Retail Payments Strategy for the EU versus the challenges of the payment sector

Motivation: The payment services sector has become one of the main areas for the development of financial innovation and the key element of the digital economy. However, the payment services market in the European Union (called the European Payments Market) is still fragmented along national borders, insufficiently integrated, and facing several challenges. Therefore, the newly announced Retail Payments Strategy for the EU is a document of great importance for the future of the entire EU economy, and deserves in-depth study. Aim: The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the trends and challenges identified by the European Commission in the Retail Payments Strategy, and the general directions and proposed actions presented in this document, appropriately reflect the challenges faced by the European payment market. Results: A comparative analysis of the Strategy’s assumptions and proposed actions was conducted, in relation to the identified challenges of the payment sector. The empirical data were derived from a survey of 202 experts from all EU member states, and the UK, Norway and Switzerland, covering all types of bank and non-bank payment market players. The analysis confirmed that the Strategy identified the main challenges and opportunities, in line with the results of the expert survey: the need for further development of open banking; cross-border integration and development of instant payments systems; and ensuring access to the banking payment infrastructure, including contactless and NFC mobile payments. However, the proposed directions of action in selected areas have not been sufficiently rationalised, and most of the actions have been left to be specified in the future. In addition, the Strategy relies mostly on the use of regulatory tools that may limit innovativeness. Although the Commission and the surveyed experts agreed in recognising the challenges related to the increasing role of BigTechs in the payment sector, no comprehensive solution addressing the related challenges was proposed in the Strategy

Mean Field Limits in Strongly Confined Systems

We consider the dynamics of $N$ interacting bosons in three dimensions which are strongly confined in one or two directions. We analyze the two cases where the interaction potential $w$ is rescaled by either $N^{-1}w(\cdot)$ or $a^{3\theta-1}w(a^\theta \cdot)$ and choose the initial wavefunction to be close to a product wavefunction. For both scalings we prove that in the mean field limit $N\rightarrow \infty$ the dynamics of the $N$-particle system are described by a nonlinear equation in one or two dimensions. In the case of the scaling $N^{-1}w(\cdot)$ this equation is the Hartree equation and for the scaling $a^{3\theta-1}w(a^\theta \cdot)$ the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. In both cases we obtain explicit bounds for the rate of convergence of the $N$-particle dynamics to the one-particle dynamics

The role of regulatory sandboxes in the development of innovations on the financial services market: the case of the United Kingdom

Motivation: The dynamic development of innovation in the financial market and the process of globalisation were at the heart of creating a new financial technology sector, called FinTech. In order to allow for a safe and intensive development of innovations and create opportunities for all entities, including start-ups, state supervisors and regulators create dedicated market environments — regulatory sandboxes.Aim: (1) to define the concept of a regulatory sandbox; (2) to identify the forms of support for innovative solutions in the financial market; (3) to identify the outcomes of a regulatory sandbox in the case of the United Kingdom.Results: Regulatory sandboxes are a new supervisory tool which, despite only a few years of history, has gained recognition of financial market participants. Research has shown that a regulatory sandbox has many benefits not only for the companies joining it but also for the supervisory institution. Sandboxes allow participants to receive continuous substantive support, obtain licences faster and resolve legal doubts. Participation in a regulatory sandbox is also a form of promotion and facilitates raising investment capital. On the other hand, regulatory sandboxes are still in the early stages of development, and the support they provide is limited. Some companies also experience problems in dealing with the long and complicated process of applying for admission and the limited number of participants. The latter obstacle may result in unequal competition on the market and failure to fully exploit the development potential of FinTech. The most important benefit for a supervisor is that through its engagement in a regulatory sandbox, it gains additional knowledge of new technologies and new business models, and its employees develop important competences. The dialogue conducted with professional financial market participants allows for a better assessment of the risks associated with new technologies. The first outcomes of participation in a regulatory sandbox are encouraging for new innovative players and supervisory authorities. It is recommended that this initiative be extended in order to enable more market players to conduct testing

Improving urban bicycle infrastructure - an exploratory study based on the effects from the COVID-19 Lockdown

INTRODUCTION: During the COVID-19 lockdown significant improvements in urban air quality were detected due to the absence of motorized vehicles. It is crucial to perpetuate such improvements to maintain and improve public health simultaneously. Therefore, this exploratory study approached bicycle infrastructure in the case of Munich (Germany) to find out which specific bicycle lanes meet the demands of its users, how such infrastructure looks like, and which characteristics are potentially important. METHODS: To identify patterns of bicycle infrastructure in Munich exploratory data is collected over the timespan of three consecutive weeks in August by a bicycle rider at different times of the day. We measure position, time, velocity, pulse, level of sound, temperature and humidity. In the next step, we qualitatively identified different segments and applied a cluster analysis to quantitatively describe those segments regarding the measured factors. The data allows us to identify which bicycle lanes have a particular set of measurements, indicating a favorable construction for bike riders. RESULTS: In the exploratory dataset, five relevant segment clusters are identified: viscous, slow, inconsistent, accelerating, and best-performance. The segments that are identified as best-performance enable bicycle riders to travel efficiently and safely at amenable distances in urban areas. They are characterized by their width, little to no interaction with motorized traffic as well as pedestrians, and effective traffic light control. DISCUSSION: We propose two levels of discussion: (1) revolves around what kind of bicycles lanes from the case study can help to increase bicycle usage in urban areas, while simultaneously improving public health and mitigating climate change challenges and (2) discussing the possibilities, limitations and necessary improvements of this kind of exploratory methodology

Improving urban bicycle infrastructure-an exploratory study based on the effects from the COVID-19 Lockdown

Introduction: During the COVID-19 lockdown significant improvements in urban air quality were detected due to the absence of motorized vehicles. It is crucial to perpetuate such improvements to maintain and improve public health simultaneously. Therefore, this exploratory study approached bicycle infrastructure in the case of Munich (Germany) to find out which specific bicycle lanes meet the demands of its users, how such infrastructure looks like, and which characteristics are potentially important. Methods: To identify patterns of bicycle infrastructure in Munich exploratory data is collected over the timespan of three consecutive weeks in August by a bicycle rider at different times of the day. We measure position, time, velocity, pulse, level of sound, temperature and humidity. In the next step, we qualitatively identified different segments and applied a cluster analysis to quantitatively describe those segments regarding the measured factors. The data allows us to identify which bicycle lanes have a particular set of measurements, indicating a favorable construction for bike riders. Results: In the exploratory dataset, five relevant segment clusters are identified: viscous, slow, inconsistent, accelerating, and best-performance. The segments that are identified as best-performance enable bicycle riders to travel efficiently and safely at amenable distances in urban areas. They are characterized by their width, little to no interaction with motorized traffic as well as pedestrians, and effective traffic light control. Discussion: We propose two levels of discussion: (1) revolves around what kind of bicycles lanes from the case study can help to increase bicycle usage in urban areas, while simultaneously improving public health and mitigating climate change challenges and (2) discussing the possibilities, limitations and necessary improvements of this kind of exploratory methodology

2022-2 Robust Contracts in Common Agency

Business activities often involve a common agent managing a variety of projects on behalf of investors with potentially conflicting interests. The extent of the agent’s actions is also often unknown to investors, who have to design contracts that provide incentives to the manager despite this lack of crucial knowledge. We consider a game between several principals and a common agent, where principals know only a subset of the actions available to the agent. Principals demand robustness and evaluate contracts on a worst-case basis. This robust approach allows for a crisp characterization of the equilibrium contracts and payoffs and provides a novel proof of equilibrium existence in common agency by constructing a pseudo-potential for the game. Robust contracts make explicit how the efficiency of the equilibrium outcome relative to collusion among principals depends on the principals’ ability to extract payments from the agent

Polki i Polacy na rynku pracy : raport z badań ludności w wieku produkcyjnym realizowanych w 2010 r. w ramach projektu "Bilans Kapitału Ludzkiego"

The study of people of working age is the key research module of the supply side of labour market in BKL Study. Generally, in all the analyses - both those concerning various forms of employment, occupations pursued and positions sought, and those that focus on education and self-evaluation of competences, what comes very much to the forefront is the segmentation of the labour market by the gender of the employers. In the period from August to November 2010 (the duration of the study), more or less one in two people working were employed on the grounds of an employment contract (umowa o pracę), one in nine conducted his own business, one in fourteen had worked during the previous year on the grounds of commission agreement (umowa zlecenia)or contract for a specific task (umowa o dzieło), and one in 20 was working without a formal contract. The differentiation between the genders is already visible at this stage: as far as in the case of regular employment women account for half of all employed people, among those running their own business outside agriculture and also working without contracts, there are on average two men for each woman

Robustness and Games with Linear Best Replies: Theory and Applications

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2019. Major: Economics. Advisor: David Rahman. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 114 pages.This thesis consists of three chapters on games with linear best replies. In the first chapter we show how in the context of a common agency game, when principals seek robustness, then linearity in total output emerges as an equilibrium outcome. More specifically we consider a game between several principals and a common agent, where principals design contracts that are robust to misspecification of the agent's technology. The principals know a subset of the actions available to the agent, but other unknown actions could exist. Principals demand robustness and evaluate contracts on the worst-case performance over all possible actions of the agent. Despite the complexity of the game, we show that a pure strategy equilibrium always exists, by constructing a pseudo-potential for the game. Equilibrium contracts are linear in total output and imply that all players (the principals and the agent) receive a share of total output. The higher the share of total output accruing to the agent, the more efficient the outcome of the game. The crisp characterization of the equilibrium allows us to revisit the classical question of the efficiency of competitive outcomes relative to collusion among principals. We also consider a game where principals collude and offer a joint contract. The efficiency of the competitive outcome depends crucially on the ability of principals to offer side-payments to one another through the agent. In the second chapter we consider several applications of the framework introduced in the first chapter. Linearity allows for sharp predictions of the model in several contexts. The main application of the model in the first chapter is in analyzing the taxation of multinational firms where we study the effects of tax competition among countries. We show that a flat tax on domestic and foreign profits with a full deduction of foreign taxes provides the best worst-case guarantee for each country's revenues. Furthermore we consider a procurement auction setup, as well as an application of the model to private provision of public goods. In the third chapter we depart from the robustness framework and focus on the network structure of games with linear best replies. Games played on fixed networks capture a variety of economic settings including public goods, peer effects, and technology adaption. Bramoulle et al. (2014) analyze a large class of one dimensional linear best reply games and provides general results on how the network affect social and economic outcomes. In this paper we first provide an isomorphism between games with linear best replies and the threshold-linear recurrent networks used in neuroscience to study the encoding of memory patterns in the brain, connecting two seemingly unrelated literatures. Inspired by the isomorphism we extend games of linear best replies in understanding Lindahl equilibria and to games with multidimensional actions. In particular we show how Cournot competition among several firms leads to specialization in production. We show how the network structure of competition in demand for consumers shape the decision of firms in which goods to specialize