Payment network scale economies, SEPA, and cash replacement

The goal of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) is to facilitate the emergence of a competitive, intra-European market by making cross-border payments as easy as domestic transactions. With crossborder inter-operability for electronic payments, card transactions will increasingly replace cash and checks for all types of payments. Using different methods, the authors estimate card and other payment network scale economies for Europe. These indicate substantial cost efficiency gains if processing is consolidated across borders rather than "piggybacked" onto existing national operations. Cost reductions likely to induce greater replacement of small value cash transactions are also illustrated.

The effect of transaction pricing on the adoption of electronic payments: a cross-country comparison

Pricing should speed up the substitution of low cost electronic payments for expensive paper-based transactions and cash. But by how much? Norway has explicitly priced individual payment transactions and rapidly shifted to electronic payments while the Netherlands has experienced the same shift without direct pricing. Controlling for differences between countries, the authors estimate the incremental effect of pricing on the shift to electronic payments. If users strongly value the improved convenience or security of electronic payments, pricing—viewed negatively by most consumers—may not be necessary to ensure rapid adoption of electronic payments. ; Also issued as Payment Cards Center Discussion Paper No. 05-18Electronic funds transfers ; Prices

Public good issues in TARGET: natural monopoly, scale economies, network effects and cost allocation

This paper discusses various theoretic concepts which play a role in assessing the public benefits of Target, the large value RTGS payment network operated by the Eurosystem. These concepts touch upon natural monopoly, network externalities, competition and contestability, as well as economies of scale and scope. The existence of a natural monopoly provides a rationale for a temporary partial or full subsidy in order for Target to achieve the ‘most efficient scale’ or apply the most efficient technology to lower unit costs. Such a subsidy could be implemented through temporary 'penetration' pricing. Based on empirical results for the Federal Reserve’s payment system (Fedwire), it is further argued that if Target decided to standardize its operating platforms and consolidate its processing sites into one or a few centers, it too could realize strong scale economy benefits and lower unit costs

Competition in bank-provided payment services

Banks supply payment services that underpin the smooth operation of the economy. To ensure an efficient payment system, it is important to maintain competition among payment service providers but data available to gauge the degree of competition are quite limited. We propose and implement a frontierbased method to assess relative competition in bank-provided payment services. Billion dollar banks account for around ninety percent of assets in the US and those with around to billion in assets turn out to be both the most and the least competitive in payment services, not the very largest banks

AutoTiering: Automatic Data Placement Manager in Multi-Tier All-Flash Datacenter

In the year of 2017, the capital expenditure of Flash-based Solid State Drivers (SSDs) keeps declining and the storage capacity of SSDs keeps increasing. As a result, the "selling point" of traditional spinning Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) as a backend storage - low cost and large capacity - is no longer unique, and eventually they will be replaced by low-end SSDs which have large capacity but perform orders of magnitude better than HDDs. Thus, it is widely believed that all-flash multi-tier storage systems will be adopted in the enterprise datacenters in the near future. However, existing caching or tiering solutions for SSD-HDD hybrid storage systems are not suitable for all-flash storage systems. This is because that all-flash storage systems do not have a large speed difference (e.g., 10x) among each tier. Instead, different specialties (such as high performance, high capacity, etc.) of each tier should be taken into consideration. Motivated by this, we develop an automatic data placement manager called "AutoTiering" to handle virtual machine disk files (VMDK) allocation and migration in an all-flash multi-tier datacenter to best utilize the storage resource, optimize the performance, and reduce the migration overhead. AutoTiering is based on an optimization framework, whose core technique is to predict VM's performance change on different tiers with different specialties without conducting real migration. As far as we know, AutoTiering is the first optimization solution designed for all-flash multi-tier datacenters. We implement AutoTiering on VMware ESXi, and experimental results show that it can significantly improve the I/O performance compared to existing solutions

Measuring up - new directions for environmental programs at the World Bank

The World Bank's new environment strategy advocates cost-effective reduction of air and water pollutants that are most harmful to human health. In addition, it addresses threats to the livelihood of over one billion people who live on fragile lands-lands that are steeply sloped, arid, or covered by natural forests. The new approach will require accurate information about environmental threats to health and livelihood, as well as an appropriate resource-allocation strategy. Drawing on recent research at the World Bank and elsewhere, this paper attempts to apply an optimal investment approach. It develops a rule for optimal cross-country resource allocation that reflects the Bank's investment policy. Using this rule, the paper estimates optimal country shares of the Bank's environmental investments from two sets of variables: threats from outdoor air pollution, water pollution, and fragile lands; and estimates of the likelihood that Bank projects will succeed. The paper combines the country shares with the Bank's investment data to estimate optimal country allocations for each environmental problem. Finally, it aggregates the country results to allocations for the major regions in which the Bank operates. Combining optimal investments for pollution and fragile lands, it finds that the largest share of total investment goes to East Asia (44 percent), followed by South Asia (21 percent) and Sub-Saharan Africa (19 percent). Other regions get significantly lower shares.Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Health Promotion,Water and Industry,Earth Sciences&GIS,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Earth Sciences&GIS,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Water and Industry,Agricultural Research

The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability

The corpus of the madwoman : toward a feminist disability studies theory of embodiment and mental illness / Elizabeth J. Donaldson -- The blindman in the classic : feminisms, ocularcentrism, and Jane Eyre / David Bolt -- "On the spectrum" : rereading contact and affect in Jane Eyre / Julia Miele Rodas -- From India-rubber back to flesh : a reevaluation of male embodiment in Jane Eyre / Margaret Rose Torrell -- From custodial care to caring labor : the discourse of who cares in Jane Eyre / D. Christopher Gabbard -- "I began to see" : Biblical models of disability in Jane Eyre / Essaka Joshua -- Illness, disability, and recognition in Jane Eyre / Susannah Mintz -- Visions of Rochester : screening desire and disability in Jane Eyre / Martha Stoddard Holmes.Item embargoed for five year

Enabling the classroom and the curriculum: higher education, literary studies and disability

In this article the tripartite model of disability is applied to the lived experience of twenty-first-century higher education. The tripartite model facilitates a complex understanding of disability that recognises assumptions and discrimination but not at the cost of valued identity. This being so, not only the normative positivisms and non-normative negativisms but also the non-normative positivisms of the classroom and the curriculum are explored. Inclusion is taken as the starting point and the argument progresses to a profound and innovational appreciation of disability. The problem addressed is that inclusion, as shown in The Biopolitics of Disability, constitutes little more than inclusion-ism until disability is recognised in the context of alternative lives and values that neither enforce nor reify normalcy. Informed by this understanding, the article adopts the disciplinary example of literary studies and refers to Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney as a primary text. The conclusion is that, despite passive and active resistance, disability enters higher education in many ways, most of which are beneficial to students and educators alike

The effects of non-focused extracorporeal shock waves on neuronal morphology, function and analgesia in horses

These studies were conducted to elucidate the regional analgesic effect that is observed clinically after treatment of orthopedic disorders with application of extracorporeal shock waves in horses. Regional analgesia after treatment with extracorporeal shock waves presents a concern because it may eliminate protective limiting mechanisms and may place equine athletes with predisposing lesions at risk of sustaining career- or life-ending injuries. Direct percutaneous application of non-focused extracorporeal shock waves to palmar digital nerves in the pastern area of horses resulted in decreased sensory nerve conduction velocities compared with untreated control nerves at 3, 7, and 35 days after treatment. Transmission electron microscopy revealed distinct morphological changes consisting of extensive separation and disruption between the different layers of the myelin sheath in large- to medium-sized myelinated axons of treated palmar digital nerves. Treatment of selected areas of the metacarpus in horses with non-focused extracorporeal shock waves failed to identify a regional analgesic effect when cutaneous sensation was assessed by comparing the nociceptive threshold (limb withdrawal reflex latency, LWRL) between treated and non-treated areas after stimulation with a focused light source. The LWRL responses in all horses were comparable in treated and control areas over time with a significant decrease noted at most sites and time points compared with baseline values

Estimating green roofing and storm water regulation in an urban environment

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityThe City of Boston land use has altered the surrounding watersheds through creation of infrastructure, damming, landfill, and expansion of impervious surfaces. The continued growth of the City has historically outstripped the capacity of its combined storm and sanitary sewer system, necessitating discharges into area water bodies. In light of model forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting precipitation increases it is likely the already strained system will need additional capacity. Boston's tradition of expanding artificial capacity is compared to the City of Curitiba's enhanced natural capacity stormwater management plan. Limitations in both are discussed and the author concludes the City of Boston would benefit from increasing decentralized natural capacity through green rooftechnology. To investigate this claim remote sensing data was analyzed over three neighborhoods. The resulting available green roofing area was then combined with historical climate data to create a retention response model. The extrapolated city-wide model predicted retention of 19%-27% of total building received rainfall from 1983-2009. This model was then correlated with Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) discharge National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System report data. The retention volume was found to accommodate most discharges in the FY2009 as well. Thus, extensive green roof technology presents a supplemental capacity building strategy for the City of Boston to avoid increases in future CSOs