23,325 research outputs found
A Tale of Three Countries: Recovery after Banking Crises
Highlights:
âą Iceland, Ireland and Latvia experienced similar developments before the crisis, such as sharp
increases in banksâ balance sheets and the expansion of the construction sector. However the impact of the crisis was different: Latvia was hit harder than any other country in the world. Ireland also suffered heavily, while Iceland came out from the crisis with the smallest fall in
employment, despite the greatest shock to the financial system.
âą There were marked differences in policy mix: currency collapse in Iceland but not in Latvia,
letting banks fail in Iceland but not in Ireland, and the introduction of strict capital controls
only in Iceland. The speed of fiscal consolidation was fastest in Latvia and slowest in Ireland.
âą Economic recovery has started in all three countries and there are several encouraging signals. The programme targets in terms of fiscal adjustment, structural reforms and financial reform are on track in all three countries.
âą Iceland seems to have the right policy mix.
âą Internal devaluation in Ireland and Latvia through wage cuts did not work, because privatesector wages hardly changed. The productivity increase was significant in Ireland and moderate in Latvia, yet was the result of a greater fall in employment than the fall in output, with harmful social consequences.
âą The experience with the collapse of the gigantic Icelandic banking system suggests that letting banks fail when they had a faulty business model is the right choice.
âą There is a strong case for a European banking federation
Beyond the crisis: prospects for emerging Europe
This paper assesses the impact of the 2008-09 global financial and economic crisis on the
medium-term growth prospects of the countries of central and eastern Europe, the Caucasus
and Central Asia, which began an economic transition about two decades ago. We use crosscountry
growth regressions, putting special emphasis on a proper consideration of the crisis and robustness. We find that the crisis has had a major impact on the within-sample fit of the models used and that the positive impact of EU enlargement on growth is smaller than previous research has shown. The crisis has also altered the future growth prospects of the countries studied, even in the optimistic but unrealistic case of a return to pre-crisis capital
inflows and credit booms
Interaction created effective flat bands in conducting polymers
For a general class of conducting polymers with arbitrary large unit cell and
different on-site Coulomb repulsion values on different type of sites, I
demonstrate in exact terms the emergence possibility of an upper, interaction
created "effective" flat band. This last appears as a consequence of a kinetic
energy quench accompanied by a strong interaction energy decrease, and leads to
a non-saturated ferromagnetic state. This ordered state clearly differs from
the known flat-band ferromagnetism. This is because it emerges in a system
without bare flat bands, requires inhomogeneous on-site Coulomb repulsions
values, and possesses non-zero lower interaction limits at the emergence of the
ordered phase.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figure
Banking system soundness is the key to more SME financing. Bruegel Policy Contribution 2013/10, July 2013
The SME access-to-finance problem is not universal in the European Union and there are reasons for the fall in credit aggregates and higher SME lending rates in southern Europe. Possible market failures, high unemployment and externalities justify making greater and easier access to finance for SMEs a top priority. Previous European initiatives were able to support only a tiny fraction of Europeâs SMEs; merely stepping-up these programmes is unlikely to result in a breakthrough. Without repairing bank balance sheets and resuming economic growth, initiatives to help SMEs get access to finance will have limited success. The European Central Bank can foster bank recapitalisation by performing in the toughest possible way the asset quality review before it takes over the single supervisory role. Of the possible initiatives for fostering SME access to finance, a properly designed scheme for targeted central bank lending seems to be the best complement to the banking clean-up, but other options, such as increased European Investment Bank lending and the promotion of securitisation of SME loans, should also be explored
RESISTING DEGLOBALISATION: THE CASE OF EUROPE. Bruegel Working Paper Issue 1 3 February 2020
Global trade and finance data indicates that the pre-2008 pace of economic
globalisation has stalled or even reversed. The European Union has defied
this trend, with trade flows and financial claims continuing to grow after the
recovery from the 2008 global economic and financial crisis. Immigration,
including intra-EU mobility, has also continued to increase.
Our analysis of public opinion in EU countries shows that support for
globalisation, free trade and immigration, is on the rise. EU public opinion on
these issues does not differ greatly from the rest of the world.
Our panel-model estimates for EU countries from 2009 to 2019 find a strong
association between the unemployment rate and the prevailing view on
whether globalisation is an opportunity for economic growth. A regression for
19 non-EU countries shows the unemployment rate is significantly associated
with public support for trade. These findings suggest that cyclical economic
factors partially drive views about globalisation. Our analysis suggests younger
and better-educated people in the EU view globalisation more positively, as
do those in better economic situations, those who feel politically included
and those with a positive view of the EU. Increased support for globalisation
among EU citizens might also have been boosted by policies to improve social
fairness, and by some success in containing asylum-seeker pressure. However,
the EU continues to have pressing social problems, concentrated in some
member countries with weaker economic outlooks. With global and European
economic growth slowing and the risk of a European recession increasing,
unemployment tensions could re-emerge, which might reverse recent
increases in support for globalisation
Plan-View Preparation of TEM Specimens from Thin Films Using Adhesive Tape
A simple plan-view sample preparation technique for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) specimens is proposed for thin films by tearing-off the film with adhesive tape. The demand for very thin samples is highest for nanostructured materials where the structure of 2â5 nm sized features (grains) needs to be resolved; therefore, overlapping of nanometer-sized features should be avoided. The method provides thin areas at the fracture edges of plan-view specimens with thickness in the range of the grain size in the film allowing for artifact free high-resolution TEM imaging. Nanostructured materials typically fracture between the grains providing areas with the thickness of the grain size. Besides the swiftness of the method, the samples are free of surface amorphization artifacts, which can occur in ion beam milling up to 1 nm depth even at low energy ion bombardment. The thin film tear-off technique is demonstrated on a CuMn alloy thin film with grain size of 2 nm
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