Vertical integration, competition, and financial exchanges: is there grain in the silo?

We investigate the incentives for vertical or horizontal integration in the financial security service industry, consisting of trading, clearing and settlement. We thereby focus on firms’ decisions but also look on the implications of these decisions on competition and welfare. Our analysis shows that the incentives for vertical integration crucially depend on industry as well as market characteristics. A more pronounced demand for liquidity clearly favors vertical integration whereas deeper financial integration increases the incentives to undertake vertical integration only if the efficiency gains associated with vertical integration are sufficiently large. Furthermore, we show that market forces can suffer from a coordination problem that end in vertically integrated structures that are not in the best interest of the firms. We believe this problem can be addressed by policy measures such as the TARGET2-Securities program. Furthermore, we use our framework to discuss major industry trends and policy initiatives. Keywords: Vertical Integration , Horizontal Integration , Competition , Trading , Settlement JEL Classification: G15, L13, L2

Design concepts to improve high performance solar simulator

By improving several important components of the well known off-axis solar simulator system, a considerable step forward was made. The careful mathematical studies on the optics and the thermal side of the problem lead to a highly efficient system with low operational costs and a high reliability. The actual performance of the simulator is significantly better than the specified one, and the efficiency is outstanding. No more than 12 lamps operating at 18 kW are required to obtain one Solar Constant in the 6 m beam. It is now known that by using sophisticated optics, even larger facilities of high performance can be designed without leaving the proven off-axis concept and using a spherical mirror. Using high performance optics is a means of reducing costs at a given size of beam because the number of lamps is one of the most cost driving factors in the construction of a solar simulator

ATLAS plans on soft and hard diffraction at the early LHC

A brief review of ATLAS forward detector system is presented. Short review of forward physics measurements that are planned to be done with first ATLAS data are introduced. This includes several topics, mainly QCD processes, but also photon physics

Do women behave more reciprocally than men? Gender differences in real effort dictator games

We analyze dictator allocation decisions in an experiment where the recipients have to earn the pot to be divided with a real-effort task. As the recipients move before the dictators, their effort decisions resemble the first move in a trust game. Depending on the recipients' performance, the size of the pot is either high or low. We compare this real-effort treatment to a baseline treatment where the pot is a windfall gain and where a lottery determines the pot size. In the baseline treatment, reciprocity cannot play a role. We find that female dictators show reciprocity and decrease their taking-rates significantly in the real-effort treatment. This treatment effect is larger when female dictators make a decision on recipients who successfully generated a large pot compared to the case where the recipients performed poorly. By contrast, there is no treatment effect with male dictators, who generally exhibit more sefish behavior. --Gender,Reciprocity,Dictator Game,Real Effort

Evidence of O2 consumption in underway seawater lines: Implications for air-sea O2 and CO2 fluxes

We observed O2 deficits of 0.5 to 2.0% (1 to 4 mol/kg) in the underway seawater lines of three different ships. Deficits in O2/Ar and isotopic enrichments in dissolved O2 observed in underway seawater lines indicate a respiratory removal process. A 1% respiratory bias in underway lines would lead to a 2.5-5 atm (2.5-5pbar) enhancement in surface water pCO2. If an underway pCO2 bias of this magnitude affectedall measurements, the global oceanic carbon uptake based on pCO 2 climatologies would be 0.5-0.8 Pg/yr higher than the present estimate of 1.6 Pg/yr. Treatment of underway lines with bleach for several hours and thorough flushing appeared to minimize O2 loss. Given the increasing interest in underway seawater measurements for the determination of surface CO2 and O2 fluxes, respiration in underway seawater lines must be identified and eliminated on all observing ships to ensure unbiased data

Gegen eine ganze Zeit.Hans Graf von Veltheim (1818-1854): Leben, Literatur, Kunst

In der Arbeit "Gegen eine ganze Zeit. Hans Graf von Veltheim (1818-1854): Leben, Literatur, Kunst" geht es um die Biographie eines vergessenen Künstlers aus der Zeit des Vormärz und der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Hervorgetreten ist er als Autor von vier historischen Dramen (1846 und 1850 erschienen), bislang unveröffentlichten Aphorismen und radierten Karikaturen. Die Dissertation enthält ein Werkregister und veröffentlicht erstmals den bislang unbekannten politisch-historisch brisanten Handzeichnungsbestand. Besonders herausragend sind die Karikaturen zur Revolution von 1848 aus altständischer Perspektive. Eingehend geschildert wird der Bildungsgang am Braunschweiger Collegium Carolinum, an der Berliner Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität und der Georgia Augusta in Göttingen. Eine umfangreiche Bibliographie und ein Editionsanhang runden die ausgesprochen interdisziplinär angelegte Studie ab