Building Structure Design as an Integral Part of Architecture: A Teaching Model for Students of Architecture

This paper explores the place of structural design within undergraduate architectural education. The role and format of lecture-based structure courses within an education system, organized around the architectural design studio is discussed with its most prominent problems and proposed solutions. The fundamental concept of the current teaching model in the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) is quite appropriate for the education of future architects. If we consider that the main occupation of an architect is to design, then, naturally, the design studio should be at the center of the curriculum. Since the act of designing cannot be realized without artistic skills and scientific and theoretical knowledge it is also suitable that the activities in design studios are backed up with relevant lecture courses. On the other hand, the importance of effective structural design knowledge for an architect is emphasized within the context of a country that encountered major earthquakes in the past.     

What preconceptions and attitudes about engineering are prevalent amongst upper secondary school pupils? An international study

In the Netherlands, as well as in many other countries, there is an increasing interest in implementing education about engineering as a part of general education at the upper secondary school level. In order to know what pupils at that level think about engineering, a study has been done to investigate their attitude towards and their concept of engineering. This study was done not only in the Netherlands but also in 39 other countries. In the preparation of the study, pupils were asked to draw concept maps of what they thought engineering was about. In the quantitative main part of the study, pupils were asked to respond to 33 Likert-type attitude items and 32 concept-items of the same type. A factor analysis was done in order to reveal the dimensions in the pupils’ attitude and concept. In contrast to studies carried out amongst students in lower secondary school levels, a fairly clear concept about engineering was found. The gender differences relating to engineering, found in lower secondary education, were not found in upper secondary education. The prevalent attitude of students towards engineering indicated a fairly positive image of engineering.     

A Prudential Paradox: The Signal in (Not) Restricting Bank Dividends

By restricting dividends in the weakest banks, prudential regulators counterintuitively induce more capital payouts in marginal banks. The potential for bank runs exacerbates the incentive to signal strength through dividend payments. Regulatory restrictions on those payments can be used to achieve the first-best outcome, but only if the prevailing capital requirements are sufficiently high. In a crisis, the optimal dividend policy is more restrictive, since it allows the weak but solvent banks to pool with the strong. Finally, we show that the optimal release of regulatory bank information depends critically on the regulator's information and dividend restriction policies.     

What Accounts for the Changes in U.S. Fiscal Policy Transmission?

Using vector autoregressions on U.S. time series for 1957–79 and 1983–2004, we find government spending shocks to have stronger effects on output, consumption, and wages in the earlier period. We try to account for this observation within a DSGE model featuring price rigidities and limited asset market participation. Specifically, we estimate the structural parameters of the model for both periods by matching impulse responses. Model‐based counterfactual experiments suggest that most of the changes in fiscal policy transmission are accounted for by increased asset market participation and the more active monetary policy of the Volcker–Greenspan period.     

Between a rock and a hard place: corporate elites in the context of religion and secularism in Turkey

Drawing on discourse analyses of 36 in-depth interviews with elite business people from Turkey, the study identifies the networking patterns of new and established business elites in the context of economic liberalization and socioreligious transformation of the country. Through a comparative analysis of the so-called secular and religious elite networks, we demonstrate the role of institutional actors such as the government, and identity networks, based on religion and place of birth in shaping the form and content of social networks among business elites in Turkey. In order to achieve this, we operationalize Bourdieu's notion of theory of practice and Granovetter's theory of social networks, illustrating the utility of combining these approaches in explicating the form and content of social networks in their situated contexts, in which power and divergent interests are negotiated.     

Income distribution and exchange in a dynamic search model

This paper studies the link between income distribution and trade mechanisms in a dynamic search model with two-sided asymmetric information. Buyers and sellers have imperfect information about the income levels of the other group. Furthermore, asymmetry of information about incomes is the source of price dispersion. In such a frictional environment, we capture the effects of a change in inter- and intra-class income distribution on the trade mechanism, which is represented by the expected trade volume and the flux of buyers and sellers in the market.     

INTEREST RATE CORRIDOR,LIQUIDITY MANAGEMENT,AND THE OVERNIGHT SPREAD

We analyze the determinants of the overnight spread (the spread between the Borsa Istanbul overnight repo interest rate and the average funding rate of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey [CBRT]) using data from both the conventional and the new monetary policy episodes. We empirically document that the overnight spread has recently been influenced by various factors that are directly or closely related to the liquidity policy of the CBRT. (JEL E43, E52, C24)     

The International Transmission of Bank Liquidity Shocks: Evidence from an Emerging Market

I exploit the 1998 Russian default as a negative liquidity shock to international banks and analyze its transmission to Peru. I find that after the shock international banks reduce bank‐to‐bank lending to Peruvian banks and Peruvian banks reduce lending to Peruvian firms. The effect is strongest for domestically owned banks that borrow internationally, intermediate for foreign‐owned banks, and weakest for locally funded banks. I control for credit demand by examining firms that borrow from several banks. These results suggest that international banks transmit liquidity shocks across countries and that negative liquidity shocks reduce bank lending in affected countries.     

An Institutionalist Framework for a Consistent Financial Regulation

Abstract:

In the light of recurrent systemic crises that financialized market economies have been experiencing since the 1980s, this article seeks to determine the conditions required for a regulatory framework apt to ensure financial stability. Drawing upon an Institutionalist Minskyian endogenous financial instability approach, the article studies the fragilities of liberalized finance and points to some policy alternatives able to lead to an alternative financial regulatory model that is consistent with macroeconomic stability. It argues that in a weak regulatory environment financial markets naturally generate instabilities that could turn into systemic crises. The analysis maintains that in order to deal with such crises, a tight supervision should be framed under the aegis of public authorities and suggests some rules to develop a relevant regulatory system through an open and democratic decision process. Two points then deserve particular attention: a macro-prudential approach that regards instability as a systemic (non-individual) issue, and a preventive approach that aims at preventing systemic-risk generating activities from taking control over the markets.