The banking sector and recovery in the EU economy

Banks within Europe have become larger and more international as Europe has moved towards a unified financial services market, but this trend has been reversed since the crisis. In order to establish the effect of these structural changes on output in Europe, we use a micro data set to investigate the impact of size (as measured by asset size) on banks’ net interest margins. We show that larger banks offer lower borrowing costs for firms, which raises sustainable output. We then use NiGEM to look at the impact of banks becoming smaller and moving back into their home territory. We investigate the impacts on output according to country size, showing that the effects are generally larger in small countries, and also larger in economies that are more dependent on bank finance for their business investment decisions. Keywords: Net interest margins; bank size; European financial integration; growth; bank regulation JEL Classifications: E44; G10; G2

Determinants of ICT adoption: Evidence from firm-level data. ESRI WP204. July 2007

We analyse factors driving ICT adoption at firm level using data from Irish manufacturing firms over the period 2001-2004. Our results indicate that the adoption of ICT has been uneven across firms, industries and space. On average, other things equal, firms with more skilled workers, firms operating in ICT-producing and ICT-using industries, and firms located in the capital city region have been relatively more successful in adopting and using ICT. We find positive technology spillovers from firms that have adopted ICT located in the same region and industry. To a certain extent, patterns of ICT adoption are different for domestic and foreign-owned firms, in particular with respect to the effects of international competitive pressure and firm size

Developing a road safety review tool to identify design standard and safety deficits on high risk road sections

The ESReT (European Safety Review Tool) project has developed a tool to support the review of road sections that have been identified as ‘high risk’ according to network screening processes. The tool provides a methodology to practitioners for the collection and analysis of road attribute data using low cost, non-specialist equipment. The overall result is a consistent and repeatable approach to the investigation and assessment of high risk road sections. There are two main parts of the assessment performed by the tool. The first part is a comparison of road attributes against design standards; the optional second part is a comparison of road attributes against ‘safety rules’. The road design standard check allows road authorities to compare the attributes of existing heritage roads with current design standards. This allows road authorities to identify where, and in what way, modern design rules are not met. Various design standard attributes are included in the tool including: median width, lane width, shoulder type and width, verge width, curve radius, crests and sags, stopping sight distance and intersection type. The optional ‘safety’ check allows the road authority to see where key safety rules are violated. This means aspects of the road that may contribute to high severity crashes are identified along with aspects of the road that may lack credibility to the road user. Attributes relating to safety include median type, clear zones (median and roadside), intersection type and frequency, stopping sight distance, adjacent land use, presence of pedestrian and cycle facilities etc. The ESReT system allows road attribute information to be visualised and reviewed by the road authority, and presents the results of the road design standard and safety checks by showing deficits both in tabular form and on interactive maps. The ESReT system does not aim to provide a definite design solution to the road authority, rather it provides experienced practitioners with standardised information about the road along with suggestions so that they can develop the best solutions based on their experience and local knowledge

EU Enlargement and Migration: Assessing the Macroeconomic Impacts. WP203. June 2007

The expansion of the EU in May 2004 to include 10 New Member States (NMS) made it possible for workers in some Central and Eastern European countries to take up work in the EU-15. Some East to West migration was anticipated as a consequence of EU enlargement due to the income gap between most EU-15 and NMS countries. However, the pattern of immigration across the EU-15 has turned out differently from expected; in part because of transitional restrictions on labour mobility imposed in many of the EU-15 countries (see e.g. Boeri and Brücker, 2005). Here we illustrate the potential macroeconomic impacts of the migration flows that are likely to have come as a result of EU enlargement. Clearly it is difficult to measure what migration might have happened had the EU enlargement in May 2004 not taken place, and hence to measure the change in migration from EU enlargement. This is for two reasons. First, there are relatively few data available on migration post enlargement to be able to disentangle an explicit EU enlargement effect. Second, the data that exist are not necessarily comparable, across countries and time, or comprehensive

The Banking Sector and Recovery in the EU Economy. ESRI Research Bulletin 2011/2/2

The financial crisis of the last three years has seen a dramatic change in the EU financial sector. Since the early 1990s, with the completion of the internal market, there had been a growing trend towards an EU financial services market. Banks were becoming more international with greater regional coverage within the EU (and the world) resulting in a more efficient use of capital in the EU economy and enhanced competition. The benefit of this growth in “European” banks was expected to arise from both efficiency gains within the sector and also from a more efficient allocation of capital across wider European economy, all leading to higher growth. Experience has shown that the expected changes in the banking sector within the EU did, in fact, translate into welfare benefits for consumers in the period prior to the current crisis

An evaluation of GO annotation retrieval for BioCreAtIvE and GOA

from A critical assessment of text mining methods in molecular biolog

'Hail England old England my country & home': Englishness and the Local in John Clare’s Writings

This article rethinks John Clare's connection to place, as well as the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘the local’ themselves. It argues that the localism of his work was enabled by potential alienation and displacement and was connected to a sense of wider national community. Clare's writings attempt to think of England in two related ways: as a political community brought together at times of threat, and as a community of taste brought together by a way of apprehending the natural world. His early patriotic verse is often strained and unconvincing, but poems such as ‘The Flitting’ present an idea of ‘native poesy’ that embodies the local and the national through careful description of the natural world. However, this idea was itself mediated through metropolitan attempts to reclaim the customs and literature of ‘merry England’. Thus Clare's localism and nationalism are shown to be ambivalent and uncanny

Projected Changes to Wintertime Air‐Sea Turbulent Heat Fluxes Over the Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean

In wintertime over the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean (SPNA), the strongest surface sensible and latent heat fluxes typically occur just downstream of the sea-ice edge. The recent retreat in Arctic wintertime sea ice is changing the distribution of these turbulent heat fluxes, with consequences for the formation of the dense waters that feed into the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Projections of turbulent heat flux over the SPNA are investigated using output from the HadGEM3-GC3.1 climate model, produced as part of the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Inter-Comparison Project. Comparison of two model resolutions (MM: 60 km atmosphere—1/4° ocean and HH: 25 km–1/12°) shows that the HH configuration more accurately simulates historic sea ice and turbulent heat flux distributions. The MM configuration tends to produce too much sea ice in the SPNA, affecting the turbulent heat flux distribution; however, it displays improved performance during winters with less sea ice, increasing confidence in future projections when less sea ice is predicted. Future projections are presented for low (SSP1-2.6) and high (SSP5-8.5) emissions pathways. The simulations agree in predicting that, with climate change, the SPNA will see reductions in wintertime sea ice and air-sea turbulent fluxes later in the 21st century, particularly in the Labrador and Irminger Seas and the interior of the Nordic Seas, and a notable reduction in their decadal variability. These effects are more severe under the SSP5-8.5 pathway. The implications for SPNA ocean circulation are discussed

[Review] Cian Duffy (2014) My purpose was humbler, but also higher: Thomas De Quincey’s 'System of the heavens’, popular science and the sublime

Review of article: Duffy Cian, Romanticism, Volume 20 Issue 1, Page 1-14, ISSN 1354-991x Available Online Mar 201