Dynamic provisioning: a countercyclical tool for loan loss reserves

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-2009, as various banking policymakers revisit loan loss provisioning rules, the Spanish approach of dynamic provisioning has garnered attention as a potential alternative to the current incurred loss approach. We review the current approach to loan loss reserves in the United States, focusing on how loan loss reserves relate to bank solvency and why the current accounting approach may have procyclical effects. We present a conceptual framework to compare loan loss provisioning under the incurred loss framework and dynamic provisioning. Then we simulate dynamic provisioning with U.S. data to present an empirical comparison.Loans

Bandera, Cesareo, A Refuge of Lies: Reflections on Faith and Fiction. East Lansing, MI: MSU Press, 2013

A review is presented of Bandera, Cesareo, A Refuge of Lies: Reflections on Faith and Fiction. East Lansing, MI: MSU Press, 2013 (viii, 156 pp.) ISBN: 978-1-60917-378-4. $19.95

The ends of violence. Girard and Derrida

Jacques Derrida’s critique of philosophical origins, in his essay on Plato and elsewhere, unveils a sacrificial dynamic that René Girard hypothesizes as the origin of human culture. Girard’s latest book, Achever Clausewitz (2008), applies his mimetic theory to history: the Prussian general’s analysis of increasingly violent «reciprocal action» in modern, post-revolutionary warfare exposes the mimetic principle of lethally violent doubles. This «trend to extremes» works to the dissolution of institutions – national sovereignty, international law, politics, war itself – that Derrida explores in Voyous, his book-length essay on terrorism (2003). Both authors see the world of globalized commerce and the globalized terrorism that goes with it as enmeshed in violent undifferentiation. Girard’s historically grounded work supplies a narrative line to Derrida’s structural analyses. Derrida’s call for an ever more vigorous deconstructive rationality as a solution is symptomatic of philosophy’s blindness to the interactive crescendos of human violence that is unveiled in Girard’s religious anthropology

Figshare Repositories: New Data-Sharing Features for Researchers and Librarians

With expanding funder data sharing policies, especially the new NIH data management and sharing policy slated for 2023, we expect that researchers from medical research institutions will increasingly need trusted repositories to share data and all of the other products of their research. However, the complexity of sharing medical research data, even when anonymized, means data are often not shared despite funder policies. In the past year, Figshare, a trusted repository platform that meets funder requirements across the globe, released a suite of new features to fit data sharing needs, increase impact, and encourage sharing. Useful to both researchers and librarians, these features include public pages in compliance with international accessibility standards, click-through citation counts, funding metadata that links out to grants, and restricted access publishing options for sensitive data. This presentation will review these features and suggest ways librarians can use the Figshare platform to help medical researchers work openly, comply with funder policies, and get credit for all the results of their research

Brief analysis of the Tan Brook watershed in Amherst, Massachusetts

The Tan Brook is a small 3.91 square kilometer watershed that runs through and encompasses the highly urbanized areas of Amherst, MA. It is part of the Connecticut River basin and the Mill River sub-basin. In order to meet the high demands of the local middle and high school, and heavy runoff from high amounts of impervious cover from downtown Amherst and the University of Massachusetts, the Tan Brook has been highly culverted

Open Science ETDs and Institutional Repositories: Making Research Data FAIRer

Graduate students, as potential future full-time researchers, are a population that should show proficiency in data sharing. Though there are many resources that teach data sharing best practices for students, it is difficult to tell how well students do when sharing their data. We compared the FAIRness of non-traditional research output metadata associated with theses and dissertations for records shared in a generalist repository by individual students, and records shared through an institutional repository using the same repository platform. Those shared in an institutional repository were significantly FAIRer, as measured by metadata richness and interoperability, and had higher views per month. The only measure where records shared by students exceed institutional records is listing funding sources. We also examine how multiple related research outputs are grouped and offer suggestions to improve interoperability. We conclude that our sample population of graduate students sharing research outputs are not yet proficient in applying the FAIR principles. The review process and oversight that are often part of institutional repositories can offer a measurable benefit to non-traditional ETD outputs