PROPOSALS FOR LEGISLATIVE PREPARATION AND TRAINING IN THE FIELD OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

The assessment of environment legislation drafting is an essential component in the process of modern and sustainable planning to which the well-being of human society at global, regional and local level, is directly connected. Maintaining the balance between the two categories of legislative structures, the environment and environmental protection, contributes to providing an appropriate level of environmental goods and services, limiting the scale of environmental conflicts, streamlining institutional flows and maintaining a high standard of the sanogenesis state of the environment and, therefore, of the population.

The Impact of Quantitative Easing on Liquidity Creation

We study the effects of the US Federal Reserve’s large-scale asset purchase programs during 2008–2014 on bank liquidity creation. Banks create liquidity when they transform the liquid reserves resulted from quantitative easing (QE) into illiquid assets. As the composition of banks’ loan portfolio affects the amount of liquidity it creates, the impact of quantitative easing on liquidity creation is not a priori clear. Using a difference-in-difference identification strategy, we find that banks more affected by the policy increased lending relative to those less affected, mainly during the first and third round of QE. However, we only find a strong effect of the policy on liquidity creation during the third round of QE. This points to a weaker impact on the real economy during the first two rounds, when more exposed banks transformed the reserves created through QE into less illiquid assets, such as real estate mortgages

Engaging Community Partners to Enrich Preschoolers Learning Experiences with Dramatic Inquiry

Interdisciplinary teams of adults are needed to enhance the capacity of schools to provide the most appropriate educational experiences for young children who have or are at risk for developmental delays and disabilities (Division for Early Childhood, 2014). When educators, families, and community partners connect around shared goals, we begin to reimagine instructional opportunities and create more equitable access to educational resources for children and families. We share insights from community partners who participated in a collaborative dramatic inquiry study designed to enrich preschoolers’ learning experiences and serve children and families

Competition and innovation in the financial sector:Evidence from the rise of FinTech start-ups

This paper provides new evidence on the effects of entry on incumbents’ incentives to innovate by examining the rise of FinTech innovations over the period 2000-2016. We employ machine learning algorithms to classify a large sample of patent applications into five types of FinTech innovations. We then show that greater competition from innovators outside the financial sector increases the probability that incumbent financial firms will innovate. Our identification strategy exploits the variation over time in the share of FinTech patent applications by non-financial start-ups relative to incumbent financial firms, as a proxy for competitive pressures from outside the financial industry. We also find that this increased competition results in a higher number of FinTech patent applications by financial incumbents relative to non-financial ones, especially when the FinTech innovations are more important, as proxied by the number of their future patent citations.Irish Research CouncilOpen Access funding provided by the IReL ConsortiumTo check citing and date details in 6

Systematic Screening for Behavior in K–12 Settings as Regular School Practice: Practical Considerations and Recommendations

There is a priority for schools to address students’ social and emotional needs as we do academic learning. Tiered models of prevention provide a framework for teaching social skills and behavioral expectations, as well as academics, with positive, proactive, evidence-based practices. Central to responding to students’ needs is accurate measurement of their performance. Systematic screening for behavior addresses this need. Practical considerations and recommendations are offered for school leadership teams as they plan for using systematic behavior screening as a regular school practice. The paper was framed within tiered models of prevention, however, screening practices may be used outside of tiered models provided structures are in place for responding to student needs when detected. Content is offered to guide school leadership teams as they undertake systematic behavior screening efforts. Key words: systematic behavior screening, K-12, tiered prevention modelsOffice of Special Education Programs U.S. Department of Education (H326S980003)Institute of Education Sciences Partnership Grant (R305H150018

Quatre essais sur la finance et l’économie réelle

This thesis consists of four essays on finance and the real economy. Chapter 1 studies the effect of banking crises on the composition of investment. It builds a partial equilibrium growth model with a banking sector and two types of investment projects: a safe, low return technology and an innovative, high productivity one. Investments in innovation are risky since they are subject to a liquidity cost which entrepreneurs cover by borrowing from the banking sector. When bank creditors are sufficiently pessimistic about the aggregate liquidity needs of the real sector, they will run on the bank and cause a credit freeze. This leads banks to tighten credit supply after the crisis, which decreases disproportionately investment in innovation and slows down economic growth. An empirical investigation, employing industry-level data on R&D investment around 13 recent banking crises, confirms this hypothesis. Industries that depend more on external finance, in more bank-based economies, invest disproportionately less in R&D following episodes of banking distress. These industries also have a relatively lower share of R&D in total investment, suggesting a shift in the composition of investment after the crisis. Such differential effects across sectors imply that the drop in R&D spending is, at least partially, the result of the contraction in credit supply.Chapter 2 studies the impact of coordination frictions in financial markets on the cost of capital. In the model, a financial intermediary seeks to raise funds to finance a risky capital-intensive project. Capital is owned by a large number of small investors, who observe noisy signals about the project's implementation cost. Employing a global games equilibrium refinement, we characterize a unique threshold equilibrium of the coordination game between investors. We then show that the relationship between the probability of success of the project and the rate of return on capital is non-monotonic. There exists a socially optimal price of capital, which maximizes the probability that the project is profitable. However, fee-maximizing intermediaries will generally set an interest rate that is higher than the socially optimal rate. The model best characterizes project finance investments funded through the bond market.Chapter 3 proposes a laboratory experiment to study the impact of partial deposit insurance schemes on the risk of deposit withdrawals. In the experiment, depositors decide whether to withdraw or leave their money in a bank, triggering a default when too many participants choose to withdraw. When a bank run occurs, the amount of wealth each depositor can recover depends on the number of withdrawals and a deposit insurance fund whose size cannot cover in full all depositors. We consider two treatments: (i) a perfect information case when depositors know the size of the insurance fund and (ii) a heterogeneous information setting when they only observe noisy signals about its size. Our results show that uncertainty about the level of deposit coverage exerts a significant impact on the propensity to run. The frequency of runs is relatively high in both treatments. A majority of subjects follow a threshold strategy consistent with a risk-dominant equilibrium selection. Finally, the last chapter re-examines the empirical relationship between financial and economic development while (i) taking into account their dynamics and (ii) differentiating between stock market and banking sector development. We study the cointegration and causality between finance and growth for 22 advanced economies. Our time series analysis suggests that the evidence in support of a finance-led growth is weak once we take into account the dynamics of financial and economic development. We show that, causality patterns depend on whether countries' financial development stems from the stock market or the banking sector.This thesis consists of four essays on finance and the real economy. Chapter 1 studies the effect of banking crises on the composition of investment. It builds a partial equilibrium growth model with a banking sector and two types of investment projects: a safe, low return technology and an innovative, high productivity one. Investments in innovation are risky since they are subject to a liquidity cost which entrepreneurs cover by borrowing from the banking sector. When bank creditors are sufficiently pessimistic about the aggregate liquidity needs of the real sector, they will run on the bank and cause a credit freeze. This leads banks to tighten credit supply after the crisis, which decreases disproportionately investment in innovation and slows down economic growth. An empirical investigation, employing industry-level data on R&D investment around 13 recent banking crises, confirms this hypothesis. Industries that depend more on external finance, in more bank-based economies, invest disproportionately less in R&D following episodes of banking distress. These industries also have a relatively lower share of R&D in total investment, suggesting a shift in the composition of investment after the crisis. Such differential effects across sectors imply that the drop in R&D spending is, at least partially, the result of the contraction in credit supply.Chapter 2 studies the impact of coordination frictions in financial markets on the cost of capital. In the model, a financial intermediary seeks to raise funds to finance a risky capital-intensive project. Capital is owned by a large number of small investors, who observe noisy signals about the project's implementation cost. Employing a global games equilibrium refinement, we characterize a unique threshold equilibrium of the coordination game between investors. We then show that the relationship between the probability of success of the project and the rate of return on capital is non-monotonic. There exists a socially optimal price of capital, which maximizes the probability that the project is profitable. However, fee-maximizing intermediaries will generally set an interest rate that is higher than the socially optimal rate. The model best characterizes project finance investments funded through the bond market.Chapter 3 proposes a laboratory experiment to study the impact of partial deposit insurance schemes on the risk of deposit withdrawals. In the experiment, depositors decide whether to withdraw or leave their money in a bank, triggering a default when too many participants choose to withdraw. When a bank run occurs, the amount of wealth each depositor can recover depends on the number of withdrawals and a deposit insurance fund whose size cannot cover in full all depositors. We consider two treatments: (i) a perfect information case when depositors know the size of the insurance fund and (ii) a heterogeneous information setting when they only observe noisy signals about its size. Our results show that uncertainty about the level of deposit coverage exerts a significant impact on the propensity to run. The frequency of runs is relatively high in both treatments. A majority of subjects follow a threshold strategy consistent with a risk-dominant equilibrium selection. Finally, the last chapter re-examines the empirical relationship between financial and economic development while (i) taking into account their dynamics and (ii) differentiating between stock market and banking sector development. We study the cointegration and causality between finance and growth for 22 advanced economies. Our time series analysis suggests that the evidence in support of a finance-led growth is weak once we take into account the dynamics of financial and economic development. We show that, causality patterns depend on whether countries' financial development stems from the stock market or the banking sector

Banking Crises and Investments in Innovation

This paper proposes a new channel to explain the medium- to long-term effects of banking crises on the real economy. It embeds a banking sector prone to runs in a stylized growth model to show that episodes of bank distress affect not only the volume, but also the composition of firm investment, by disproportionally decreasing investments in innovation. Thishypothesis is confirmed empirically employing industry-level data on R&D spending around 13 recent banking crises episodes. Using difference-in-difference identification strategies, I show that industries that depend more on external finance, in more bank-based economies, invest disproportionally less in R&D following systemic banking crises. These industries also have a lower share of R&D spending in total investment, suggesting a shift in the composition of investment that is specific to recessions following banking crises and not other business cycle recessions