Foreign Currency Lending in Emerging Europe: Bank Level Evidence

Based on survey data from 193 banks in 20 countries we provide the first bank-level analysis of the determinants of foreign currency (FX) lending in Emerging Europe. We find that FX lending by all banks, regardless of their ownership structure, is strongly determined by the macroeconomic environment. We find no evidence of foreign banks ‘pushing’ FX loans indiscriminately because of easier access to wholesale funding in foreign currency. In fact, while foreign banks do lend more in FX to corporate clients, they do not do so to retail clients. We also find that after a take-over by a foreign bank, the acquired bank does not increase its FX lending any faster than a bank which remains in domestic hands.Foreign currency lending;currency mismatch;foreign banks;financial stability

The effectiveness of Kazakhstan's security policy

A condition for a sound and constructive public policy of a state is security. If a nation is under attack, internally, by a civil war such as in Syria, or externally, when Iraq and Iran waged a war, such violence prevents a country from conducting a solid public policy. Therefore, for the execution of - for example - economic policy and an effective political system, the condition is that internal and external security are guaranteed. This research focuses upon the effectiveness of the security policy of Kazakhstan

The effectiveness of Kazakhstan's security policy

A condition for a sound and constructive public policy of a state is security. If a nation is under attack, internally, by a civil war such as in Syria, or externally, when Iraq and Iran waged a war, such violence prevents a country from conducting a solid public policy. Therefore, for the execution of - for example - economic policy and an effective political system, the condition is that internal and external security are guaranteed. This research focuses upon the effectiveness of the security policy of Kazakhstan

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's momentum towards a mature security alliance

Security organisations can differ in their scope of activities and in deepness of their mutual cooperation. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) nowadays pays homage to the broad concept of security: security not only encompassing military but also political, economic, social and environmental factors.1 Among other things, this comprehensive approach to security includes aspects such as free and fair elections; well-organised administrative, lawenforcement and judicial organs at national, regional and local level; employment; housing; education and health services. If all of these dimensions of security are provided in the areas where NATO operates, such as Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, then a stable and secure situation has been reached. However, in 1949 NATO started as an organisation with an exclusive military objective, namely to deter an eventual attack by the Soviet Union and its satellites against European (NATO) countries. Especially during its operations in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Western alliance realised that its concept of security should include other aspects than military, in order to achieve a stable international security environment. As to the intensity of cooperation among its member-states, NATO started with the most essential elements of political and military cooperation only. It took NATO many years to establish its current integrated political-military structure and activities, such as frequent political deliberations, joint forces and allied operations far beyond its territorial borders. Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies Vol. 36 (1) 2008: pp. 14-3

Collective excitations and low temperature transport properties of bismuth

We examine the influence of collective excitations on the transport properties (resistivity, magneto- optical conductivity) for semimetals, focusing on the case of bismuth. We show, using an RPA approximation, that the properties of the system are drastically affected by the presence of an acoustic plasmon mode, consequence of the presence of two types of carriers (electrons and holes) in this system. We found a crossover temperature T* separating two different regimes of transport. At high temperatures T > T* we show that Baber scattering explains quantitatively the DC resistivity experiments, while at low temperatures T < T* interactions of the carriers with this collective mode lead to a T^5 behavior of the resistivity. We examine other consequences of the presence of this mode, and in particular predict a two plasmon edge feature in the magneto-optical conductivity. We compare our results with the experimental findings on bismuth. We discuss the limitations and extensions of our results beyond the RPA approximation, and examine the case of other semimetals such as graphite or 1T-TiSe_2