Bank lending to the production sector: credit crunch or extra-credit?

This paper provides empirical evidence to support the theory that, in Italy, over the course of the past two years, even though a considerable slowdown in bank lending has been recorded, there has not been a credit crunch. After a first section dedicated to a descriptive analysis of the data, the paper presents an econometric estimation of the production sector’s demand for bank loans. An Error Correction Model (ECM) is used – estimated for the pre-crisis period (1998.Q2 – 2007.Q2) and applied both with the one and two step procedure – which considers lending as a function of the added value of the private sector, of the gross operating margin to nominal added value ratio (a proxy for self-financing) and of the real interest rate applied to loans. To test the robustness of the results obtained in the first specification of the model, we remove the assumption of weak exogeneity of the independent variables of the single equation model and construct a multivariate multi-equation model (VECM). All of the different approaches and methods adopted provided similar results: as expected, the demand for credit increases as real added value increases and decreases as the cost of lending and self-financing increase. The dynamic out-of-sample forecast of the model, relating to the two-year period of economic and financial crisis (2007.Q3 – 2009.Q2), shows that the actual loan stock remained well above the “theoretical” level forecasted on the basis of the functional relationships estimated before the crisis. This delta (which can be defined as “extra-credit”) is interpreted as the outcome of a rightward shift of the credit supply curve, rather than a leftward shift as would have happened in a credit crunch scenario.credit crunch, Italian banks, bank lending, production sector, loan demand, error correction model, cointegration

Bank lending to the production sector: credit crunch or extra-credit?

This paper provides empirical evidence to support the theory that, in Italy, over the course of the past two years, even though a considerable slowdown in bank lending has been recorded, there has not been a credit crunch. After a first section dedicated to a descriptive analysis of the data, the paper presents an econometric estimation of the production sector’s demand for bank loans. An Error Correction Model (ECM) is used – estimated for the pre-crisis period (1998.Q2 – 2007.Q2) and applied both with the one and two step procedure – which considers lending as a function of the added value of the private sector, of the gross operating margin to nominal added value ratio (a proxy for self-financing) and of the real interest rate applied to loans. To test the robustness of the results obtained in the first specification of the model, we remove the assumption of weak exogeneity of the independent variables of the single equation model and construct a multivariate multi-equation model (VECM). All of the different approaches and methods adopted provided similar results: as expected, the demand for credit increases as real added value increases and decreases as the cost of lending and self-financing increase. The dynamic out-of-sample forecast of the model, relating to the two-year period of economic and financial crisis (2007.Q3 – 2009.Q2), shows that the actual loan stock remained well above the “theoretical” level forecasted on the basis of the functional relationships estimated before the crisis. This delta (which can be defined as “extra-credit”) is interpreted as the outcome of a rightward shift of the credit supply curve, rather than a leftward shift as would have happened in a credit crunch scenario

Bank lending to the production sector: credit crunch or extra-credit?

This paper provides empirical evidence to support the theory that, in Italy, over the course of the past two years, even though a considerable slowdown in bank lending has been recorded, there has not been a credit crunch. After a first section dedicated to a descriptive analysis of the data, the paper presents an econometric estimation of the production sector’s demand for bank loans. An Error Correction Model (ECM) is used – estimated for the pre-crisis period (1998.Q2 – 2007.Q2) and applied both with the one and two step procedure – which considers lending as a function of the added value of the private sector, of the gross operating margin to nominal added value ratio (a proxy for self-financing) and of the real interest rate applied to loans. To test the robustness of the results obtained in the first specification of the model, we remove the assumption of weak exogeneity of the independent variables of the single equation model and construct a multivariate multi-equation model (VECM). All of the different approaches and methods adopted provided similar results: as expected, the demand for credit increases as real added value increases and decreases as the cost of lending and self-financing increase. The dynamic out-of-sample forecast of the model, relating to the two-year period of economic and financial crisis (2007.Q3 – 2009.Q2), shows that the actual loan stock remained well above the “theoretical” level forecasted on the basis of the functional relationships estimated before the crisis. This delta (which can be defined as “extra-credit”) is interpreted as the outcome of a rightward shift of the credit supply curve, rather than a leftward shift as would have happened in a credit crunch scenario

MarciaTesta: An Automatic Generator of Test Programs for Microprocessors' Data Caches

SBST (Software Based Self-Testing) is an effective solution for in-system testing of SoCs without any additional hardware requirement. SBST is particularly suited for embedded blocks with limited accessibility, such as cache memories. Several methodologies have been proposed to properly adapt existing March algorithms to test cache memories. Unfortunately they all leave the test engineers the task of manually coding them into the specific Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) of the target microprocessor. We propose an EDA tool for the automatic generation of assembly cache test program for a specific architectur

Validation & Verification of an EDA automated synthesis tool

Reliability and correctness are two mandatory features for automated synthesis tools. To reach the goals several campaigns of Validation and Verification (V&V) are needed. The paper presents the extensive efforts set up to prove the correctness of a newly developed EDA automated synthesis tool. The target tool, MarciaTesta, is a multi-platform automatic generator of test programs for microprocessors' caches. Getting in input the selected March Test and some architectural details about the target cache memory, the tool automatically generates the assembly level program to be run as Software Based Self-Testing (SBST). The equivalence between the original March Test, the automatically generated Assembly program, and the intermediate C/C++ program have been proved resorting to sophisticated logging mechanisms. A set of proved libraries has been generated and extensively used during the tool development. A detailed analysis of the lessons learned is reporte

An area-efficient 2-D convolution implementation on FPGA for space applications

The 2-D Convolution is an algorithm widely used in image and video processing. Although its computation is simple, its implementation requires a high computational power and an intensive use of memory. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) architectures were proposed to accelerate calculations of 2-D Convolution and the use of buffers implemented on FPGAs are used to avoid direct memory access. In this paper we present an implementation of the 2-D Convolution algorithm on a FPGA architecture designed to support this operation in space applications. This proposed solution dramatically decreases the area needed keeping good performance, making it appropriate for embedded systems in critical space application

Enhanced photogeneration of polaron pairs in neat semicrystalline donor-acceptor copolymer films via direct excitation of interchain aggregates

We investigate the photogeneration of polaron pairs (PPs) in neat films of the semicrystalline donor–acceptor semiconducting copolymer PCPDTBT. Carefully selecting the solution-processing procedures, we obtain films with different amounts of crystallinity and interchain aggregation. We compare the photogeneration of PPs between the films by monitoring their photoinduced absorption in ultrafast pump–probe experiments, selectively exciting nonaggregated or aggregated polymer chains. The direct photoexcitation of interchain π-aggregates results in prompt (<100 fs) charge generation. Compared to the case where nonaggregated chains are excited, we find an 8-fold increase in the prompt PP to singlet-exciton ratio. We also show that highly crystalline lamellar nanostructures not containing π-stacked or any light-absorbing aggregates do not improve the efficiency of PP photogeneration. Our results show that light absorption from interchain aggregates is highly beneficial for charge photogeneration in semiconducting polymers and should be taken into account when optimizing film morphologies for photovoltaic devices

SA-FEMIP: A Self-Adaptive Features Extractor and Matcher IP-Core Based on Partially Reconfigurable FPGAs for Space Applications

Video-based navigation (VBN) is increasingly used in space applications to enable autonomous entry, descent, and landing of aircrafts. VBN algorithms require real-time performances and high computational capabilities, especially to perform features extraction and matching (FEM). In this context, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can be employed as efficient hardware accelerators. This paper proposes an improved FPGA-based FEM module. Online self-adaptation of the parameters of both the image noise filter and the features extraction algorithm is adopted to improve the algorithm robustness. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed self-adaptive module. It introduces a marginal resource overhead and no timing performance degradation when compared with the reference state-of-the-art architecture

SATTA: a Self-Adaptive Temperature-based TDF awareness methodology for dynamically reconfigurable FPGAs

Dependability issues due to non functional properties are emerging as major cause of faults in modern digital systems. Effective countermeasures have to be presented to properly manage their critical timing effects. This paper presents a methodology to avoid transition delay faults in FPGA-based systems, with low area overhead. The approach is able to exploit temperature information and aging characteristics to minimize the cost in terms of performances degradation and power consumption. The architecture of a hardware manager able to avoid delay faults is presented and deeply analyzed, as well as its integration in the standard implementation design flow