Culprits or bystanders? Offshore jurisdictions and the global financial crisis

Questions have been raised regarding the role of low-tax offshore jurisdictions in the global financial crisis, based largely on evidence that many problematic asset-backed securities were issued from or listed in the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Ireland, and other ‘offshore’ sites. However, there has not been a systematic investigation of the offshore geography of crisis-implicated securitization. Here we fill this gap by constructing the first comprehensive jurisdictional map of the largest pre-crisis Asset-Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) programs, and examining the rationale for and impacts of this geography in detail. We show that offshore jurisdictions were disproportionately involved in producing the most unstable ABCP classes. However, this is difficult to explain in terms of the traditional role of offshore banking centers as sites for direct avoidance of onshore regulation and transparency. Rather, we propose a Minskian model of pre-crisis offshore ABCP production, wherein these jurisdictions specialized in alleviating incidental institutional frictions (e.g. double taxation) hindering onshore financial innovation. In this context, they could sometimes be legitimately described as improving the institutional ‘efficiency’ of financial markets; however, by facilitating the endogenous evolutionary instability of these markets, this apparently innocuous service had profoundly negative effects. This normative disconnect poses a conundrum for offshore reform

Sticky Power

Modern civilization revolves around money. However, money is a paradox. It is nothing more than a representation of and medium for decentralized networks of social trust, but its production is controlled by highly centralized networks of firms, places, and governments, and there is never enough of it to go around. Moreover, given that the creation of money, as credit, is based on expectations, money is at its heart an instrument for human agency to change the future. At the same time, however, the financial systems that produce money are deeply rooted in the past, and perpetuate themselves through history. This book seeks to deepen our understanding of the paradox of money, by introducing a novel conceptual lens—that of Global Financial Networks—to cast new light on the geography, history, politics, and sociology of finance from the middle ages to the global financial crisis and beyond. It shows that the power of finance is inherently “sticky”; with what are generally assumed to be new innovations such as “offshore” finance actually dating back centuries, and the architecture of global financial networks more broadly adapting to the rise and fall of empires and new technologies while changing surprisingly little in their basic character; or at most changing very slowly. A recognition of the mechanics of this durability, it is argued, calls for a new approach to reforming finance which is less reactively focused on regulation, and more proactively focused on building new institutional systems with a long-term “sticky power” of their own

Sticky Power

Modern civilization revolves around money. However, money is a paradox. It is nothing more than a representation of and medium for decentralized networks of social trust, but its production is controlled by highly centralized networks of firms, places, and governments, and there is never enough of it to go around. Moreover, given that the creation of money, as credit, is based on expectations, money is at its heart an instrument for human agency to change the future. At the same time, however, the financial systems that produce money are deeply rooted in the past, and perpetuate themselves through history. This book seeks to deepen our understanding of the paradox of money, by introducing a novel conceptual lens—that of Global Financial Networks—to cast new light on the geography, history, politics, and sociology of finance from the middle ages to the global financial crisis and beyond. It shows that the power of finance is inherently “sticky”; with what are generally assumed to be new innovations such as “offshore” finance actually dating back centuries, and the architecture of global financial networks more broadly adapting to the rise and fall of empires and new technologies while changing surprisingly little in their basic character; or at most changing very slowly. A recognition of the mechanics of this durability, it is argued, calls for a new approach to reforming finance which is less reactively focused on regulation, and more proactively focused on building new institutional systems with a long-term “sticky power” of their own

Statistical analysis of stochastic magnetic fluctuations in space plasma based on the MMS mission

Based on the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission we look at magnetic field fluctuations in the Earth's magnetosheath. We apply the statistical analysis using a Fokker-Planck equation to investigate processes responsible for stochastic fluctuations in space plasmas. As already known, turbulence in the inertial range of hydromagnetic scales exhibits Markovian features. We have extended the statistical approach to much smaller scales in space, where kinetic theory should be applied. Here we study in detail and compare the characteristics of magnetic fluctuations behind the bow shock, inside the magnetosheath, and near the magnetopause. It appears that the first Kramers- Moyal coefficient is linear and the second term is quadratic function of magnetic increments, which describe drift and diffusion, correspondingly, in the entire magnetosheath. This should correspond to a generalization of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We demonstrate that the second order approximation of the Fokker-Planck equation leads to non-Gaussian kappa distributions of the probability density functions. In all cases in the magnetosheath, the approximate power-law distributions are recovered. For some moderate scales we have the kappa distributions described by various peaked shapes with heavy tails. In particular, for large values of the kappa parameter this shape is reduced to the normal Gaussian distribution. It is worth noting that for smaller kinetic scales the rescaled distributions exhibit a universal global scale-invariance, consistently with the stationary solution of the Fokker-Planck equation. These results, especially on kinetic scales, could be important for a better understanding of the physical mechanism governing turbulent systems in space and astrophysical plasmas.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

Broadband Input Block of Radio Receiver for Software-Defined Radio Devices

In the paper a cost-effective input block of the SDR receiver for 0:

Evaluation of near field of the GSM base station antennas in urban environment, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2003, nr 1

A simple and efficient method for evaluation of near field of the GSM base station antennas in urban environment is presented in this paper. The method is based on the replacement of panel antenna with a discrette linear array. Moreover, the geometrical optics approach is used to consider the influence of environment. The approximate results are found to be in excellent agreement with the results obtained by using the method of moments (MoM). Presented method can be successfully used for fast evaluation of exposure to electromagnetic fields emitted by the GSM base station antennas in urban environment

NOWY ALGORYTM HYBRYDOWY WYKORZYSTUJĄCY AUTOENKODER KONWOLUCYJNY Z SVM DLA ELEKTRYCZNEJ TOMOGRTAFII IMPEDANCYJNEJ I TOMOGRAFII ULTRADŹWIĘKOWEJ

This paper presents a new hybrid algorithm using multiple Support Vector Machines models with convolutional autoencoder to Electrical Impedance Tomography, and Ultrasound Computed Tomography image reconstruction. The ultimate hybrid solution uses multiple SVM models to convert input measurements to individual autoencoder codes representing a given scene then the decoder part of the autoencoder can reconstruct the sceneArtykuł przedstawia nowy hybrydowy algorytm który używa modeli maszyn wektorów nośnych wraz z autoenkoderem konwolucyjnym do rekonstrukcji obrazu z Elektrycznej Tomografii Impedancyjnej oraz Ultrasonograficznej Tomografii Transmisyjnej. Ostateczne rozwiązanie hybrydowe używa wielu modeli SVM do konwersji pomiarów wejściowych do pojedynczych kodów autoenkodera reprezentujących daną scenę a wtedy dekoder wycięty z autoenkodera może zrekonstruować daną scen

The impact of Brexit on London’s entrepreneurial ecosystem: The case of the FinTech industry

This paper analyses how different entrepreneurial actors respond to political uncertainty and changing institutional settings. Moreover, it discusses the impact of those actor-level responses on the resilience of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs), focussing on how they affect the diversity of and the connectivity among its actors. To address these questions, the paper examines how the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union has influenced the financial technology (FinTech) industry in London, applying data collected from in-depth interviews, covering different groups of stakeholders in London’s FinTech industry, such as angel investors, banks, legal advisors, lobby organisations, and private companies. Our results show that political uncertainty and the prospect of institutional change can trigger actor-level responses, which have the potential to modify the diversity as well as the local and non-local connectivity of an EE. Moreover, we demonstrate that the nature of strategic responses of entrepreneurial actors varies significantly, depending on their firm’s characteristics, such as age, size, product specialization, and the structure of their egocentric networks. With regard to the latter, our results show that anchor firms play an important role in other firms’ egocentric networks and have the power to shape their strategic responses

Wybrane problemy bezstratnej kompresji obrazów binarnych

In the paper some basic notions and algorithms devoted to the problem of lossless digital binary images compressionwere provided. A brief survey on existing lossless algorithms was performed, concentrated on the ones that are or can be applied tobinary images, e.g. Huffman, Golomb, Rice, JBIG, RLE, arithmetic coding, as well as the selected predicting approaches.W artykule przedstawiono podstawowe pojęcia i algorytmy związane z bezstratną kompresją obrazów binarnych. Dokonano przeglądu istniejących algorytmów bezstratnej kompresji, które są lub mogą być stosowane do obrazów binarnych, takich jak: kodowanie Huffmana, Golomba, Rice’a, kompresja JBIG, kodowanie długości sekwencji, kodowanie arytmetyczne oraz wybrane algorytmy predykcyjn