Credit Creation: Reconciling Legal and Regulatory Incentives

As international organizations adopt new legal standards to promote access to credit through the modernization of national secured transactions law, the lack of coordination with regulatory standards for banking institutions thwarts the effectiveness of these efforts. In recognizing the relevance of the problem, UNCITRAL - for the first time since its establishment - is currently considering how to coordinate secured transactions law reforms with the implementation of the Basel Accord. In a similar vein, the problem is currently approached by other international organisations. Although efforts at the national level to coordinate legal and regulatory standards are commendable, coordination between secured transactions law and capital requirements should be addressed at the highest level of the lawmaking process, i.e. when international soft-laws are defined. To advance this argument, the key functions of secured transactions law and capital requirements are isolated and a holistic understanding of the legal and regulatory rules governing the creation of credit is presented. The Article steers away from the idea that banks are mere intermediaries and offers a fresh understanding of the role of regulatory capital in controlling credit creation, through the management of risk. Within this context, the incentives created by secured transactions law and capital requirements are examined by comparing the capital charges for different credit protections, including credit derivatives and commercial loans to small business. First, it emerges that the implementation of new secured transactions law and the limited ability of security interests in personal property to reduce regulatory capital under the Basel Accords stimulate the creation of credit outside the banking system. Second, to control this phenomenon, the Article shows that it is essential to reconcile the incentive structures created by international legal and regulatory standards

The Influence of Colour on Radiometric Performances of Agricultural Nets

The whole construction parameters of the net, combined with the shape of the structure, the position of the sun and the sky conditions affect the radiometric performance of the permeable covering system. The radiometric properties of the permeable membrane influence the quality of the agricultural production and the aesthetic characteristics of the netting system. Moreover, the colour of the material and the light reflection- especially of the wavelengths visible for the human eye (VIS, 380-760nm)- is an interesting criterion to determine the aesthetic value of the net structure and its environmental impact. In order to investigate the influence of the threads colour on the radiometric properties of the net, a set of field tests were performed by means of a spectroradiometer in combination with an experimental setup 120x120x50cm covered with membranes formed by threads with different colour. A second set of experiments were performed, on the same kind of nets, in laboratory by means of a combination of a large integrating sphere and a small one: the transmissivity from a direct (tauDIR) and diffuse ((tauDIF) source and the reflectivity from diffuse source (¿) of 50x50cm samples were measured in the PAR range. The evaluation of the transmissivity values shows that the colour of a net influence spectral distribution of the radiation passing through the net absorbing their complementary colours. The transmissivity of black nets is almost constant in the visible range and the reduction of the incoming radiation is proportional to the solidity of the net. In the PAR range transparent and black nets doesn¿t cause an alteration of the spectrum of solar radiation and transmittance is almost constant with a slight growth in nets having lower porosity

Ultrahigh dielectric constant of thin films obtained by electrostatic force microscopy and artificial neural networks

Copyright 2012 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics.A detailed analysis of the electrostatic interaction between an electrostatic force microscope tip and a thin film is presented. By using artificial neural networks, an equivalent semiinfinite sample has been described as an excellent approximation to characterize the whole thin film sample. A useful analytical expression has been also developed. In the case of very small thin film thicknesses (around 1 nm), the electric response of the material differs even for very high dielectric constants. This effect can be very important for thin materials where the finite size effect can be described by an ultrahigh thin filmdielectric constant.This work was supported by TIN2010-196079. G.M.S. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ramón y Cajal Program

Constraining the Warm Dark Matter Particle Mass through Ultra-Deep UV Luminosity Functions at z=2

We compute the mass function of galactic dark matter halos for different values of the Warm Dark Matter (WDM) particle mass m_X and compare it with the abundance of ultra-faint galaxies derived from the deepest UV luminosity function available so far at redshift z~2. The magnitude limit M_UV=-13 reached by such observations allows us to probe the WDM mass functions down to scales close to or smaller than the half-mass mode mass scale ~10^9 M_sun. This allowed for an efficient discrimination among predictions for different m_X which turn out to be independent of the star formation efficiency adopted to associate the observed UV luminosities of galaxies to the corresponding dark matter masses. Adopting a conservative approach to take into account the existing theoretical uncertainties in the galaxy halo mass function, we derive a robust limit m_X>1.8 keV for the mass of thermal relic WDM particles when comparing with the measured abundance of the faintest galaxies, while m_X>1.5 keV is obtained when we compare with the Schechter fit to the observed luminosity function. The corresponding lower limit for sterile neutrinos depends on the modeling of the production mechanism; for instance m_sterile > 4 keV holds for the Shi-Fuller mechanism. We discuss the impact of observational uncertainties on the above bound on m_X. As a baseline for comparison with forthcoming observations from the HST Frontier Field, we provide predictions for the abundance of faint galaxies with M_UV=-13 for different values of m_X and of the star formation efficiency, valid up to z~4.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Exploring the financial risk of a temperature index: a fractional integrated approach

This paper introduces a new temperature index, which can suitably represent the underlying of a weather derivative. Such an index is defined as the weighted mean of daily average temperatures measured in different locations. It may be used to hedge volumetric risk, that is the effect of unexpected fluctuations in the demand/supply for some specific commodities—of agricultural or energy type, for example—due to unfavorable temperature conditions. We aim at exploring the long term memory property of the volatility of such an index, in order to assess whether there exist some long-run paths and regularities in its riskiness. The theoretical part of the paper proceeds in a stepwise form: first, the daily average temperatures are modeled through autoregressive dynamics with seasonality in mean and volatility; second, the assessment of the distributional hypotheses on the parameters of the model is carried out for analyzing the long term memory property of the volatility of the index. The theoretical results suggest that the single terms of the index drive the long memory of the overall aggregation; moreover, interestingly, the proper selection of the parameters of the model might lead both to cases of persistence and antipersistence. The applied part of the paper provides some insights on the behaviour of the volatility of the proposed index, which is built starting from single daily average temperature time series. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Annals of Operations Research. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-3063-

Non perturbative renormalization group approach to surface growth

We present a recently introduced real space renormalization group (RG) approach to the study of surface growth. The method permits us to obtain the properties of the KPZ strong coupling fixed point, which is not accessible to standard perturbative field theory approaches. Using this method, and with the aid of small Monte Carlo calculations for systems of linear size 2 and 4, we calculate the roughness exponent in dimensions up to d=8. The results agree with the known numerical values with good accuracy. Furthermore, the method permits us to predict the absence of an upper critical dimension for KPZ contrarily to recent claims. The RG scheme is applied to other growth models in different universality classes and reproduces very well all the observed phenomenology and numerical results. Intended as a sort of finite size scaling method, the new scheme may simplify in some cases from a computational point of view the calculation of scaling exponents of growth processes.Comment: Invited talk presented at the CCP1998 (Granada

Overcoming barriers to electrical energy storage: Comparing California and Europe

Multiple market drivers suggest that electrical energy storage (EES) systems are going to be essential for future power systems within the next decade. However, the deployment of the technology is proceeding at very different rates around the world. Whereas the sector is progressing quickly in California, it is not gaining much traction, so far, in Europe. This research aims to clarify why the prospects for energy storage in Europe are not as good as they are in California. The market and regulatory framework in California and Europe are analysed critically, and changes to overcome the main barriers are recommended. The research shows that the main barriers are: inadequate definition and classification of EES in legislation; lack of markets for some ancillary services; inadequate market design that benefits traditional technologies; and the lack of need for EES in some jurisdictions. The prospects are better in California because regulation is more advanced and favourable for the technology, and regulators are collaborating with developers and utilities to analyse barriers and solutions for the technology. In Europe, there is a need to clarify the definition of EES, create new markets for ancillary services, design technology-neutral market rules and study more deeply the necessity of EES