Tag: Crisis

Free Download Alan S. Blinder, "Rethinking the Financial Crisis"
English | ISBN: 0871548100 | 2013 | 374 pages | PDF | 5 MB
Some economic events are so major and unsettling that they "change everything." Such is the case with the financial crisis that started in the summer of 2007 and is still a drag on the world economy. Yet enough time has now elapsed for economists to consider questions that run deeper than the usual focus on the immediate causes and consequences of the crisis. How have these stunning events changed our thinking about the role of the financial system in the economy, about the costs and benefits of financial innovation, about the efficiency of financial markets, and about the role the government should play in regulating finance? In Rethinking the Financial Crisis, some of the nation’s most renowned economists share their assessments of particular aspects of the crisis and reconsider the way we think about the financial system and its role in the economy. In its wide-ranging inquiry into the financial crash, Rethinking the Financial Crisis marshals an impressive collection of rigorous and yet empirically-relevant research that, in some respects, upsets the conventional wisdom about the crisis and also opens up new areas for exploration. Two separate chapters-by Burton G. Malkiel and by Hersh Shefrin and Meir Statman – debate whether the facts of the financial crisis upend the efficient market hypothesis and require a more behavioral account of financial market performance. To build a better bridge between the study of finance and the "real" economy of production and employment, Simon Gilchrist and Egan Zakrasjek take an innovative measure of financial stress and embed it in a model of the U.S. economy to assess how disruptions in financial markets affect economic activity-and how the Federal Reserve might do monetary policy better. The volume also examines the crucial role of financial innovation in the evolution of the pre-crash financial system. Thomas Philippon documents the huge increase in the size of the financial services industry relative to real GDP, and also the increasing cost per financial transaction. He suggests that the finance industry of 1900 was just as able to produce loans, bonds, and stocks as its modern counterpart-and it did so more cheaply. Robert Jarrow looks in detail at some of the major types of exotic securities developed by financial engineers, such as collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, reaching judgments on which make the real economy more efficient and which do not. The volume’s final section turns explicitly to regulatory matters. Robert Litan discusses the political economy of financial regulation before and after the crisis. He reviews the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which he considers an imperfect but useful response to a major breakdown in market and regulatory discipline. At a time when the financial sector continues to be a source of considerable controversy, Rethinking the Financial Crisis addresses important questions about the complex workings of American finance and shows how the study of economics needs to change to deepen our understanding of the indispensable but risky role that the financial system plays in modern economies.

Free Download João Teixeira Lopes, "Public Spaces: Times of Crisis and Change "
English | ISBN: 1786354640 | 2016 | 440 pages | EPUB | 5 MB
This volume is about the plurality and complexity of modern urban public spaces. The authors move far beyond the nostalgia of traditional streets, squares and gardens to mobilize contemporary sociological knowledge based on the mediated relations between spatial morphology and everyday life in cities across several continents. Contributions analyse diverse social realities and social interventions within the context of urban public spaces, linking to the broader discussion of urban public policies in European cities and beyond. Sometimes these interventions lead to exclusionary processes; other times they are the object of conflicts and resistances. When we speak about the (re)constructions, the uses and counter-uses of urban public spaces, we are always in the core of the political (city: polis) domain as those places are not fixed and do not have unique representations or immutable configurations – they are networks of relationships and social practices with antagonistic views and flexible uses.

Free Download Mark Feng Teng, "Identity Crisis of Early Career Academics in Applied Linguistics: Against the Publish or Perish Paradox in China"
English | ISBN: 9819725534 | 2024 | 149 pages | PDF | 3 MB
This book adopts a tripartite framework approach to explore the identity construction of early-career researchers in applied linguistics. This tripartite framework of identity-in-practice, identity-in-discourse, and identity-in-activity enables a comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved in the process, within the context of China’s higher education context. By delving into the complexities of early-career teachers’ professional development and identity construction in China’s evolving higher education landscape, readers gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by these professionals. This knowledge informs educators and administrators in providing effective support for the professional development of early-career teachers, as well as offers insights that may be applicable to teachers and researchers in other contexts. Furthermore, the tripartite framework of teacher identity based on the findings lends support to an expanded notion of professional development that higher education teachers should draw on to empower themselves.

Free Download Financial Centres in Europe: Post-Crisis Risks, Challenges and Opportunities By Rym Ayadi, Emrah Arbak
2013 | 200 Pages | ISBN: 1137275030 | PDF | 2 MB
Financial centres are constantly evolving to accommodate an increasingly integrated global economy and an equally challenging environment post financial crisis. They are home to a range of financial services and serve as intermediaries between mostly non-resident clients and international and local financial institutions, large or small. Financial centres have grown over recent decades as a direct result of the increasing importance of financial markets across the globe. Using analysis from a representative sample of financial centres in Europe and elsewhere, face-to-face surveys pre and post crisis and systematic comparisons, Financial Centres in Europe provides a comprehensive assessment of the extent to which increased international cooperation in regulation and taxation could allow financial centres to better respond to risks and opportunities facing them in the future. At the same time, it identifies challenges of a geopolitical and macroeconomic nature facing financial centres in the coming years.

Free Download Balázs Trencsényi, "East Central European Crisis Discourses in the Twentieth Century "
English | ISBN: 1032572051 | 2024 | 440 pages | PDF | 4 MB
The term "crisis," with its complex history, has emerged as one of the pivotal notions of political modernity. As such, reconstructing the ways the discourse of crisis functioned in various contexts and historical moments gives us a unique insight not only into a series of conceptual transformations, but also into the underlying logic of key political and intellectual controversies of the last two centuries. Studying the ways crisis was experienced, conceptualized, and negotiated can contribute to the understanding of how various visions of time and history shape political thinking and, conversely, how political and social reconfigurations frame our assumptions about temporality and spatiality.

Free Download Alwyn W. Turner, "Crisis? What Crisis?: Britain in the 1970s"
English | 2013 | pages: 336 | ISBN: 1845134257, 1845133277 | EPUB | 0,6 mb
The 1970s. They were the best of times and the worst of times. Wealth inequality was at a record low, yet industrial strife was at a record high. These were the glory years of Doctor Who and glam rock, but the darkest days of the Northern Ireland conflict. Beset by strikes, inflation, power cuts and the rise of the far right, the cosy Britain of the post-war consensus was unravelling – in spectacularly lurid style. Fusing high politics and low culture, Crisis? What Crisis? presents a world in which Enoch Powell, Ted Heath and Tony Benn jostle for space with David Bowie, Hilda Ogden and Margo Leadbetter, and reveals why a country exhausted by decline eventually turned to Margaret Thatcher for salvation.

Free Download Ivo H. Daalder, Nicole Gnesotto, Philip H. Gordon, "Crescent of Crisis: U.S.-European Strategy for the Greater Middle East"
English | 2006 | pages: 273 | ISBN: 0815716907, 0815716893 | PDF | 10,9 mb
The greater Middle East region is beset by a crescent of crises, stretching from Pakistan through Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Together, these five crises pose the most pressing security challenges faced by the United States and its European allies-ranging from terrorism and weapons proliferation to the rise of fundamentalism and the lack of democracy. Until now, Europe and the United States have approached these issues (indeed, the Middle East as a whole) in differing ways, with little effective coordination of policy. In fact, how best to deal with the greater Middle East has emerged as one of the most contentious issues in U.S.-European relations. The need for a common approach to the region is more evident than ever. This book brings together some of Europe and America’s leading scholars and practitioners in an effort to develop a common approach to resolving the five major crises in the region. European and American authors provide succinct and fact-filled overviews of the different crises, describe U.S. and European perspectives on the way forward, and suggest ways in which the United States and Europe can better cooperate. In the conclusion, the editors synthesize the different suggestions into a roadmap for U.S.-European cooperation for addressing the challenges of the Greater Middle East in the years ahead. Contributors include Stephen Cohen (Brookings Institution), James Dobbins (RAND), Toby Dodge (University of London), Martin Indyk (Saban Center at Brookings), Kenneth Pollack (Saban Center at Brookings), Jean-Luc Racine (Center for the Study of India and South Asia), Barnett Rubin (New York University), Yezid Sayigh (University of Cambridge), and Bruno Tertrais (Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique).

Free Download Credit Models and the Crisis: A Journey into CDOs, Copulas, Correlations and Dynamic Models By Damiano Brigo, Andrea Pallavicini, Roberto Torresetti
2010 | 176 Pages | ISBN: 0470665661 | PDF | 2 MB
The recent financial crisis has highlighted the need for better valuation models and risk management procedures, better understanding of structured products, and has called into question the actions of many financial institutions. It has become commonplace to blame the inadequacy of credit risk models, claiming that the crisis was due to sophisticated and obscure products being traded, but practitioners have for a long time been aware of the dangers and limitations of credit models. It would seem that a lack of understanding of these models is the root cause of their failures but until now little analysis had been published on the subject and, when published, it had gained very limited attention.Credit Models and the Crisis is a succinct but technical analysis of the key aspects of the credit derivatives modeling problems, tracing the development (and flaws) of new quantitative methods for credit derivatives and CDOs up to and through the credit crisis. Responding to the immediate need for clarity in the market and academic research environments, this book follows the development of credit derivatives and CDOs at a technical level, analyzing the impact, strengths and weaknesses of methods ranging from the introduction of the Gaussian Copula model and the related implied correlations to the introduction of arbitrage-free dynamic loss models capable of calibrating all the tranches for all the maturities at the same time. It also illustrates the implied copula, a method that can consistently account for CDOs with different attachment and detachment points but not for different maturities, and explains why the Gaussian Copula model is still used in its base correlation formulation.The book reports both alarming pre-crisis research and market examples, as well as commentary through history, using data up to the end of 2009, making it an important addition to modern derivatives literature. With banks and regulators struggling to fully analyze at a technical level, many of the flaws in modern financial models, it will be indispensable for quantitative practitioners and academics who want to develop stable and functional models in the future.

Free Download Professor Barbara Sutton, "Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women’s Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina"
English | 2010 | pages: 269 | ISBN: 0813547407, 0813547393 | PDF | 0,8 mb
Born and raised in Argentina and still maintaining significant ties to the area, Barbara Sutton examines the complex, and often hidden, bodily worlds of diverse women in that country during a period of profound social upheaval. Based primarily on women’s experiential narratives and set against the backdrop of a severe economic crisis and intensified social movement activism post-2001, Bodies in Crisis illuminates how multiple forms of injustice converge in and are contested through women’s bodies. Sutton reveals the bodily scars of neoliberal globalization; women’s negotiation of cultural norms of femininity and beauty; experiences with clandestine, illegal, and unsafe abortions; exposure to and resistance against interpersonal and structural violence; and the role of bodies as tools and vehicles of political action.

Free Download Professor Barbara Sutton, "Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women’s Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina"
English | 2010 | pages: 269 | ISBN: 0813547407, 0813547393 | PDF | 0,8 mb
Born and raised in Argentina and still maintaining significant ties to the area, Barbara Sutton examines the complex, and often hidden, bodily worlds of diverse women in that country during a period of profound social upheaval. Based primarily on women’s experiential narratives and set against the backdrop of a severe economic crisis and intensified social movement activism post-2001, Bodies in Crisis illuminates how multiple forms of injustice converge in and are contested through women’s bodies. Sutton reveals the bodily scars of neoliberal globalization; women’s negotiation of cultural norms of femininity and beauty; experiences with clandestine, illegal, and unsafe abortions; exposure to and resistance against interpersonal and structural violence; and the role of bodies as tools and vehicles of political action.