Corporate governance of banks: the current state of the debate.

Since banks are among the most important sources not only of finance but also of external governance for firms, the corporate governance of banks is a crucial factor for growth and development. Despite its importance, this topic has been explored only by a few studies. While some authors support, with different arguments in the course of time, the specificity of banks, other authors, among whom Ross Levine and his co-authors from the World Bank, question heavily the present banking regulatory framework. The debate on the corporate governance of banks has a direct bearing on the current discussions on the future of banking regulatory design: should the regulatory intervention be the most important corporate control mechanism in banking or should regulators focus on introducing incentives for appropriate market behaviour?Financial economics; Corporate Governance; Banking; Regulation and Supervision; Market Discipline; Securities Law

The Italian Chamber of Lords Sits on Listed Company Boards: An Empirical Analysis of Italian Listed Company Boards from 1998 to 2006

The purpose of the present paper is to contribute to the literature on country interlocks by illustrating and analysing the interlocking directorships in the Italian listed companies from 1998 to 2006. We find that over the entire period a high percentage of the Italian listed companies are connected with each other through a very small minority of directors. Such group of interlocking (overwhelmingly male) directors shows a remarkable stability over time with very few entrants and very few exits mainly related to the passing away of the director. We define them for brevity the Lords of the Italian stockmarket. Lords tend to belong to families of directors, with the first five families having more than 100 directorships in nine years. The highest level of connectivity concerns those companies that belong to the MIB 30/S&P-MIB 40 index, the Italian Blue Chips. In particular, practically all the financial Blue Chips are connected with each other through a web of directors continuously from 1998 to 2006. The extent, depth, and stability of the connections among the Italian listed companies, and in particular the main Italian financial companies, raise doubts on the extent of their competitive behaviour.corporate governance, interlocking directorships, board turnover, antitrust, competition, social network analysis (SNA), exploratory data analysis (EDA), empirical corporate finance

Secured Creditor Control in Bankruptcy: Costs and Conflict

The secured creditor control in the resolution of distress in small businesses can have two effects: it can reduce the ex-post cost of financial distress but, on the other hand, secured creditors and business owners may collude to divert value from junior creditors. This concern has been particularly expressed in the US for state procedures under which a large percentage of small businesses are restructured. In the UK the secured creditors have introduced the highly contested practice of pre-packs which vividly highlights this trade-off. In a pre-pack, an insolvency practitioner, appointed by the secured creditor, can privately sell the company without involving the courts or consulting with junior creditors and in 50% of the cases the company is sold back to the original owner. Contrary to widespread criticism that this procedure leads to collusion, we find no evidence of exploitation of conflict of interests and we find that it preserves the value of the business and maximises recovery in circumstances in which a public announcement of bankruptcy would destroy value. In small businesses where secured creditors are concentrated, the benefits of their control seem to outweigh the costs. This evidence contradicts the view that court supervision, instead of freedom of contracting, is always needed to avoid expropriation. Moreover, the findings of the paper have important implications for debates about auction designs of bankruptcies and for the social implications of using floating charge as a debt resolution mechanism

Application of Super Resolution Convolutional Neural Networks (SRCNNs) to enhance medical images resolution

The importance of resolution is crucial when working with medical images. The possibility to visualize details lead to a more accurate diagnosis and makes segmentation easier. However, obtention of high-resolution medical images requires of long acquisition times. In clinical environments, lack of time leads to the acquisition of low-resolution images. Super Resolution (SR) consist in post-processing images in order to enhance its resolution. During the last years, a branch of SR is getting promising results. This branch focuses in the application of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to the images. This project is intended to create a network able to enhance resolution of knee MR stored in DICOM format. Different networks are proposed, and evaluation is made by computing Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and normalized Cross-Correlation. One of the networks proposed, SR-DCNN, presented better results than the conventional method, bicubic interpolation. Finally, visual comparison of the SR-DCNN and bicubic interpolation also showed that the network proposed outperforms the conventional methods.Ingeniería Biomédic

A Comparison among the director networks in the main listed companies in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on director interlocks by illustrating and analysing the interlocking directorships among the Italian, French, German, UK and US listed Blue Chips. The comparison of the five countries considered shows that two national models stand out. On the one hand a model made of a high number of companies linked to each other through a small number of shared directors who serve on several company boards at the time (France, Germany, and Italy). On the other hand, in the UK much fewer companies are connected to each other essentially through directors who have no more than two board positions at the time. A case in between is represented by the US, where a high number of companies are connected to each other just like Germany, France, and Italy. However, just like the UK, such connections are made through directors who tend to have just two board positions at the time, a sign that, differently from Italy, Germany, and France, the UK and US networks might not be functional to systemic collusion.corporate governance, interlocking directorships, antitrust, competition, social network analysis (SNA), exploratory data analysis (EDA), empirical corporate finance

Funciones de desempeño de seguridad en carriles de uso exclusivos del BRT sobre el corredor de la Avenida Caracas en la ciudad de Bogotá

Introduction- Road safety is a global concern due to the fact that traffic accidents represent serious temporary and / or permanent damage to the health of those involved. On the other hand, the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems carries a large volume of passengers and during their operation; they are involved in this problem. Objective- Accident prediction model implemented in the Highway Safety Manual 2010 or HSM is an alternative to evaluate the strategies that allow to reduce accidents in this type of systems. However, there is not specified safety performance functions (SPFs) developed for BRT systems. In the present work, the accident model of HSM is adapted by calibration of general SPFs expressions of the manual and also, SPFs were developed for BRTs installed on the central-line of main roads and use an exclusive lane of all other transport systems (both public or private) and mobility (e.g. bike paths). Method / Results - Crashes reports and traffic volumes data supplied by the Department of Transportation of Bogotá were used. The model was calibrated using the safety performance functions (SPFs) of the HSM and a specific developed functions for the BRT conditions. These SPFs were developed using a negative binomial model in roadway segments and intersections. Conclusions- Through the validation, it was found that the functions developed have a better fit than the established SPF of the HSM. The developed SPFs can be used as a tool to define safety performance guidelines of Bogotá's BRT corridors in the coming years.Introducción- La seguridad vial es una preocupación global ya que los accidentes de tránsito generan afectaciones en la salud de carácter temporal y / o permanente de las personas involucradas. Por otro lado, los Sistemas de Buses de Tránsito Rápido (BRT) transportan una gran cantidad de pasajeros y, durante su operación se involucran en este tipo de problema. Objetivo- El modelo de estimación de accidentes del Manual de Seguridad Vial de los Estados Unidos (HSM-2010) es una alternativa para evaluar las estrategias de reducción de accidentes en este tipo de sistemas. Sin embargo, no hay Funciones de Desempeño de Seguridad (SPFs) Vial desarrolladas para los BRT. Por tanto, en este estudio se calibra el modelo de accidentes del HSM usando las expresiones generales de SPFs del manual y, además, se proponen SPFs para el sistema BRT que operan sobre avenidas usando un carril de uso exclusivo ubicado en el centro de la vía y, separado de todos los demás sistemas de transporte (público o privado) y movilidad (por ejemplo, ciclo-vías). Metodología / Resultados – Se utilizaron los reportes de accidentalidad y los volúmenes de tráfico suministrados por la Secretaria de Movilidad de Bogotá. El modelo se calibró utilizando las funciones de desempeño de seguridad del HSM y se desarrolló funciones para las condiciones específicas del BRT empleando un modelo binomial negativo tanto para segmentos de vía como intersecciones. Conclusiones- Mediante el proceso de validación se determinó que las funciones desarrolladas tienen un mejor ajuste que las SPFs establecidas en el HSM. Estas SPFs desarrollados pueden emplearse para definir las pautas del desempeño de seguridad de los corredores del BRT en la ciudad de Bogotá durante los próximos años

Corporate governance of banks: the current state of the debate.

Since banks are among the most important sources not only of finance but also of external governance for firms, the corporate governance of banks is a crucial factor for growth and development. Despite its importance, this topic has been explored only by a few studies. While some authors support, with different arguments in the course of time, the specificity of banks, other authors, among whom Ross Levine and his co-authors from the World Bank, question heavily the present banking regulatory framework. The debate on the corporate governance of banks has a direct bearing on the current discussions on the future of banking regulatory design: should the regulatory intervention be the most important corporate control mechanism in banking or should regulators focus on introducing incentives for appropriate market behaviour

Corporate governance of banks: the current state of the debate.

Since banks are among the most important sources not only of finance but also of external governance for firms, the corporate governance of banks is a crucial factor for growth and development. Despite its importance, this topic has been explored only by a few studies. While some authors support, with different arguments in the course of time, the specificity of banks, other authors, among whom Ross Levine and his co-authors from the World Bank, question heavily the present banking regulatory framework. The debate on the corporate governance of banks has a direct bearing on the current discussions on the future of banking regulatory design: should the regulatory intervention be the most important corporate control mechanism in banking or should regulators focus on introducing incentives for appropriate market behaviour

Análisis de las nuevas princesas de Disney y sus narrativas. Campaña “Soy Princesa siendo yo” y la formación de roles de género en niños y niñas de 6 a 11 años

En la presente investigación se busca conocer cuál es la percepción de los niños y niñas frente a un cambio de paradigma en las nuevas princesas. Con este objetivo, tomaremos en la presente investigación ocho películas protagonizadas por princesas de Disney, con técnicas de diseño y animación 2D y de género musical