost efficiency estimates that have been reported elsewhere for private-sector financial institutions.Federal Reserve banks - Costs ; Payment systems

Federal Home Loan Bank advances and commercial bank portfolio composition

This paper considers the role of Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances in stabilizing their commercial bank members' residential mortgage lending activities. Our theoretical model shows that using mortgage-related membership criteria or requiring mortgage-related collateral does not ensure that FHLB advances will be put to use for stabilizing members' financing of housing. Using panel vector autoregression (VAR) techniques, we estimate recent dynamic responses of U.S. bank portfolios to FHLB advance shocks, bank lending shocks, and macroeconomic shocks. Our empirical findings suggest that FHLB advances are just as likely to fund other types of bank credit as to fund single-family mortgages.

A reconsideration of the risk sensitivity of U.S. banking organization subordinated debt spreads: a sample selection approach

The authors estimate a sample selection model over three distinct regulatory "regimes" when the treatment of bank bondholders (in the event of bank failures) differed substantially. They then estimate their selection model to test the strength of bond market discipline over these three regulatory regimes, finding that bank bond spreads are positively associated with bank risk measures during all three regimes, even during the too-big-to-fail period.Bank assets ; Debt management ; Banks and banking - Ratio analysis ; Deposit insurance

Dawn or Doom: The Risks and Rewards of Emerging Technologies

Dawn or Doom is a free and open to the public conference at Purdue where we focus on benefits and risks surrounding some of the technologies that are both the most disruptive to current practices and being adopted the fastest. A collection of Purdue faculty experts and some outside speakers showcase their many perspectives related to this technology explosion, explore conditions that will foster innovation and investment into the next generation, and address the big-picture issues where both optimism and pessimism are warranted

Structural studies of a lipid-binding peptide from tunicate hemocytes with anti-biofilm activity

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Clavanins is a class of peptides (23aa) histidine-rich, free of post-translational modifications. Clavanins have been studied largely for their ability to disrupt bacterial membranes. In the present study, the interaction of clavanin A with membranes was assessed by dynamic light scattering, zeta potential and permeabilization assays. We observed through those assays that clavanin A lysis bacterial cells at concentrations corresponding to its MIC. Further, the structure and function of clavanin A was investigated. To better understand how clavanin interacted with bacteria, its NMR structure was elucidated. The solution state NMR structure of clavanin A in the presence of TFE-d3 indicated an α-helical conformation. Secondary structures, based on circular dichroism measurements in anionic sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and TFE (2,2,2-trifluorethanol), in silico lipid-peptide docking and molecular simulations with lipids DPPC and DOPC revealed that clavanin A can adopt a variety of folds, possibly influencing its different functions. Microcalorimetry assays revealed that clavanin A was capable of discriminating between different lipids. Finally, clavanin A was found to eradicate bacterial biofilms representing a previously unrecognized function.We would like to thank CNPq, CAPES (Ciências sem Fronteiras), FAPDF and FUNDECT. D.G. acknowledges Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - Ministério da Educação e Ciência (FCT-MEC, Portugal) for fellowship SFRH/BPD/73500/2010 and A.S.V. for funding within the FCT Investigator Programme (IF/00803/2012).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio