Domesticating Fears and Fantasies of ‘the East’: integrating the Ottoman legacy within European heritage

'Europe' has no fixed geographical, historical, religious or cultural boundaries. Claims for the existence of European civilization as a discrete construct are continually made yet dissolve on close scrutiny. Here, we examine these claims at one of the grandest points of existential crisis and belonging for Europe, the relationship with the 'Other within': Turkey, the Balkans and Ottoman heritage in Europe. Through a hybrid semiotic and Foucauldian analysis of catalogues of eight high-profile exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium and Portugal we argue that an unsettled discursive struggle is at play, in which one 'Europe' articulates 'reconciliation' of profound civilizational difference while another, Ottoman, 'Europe' stakes a claim of right as an intrinsic component of what it means to be European in a contemporary context. We attempt to trace the role of museum marketing in the perennial accommodation/exclusion of the Ottoman Empire as an intrinsic component in the diversity of Europe’s cultural heritage

Middle East - North Africa and the millennium development goals : implications for German development cooperation

          Closed-loop controlled combustion is a promising technique to improve the overall performance of internal combustion engines and Diesel engines in particular. In order for this technique to be implemented some form of feedback from the combustion process is required. The feedback signal is processed and from it combustionrelated parameters are computed. These parameters are then fed to a control process which drives a series of outputs (e.g. injection timing in Diesel engines) to control their values. This paper’s focus lies on the processing and computation that is needed on the feedback signal before this is ready to be fed to the control process as well as on the electronics necessary to support it. A number of feedback alternatives are briefly discussed and for one of them, the in-cylinder pressure sensor, the CA50 (crank angle in which the integrated heat release curve reaches its 50% value) and the IMEP (Indicated Mean Effective Pressure) are identified as two potential control variables. The hardware architecture of a system capable of calculating both of them on-line is proposed and necessary feasibility size and speed considerations are made by implementing critical blocks in VHDL targeting a flash-based Actel ProASIC3 automotive-grade FPGA

Bank Behavior in Response to Basel Iii

This paper investigates the impact of the new capital requirements introduced under the Basel III framework on bank lending rates and loan growth. Higher capital requirements, by raising banks’ marginal cost of funding, lead to higher lending rates. The data presented in the paper suggest that large banks would on average need to increase their equity-to-asset ratio by 1.3 percentage points under the Basel III framework. GMM estimations indicate that this would lead large banks to increase their lending rates by 16 basis points, causing loan growth to decline by 1.3 percent in the long run. The results also suggest that banks’ responses to the new regulations will vary considerably from one advanced economy to another (e.g. a relatively large impact on loan growth in Japan and Denmark and a relatively lower impact in the U.S.) depending on cross-country variations in banks’ net cost of raising equity and the elasticity of loan demand with respect to changes in loan rates.Commercial banks;Bank supervision;Monetary policy;Banking sector;Basel Core Principles;Developed countries;Economic models;banking, banking crisis, interest expense, bank capital, crisis countries, financial crisis, return on equity, bank holding, banking crises, bank holding companies, bank profitability, bank equity, net interest margin, capital requirement, bank of international settlements, capital adequacy, financial crises, banking system, bank loans, bank lending, bank behavior, bank lending rates, banking supervisors, banks loans, bank regulation, bank data, tier 1 capital, loan loss provision, systemic banking crisis, capital regulation, return on assets, systemic financial crises, banking systems, monetary authority, risk weighted asset, bank borrowing, deposit guarantee, bank holding company, too big to fail ? banks, crisis episodes, resolution of banking crises, bank deposits, bank assets, systemic risk, bankruptcies, central banking, debt financing, bank capital standards, bank management, nonperforming loan, banking industry, bank reserves, deposit guarantee schemes, holding company, bank issues, bank for international settlements

U.S. Bank Behavior in the Wake of the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis

The paper examines the slowdown of lending by large U.S. banks over the period 2007Q3 - 2009Q2, focusing on: (i) whether capital or liquidity was the binding constraint; (ii) factors influencing banks’ decision to hold capital; and (iii) their pricing behavior. Using quarterly data for the largest U.S. banks, the paper finds that capital, rather than liquidity, constrained lending. Banks took actions to increase capital by slowing lending and raising profit margins, not fully passing through the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts. Banks optimally choose capital based on the expected future demand for loans and the marginal cost of capital.Commercial banks;Bank credit;Interest rates on loans;Global Financial Crisis 2008-2009;Liquidity;banking, bank holding, bank holding companies, capital ratio, bank capital, capital loss, banking system, capital losses, liquid asset, interest expense, net interest margin, bank lending, banking activities, bank behavior, tier 1 capital, nonperforming loan, bank assets, off ? balance sheet, bank profitability, bank activities, holding company, bank loans, capital ? to ? asset ratio, off balance sheet, return on equity, bank holding company, capital crunch, interbank market, basel accord, cost of capital, banking institutions, return on assets, call options, capital markets, banking industry, equity capital, purchase of securities, capital increases, loan loss provision, asset ? backed securities, liquidity ratio, bank competition, banking sector, capital to asset ratio, capital ? asset, marketable securities, bank equity, banking market, central banking, asset backed securities, capital structure, mortgage backed securities, bank run, subordinated debt, capital asset ratio, present value, bank profits, capital injection, interest sensitivity, bank management, capital ? asset ratio, capital asset, bank size, deposit insurance, bank intermediation