Quantitative Easing Forever? Financialisation and the Institutional Legitimacy of the Federal Reserve’s Unconventional Monetary Policy

Scholars of financialisation have argued that the emergence of finance-led grow regimes requires new instruments for effective conduct of economic policy. In this scholarship, central banks have been seen as the most promising actors to utilise one of the most synergetic policies, the maintenance of high and stable prices of financial assets. Since the financial crisis of 2007–8, central banks of the developed world have adopted various unconventional monetary policy measures that serve this function. But will these unconventional measures become institutionally legitimate and institutionalised as conventional practice, as suggested necessary by scholars of financialisation? In this paper, we answer to this question by studying the institutional legitimation of the Federal Reserve’s Quantiative Easing (QE) programmes. We argue that the QE programmes have been legitimated successfully but with institutional legitimation strategies, which cause institutional pressures that question the potential of QE from becoming a regular policy instrument and practice.     

昆山花桥梦世界飞天影院单层球面网壳结构整体稳定性分析

对于球形单层网壳结构进行考虑初始缺陷的几何非线性的有限元分析即荷载-位移全过程分析。     

富水粉细砂地层隧道综合降水设计与施工技术

本文通过对实例进行分析论述,解决了围岩受施工扰动和水长期浸润后开挖时不稳定问题,保证了隧道结构和施工安全,为同等或类似地质条件下的地下工程研究及施工提供借鉴和参考。     

Bank competition,concentration and financial stability in the Turkish banking industry

This paper analyzes the impact of competition and concentration on bank stability in the Turkish banking industry over the period 2002–2012. The Boone indicator and the efficiency-adjusted Lerner index are used as proxies for competition, while the non-performing loans (NPL) ratio and Z-scores are used as proxies for bank stability. The main results indicate that competition is negatively related to the NPL ratio but positively related to the Z-score. The results further indicate that greater concentration has a positive impact on the NPL and a negative impact on the Z-score. We also use a quadratic term of the competition measures to capture a possible non-linear relationship between competition and stability. The results show that the coefficient of the quadratic term is negative for the NPL model and positive for the Z-score model. Overall, our findings provide support for the competition-fragility view.     

多级斜坡路基软弱地基变形机理和稳定性数值分析

山区公路路基往往是在斜坡上填筑的,这种填筑形式更易于发生变形破坏,故本文以某斜坡路基为研究对象,研究斜坡路基地基变形机理,并用强度折减法分析该斜坡路基的稳定性。结果表明:①地基形变的总体趋势以沉降变形为主,随填筑高度的增加,水平位移逐渐趋于均匀,并表现为侧向外鼓,沉降最大值集中在与填筑体中心相交的区域。②路基中心的最终沉降位移相较于坡脚的2倍;路基整体有向斜坡下滑移的趋势;短坡脚的水平位移发展最快。③斜坡路基随填筑高度的增加,从深层滑动发展为浅层滑动,滑体集中于长坡脚。④随填筑高度的增加,安全系数逐渐降低。     

Measuring the deadly embrace: Systemic and sovereign risks

This study contributes to the literature by making a first step toward implementing a comprehensive internally coherent measurement of systemic risk in a country. It measures systemic risk and the ensuing conditional contingent liabilities of the sovereign stemming from Luxembourg’s Other Systemically Important Institutions (OSIIs), the Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) to which they belong, the investment funds sponsored by the OSIIs, the household and the non-financial corporate sectors. The ensuing estimated systemic contingent claims are included in a stochastic version of the general government’s balance sheet to gauge their impact on the country’s sovereign risk. Results indicate that time-varying conditional implicit guarantees from OSSIs are larger than those from G-SIBs and investment funds, while systemic risk stemming from the household and non-financial corporate sectors is moderate. The robustness of the sovereign is not drastically affected by systemic risk stemming from the rest of the economy. However, illustrating the so-called “deadly embrace”, sovereign risk would significantly rise as a result of a historically plausible increase in sovereign assets’ value volatility combined with an economy-wide shock. The main policy implication is that financial stability stands on two columns, a resilient financial sector and a sustainable fiscal position.     

Assessing Systemic Importance With a Fuzzy Logic Inference System

Three metrics are designed to assess Colombian financial institutions' size, connectedness and non-substitutability as the main drivers of systemic importance: (i) centrality as net borrower in the money market network; (ii) centrality as payments originator in the large-value payment system network; and (iii) asset value of core financial services. An aggregated systemic importance index is calculated based on expert knowledge by using a fuzzy logic inference system. We use principal component analysis to calculate a benchmark index for comparison purposes. Overall similarities between both indexes put forward that expert knowledge aggregation is consistent with that based on a purely quantitative standard approach. Specific non-negligible differences concur with the nonlinear features of an approach whose intention is to replicate human reasoning. Both indexes are complementary and provide a comprehensive relative assessment of each financial institution's systemic importance in the Colombian case, in which the choice of metrics pursues the macroprudential perspective of financial stability. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

苏里格气田苏X区盒8段储层测井二次解释及应用

就苏里格气田苏X区盒8段储层测井二次解释进行了研究。在阐述测井资料预处理的基础上,对储气层孔隙度解释、渗透率解释、泥质含量解释、含气饱和度解释的模型与有效厚度下限的确定作了论述。     

The moments of the Gompertz distribution and maximum likelihood estimation of its parameters

The Gompertz distribution is widely used to describe the distribution of adult deaths. Previous works concentrated on formulating approximate relationships to characterise it. However, using the generalised integro-exponential function, exact formulas can be derived for its moment-generating function and central moments. Based on the exact central moments, higher accuracy approximations can be defined for them. In demographic or actuarial applications, maximum likelihood estimation is often used to determine the parameters of the Gompertz distribution. By solving the maximum likelihood estimates analytically, the dimension of the optimisation problem can be reduced to one both in the case of discrete and continuous data. Monte Carlo experiments show that by ML estimation, higher accuracy estimates can be acquired than by the method of moments.     

The tortoise and the hare: the impact of employment instability on firm performance

The main objective of this study is to assess the influence of employment instability on firm performance in a sample of publicly traded firms. Competing theoretical arguments are considered with regard to likely outcomes associated with employment instability. A large sample of cross‐sectional time‐series data is then analysed using generalised estimating equations (GEE) regression techniques. Results indicate that employment instability is negatively associated with firm performance, although the relationship is also demonstrated to be quadratic (an inverse U‐shaped relationship). This suggests that the main relationship varies depending upon the level of employment instability. Industry characteristics are also examined as moderators of this main effect. The results suggest a disordinal interaction effect for industry differentiation, where employment instability is negatively associated with firm performance for firms in highly differentiated industries and positively associated in less differentiated industries.