The Impact of Financial Crises on Trade Flows: A Developing Country Perspective

The global financial crisis has hit hard international trade that dropped below levels not seen since the Great Depression with disastrous consequences for the developing world. This paper estimates an extended gravity model of trade on a sample of 83 developing countries over the period 1990-2007 to shed light on how banking crises and global economic downturns affect bilateral exports flows from developing countries. In addition to traditional variables, we include a trade finance variable and foreign aid among the regressors. Differences between developing regions are taken into account. Our results show that (i) trade finance has a positive and significant impact on bilateral export flows in all developing regions except Latin America; (ii) foreign aid matters in all regions; (iii) global economic downturns exert a negative and significant impact on export flows in all developing countries, and especially in Latin American and Sub-Saharan African economies; (iv) banking crises appear to have no significant impact in most regions.Banking Crises, Developing Countries, Foreign Aid, Global Downturn, International Trade, Trade Finance, Mixed Effects Panel Data, Random Coefficients., Agricultural and Food Policy, C23, F11, F12, F34, F35, G01.,

Interoperabilidad entre entidades de contrapartida central: Impacto sobre la distribución del consumo de capital entre los miembros

Central Counterparties (CCPs) are financial infrastructures designed to reduce counterparty risk. They do so by virtue of novation of trades, becoming the buyer to the seller and the seller to the buyer. CCPs manage the counterparty risk collecting Margins from its Members. Interoperability among CCPs allows those Members that maintain positions in several CCPs (like big investment banks or HFTs) to concentrate all their trades in one CCP. After an Interoperability arrangement is implemented, these Members can reduce their total exposure by netting long and short positions, thus enjoying a reduction in the Margins they have to post. But Interoperability reduces the Margins for some Members at the price of creating new risks for the whole system. These new risks have to be covered with Interoperability Margins, additional to the Position-related ones. As a consequence, Members with a below-average use of Interoperability – like local Banks or final investors – will suffer an increase in the Margins they have to post. Interoperability – which is compulsory in Europe by virtue of EMIR – implies a transfer of capital from local Banks and final investors to big Investment Banks and HFTs. The rationale for defending such a policy should be openly discussed: it is not easy to realize why capital in the hands of HFTs and big Investment Banks is preferable to capital in the hands of local Banks and buy-side firms.Las entidades de contrapartida central (ECC) son infraestructuras financieras diseñadas para reducir el riesgo de las contrapartes mediante la innovación comercial, convirtiéndose en compradores para los vendedores, y viceversa. Las ECC gestionan el riesgo de las contrapartes, recolectando los márgenes procedentes de sus miembros. La interoperabilidad entre las ECC permite que aquellos miembros que mantienen posiciones en diversas ECC (tales como los grandes bancos de inversión, o las HFT) puedan concentrar todas sus operaciones en una única ECC. Una vez que se introduce un acuerdo de interoperabilidad, dichos miembros pueden reducir su exposición al compensar sus posiciones a largo y corto plazo, obteniendo de este modo una reducción de los márgenes que tienen que registrar. Pero la interoperabilidad reduce los márgenes de algunos miembros, a costa de crear nuevos riesgos para el sistema en general, que deben cubrirse con los márgenes de interoperabilidad, además de los márgenes relativos a la posición. Como consecuencia de ello, los miembros que utilicen una interoperabilidad por debajo de la media ---como es el caso de los bancos locales o los inversores finales--- experimentarán un incremento de los márgenes que tienen que registrar. La interoperabilidad ---que es obligatoria en Europa en virtud de la normativa EMIR--- implica la transferencia de capital de los bancos locales e inversores finales a los grandes bancos de inversión y a las HFT. Claramente, deberá analizarse la justificación para defender dicha política: no es fácil comprender por qué es preferible que el capital esté en manos de las HFT y los grandes bancos, en lugar de residir en los bancos locales y en las empresas compradora

Semi-Teleparallel Theories of Gravitation

A class of theories of gravitation that naturally incorporates preferred frames of reference is presented. The underlying space-time geometry consists of a partial parallelization of space-time and has properties of Riemann-Cartan as well as teleparallel geometry. Within this geometry, the kinematic quantities of preferred frames are associated with torsion fields. Using a variational method, it is shown in which way action functionals for this geometry can be constructed. For a special action the field equations are derived and the coupling to spinor fields is discussed.Comment: 14 pages, LaTe

Sensory Aids Research

Contains a report on a research project

Comparison of the INRIM and PTB lattice-spacing standards

To base the kilogram definition on the atomic mass of the silicon 28 atom, the present relative uncertainty of the silicon 28 lattice parameter must lowered to 3E-9. To achieve this goal, a new experimental apparatus capable of a centimetre measurement-baseline has been made at the INRIM. The comparison between the determinations of the lattice parameter of crystals MO*4 of INRIM and WASO4.2a of PTB is intended to verify the measurement capabilities and to assess the limits of this experiment.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Metrologi

Spatial linear stability of a hypersonic shear layer with nonequilibrium thermochemistry

We examine the spatial linear stability of a shear layer in a hypervelocity flow where high temperature effects such as chemical dissociation and vibrational excitation are present. A shock triple point is used to generate a free shear layer in a model problem which also occurs in several aerodynamic applications such as shock-boundary layer interaction. Calculations were performed using a state-resolved, three-dimensional forced harmonic oscillator thermochemical model. An extension of an existing molecular-molecular energy transfer rate model to higher collisional energies is presented and verified. Nonequilibrium model results are compared with calculations assuming equilibrium and frozen flows over a range of (frozen) convective Mach numbers from 0.341 to 1.707. A substantial difference in two- and three-dimensional perturbation growth rates is observed among the three models.Thermochemical nonequilibrium has a destabilizing effect on shear-layer perturbations for all convective Mach numbers considered. The analysis considers the evolution of the molecular vibrational quantum distribution during the instability growth by examining the perturbation eigenfunctions. Oxygen and nitrogen preserve a Boltzmann distribution of vibrational energy, while nitric oxide shows a significant deviation from equilibrium. The difference between translational and vibrational temperature eigenfunctions increases with the convective Mach number.Dissociation and vibration transfer effects on the perturbation evolution remain closely correlated at all convective Mach numbers

Determining the Physical Properties of the B Stars I. Methodology and First Results

We describe a new approach to fitting the UV-to-optical spectra of B stars to model atmospheres and present initial results. Using a sample of lightly reddened stars, we demonstrate that the Kurucz model atmospheres can produce excellent fits to either combined low dispersion IUE and optical photometry or HST FOS spectrophotometry, as long as the following conditions are fulfilled: 1) an extended grid of Kurucz models is employed, 2) the IUE NEWSIPS data are placed on the FOS absolute flux system using the Massa & Fitzpatrick (1999) transformation, and 3) all of the model parameters and the effects of interstellar extinction are solved for simultaneously. When these steps are taken, the temperatures, gravities, abundances and microturbulence velocities of lightly reddened B0-A0 V stars are determined to high precision. We also demonstrate that the same procedure can be used to fit the energy distributions of stars which are reddened by any UV extinction curve which can be expressed by the Fitzpatrick & Massa (1990) parameterization scheme. We present an initial set of results and verify our approach through comparisons with angular diameter measurements and the parameters derived for an eclipsing B star binary. We demonstrate that the metallicity derived from the ATLAS 9 fits to main sequence B stars is essentially the Fe abundance. We find that a near zero microturbulence velocity provides the best-fit to all but the hottest or most luminous stars (where it may become a surrogate for atmospheric expansion), and that the use of white dwarfs to calibrate UV spectrophotometry is valid.Comment: 17 pages, including 2 pages of Tables and 6 pages of Figures. Astrophysical Jounral, in pres

Sensory Aids Research

Contains reports on two research projects

BACK TO THE BASICS: WHAT DOES THE MARKET TELL US ABOUT BASIS?

This study explores market forces that affect harvest grain basis for corn, soybeans, and wheat in a grain deficit market. The findings indicate that implied basis (cash forward bid less harvest futures), nearby HHO price, and log of open interest on the harvest futures contract can be used to predict 33 to 99 percent of the variation in harvest basis at selected South Carolina locations.Marketing,