DTMsim - DTM channel simulation in ns

Dynamic Transfer Mode (DTM) is a ring based MAN technology that provides a channel abstraction with a dynamically adjustable capacity. TCP is a reliable end to end transport protocol capable of adjusting its rate. The primary goal of this work is investigate the coupling of dynamically allocating bandwidth to TCP flows with the affect this has on the congestion control mechanism of TCP. In particular we wanted to find scenerios where this scheme does not work, where either all the link capacity is allocated to TCP or congestion collapse occurs and no capacity is allocated to TCP. We have created a simulation environment using ns-2 to investigate TCP over networks which have a variable capacity link. We begin with a single TCP Tahoe flow over a fixed bandwidth link and progressively add more complexity to understand the behaviour of dynamically adjusting link capacity to TCP and vice versa

Credit risk transfer and financial sector performance

In this paper we study the impact of credit risk transfer (CRT) on the stability and the efficiency of a financial system in a model with endogenous intermediation and production. Our analysis suggests that with respect to CRT, the individual incentives of the agents in the economy are generally aligned with social incentives. Hence, CRT does not pose a systematic challenge to the functioning of the financial system and is generally welfare enhancing. However, we identify issues that should be addressed by the regulatory authorities in order to minimize the potential costs of CRT. These include: ensuring the development of new methods of CRT that allow risk to be more perfectly transferred, setting regulatory standards that reflect differences in the social cost of instability in the banking and insurance sector; promoting CRT instruments that are nor detrimental to the monitoring incentives of banks

The effect of lenders’ credit risk transfer activities on borrowing firms’ equity returns

Although innovative credit risk transfer techniques help to allocate risk more optimally, policymakers worry that they may detrimentally affect the effort spent by financial intermediaries in screening and mo-nitoring credit exposures. This paper examines the equity market’s response to loan announcements. In common with the literature it reports a significantly positive average excess return – the well known ‘bank certification’ effect. However, if the lending bank is known to actively manage its credit risk ex-posure through large-scale securitization programmes, the magnitude of the effect falls by two thirds. The equity market does not appear to place any value on news of loans extended by banks that are known to transfer credit risk off their books.bank loans; credit derivatives; bank certification

Select Committees are engaging better than ever before, but while much as been accomplished, much more remains possible

Select Committees in the UK Parliament have become more powerful over the last five years or so since the implementation of the Wright Commission reforms, which allowed for – amongst other things – the election by the whole House of Commons of members and chairs. Here, Ian Marsh looks at the outreach of the committees since these changes, finding examples of good practice and unfulfilled potential. He concludes that while a great deal has been done, there is potential for far more

How contemporary politics became trapped in the short term and whether it can be repaired

Ian Marsh argues that policy convergence, cynical marketing strategies and the demise of party organisations have destroyed the infrastructures that once provided a platform for longer term policy debates. Contemporary politics is trapped in short-termism and parties may never be able to recover

Twelve recommendations to strengthen public engagement by Commons committees

Since the Wright reforms which strengthened the independence of select committees against the government and party front benches were implemented, committees have improved their visibility and policy impact. Here, Ian Marsh reports 12 recommendations to strengthen the public engagement by committees to improve their impact and visibility further

Knowledge is made for cutting – An introduction

This special issue of Social Epistemology represents a departure point from the traditional field of suicidology. Unlike its predecessor, critical suicidology, or more recently, critical suicide studies, consider the scientific framework of research too narrow and argue against universalizing assumptions and applications of ideas about suicide, which often centre on Western notions of psychopathology, and individualist accounts of suicidal agency and subjectivity. Instead, critical suicidology advocates for researching suicide and suicide prevention from a contextualist, historical, subjective, political, cultural, linguistic and social perspectives. Arguably, critical suicidology has been in the making since the 1980s, as a handful of researchers persistently raised concerns about the way suicidology generated knowledge about suicide and suicide prevention. Perhaps then it is not surprising that critical suicidology, as an intellectual movement, came together in March 2016 at its very first conference, “Suicidology’s Cultural Turn and Beyond”. Articles in this issue have been developed from some of the papers presented at the conference. They represent a series of epistemological interventions into the way suicide and suicide prevention have been understood in different contexts, be it in relation to history, theory, knowledge production, ethics and the way suicide is represented publicly and personally

For the Good That We Can Do: African Presses, Christian Rhetoric, and White Minority Rule in South Africa, 1899-1924

This research examines Christian rhetoric as a source of resistance to white minority rule in South Africa within African newspapers in the first two decades of the twentieth-century. Many of the African editors and writers for these papers were educated by evangelical protestant missionaries that arrived in South Africa during the nineteenth century. Most prior research on these presses has examined the importance of Christianity, but has not taken into account the evolution of its use over the entirety of the period. Without this emphasis on evolving utilization, the current scholarship lacks a complete understanding of African newspapers and their relationships with Christianity, the African population, and white minority rule. This research shows the importance of this evolution in the larger legacy of African resistance to marginalization in twentieth-century South Africa