Banking performance and technological change in non-core EU countries: A study of Spain and Portugal

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cost efficiency of banks operating in two "non-core" EU countries, Portugal and Spain, over a number of years. Specifically, the paper aims to examine the extent to which banks' efficiency is influenced by their portfolio orientation and scale of operation. Data envelopment analysis is used to identify banks' levels of performance over time in both countries. In order to decompose banks' total factor productivity change into technological, scale efficiency and pure efficiency changes, the Malmquist index method is applied. Banks operating in both countries have improved their performance over time and savings banks and large banks, in particular, have tended to outperform other types of banks. Banks operating in Spain tend to perform better than in Portugal and Spanish-owned banks perform better than their Portuguese-owned counterparts. The improvements in performance revealed have mainly been due to technological change. Bankscope is a well- respected data source and has been the basis of many studies of performance in international banking. Unfortunately, owing to data deficiencies, around 20 per cent of the banks operating in Portugal and Spain were not included. Practical implications - If Portuguese banks are to be competitive internationally, there is considerable need for efficiency improvements. The paper provides insights into the dynamics of the Portuguese and Spanish banking systems. The results should be of interest to management in banking and bank regulators in Europe, and economists and others studying bank performance trends. The research reported may shed light on some of the challenges facing the banking sectors of the "new" EU states (such as Poland and Hungary)

Testing for international financial markets integration

This paper examines the extent to which financial markets across the main international financial centres integrated between 1988 and 2001 in the face of technological change and capital market liberalisation. Two empirical approaches are adopted based on principal components analysis and cointegration tests, applied respectively to covered interest rate differentials and real interest rates.. The results suggest that some financial integration occurred during the 1990s but that integration is far from complete at the international level. The study also confirms differing trends in the integration of financial markets in different geographical regions.School of Managemen

Emergence of a superradiation: pselaphine rove beetles in mid-Cretaceous amber from Myanmar and their evolutionary implications

Pselaphinae is an exceptionally species-rich, globally distributed subfamily of minute rove beetles (Staphylinidae), many of which are inquilines of social insects. Deducing the factors that drove pselaphine diversification and their evolutionary predisposition to inquilinism requires a reliable timescale of pselaphine cladogenesis. Pselaphinae is split into a small and highly plesiomorphic supertribe, Faronitae, and its sister group, the ‘higher Pselaphinae’ – a vast multi-tribe clade with a more derived morphological ground plan, and which includes all known instances of inquilinism. The higher Pselaphinae is dominated by tribes with a Gondwanan taxonomic bias. However, a minority of tribes are limited to the Nearctic and Palearctic ecozones, implying a potentially older, Pangaean origin of the higher Pselaphinae as a whole. Here, I describe fossils from mid-Cretaceous (∼99 million years old) Burmese amber that confirm the existence of crown-group higher pselaphines on the Eurasian supercontinent prior to contact with Gondwanan landmasses. Protrichonyx rafifrons gen. et sp.n. is placed incertae sedis within the higher Pselaphinae. Boreotethys gen.n., erected for B. grimaldii sp.n. and B. arctopteryx sp.n., represents an extinct sister taxon and putative stem group of Bythinini, a Recent tribe with a primarily Holarctic distribution. The Laurasian palaeolocality of the newly described taxa implies that higher pselaphines are indeed probably of Jurassic, Pangaean extraction and that the Laurasian-Gondwanan tribal dichotomy of this clade may have developed vicariantly following Pangaean rifting. Higher pselaphines probably predate the earliest ants. Their physically protective morphological ground plan may have been a preadaptation for myrmecophily when ants became diverse and ecologically ubiquitous, much later in the Cenozoic

Myrmecophily in beetles (Coleoptera): evolutionary patterns and biological mechanisms

Socially parasitic myrmecophily has evolved numerous times in arthropods, but myrmecophilous lineages are non-randomly distributed across phylogeny. Evolution of this way of life is heavily biased towards the Coleoptera, within this order towards rove beetles (Staphylinidae), and within rove beetles to two subfamilies. Here, I provide an overview of the diversity of myrmecophilous beetles and discuss advances in comprehending their biology, systematics, and evolution. I address possible factors underlying the skewed phylogenetic distribution of myrmecophily across the Coleoptera. Accounting for this trend requires knowledge of ancestral ecologies and phenotypic attributes in clades where taxa are predisposed to undergo the evolutionary transition from free-living to myrmecophilous. Clades that are primitively predatory, small in body size, and possess defensive strategies, either physical or chemical, that permit some degree of protection from policing worker ants, appear to be preadapted to evolve myrmecophily repeatedly. I propose that the mode of colony exploitation employed during the initial phase of evolution, combined with the potential evolvability of the body plan, has important consequences for subsequent evolutionary steps: These parameters influence if and how different taxa undergo specialisation to colony life and the mechanisms the most advanced myrmecophiles employ to achieve social integration. Myrmecophily is a paradigm of intricate symbiosis, which in certain clades of beetles evolves recurrently from an ancestral preadaptive ground state and follows a relatively predictable phenotypic trajectory. These clades are potentially powerful systems to explore the evolution and mechanistic bases of symbiotic relationships in animals

Control of Compartment Size by an EGF Ligand from Neighboring Cells

Insect bodies are subdivided into anterior (A) and posterior (P) compartments: cohesive fields of distinct cell lineage and cell affinity [1]. Like organs in many animal species, compartments can develop to normal sizes despite considerable variation in cell division [2, 3]. This implies that overall compartment dimensions are subject to genetic control, but the mechanisms are unknown. Here, studying Drosophila's embryonic segments, I show that P compartment dimensions depend on epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling. I suggest the primary activating ligand is Spitz, emanating from neighboring A compartment cells. Spi/EGFR activity stimulates P compartment cell enlargement and survival, but evidence is presented that Spitz is secreted in limited amounts, so that increasing the number of cells within the P compartment causes the per-cell Spitz level to drop. This leads to compensatory apoptosis and cell-size reductions that preserve compartment dimensions. Conversely, I propose that lowering P compartment cell numbers enhances per-cell Spitz availability; this increases cell survival and cell size, again safeguarding compartment size. The results argue that the gauging of P compartment size is due, at least in part, to cells surviving and growing according to Spi availability. These data offer mechanistic insight into how diffusible molecules control organ size

Challenges Facing the Polish Banking Industry: A Comparative Study with UK Banks

In 2004 Poland entered the EU. This paper investigates the performance of the Polish banking industry over the period 1999–2004, by looking specifically at its comparative efficiency in relation to one of the largest banking sectors in the EU namely, that of the UK. Based on a range of efficiency measures, the empirical results reveal a surprising degree of relative efficiency in the Polish banking industry, no doubt reflecting the substantial economic changes introduced in Poland since 1989. The findings suggest that the Polish banking sector should be able to withstand the new competitive pressures that it faces following entry into the banking sector of the EU.Poland, UK, banking, efficiency, performance

A mathematical and experimental investigation on mine ventilation and fans

Mining is "being carried on at steadily increasing depths, and as mines go deeper, ventilation presents problems of increasing complexity and importance. The working of mineral deposits at moderate depths has led to the sinking of numerous shafts, each serving for the winning of the minerals from a small area, B\zt with greater depths, the heavy cost of sinking and fitting shafts has made larger mineral concessions a hecessity; and with modem progress in the construction of roadways supported by circular steel girders and brick or cement linings, it is becoming evident that in the future still more extensive concessions ?/ill be worked from a single pair of shafts. Money which in the past has been spent in sinking new shafts and erecting extensive surface works will be found to be more economically expended in making larger roadways with permanent linings, which will not only serve for the winning of the minerals from an area much more extensive, but will also lead to increased safety and economy, especially by reducing the accident rate and the cost of haulage below their present day values.The Science of Mine Ventilation is faced with the problem of ventilating these extended areas in an effective manner, and of securing, if possible, that there shall not be set an effective limit to the size of the area of economical exploitation by a failure to supply an adequate volume of air. This problem divides itself into a mining problem which has to do with the provision and maintenance of suitable shafts and airways, and an engineering problem which has to do with the provision of suitable ventilating appliances for the production of the necessary currents of air.The solution of the mining problem is found in the provision of large airways in parallel arrangement with each other, well secured by strong linings, as smooth as possible to prevent excessive friction and as tight as possible to prevent serious leakage of air from the intake to the return. The power required to circulate the necessary volume of air will depend upon how well this mining problem has been solved. Large roadways not only increase the facilities for safe and efficient transport, but also reduce very considerably the bill for power required to produce adequate ventilation.For the solution of the engineering problem, the volume of air required and the pressure necessary to circulate that volume must "be known* As the efficiency obtained from the ventilator will depend largely on the accuracy of this estimate, the determination of the P-Q relation for the mine becomes a matter of import. The task, however, is one which presents considerable difficulty