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Europe has been beset by an interrelated banking crisis and sovereign debt crisis. Bond spreads faced by Greece and Ireland, and to a lesser extent Portugal followed by Spain, have increased. This paper explores these issues from the perspective of financial markets, focusing mainly on the four countries in the frontline of these pressures: Greece and Portugal, on the one hand, where the problems are primarily fiscal in nature; and Ireland and Spain, on the other, where banking problems related to the property boom and bust have been the key moving part. The paper first examines the probabilities of default implicit in observable market spreads and considers these calculations against sovereign debt dynamics. It then explores the implications of the interaction between bank losses and fiscal deficits on the one hand, and the feedback that any debt haircuts anticipated by markets could have on bank solvency. The study finds that market-implied sovereign default probabilities do in fact discriminate quite clearly between countries based on five criteria that affect the probability of debt restructuring. The discussion highlights some implications for banking system balance sheets of expected losses and shows the potential impact on them of sovereign restructuring implicit in market analysis. While the paper does not make any recommendations for policy action, it does explore a range of policy options and the implications each might have for the financial markets. JEL Classification: G01, G12, G15, G18, G21, H06, H60, H62, H63, H68 Keywords: financial crisis, sovereign risks, public deficits and debt, bond markets, banks.
New restrictions on short-selling sovereign debt need to be supported by concrete evidence that links systematically unrestricted short-selling activities to fraud, abuse or market manipulation. OECD debt managers noted that there is plenty of empirical evidence on the benefits of short selling, including more liquidity, pricing efficiency and better allocated risk. However, solid evidence in the form of empirical data on market instability unambiguously caused by unrestricted short-selling activities (to be counted as ‘costs’) seems to be lacking. Debt managers also noted that the reporting requirements will be costly from a purely administrative point of view. A ban on uncovered short selling transactions of sovereign debt would make risk management more difficult and expensive, with detrimental effects on market efficiency, liquidity and funding costs for sovereigns. Moreover, it is unlikely that such bans would have a stabilising effect in government securities markets during a crisis. Rather than containing the crisis, a ban on short selling of government debt is likely to worsen the situation. The paper concludes that OECD debt managers have a range of tested tools at their disposal for dealing with temporary or chronic dysfunctional measures in sovereign debt markets, ranging from ‘quantity measures’, such as openings, to ‘pricing measures’ such as dynamic fails charges. JEL Classification: E44, G01, G21, G28, E61, H21. Keywords: financial regulation, short-selling, restrictions on short-selling, debt management, risk management, sovereign debt.
Suivant l’approche TUNING, des universitaires provenant de divers pays et régions du monde, se sont mis d’accord sur une définition des résultats attendus d’étudiants de 1er cycle universitaire dans les deux disciplines. Ce document de travail présente le produit de leur réflexion s’agissant de l’ingénierie.
Tout en tenant compte des cycles d’études et des professions, les membres du groupe de travail Ingénierie Tuning-AHELO ont défini les résultats d’apprentissage pour l’ensemble des programmes d’ingénierie, et de ceux plus spécifiques à trois branches de l’ingénierie, soient l’ingénierie mécanique, l’ingénierie électrique et l’ingénierie civile.
Le document présente également le champ couvert par l’ingénierie, les types de diplômes et de métiers possibles pour le premier et le second cycle. Il reflète par ailleurs les débats sur le rôle des résultats d’apprentissage et réunit les approches ayant servi à les définir. Un résumé des travaux conduits précédemment sur les résultats d’apprentissage en ingénierie est inclus.
The complex effects of the global financial crisis (GFC) have affected countries differently. The concept of stimulus packages to enable economies to withstand its full effects was widespread, as were decisions by several countries to invest in higher education as a means of stimulating the economy while placing workforce development and research on a firmer footing. While the GFC increased awareness of the need to invest in the knowledge economy, governments adopted approaches reflecting their different fundamental priorities. Arguably Ireland was left with little leeway, whereas Australia’s far better economic position might have provided an opportunity to invest in higher education through its stimulus packages. This paper examines the policy choices that Australian and Irish governments made both before, and in response to, the GFC to assess how these decisions have prepared higher education for the future.
2010 was a landmark year for the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in many ways. It marked 50 years since the DAC was founded, it was the year Eckhard Deutscher handed over the Chair to Brian Atwood, and it marked the coming of age of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. In this article, the out-going DAC Chair reflects on the lessons of the past and concludes that despite the many changes and new challenges, development co-operation is as relevant today as ever. He sets three key priorities for the DAC and its members as they embark on the next 50 years. These are to stay true to the commitments made to increase aid volumes, continue to be guided by the principles of effective aid in an increasingly complex context, and reach out to all providers of development co-operation in the effort to create an effective global development partnership.
This paper shows that negative comovements between major macroeconomic variables at business-cycle frequencies are commonly observed, but that standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) theory fails to predict this feature of the data. We show that allowing for “anticipation effects” in response to “news shocks” enables standard RBC models to predict both the observed patterns of negative comovement and overall positive correlations. Anticipation also improves magnification of shocks in the model without harming predictions for the other second moments central to RBC studies. Anticipation effects improve on standard RBC frameworks by offering an empirically plausible explanation for the nontrivial fraction of time that aggregate variables are observed to comove negatively.