La literatura sobre la interacción del riesgo fiscal y la estabilidad financiera: una revisión

This article presents a review of the literature on aspects of fiscal and financial crises. Firstly, an analysis is made on how fiscal policy may become unsustainable, whether it is due to a worsening of the fundamentals of a country, or to increasing international financial turmoil. Particular attention is paid to the literature on the role of financial institutions and their sovereign links in a crisis context. This link may mean that sovereign stress is transferred to the banks, via holdings of sovereign debt or vice versa, on account of the implicit (or explicit) guarantee that banks may have from the sovereign. Secondly, a review is made of the determining factors of the connectedness amongst financial institutions and between sovereign banks. The indicators of connectedness can help understand how systemic risk builds up. Finally, an analysis is made on how the debate on macro-prudential policy has evolved to tackle the issue of system-wide financial stressEste artículo repasa la literatura académica sobre crisis fiscales y financieras. En primer lugar, se analiza cómo la política fiscal de un país puede acabar siendo insostenible, ya sea por un deterioro de los fundamentales del país o por un aumento de las turbulencias financieras internacionales. Prestamos especial atención a la literatura sobre el papel de las instituciones financieras y su vinculación con el soberano en un contexto de crisis. Este vínculo puede provocar que el estrés del soberano se traslade a las entidades financieras mediante las tenencias de bonos soberanos. La dirección de la transmisión del riesgo puede ser también la contraria, debido a la garantía que ejerce el soberano sobre las entidades financieras de su país.Asimismo, se repasa la literatura sobre la conectividad de instituciones financiares entre sí y entre bancos y soberanos. Los indicadores permiten comprender cómo surge el riesgo sistémico. Finalmente, analizamos cómo el debate sobre la política macro prudencial ha evolucionado en los últimos tiempos

Editorial: Decolonising the University

Therefore, in its variety, the contributions in this special issue share theorisations, auto-ethnographic reflections, and pedagogical experiments of decolonisation, politics of knowledge, and activism informed by Feminist, Gender, and Queer studies but also by non-Eurocentred epistemic geo-genealogies grounded in embodied experiences of racialisation, discrimination, and resistance in the academia. Inserting what are inevitably profoundly political contributions, which question the foundations and limitations of hegemonic knowledge creation, into the mould of an academic peer-reviewed special issue is a complex and, at times, seemingly impossible exercise. As the guest editors and editorial board negotiated the process of this issue’s production, we ourselves were challenged to engage with tensions around what constitutes a ‘proper’ scientific contribution, by which and whose standards. As a reader of this special issue, and perhaps a student, teacher, researcher, activist, or a combination thereof, it is likely that you also find yourself addressed and challenged by some of the critiques and proposals articulated in the articles and essays that follow

Tanteando en la oscuridad::Decolonial Feminist Horizons

Can we respond to the possibility of an ethical life that is not structurally implicated with the suffering and the consumption of the life of earth and others? In this professorial inaugural lecture, I will set some of the elements of decolonial feminist horizons that can help us to address the erasure of experiences that can teach us about overcoming the destruction of Earth (ecocide) and of ways of knowing and forms of knowledge (epistemicide). I argue for connecting ecocide to epistemicide in our struggles to decolonize universities, methodologies, curricula, and ourselves. But how can we nurture knowledges and learning in ways that lead us towards decolonial feminist horizons? Is this possible given the parameters of the university, of critical social sciences, of the fields of global politics, development studies and feminism? To co-generate some tentative answers to these questions, I present praxical thinking and ethics of relationality as the grounding tenets of my research, teaching and mentoring program on Global Politics, Feminisms and Decoloniality that aims to consolidate research on the turn towards an epistemic ‘South'’ in the study of knowledge production in global development at the ISS, The Hague

Decision Support System for Container Port Selection using Multiple-Objective Decision Analysis

Ports are essential for maritime transportation and global supply chains since they are nodes that connect the sea- and land-based modes of transportation. With containerization and supply chains stimulating global trade, ports are challenged to adjust to changes in the market to create value to their customers. Therefore, this dissertation research focuses on the container port selection decision analysis to provide information to help shipping lines select the best port for their shipping networks. Since the problem is complex, dynamic, and involves multiple and conflicting criteria, the research proposes to use the multi-objective decision analysis with Value-Focused Thinking approach. The first chapter analyzes the port selection literature by timeline, journals, geographical location, and focus of the studies. Also, the research identifies the multiple criteria used in the port selection literature, as well as the models and approaches used for the analysis of the port selection decision problem. The second chapter develops a container port selection decision model for shipping lines using ports in West Africa. This model uses a multi-attribute value theory with valued-focused thinking and Alternative-Focused Thinking methodologies. The third chapter develops a port selection decision support system for shipping lines to select the best port in the U.S. Gulf Coast considering the impact of the Panama Canal’s expansion. The decision support system uses the multi-objective decision analysis with Value-Focused Thinking approach, incorporating the opinion of an industry expert for the development of the value model. It also includes a cost model to quantify the cost of the alternatives. A Monte Carlo simulation is used to help decision makers understand the value and cost risks of the decision. The contribution of this research is that it provides a tool to decision makers of the shipping lines industry to improve the decision making process to select the port that will add the most affordable value to the global supply chains of their customers. In addition, researchers can use the proposed methodology for future port selection studies in other regions and from the perspectives of other stakeholders

Machines for living in: communication technologies and everyday life in times of urban transformation

This thesis investigates the degree to which our everyday conceptions of 'place' have changed in contemporary society, especially in relation to the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs). The empirical evidence is a case study of 20 low-income families who live in Santiago, Chile. These families had just moved to a new social housing estate from the shantytowns and/or situations of extreme overcrowding. The first section of the thesis examines how their conceptions of 'place' have changed as a result of the move. On the one hand, it is difficult for them to perceive the housing estate as a 'place' with the same characteristics as their former home environments (close social networks, common history, etc.) due to a difficult and still incomplete adaptation. On the other hand, their social exclusion, especially demonstrated in terms of their limited spatial mobility, means that their everyday life still unfolds in a limited and relatively static number of places. In these circumstances they develop a minimal concept of place based not on an emotional attachment to a space, but rather on particular practices located in certain time and space. This concept of place is labelled here as 'localities of practices'. The second part of the thesis examines how these 'localities of practices' are becoming increasingly 'mediated,' or the increasing degree to which the use of ICTs permeates the conceptions of place of the members of these families through an analysis of practices related to the use of three particular technologies. The first study shows how the home is a project that has to be constructed in a constant competitive interplay with the place created by television use. The second analyses how the noise produced by hi-fi technologies at very high volumes is used to redefine the spaces of the housing estate against the background of their quite limited material surroundings. The third shows how the use of mobile phones, and the 'media space' created by them, reconstitutes and gives a new meaning to the limitations that these families face when moving through the urban environment of Santiago. As a result of these continual processes of mediation the thesis concludes that along with the physical environment of the housing estate, the spatial environments created by the use of media technologies are key to the construction of 'place' to such a degree that is almost impossible to consider one without the other. They, together, are their "machines for living in"; the setting in which their everyday lives unfold

Urban and regional heat island adaptation measures in the Netherlands

The urban planner´s role should be adapted to the current globalised and overspecialised economic and environmental context, envisioning a balance at the regional scale, apprehending not only new technologies, but also new mapping principles, that allow obtaining multidisciplinary integral overviews since the preliminary stages of the design process. The urban heat Island (UHI) is one of the main phenomena affecting the urban climate. In the Netherlands, during the heat wave of 2006, more than 1,000 extra deaths were registered. UHI-related parameters are an example of new elements that should be taken into consideration since the early phases of the design process. PROBLEM STATEMENT Thus, the development of urban design guidelines to reduce the heat islands in Dutch cities and regions requires first an overall reflection on the heat island phenomenom (relevance of the large scale assessment, existing tools, instruments) and proposal of integrative and catalysing mapping strategies and then a specific assessment of the phenomenom at the selected locations in The Netherlands (testing those principles). MAIN RESEARCH QUESTION Could the use of satellite imagery help analyse the UHI in the Netherlands and contribute to suggest catalysing mitigation acions actions implementable in the existing urban context of the cities, regions and provinces assessed? METHOD The development of urban design principles that aim at reaching a physical balance at the regional scale is critical to ensure a reduction of the UHI effect. Landsat and Modis satellite imagery can be analysed and processed using ATCOR 2/3, ENVI 4.7 and GIS, allowing not only a neighbourhood, city and regional scale assessment, but also generating holistic catalysing mapping typologies: game-board, rhizome, layering and drift, which are critical to ensure the integration of all parameters. The scientific inputs need to be combined not only with other disciplines but often also with existing urban plans. The connection between scientific research and existing agreed visions is critical to ensure the integration of new aspects into the plans. RESULTS At the neighbourhood level the areas that have a greater heat concentration in the cities of Delft, Leiden, Gouda, Utrecht and Den Bosch are the city centres characterised by their red ceramic roof tiles, brick street paving, and canals. Several mitigation strategies could be implemented to improve the UHI effect in those areas; however, since the city centres are consolidated and listed urban areas, the mitigation measures that would be easier to implement would consist in improving the roof albedo. A consistent implementation of albedo improvement measures (improving the thermal behaviour not only of flat roofs, but also of tiled pitched roofs) of all roofs included in the identified hotspots (with an average storage heat flux greater than 90 W/m2) would help reduce the temperatures between 1.4°C and 3°C. Pre-war and post-war compact and ground-based neighbourhoods present similar thermal behaviour of the surface cover, and green neighbourhoods and small urban centres also present similar thermal behaviour. At the city scale the analysis of 21 medium-size cities in the province of North Brabant, which belongs to the South region of the county -in relative terms the most affected by the UHI phenomenon during the heat wave of 2006-, reveals that albedo and normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) are the most relevant parameters influencing the average nightime land surface temperature (LST). Thus, imperviousness, distance to the nearest town and the area of the cities do not seem to play a significant role in the LST night values for the medium-size cities analysed in the region of North Brabant, which do not exceed 7,700 ha in any case. The future growth of most medium-size cities of the regions will not per se aggravate the UHI phenomenon; in turn it will be the design of the new neighbourhoods that will impact the formation of urban heat in the province. The average day LST of provincial parks in South Holland varies depending on the land use. The analysis of the average night LST varies depending of the land use of the patches. The following surfaces are arranged from the lowest to the highest temperatures: water surfaces, forests, cropland, and greenhouse areas. For each of these land uses, NDVI, imperviousness and landscape shape index (LSI) shape index influence the thermal behaviour of the patches differently. NDVI is inversely correlated to day LST for all categories, imperviousness is correlated to day LST for all areas which do not comprise a significant presence of greenhouses (grassland and built patches) and inversely correlated to LST for areas with a high presence of greenhouses (cropland and warehouses). Greenhouse surfaces have highly reflective roofs, which contribute to the reduction of day LST. Finally, landscape shape index varies depending on the nature of the surrounding patches, especially for small patches (built areas, forests and greenhouse areas). When the patches analysed are surrounded by warmer land uses, slender and scattered patches are warmer, more compact and large ones are cooler. In turn, when they are surrounded by cooler patches it is the opposite: slenderer and scattered patches are cooler and more compact and larger ones are warmer. In Midden-Delfland (1 of the 6 South Holland provincial parks), most of the hotspots surrounding the park are adjacent to grassland patches. The measure to increase the cooling capacity of those patches would consist in a change of land use and/or an increase of NDVI of the existing grassland patches. CONCLUSIONS Satellite imagery can be used not only to analyse the heat island phenomenom in Dutch neighbourhoods, cities and regions (identify neighbourhoods with highest surface temperature, identify impact of city size and morphology in surface temperature, calcuate average surface temperature for different land uses…), but also to suggest mitigation actions for the areas assessed. Moreover, satellite imagery is here used to generate catalysing mapping typologies: game-board, rhizome, layering and drift, ensuring that the measures proposed remain accurate enough to actualy be efficient and open enough to be compatible with the rest of urban planning priorities