Infrastructure for sustainable development: the role of national development banks

This repository item contains a policy brief from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment.Development banks are increasingly becoming relied upon to help finance sustainable infrastructure in the 21st century. Much of the emphasis has been on the role of the existing multi-lateral development banks (MDBs), but lesser attention has been paid to the role of national development banks (NDBs). To help fill this gap, Boston University’s Global Economic Governance initiative (GEGI) and the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program convened a Task Force on Development Banks and Sustainable Development to examine the extent to which development banks are becoming catalysts for achieving a climate friendly and more socially inclusive world economy

Greening development finance in the Americas

This repository item contains a report from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment

Comment on "Phase separation in a two-species Bose mixture"

In an article in 2007, Mishra, Pai, and Das [Phys. Rev. A 76, 013604 (2007)] investigated the two-component Bose-Hubbard model using the numerical DMRG procedure. In the regime of inter-species repulsion $U^{ab}$ larger than the intra-species repulsion $U$, they found a transition from a uniform miscible phase to phase-separation occurring at a finite value of $U$ , e.g., at around $U = 1.3$ for $\Delta = U^{ab}/U = 1.05$ and $\rho_{a} = \rho_{b} = 1/2$. In this comment, we show that this result is not correct and in fact the two-component Bose-Hubbard model is unstable to phase-separation for any $U^{ab} > U > 0$.Comment: 2 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Repositioning Chinese development finance in Latin America: opportunities for green finance

This repository item contains a policy brief from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment.China is one of the largest creditors of Latin American and the Caribbean and has loaned the region more than $125 billion since 2005. However, the composition of China’s financing in the region has been concentrated in commodity related sectors that are currently on the decline. This policy brief notes the extent to which Chinese finance is concentrated in new green economy sectors, and finds that China is not taking full opportunity of the potential in this sector. Moreover, as the global commodity boom has declined, much of China’s investments in the region have been exposed to significant risk, including prominent environmental and social risks. Despite great strides whereby the Chinese government has established a series of guidelines on greening overseas investment over the last few years, China’s development banks and companies are lacking the policies and staffing to identify and fully mitigate such risks. This policy brief reviews the green profile of Chinese development finance in LAC and analyzes environment related risks and policies for Chinese overseas investment. It also outlines the opportunities of green finance in LAC and how blending instruments can mobilize green financial flows that are beneficial for both China and LAC

Point Interactions: PT-Hermiticity and Reality of the Spectrum

General point interactions for the second derivative operator in one dimension are studied. In particular, ${\mathcal P \mathcal T}$-self-adjoint point interactions with the support at the origin and at points $\pm l$ are considered. The spectrum of such non-Hermitian operators is investigated and conditions when the spectrum is pure real are presented. The results are compared with those for standard self-adjoint point interactions.Comment: 17 page