Housing Prices, Bank Lending, and Monetary Policy

In order to gain more insight into the relationship between housing prices and mortgage lending, we estimate models for both the Dutch housing and the mortgage market. The empirical analysis presented in this paper offers support for the hypothesis that in the Netherlands housing prices and mortgage lending are interdependent. According to our model, housing prices were influenced by changes in bank lending criteria during the estimation period, even when we control for variables such as disposable household income, mortgage interest rate, demographic developments and the housing stock. Mortgage lending was found to be dependent on housing prices as well as disposable income. Our analysis further suggests that in the short run housing prices can deviate substantially from their long-run equilibrium value.housing prices, mortgage market, monetary policy

Spin Hamilton Operators, Symmetry Breaking, Energy Level Crossing and Entanglement

We study finite-dimensional product Hilbert spaces, coupled spin systems, entanglement and energy level crossing. The Hamilton operators are based on the Pauli group. We show that swapping the interacting term can lead from unentangled eigenstates to entangled eigenstates and from an energy spectrum with energy level crossing to avoided energy level crossing

The National Bank of Belgium, Research Department’s new business survey indicator

The business survey indicator is one of the most valuable statistics that the Bank publishes every month. Its reputation is due to the reliability it has demonstrated over several decades in reflecting the pattern of economic activity in the country and in the euro area every month. The indicator is compiled on the basis of the responses to the monthly business survey that the Bank has arranged with enterprises in Belgium since 1954. Almost twenty years after the last methodological revision of the indicator in 1990, the Bank decided that it was now desirable to review its method of calculation again. This article presents the key characteristics of the business survey indicator, its practical applications and the new method of calculation applied since April 2009. This methodological revision gradually became necessary owing to the extension of the survey in 1994 to business-related services, the results of which were not included in the general business survey indicator until this methodological change. The old business survey indicator had also exhibited some undesirable short-term fluctuations. The methodological changes have been kept to a minimum and only concern the calculation of the synthetic curves, with an amended selection of questions that are included in the synthetic curves for each industry and by incorporating the business-related services curve into the overall synthetic business indicator. These changes aim to strengthen the correlation between the indicator and GDP growth, to reduce the undesirable short-term volatility and to maintain its early response.business cycle, business survey, leading indicator, correlation, GDP

About memory in fashion: a study of the work of Clive Rundle

M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities (Arts), 2012In this research project I propose to investigate the notion of memory and its trace in the work of fashion designer Clive Rundle (b. 1959). This positioning of the work in the context of memory offers an approach to the reading of the fashion processes and products; one of various research options that could be used to analyse the creative approach, the fashioned objects and the complex displays of Clive Rundle’s fashion within the broader creative and social context of a post-­‐Apartheid South Africa. The inquiry for this research is concerned with the palimpsest, as witness to the past in the form of traces, memories and histories. The evidence or renegotiation of the past in the present in fashion, which I will reference in this research is what Walter Benjamin identified as the ‘tigersprung’, and which is surfacing in the construction of new contemporary fashion narratives of a number of contemporary South African fashion designers, who together with other visual artists are currently exploring notions of memory and history as catalysts for remembrance, social commentary and healing. By exploring the role of memory and its trace in Clive Rundle’s work, I hope to investigate the layers in the palimpsest that informs the work. In this research I aim to explore how Rundle’s work could offer an opportunity to investigate whether notions of loss and mourning can be expressed through fashion, how the past resurfaces in fashion, andthis can help locate a current understanding of transformation in a post-­‐modern South Africa. whethe

Booming illegal abalone fishery in Hangberg: Tough lessons for small-scale fisheries governance in South Africa

Includes bibliographical referencesMarine capture fisheries around the world are widely perceived to be in a state of crisis, with growing recognition that conventional resource-centred management strategies are insufficient to counter ongoing problems of overexploitation. This is considered particularly true in the small‐scale sector, which employs the overwhelming majority of the world’s fishers but has historically been overlooked. To manage marine resources more sustainably, new approaches to fisheries governance have been sought that recognise the complex nature of fisheries systems, paying attention to the social dimensions of fisheries management in addition to important ecological processes. In South Africa, many of these new approaches have been embraced in a recently adopted policy for the small-scale sector. Attempts to reform marine fisheries have been ongoing in the country since the end of apartheid (a system of legalised racial segregation and white supremacy that ruled for almost 50 years) but have largely failed to bring meaningful change to impoverished fishing communities. Frustration at ineffective reform has contributed to widespread non-compliance – most notably in the abalone fishery, which has collapsed in the face of rampant poaching, driven by a lucrative, illegal export market to the Far East. Although the new small-scale fisheries (SSF) policy has been hailed as a progressive shift in thinking, questions remain about how it is to be implemented. One major challenge will be dealing with illegal fishing. The purpose of this study, was to profile the human dimensions of abalone poaching in the Cape Town fishing community of Hangberg and to draw lessons for implementing the new SSF policy. A qualitative multi-method research approach, based mainly on unstructured interviews and participant observation, was used to access the clandestine fishery and investigate its historical development, current structure, scale and methods of operation and main socio-economic drivers and impacts. It was found that abalone poaching has become deeply embedded in Hangberg, having evolved into a highly organized boat-based fishery in a period of less than 15 years. At least five local poaching groups – representing some 250 individuals in total – currently used dedicated high-powered vessels to access reefs around the Cape Peninsula. Profits earned from poaching are substantial but vary, with poachers operating according to a loose hierarchy and performing a range of different tasks in the fishery. This variation notwithstanding, the illegal fishery appears to have become a mainstay of the impoverished local economy, funding poachers’ expensive lifestyles, in addition to contributing more meaningfully to the livelihoods of an estimated 1000 residents

Zeegezichten

Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-104).This dissertation explicates the work produced during the course of my Masters of Fine Art (MFA) at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. For a better understanding of this body of work, it is important that I relate the events in part that led up to its production. My intention from the start (in selecting a change of working location from The Netherlands to South Africa) was to test my practice, not only against the practical and theoretical contingencies influencing its production up to the end of 2003, but also how a specific geographical and political milieu affects its making. To do this I need to interrogate both bodies of works, those produced immediately before my MFA, as well as those arising during my studies in Cape Town. My art-historical field of reference consists mainly of West European and twentieth century American art and art theory