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Daily Archives: July 26, 2014

Capital Inflows, Exchange Rate Flexibility and Credit Booms

Magud, Nicolas E. and Reinhart, Carmen M. and Vesperoni, Esteban, Capital Inflows, Exchange Rate Flexibility and Credit Booms (August 2014). Review of Development Economics, Vol. 18, Issue 3, pp. 415-430, 2014. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2472247 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/rode.12093

Historically, capital flow bonanzas have often fueled sharp credit expansions in advanced and emerging market economies alike. Focusing primarily on emerging markets, this paper analyzes the impact of exchange rate flexibility on credit markets during periods of large capital inflows. It is shown that bank credit is larger and its composition tilts to foreign currency in economies with less flexible exchange rate regimes, and that these results are not explained entirely by the fact that the latter attract more capital inflows than economies with more flexible regimes. The findings thus suggest countries with less flexible exchange rate regimes may stand to benefit the most from regulatory policies that reduce banks’ incentives to tap external markets and to lend/borrow in foreign currency; these policies include marginal reserve requirements on foreign lending, currency‐dependent liquidity requirements and higher capital requirement and/or dynamic provisioning on foreign exchange loans.”

EPA Is Not Fully Aware of the Extent of Its Use of Cloud Computing Technologies

EPA OIG – Report No. 14-P-0323 July 24, 2014 “Our audit work disclosed management oversight concerns regarding the EPA’s use of cloud computing technologies. These concerns highlight the need for the EPA to strengthen its catalog of cloud vendors and processes to manage vendor relationships to ensure compliance with federal security requirements. In particular: The EPA… Continue Reading

The Precise Form of Financial Integration: Empirical Evidence for Selected Asian Countries

Gan, Pei-Tha, The Precise Form of Financial Integration: Empirical Evidence for Selected Asian Countries (2014). Economic Modelling, Vol. 42, 2014. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2471390 “A noteworthy attribute of the empirical studies on financial integration is that many published papers rely on the approximate form of financial integration by studying the degree of regional financial… Continue Reading

In Sweden, Sverker Johansson and His ‘Bot’ Have Created 2.7 Million Articles – WSJ

WSJ.com – “Sverker Johansson could be the most prolific author you’ve never heard of. Volunteering his time over the past seven years publishing to Wikipedia, the 53-year-old Swede can take credit for 2.7 million articles, or 8.5% of the entire collection, according to Wikimedia analytics, which measures the site’s traffic. His stats far outpace any other… Continue Reading

Cancer Vaccine Exists, Goes Unused

The Atlantic: “Every 20 minutes a person in the U.S. is diagnosed with with a human-papilloma virus-associated cancer. Most of those cancers could be prevented with an HPV vaccine. But fewer than half of American children are given the vaccination, CDC officials announced yesterday.  If as many people got vaccinated against HPV as do against whooping… Continue Reading

Wealth Levels, Wealth Inequality, and the Great Recession

“In a new Recession Brief for the Recession Trends initiative, Fabian T. Pfeffer (University of Michigan), RSF president Sheldon Danziger, and Robert F. Schoeni (University of Michigan) explore the extent to which the Great Recession altered the level and distribution of American families’ wealth, looking at the period between 2007 and 2013. While the Recession had a… Continue Reading

Why “Can’t Make Ends Meet” Trumps “Poverty”

Moyers & company: “This week, the Center for Community Change (CCC) released new research that details the way low-income Americans think and talk about living on the edge. It found that the language being used by policymakers and others to describe them is turning off the very people it is supposed to help. The project surveyed over 1,700… Continue Reading

Deeper Dive into EFF’s Motion on Backbone Surveillance

News release: “Yesterday we filed a motion for partial summary judgment in our long running Jewel v. NSA case, focusing on the government’s admitted seizure and search of communications from the Internet backbone, also called “upstream.” We’ve asked the judge to rule that there are two ways in which this is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment: The admitted seizure of communications from the… Continue Reading