Beyond financial repression and regulatory capture: the recomposition of European financial ecosystems after the crisis. LEQS Paper No. 147/2019 September 2019

The financial crisis has radically changed the political economy of the European financial system. The evolution of relations between European states and their respective financial systems has given rise to two competing narratives. On the one hand, government agencies are often described as being at the mercy of the financial sector, regularly hijacking political, regulatory and supervisory processes. This trend is often referred to as "regulatory capture" and would explain the "soft touch" regulation and bank bailout. On the other hand, governments are portrayed as subverting markets and abusing the financial system for their benefit, mainly to obtain better financing conditions and allocate credit to the economy on preferential terms, a trend called "financial repression" that is considered corrosive to the proper functioning of free markets and a source of capital misallocation. This paper takes a critical look at this debate and argues that the relationship between governments and financial systems in Europe cannot be reduced to the polar notions of "capture" and "repression", but that the channels of pressure and influence between governments and their financial systems have often been bi-directional and mutually reinforcing

Why Bretton Woods nostalgia makes no sense

In the era of capital controls and fixed exchange rates, national business cycles were synchronised too, write Eric Monnet and Damien Pu

Europe between financial repression and regulatory capture. Bruegel Working Paper 2014/08, July 2014

From the Introduction. In the long shadow of the euro-area crisis, the relationship between governments and their banks has been brought to the the centre of the policy debate in Europe by the implementation of regulatory reforms, the risks associated with financial fragmentation, and the fight to sustain the flow of credit to governments and corporates. The attempt to interpret the patterns of pressure and influence running between governments and their financial system has led commentators to rediscover and give new life to concepts originating from academic debates of the 1970s such as “regulatory capture” and “financial repression”. Government agencies have been frequently described as being at the mercy of the financial sector, often allowing financial interests to hijack political, regulatory and supervisory processes in order to favouring their own private interests over the public good1. An opposite view has instead pointed the finger at governments, which have often been portrayed as subverting markets and abusing the financial system to their benefit, either in order to secure better financing conditions to overcome their own financial difficulties, or with the objective of directing credit to certain sectors of the economy, “repressing” the free functioning of financial markets and potentially the private interests of some of its participants

SAURON Observations of Disks in Early-Type Galaxies

We briefly describe the SAURON project, aimed at determining the intrinsic shape and internal dynamics of spheroids. We focus here on the ability of SAURON to identify gaseous and stellar disks and to measure their morphology and kinematics. We illustrate some of our results with complete maps of NGC3377, NGC3623, and NGC4365.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures (newpasp.sty). To appear in ASP Conf. Series "Galaxy Disks and Disk Galaxies", eds. J.G. Funes S.J. & E.M. Corsini. Version with full resolution images available at http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~bureau/pub_list.htm

Molecular Gas Dynamics in NGC 6946: a Bar-driven Nuclear Starburst "Caught in the Act"

We present high angular resolution ~1" and 0.6" mm-interferometric observations of the 12CO(1-0) and 12CO(2-1) line emission in the central 300pc of the late-type spiral galaxy NGC6946. The data, obtained with the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI), allow the first detection of a molecular gas spiral in the inner ~10" (270pc) with a large concentration of molecular gas (M(H_2) ~1.6x10^7M_sun) within the inner 60pc. This nuclear clump shows evidence for a ring-like geometry with a radius of ~10pc as inferred from the p-v diagrams. Both the distribution of the molecular gas as well as its kinematics can be well explained by the influence of an inner stellar bar of about 400pc length. A qualitative model of the expected gas flow shows that streaming motions along the leading sides of this bar are a plausible explanation for the high nuclear gas density. Thus, NGC6946 is a prime example of molecular gas kinematics being driven by a small-scale, secondary stellar bar.Comment: accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal; 47 pages, 17 figures, 1 tabl

Difficulties with Recovering The Masses of Supermassive Black Holes from Stellar Kinematical Data

We investigate the ability of three-integral, axisymmetric, orbit-based modeling algorithms to recover the parameters defining the gravitational potential (M/L ratio and black hole mass Mh) in spheroidal stellar systems using stellar kinematical data. We show that the potential estimation problem is generically under-determined when applied to long-slit kinematical data of the kind used in most black hole mass determinations to date. A range of parameters (M/L, Mh) can provide equally good fits to the data, making it impossible to assign best-fit values. We illustrate the indeterminacy using a variety of data sets derived from realistic models as well as published observations of the galaxy M32. In the case of M32, our reanalysis demonstrates that data published prior to 2000 are equally consistent with Mh in the range 1.5x10^6-5x10^6 solar masses, with no preferred value in that range. While the HST/STIS data for this galaxy may overcome the degeneracy in Mh, HST data for most galaxies do not resolve the black hole's sphere of influence and in these galaxies the degree of degeneracy allowed by the data may be substantial. We investigate the effect on the degeneracy of enforcing smoothness (regularization) constraints. However we find no indication that the true potential can be recovered simply by enforcing smoothness. For a given smoothing level, all solutions in the minimum-chisquare valley exhibit similar levels of noise. These experiments affirm that the indeterminacy is real and not an artifact associated with non-smooth solutions. (Abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. Changes include discussion of regularizatio

Faites vos jeux ! Rien ne va plus ? Les serious games en bibliothèque

Journée thématique organisée par un groupe d\u27élèves conservateurs, promotion DCB 21, en partenariat avec la délégation régionale Rhône-Alpes du CNFPT, la Direction de l\u27Europe, des relations internationales et de la coopération de la Région Rhône-Alpes et avec le soutien de l\u27ARALD et du CRDP de l\u27Académie de Lyon. Elle a bénéficié également de l\u27aide du Serious Game Expo de Lyon qui s\u27est tenue les 22 et 23 octobre 2012 à Lyon, Cité Internationale. "Comme en leur temps les bandes dessinées, les romans policiers ou les mangas, les serious games ont parfois du mal à obtenir l’aval des bibliothécaires : seraient-ils un « mauvais genre » dont il faudrait préserver les bibliothèques, ou au contraire une opportunité nouvelle de développer leur rôle éducatif et social parce qu’ils sont des jeux vidéo d’apprentissage ? Les serious games, en effet, peuvent se révéler des outils au service des missions des bibliothèques, ce qui leur donne toute leur légitimité. Les expérimentations actuelles, à l\u27étranger ou en France, montrent que ces interrogations sont à l’œuvre dans le monde professionnel. L’objet de cette journée a porté sur la définition de la notion de serious game puis sur sa spécificité par rapport aux autres produits numériques que peuvent promouvoir les bibliothèques (jeux vidéo, réseaux sociaux...). Il s’agit donc de sensibiliser les bibliothécaires, mais aussi les professionnels de la documentation, à la pratique et aux enjeux des serious games, autour des questions suivantes : comment les choisir ? Quels sont leurs avantages et leurs limites ? Comment monter un projet ? Quelles sont les médiations possibles ?