The changing incentive structure of institutional asset managers: implications for financial markets.

This article presents the principal findings of the Working Group on Incentive Structures in Institutional Asset Management set up under the aegis of the Commitee on the Global Financial System (CGFS). These findings, which have recently been published in a report, aim to give the central bank community – and beyond that, the financial community – a better understanding of ongoing developments in the fund management industry and their potential implications for financial markets. The report, based on a comprehensive literature review and extensive interviews with market practitioners, has identified various features and trends in the industry with a potential effect on the functioning of financial markets. However, as many of these effects are at least partially offsetting, the lack of reliable empirical evidence has not allowed the working group to come to a clear-cut conclusion on the aggregate effect of these various features and trends at the current juncture. Still, one broad conclusion may be drawn from this report: ongoing and future developments in the fund management industry have the potential to change institutional behaviour in ways that can be important for financial markets. This relates to the general issue of preserving the diversity of investment behaviour, and partially results from the fact that parts of the institutional asset management industry have moved towards becoming a «commodity» industry offering investors more and more standardised investments products and approaches. Therefore, developments in the industry may require further attention by the financial community as a whole. More specifically, the report points to four broad areas where particular attention should be paid: risk management and disclosure, conflicts of interest, explicit and implicit barriers to market entry, and regulatory trade-offs.

Systematic Differential Renormalization to All Orders

We present a systematic implementation of differential renormalization to all orders in perturbation theory. The method is applied to individual Feynamn graphs written in coordinate space. After isolating every singularity. which appears in a bare diagram, we define a subtraction procedure which consists in replacing the core of the singularity by its renormalized form givenby a differential formula. The organizationof subtractions in subgraphs relies in Bogoliubov's formula, fulfilling the requirements of locality, unitarity and Lorentz invariance. Our method bypasses the use of an intermediate regularization andautomatically delivers renormalized amplitudes which obey renormalization group equations.Comment: TEX, 20 pages, UB-ECM-PF 93/4, 1 figureavailable upon reques

Kinetics of in situ epoxidation of hemp oil under heterogeneous reaction conditions: an overview with preliminary results

Epoxidised hemp oil (EHO) was synthesised in the laboratory by reacting hemp oil (HO) with peroxyacetic acid (PA) in a batch reactor. The peroxyacetic acid was formed in situ from acetic acid (AA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the presence on an acidic ion exchange resin (Amberlite IR-120) as catalyst. The overall reaction can be thought of as having two components. The first being epoxidation, a homogenous reaction which occurs at the interface of the aqueous phase and the HO phase while the second is the formation of PA, a heterogeneous reaction at the interface of the aqueous phase and the solid catalyst phase. The overall reaction kinetics were modelled by applying the Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Hougen-Watson (LHHW) model to heterogeneous reactions. Of the steps in the reaction it is postulated that the formation of PA is rate limiting, while the epoxidation occurs comparatively fast negating the requirement for an additional homogenous model. The diffusion steps in the reaction are also ignored in the kinetic model as it is believed that their effects are negligible due to intensive mixing in the batch reactor. Experiments were used to determine the optimal molar ratios of reactants and it was found that at these conditions 88% conversion of double bonds to epoxy groups occurred. The kinetic model was found to be in good agreement with the experimental results

Latina

Latina by Jocelyne Cardon

Contribuciones del enfoque cualitativo de corte etnometodológico al análisis de la entrevista motivacional en Atención Primaria

Este artículo propone reflexionar acerca de las contribuciones del enfoque cualitativo de corte etnometodológico (estudia la organización de las conversaciones cotidianas) en el campo de la práctica profesional, a propósito de un análisis de la interacción usuario-profesional de salud (médico o enfermera) en la situación de la entrevista motivacional en la consulta de atención primaria. El proyecto ISTAPS es un ensayo clínico multicéntrico aleatorizado por clústers realizado durante los años 2006-2008 en 11 comunidades autónomas de España que evalúan las intervenciones para ayudar a dejar de fumar, entre ellas la entrevista motivacional (EM). Desde este marco se planteó un subestudio cualitativo con el objetivo de conocer como se realizaban las acciones en un contexto interaccional, negociable y cambiante como el que se daba en la consulta de la AP. Se realizaron videograbaciones de la EM en la consulta, que fueron la base documental para el análisis conversacional de la interacción usuario-profesional de salud (enfermera o médico) en la situación de EM. Se presentan diferentes ejemplos con la intención de ilustrar las contribuciones del enfoque cualitativo de corte etnometodológico en la práctica profesional. El primer ejemplo analiza el contexto de la consulta de atención primaria como un espacio para hablar sobre la conducta de fumar. El segundo, pone el énfasis en las estrategias que utiliza el profesional para producir una conversación centrada en la persona. El tercero, reflexiona sobre las consecuencias de la falta de acuerdo entre el usuario y el profesional acerca del tema a tratar. Finalmente, el cuarto ejemplo ilustra una relación asimétrica

Portada

Portada: L’antiga parròquia de Sant Miquel de Sorerols, de Tavertet. Foto: Jordi Gum