Risk and regulation of financial groups and conglomerates

Recent financial market trends, such as convergence and the spread of conglomerates have changed the nature and structure of the financial sector’s risk profile. The paper investigates this issue from a regulatory policy aspect. Regulatory failures in the 1990s (BCCI, Barings) and the development of the market demonstrate that even „best regulatory practice” does not fulfil the requirements of transparency and efficiency. We investigate the improvement of prudential legislation for financial groups on the example of EU legislation, summarize recommendations made by international forums, and present existing regulatory frameworks in certain countries. In the light of these we address major lacuna in the relevant Hungarian legislation, even going beyond requirements in the field of EU harmonization.financial convergence, financial conglomerates, prudential regulation, European Union, Hungary.

Petri net model decomposition - a model based approach supporting distributed execution

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Electrotécnica, Especialidade de Sistemas Digitais, pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaModel-based systems development has contributed to reducing the enormous difference between the continuous increase of systems complexity and the improvement of methods and methodologies available to support systems development. The choice of the modeling formalism is an important factor for success-fully increasing productivity. Petri nets proved to be a suitable candidate for being chosen as a system specification language due to their natural support of modeling processes with concurrency, synchronization and resource sharing, as well as the mechanisms of composition and decomposition. Also having a formal representation reinforces the choice, given that the use of verification tools is fundamental for complex systems development. This work proposes a method for partitioning Petri net models into concurrent sub-models, supporting their distributed implementation. The IOPT class (Input-Output Place Transition) is used as a reference class. It is extended by directed synchronous communication channels, enabling the com- munication between the generated sub-models. Three rules are proposed to perform the partition, and restrictions of the proposed partition method are identified. It is possible to directly compose models which result from the partitioning operation, through an operation of model addition. This allows the re-use of previously obtained models, as well as the easy modification of the intended system functionalities. The algorithms associated with the implementation of the partition operation are presented, as well as its rules and other procedures. The proposed methods are validated through several case studies emphasizing control components of automation systems

Structure and features of Competitiveness Index

Competitiveness is an important factor among social variables influencing youth’s health related behaviors, however the relationship between competitiveness and health behaviors is a less investigated field of research. In addition, cultural background may lead to differences in dimensions and structure of competitiveness, but only few researchers have examined this relationship thus far. Our data contained three subsamples. The first wave of data were collected in 2005, in the Southern Plain Region of Hungary, Békés and Csongrád counties. 548 questionnaires were analyzed (age range: 14-21 years; M= 16.3 years; S.D. 1.3 years; response rate: 91.3%; 42% girls). The second one was collected in 2009, in the same region, from Szeged. 501 questionnaires were analyzed (age range: 19-27 years; M=21.3 years; S.D. 1.6 years; response rate: 98,2%; 57.5% girls). Finally, the third subsample was collected in 2010 from Novi Sad, Subotica and B. Topola. 200 questionnaires were analyzed (age range: 19-34 years; M=22.67 years; S.D. 2.0 years, response rate: 95,2%; 43.5% girls). Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. Questionnaires included items on sociodemographics, competitiveness and health behaviors. Factor analysis provided three factor solution with good reliability values, but different factor loadings on the subsamples. „Enjoyment of competition” factor was nearly the same in all subsamples, but the other factors were varied. Among Hungarian youth „Avoidance of social conflict” and „Fear of competition” were separate factors, while among students from Serbia making difference between arguements and competition was a more important issue. Avoidance of arguements was correlated with negative emotion (dread, unpleasant) while avoidance of competition was not. We also found differences in the relationships between competitiveness factors and health behaviors. Our study pointed out that health promotion programs should take cultural background into account

A vallásos attitűdök, a megküzdési módok és a lelki egészség összefüggései serdülő- és fiatal felnőttkorban = The relationship between religious attitudes, coping strategies, and mental health in adolescence and young adulthood

Egyre több kutatás bizonyítja a vallás pozitív hatását a lelki egészségre nézve. A jelen vizsgálatban arra a kérdésre kerestük a választ, hogy serdülők és fiatal felnőttek esetében hogyan függ össze a vallásos attitűd a megküzdés adaptív és nem adaptív formáival, valamint hogy lehet-e közvetítő szerepe a megküzdésnek a vallásosság és lelki egészség közötti kapcsolatban. 190 budapesti középiskolás (átlagéletkoruk 16,9 év) és 213 egyetemista (átlagéletkoruk 21,4 év) töltötte ki anonim, önkitöltős kérdőívünket. Eredményeink szerint a transzcendens elfogadása mind a serdülő, mind a fiatal felnőtt mintán erős összefüggést mutat az érzelmi-adaptív megküzdés faktorával, melyben szerepel a társas támasz elfogadása/igénybevétele is. A regressziós elemzés eredményei arra utalnak, hogy az érzelmi-adaptív és a problémaközpontú megküzdés közvetítő tényezőként játszhat szerepet a vallásosság és a pozitív lelki egészség kapcsolatában. A vallásosság változása miatt azonban a vallásosság különböző aspektusai (középiskolásoknál a templomba járás gyakorisága és a transzcendens elfogadása, egyetemistáknál a vallásos kijelentések szimbolikus értelmezése) járulnak hozzá a megküzdési stratégiák választásán keresztül a jobb lelki egészséghez. | There is a growing body of evidence proving the protective effects of religion on mental health. In the present study our aim was to explore the relationship between religious attitudes and adaptive and non-adaptive coping, as well as the possible mediating role of coping in the relationship between religion and mental health in an adolescent and young adult sample. Data was gathered from 190 high-school students (mean age 16.9) and 213 university students (mean age 21.4) with the help of self-administered questionnaires. Our results show a strong relationship between the inclusion of transcendence and the factor of emotional-adaptive coping, including social support, in both age groups. Results of the regression analysis suggest that emotional-adaptive and problem-focused coping might play a mediating role in the relationship between religion and mental health. Due to the changes in religiosity, however, it is different aspects of religion (frequency of church attendance and inclusion of transcendence in high-school students, and symbolic interpretation in university students) that enhance mental health through the choice of coping strategies

Studies On The Potential Impacts Of The New Basel Capital Accord

In April 2003, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published the third consultative paper (CP3) of the new Basel Capital Accord relating to the prudential regulation of banks, which was followed in July 2003 by the EU Commission’s draft directive with the same contents, but slightly different detailed rules (Capital Adequacy Directive, CAD3). During the consultative process both organisations expect comments from the players affected by the new capital regulation, thus from the central banks of each country as well. The significance of the new capital regulation is underlined by the fact that the Basel recommendation will soon be followed by the European Union’s directive (presumably in 2004), the implementation of which will be one of the largest regulative challenges for Hungary. Accordingly, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank pays special attention to preparing the implementation of the Basel II/CAD3 capital accords, laying the groundwork for the adaptation and carrying out the necessary background analyses. Our main objective in the first phase of this rather complex and far-reaching project was – through participation in the legislative process – to analyse the issues important and relevant for the MNB, as well as to assess the potential consequences of implementation in Hungary. During such analyses we focused on the macro-prudential consequences. Accordingly, we carried out a detailed assessment of five topics.Basel Capital Accord, Pro-cyclicality, Credit risk, Market Risk, Regulation, Corporate governance.

Refactoring Erlang programs

This paper presents the model, the design principles and the prototype of a refactoring toolset for Erlang programs. With this toolset one can incrementally carry out programmer-guided meaning-preserving program transformations. Erlang is a mostly dynamically typed language, and many of its semantical rules are also dynamic. Therefore the main challenge in this research is to ensure the safety of (the statically performed) refactoring steps. The paper analyses the language constructs of Erlang with respect to refactoring. A novelty of the presented approach is that programs are represented, stored and manipulated in a relational database. This feature makes it possible to express refactoring steps in a fairly compact and comprehensible way. The proposed software development environment with the integrated refactoring tool provides multiple editing modes. These editing modes support changes ranging from fully controlled (allowing only meaning-preserving transformations) to uncontrolled (editing program text freely). Transformations are performed more safely and efficiently in an editing mode with higher control