Retail Interest Rate Pass-Through - The Irish Experience

In this paper, we examine the extent to which changes in the money market interest rate are passed through to a number of retail lending rates between 1980 and 2001. In addition, we analyse the speed of adjustment of these lending rates with respect to such changes in the money market rate. Our main findings are - (1) pass-through from the money market rate to lending rates is not complete (2) the speed of adjustment varies quite considerably across alternative lending rates and (3) there has been significant structural change in the relationship between the money market rate and lending rates both in terms of pass-through and speed of adjustment during this period.

Barriers and Supports Affecting the Inclusion of Special Education Issues into the Preservice Training of School Principals: Faculty Perceptions.

The literature contains repeated claims that most aspiring principals have limited academic knowledge and exposure to special education related issues. However in this same literature there is substantial discussion that, for prospective administrators to be prepared to deal with the ever-increasing demands of special education, principal preparation programs need to increase the amount of instructional time and structured experiences related to special education issues. This qualitative study gives voice to faculty directly involved in the preservice training of principals in this ongoing call to reform principal preparation programs and increase the attention paid to issues concerning special education. In addition, this study offers insight into the nature of the supports and barriers that influence faculty in their decisions to include or exclude special education issues in course curricula and among departmental requirements for students in principal preparation programs. The results indicated that faculty often are untrained, inexperienced, or disinterested in special education and, because of academic freedom, may freely exclude special education topics from the courses they teach. Faculty often inadvertently assume that special education is a topic that can be delegated to another department member who is more knowledgeable, better trained, or has a passion for addressing special education issues. Findings also indicated that faculty members often perceived a belief among their colleagues that special education-related topics can be delegated to others. In addition, students enrolled in principal preparation programs were noted to often be as untrained, inexperienced, or disinterested in special education issues as the faculty who prepare them

Retail Interest Rate Pass-Through: The Irish Experience

Most central banks use a short-term interest rate such as the one-month money market interest rate as their main instrument of monetary policy. Changes to this short-term interest rate are the first important step in the transmission of monetary policy. Consumption and investment decisions made by households and firms will be affected by the rate of interest rate charged to them by banks and other financial intermediaries. A critical element of the transmission of monetary policy is the degree and speed at which changes in the short-term policy rate are transmitted to retail rates faced by firms and households. The term pass through refers to the extent to which changes in money market rates are reflected in changes in retail rates. This paper aims at increasing our understanding of this particular aspect of the monetary transmission mechanism in an Irish context between 1980 and 2001. In particular, we seek to answer two questions. 1) To what extent are changes in the one-month money-market rate passed through to various retail lending rates? 2) What is the speed at which changes in this money market rate transmitted to these lending rates? Understanding this process is important since it will determine in part how sensitive the domestic economy is to monetary policy changes as well as determining the speed at which the real economy responds to such policy rate changes. One of our main findings is that pass through from the money market rates to retail lending rates is not complete. In other words, lending rates respond less than one for one to changes in money market rates. For example, a one per cent change in the money market rate results in less than 0.8 of one per cent pass through to mortgage rates. Our results for the speed of adjustment are consistent with those of previous international studies. A significant part of our analysis is that we document the effect of a number of the more substantial developments in the financial environment over the sample period, namely, the institutional arrangements regarding the setting of retail rates, changes in competition and regulatory regimes in financial markets and changes in the conduct and operation of monetary policy. We find that such structural change has had a significant effect on the relationship between the money market rate and the various lending rates both in terms of pass through and speed of adjustment during this period. For example, we find that the dismantling of so called ‘matrix’ (an agreement on the setttng of various retail rates between the Central Bank and the Associated Banks) led to an increase in the degree of pass through between the money market rate and all lending rates considered. Failure to account for such change will lead to biased estimates of both the degree of and speed of pass through from money market rates to lending rates.

Getting out of the car: an institutional/evolutionary approach to sustainable transport policies

Orthodox economics sees transport as a market which can be made more sustainable by improving its self-regulating capacity. To date this static approach has not been able to limit the growing demand for transport and its increasing environmental impact. Better results might be obtained by using evolutionary and institutional economics. Starting from these theories, a sustainable transport policy should be based on three fundamental considerations. First, transport is not a market, but a sum of systems affected by path-dependence and lock-in phenomena. Second, transport is not sustainable because it is locked in environmentally sub-optimal systems. Third, structural changes in technologies and organisations, institutions, and values are needed to establish more sustainable transport systems. We give an example of the use of an institutional/evolutionary approach to sustainable transport policies in the transition from the system of mass motorisation to the new urban mobility system

Evaluation of the strain-line patterns in a human left ventricle: A simulation study

The aim of this paper is to emphasise the role of the primary strain-line patterns in a human left ventricle (LV) within the complex system that is the heart. In particular, a protocol is proposed for the measurement of the principal strain lines (PSL) in the walls of the LV; this protocol is tested by means of a computational model which resembles a human LV. When the analysis is focused on the epicardial surface, PSL can be used to derive information on the directions of muscle fibres during the entire cardiac cycle, not only the systolic phase. © 2013 Taylor & Francis