Financial stability and the Trans-Pacific Partnership: lessons from Chile and Malaysia

This repository item contains a working paper from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment.There is growing recognition that nations may need to deploy cross-border financial regulations to prevent and mitigate financial crises. Indeed, in December of 2012 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed on a new ‘institutional view’ that notes how the IMF will begin to recommend that nations deploy cross-border financial regulations going forward. However, many nations have become party to global, regional, and bi-lateral trade and investment treaties that may restrict their ability to effectively deploy such regulations. This paper examines the cases of two countries currently in negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP): Chile and Malaysia. The paper examines the extent to which each nation has deployed cross-border financial regulations in the past, and the extent to which they have negotiated the policy space for such regulations in its previous trade and investment treaties. Finally, it analyzes the extent to which such measures would be permitted if the TPP’s investment provisions looked like the model bi-lateral investment treaty of the United States. We find that, with some important exceptions, both countries have successfully deployed crossborder financial regulations and have carved out the ability to do so under a sample of representative trading commitments. However, such policy space would be jeopardized if the TPP conformed to the US model rather than arrangements that each country has been able to broker in other arenas

Giving ecological meaning to satellite-derived fire severity metrics across North American forests

Satellite-derived spectral indices such as the relativized burn ratio (RBR) allow fire severity maps to be produced in a relatively straightforward manner across multiple fires and broad spatial extents. These indices often have strong relationships with field-based measurements of fire severity, thereby justifying their widespread use in management and science. However, satellite-derived spectral indices have been criticized because their non-standardized units render them difficult to interpret relative to on-the-ground fire effects. In this study, we built a Random Forest model describing a field-based measure of fire severity, the composite burn index (CBI), as a function of multiple spectral indices, a variable representing spatial variability in climate, and latitude. CBI data primarily representing forested vegetation from 263 fires (8075 plots) across the United States and Canada were used to build the model. Overall, the model performed well, with a cross-validated R2 of 0.72, though there was spatial variability in model performance. The model we produced allows for the direct mapping of CBI, which is more interpretable compared to spectral indices. Moreover, because the model and all spectral explanatory variables were produced in Google Earth Engine, predicting and mapping of CBI can realistically be undertaken on hundreds to thousands of fires. We provide all necessary code to execute the model and produce maps of CBI in Earth Engine. This study and its products will be extremely useful to managers and scientists in North America who wish to map fire effects over large landscapes or regions

Validating burn severity classifications using Landsat imagery across western Canadian National Parks

National parks in western Canada experience wildland fire events at differing frequencies, intensities, and burn severities. These episodic disturbances have varying implications for various biotic and abiotic processes and patterns. To predict burn severity, the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) algorithm, derived from Landsat imagery, has been used extensively throughout the wildland fire community. Researchers have often employed this approach to study the effects of fire across multiple contrasting landscapes. Many remote sensing scientists have concluded that incorporating pre-fire information into the current remote sensing dNBR methodology may make such models more transferable. In the first study the main purpose was to investigate the accuracies of the absolute dNBR versus its relative form (RdNBR) to estimate burn severity, in which was hypothesized that RdNBR would outperform dNBR based on former research by Miller and Thode (2007). The secondary purpose was to examine and compare the accuracies of RdNBR and dNBR algorithms in pre-fire landscapes with low canopy closure and high heterogeneity. Results indicate that the RdNBR-derived model did not estimate burn severity more accurately than dNBR (65.2% versus 70.2% classification accuracy, respectively) nor indicate improved estimates in the more heterogeneous and low canopy cover landscapes. In addition, we concluded that RdNBR is no more effective than dNBR at the regional, individual, and fine-scale vegetation levels. The results herein support the continued use of both the dNBR and RdNBR methods and the pursuit of developing regional models. In the second study, we compare the transferability of an overall model and those stratified by land cover and ecozone. Our second objective was to test the statistical benefit of incorporating pre- and post-fire information into standard dNBR approaches. We determined that an overall dNBR derived model successfully estimated burn severity for the majority of our study fires, which supports its transferability across multiple western Canadian landscapes. Results indicate that both pre- and post-fire remote sensing information provides a means of further understanding the different post-fire responses as well as showing minimal statistical burn severity estimates across the majority of fires, however, significant improvement was evident for three of the ten study fires.Forestry, Faculty ofGraduat

The loss of innocence: America's trial in Vietnam.

http://www.archive.org/details/lossofinnocencea00sov