THE LENDER OF LAST RESORT: A TWENTY‐FIRST CENTURY APPROACH

The classical Bagehot conception of a Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) that lends to illiquid banks has been criticized on two grounds: On the one hand, the distinction between insolvency and illiquidity is not clear‐cut; on the other, a fully collateralized repo market allows central banks to provide the adequate aggregate amount of liquidity and leave to the banks the responsibility of lending uncollateralized. The object of this paper is to analyze these issues rigorously by providing a framework in which liquidity shocks cannot be distinguished from solvency ones and then asking whether there is a need for a LOLR and how it should operate in the absence of systemic threats. Determining the optimal LOLR policy requires a careful modeling of the structure of the interbank market and of the closure policy. In our setup, the results depend upon the existence of moral hazard. If the main source of moral hazard is the banks' lack of incentives to screen loans, then the LOLR may have to intervene to improve the efficiency of an unsecured interbank market in crisis periods; if instead the main source of moral hazard is loan monitoring, then the interbank market should be secured and the LOLR should never intervene. (JEL: E58, 628)     

Projection error term in Gower's interpolation

New points can be superimposed on a Euclidean configuration obtained as a result of a metric multidimensional scaling at coordinates given by Gower's interpolation formula. The procedure amounts to discarding a, possibly nonnull, coordinate along an additional dimension. We derive an analytical formula for this projection error term and, for real data problems, we describe a statistical method for testing its significance, as a cautionary device prior to further distance-based predictions.     

Diversity of vocabulary and homogeneity of literary style

To help settle the debate around the authorship of Tirant lo Blanc, we analyse the evolution of the diversity of the vocabulary used in that book, as measured through eight different diversity indices. The exploratory analysis reveals a clear single shift in diversity, that is estimated through change-point techniques to be in chapter 382, and might indicate the existence of one main author writing about four fifths of the book, and of a second author finishing the last one fifth of the book. Before chapter 382, the language is richer and more diverse than after it.     

Upskilling and distributional changes in the electronics global value chain

The electronics industry has one of the most complex global production chains in the international economy. Using data from the World Input–Output Database for the period 2000–14, this article traces individual contributions to the value chain in order to observe how financial turmoil has affected its evolution over time and to map international interactions. The authors point to a rise in offshoring until the outbreak of the global financial crisis of 2007–08, as China and other Eastern Asian economies became an essential node of value creation. They also detect a deep transformation of production technologies, accompanied by a process of upskilling.     

Influence of Communicative Openness on the Psychological Adjustment of Internationally Adopted Adolescents

This study evaluated the predictive relationship between the communicative openness and psychological adjustment of adopted adolescents, controlling for preplacement risk factors. One hundred Spanish international adoptees aged 12–18 took part in the study. Data were gathered with a structured interview, the Youth Self Report and the Adoption Communication Scale. A history of maltreatment prior to the adoption was associated with more closed communication between parents and children. Prenatal drug exposure shows a relationship with the presence of externalizing behaviors and attention problems in adolescents. Finally, a lower degree of communicative openness regarding the child's origins was significantly associated with the presence of all the adolescent behavioral problems studied.     

Critical Feminist Gerontology: In the Back Room of Research

The article takes a feminist approach to gerontology. It examines the stereotypes of ageism that derive from the relationship between culture and old age. It establishes the requirements for a type of research that reflects women's own experience of growing older, as well as the social construction of values related to women's old age. It focuses on the sociocultural features of this population, which faces old age with certain limitations, but also with unparalleled assets.     

Sexuality in Older Spanish Women: Voices and Reflections

Our research has been aimed at understanding the experience, practice, and sexual life in a group of Spanish women over 50 years of age. We studied a sample of 729 women between 50 and 80 years old. Our results provide qualitative and quantitative information and important insights about the sexual life of Spanish women and identify differences in the experience and reality of sexual life after the age of 70. The status of having or lacking a partner, and a personal interest in emotional relationships and sexual practices, are elements that determine the possibility of enjoying a satisfying postmenopausal sexuality.     

Montée en qualification et modification de la répartition au sein de la chaîne de valeur mondiale du secteur de l’électronique

Le secteur de l’électronique repose sur une chaîne de production mondiale particulièrement complexe. Les auteurs s'appuient sur des données de la base WIOD pour la période 2000–2014 afin d'apprécier la contribution des pays à cette chaîne de valeur. Ils examinent notamment l'incidence de la crise financière mondiale de 2007–2008 sur son évolution et établissent une cartographie des interactions internationales. L’étude révèle une augmentation des délocalisations depuis la crise financière, la Chine et d'autres pays d'Asie de l'Est étant devenus les principaux pôles de création de valeur. Elle montre aussi que les technologies de production ont connu une transformation radicale, accompagnée d'une montée en qualification.     

Ramon Llull: from ‘Ars electionis’ to social choice theory

Ramon Llull (Majorca c.1232–1316) is one of the earliest founding fathers of voting theory and social choice theory. The present article places Llull’s contributions and discussion in the historical context of elections in the medieval Church and the emergence of majority rule as a new general principle for making enforceable collective decisions in replacement of traditional unanimous requirements. To make the majority principle operational, Llull initially proposed a system of exhaustive binary comparisons that is more efficacious in producing a winner than the Condorcet system, in anticipation to the so called Copeland procedure. In contrast to some previous tentative suggestions, careful reading of Llull’s papers demonstrates that he did not propose a rank-order count system, such as those proposed later on by Cusanus and Borda. A new hypothesis is presented to explain Llull’s later proposal of an eliminatory system of partial binary comparisons. Some performance of Llull’s voting systems is estimated by innovative analysis of results in certain modern sports tournaments.