Irresponsible Lending?: A Case Study of a U.K. Credit Industry Reform Initiative

There are major concerns about the level of personal borrowing, particularly sourced from credit cards. This paper charts the progress of an initiative to create a Responsible Lending Index (RLI) for the credit industry. The RLI proposed to voluntarily benchmark lending standards and promote best practice within the credit industry by involving suppliers of credit, customer representatives and regulators. However, despite initial support from some banks, consumer bodies and the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, it failed to gain sufficient support from financial institutions in its original format. The primary reasons for this were related to the complexity of building such a robust index and the banks trade body’s fear of exposing its members to public scrutiny. A revised alternative, the Responsible Lending Initiative, was proposed which took into account these concerns. However, the Association of Payment Clearing Service (APACS), the trade body of the credit industry, then effectively destroyed the proposal. This article describes an attempt to address the challenges in the credit card industry with the initiation of the RLI, reflected in stakeholder discourse and in the context of a wider concern expressed by the involved stakeholders in terms of the need for greater responsibility in the banking industry’s lending practices.

An integrated wideband multifunctional antenna using a microstrip patch with two U-slots

In this paper a multifunctional microstrip antenna is designed, fabricated and experimentally verified for operation in AWS, GSM, WiMAX and WLAN bands. This microstrip patch antenna has two U-shaped slots to achieve the dual wideband operation required to meet these specifications. The dimensions and locations of the U-slots are designed appropriately. The thick substrate used here helps in integrating the antenna with the existing aircraft panel material while achieving wide bandwidths. Experimental results of this single feed antenna indicate that it meets all current requirements for in-cabin wireless communication needs.

A double U-slot patch antenna with dual wideband characteristics

Microstrip patch antennas are strong candidates for use in many wireless communications applications. This paper proposes the use of a patch antenna with two U-shaped slots to achieve dual band operation. A thick substrate helps broaden the individual bandwidths. The antenna is designed based on extensive IE3D simulation studies. A prototype antenna is fabricated and experimentally verified for the required performance.

Law, Politics and Financial Development: The Great Reversal of the U.K. Corporate Debt Market

This article examines the role of creditor protection in the development of the U.K. corporate bond market. This market grew rapidly in the late nineteenth century, but in the twentieth century it experienced a reversal, albeit with a short-lived post-1945 renaissance. Such was the extent of the reversal that the market from the 1970s onwards was smaller than it had been in 1870. We find that law does not explain the variation in the size of this market over time. Alternatively, our evidence suggests that inflation and taxation policies were major drivers of this market in the post-1945 era. Copyright © The Economic History Association 2013

The development of Temporal Cognition

Time features in two key ways in cognition, each of which is discussed in turn in this chapter: time is processed as a dimension of stimuli or events, and time is represented as a framework in which events can be located. Section 1 examines the first of these from a developmental perspective, by reviewing research on age-related changes in the accuracy of duration processing. The Piagetian approach linked changes in duration processing to the development of a concept of time as a dimension of events separable from other event dimensions. This is contrasted with recent research conducted within the framework of Scalar Expectancy Theory, which models development in terms of changes in components of specialized timing mechanisms. Section 2 discusses developmental changes in the temporal frameworks that children use to represent the locations of events. Although as adults, we represent times as locations on a linear framework stretching from the past, to the present, and into the future, this way of representing time is not developmentally basic. A model is proposed of developmental stages in the acquisition of a mature temporal framework. The chapter concludes by considering two themes that cut across Section 1 and 2: the issue of whether there are both qualitative and quantitative change in children’s temporal abilities, and the link between temporal and spatial cognition.

Epitaxial ferroelectric Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 thin films on La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 bottom electrode

Epitaxial (001)-oriented 0.7Pb(Mg_0.33Nb_0.67)O₃-0.3PbTiO₃ (PMN-PT) thin films were deposited by pulsed laser deposition on vicinal SrTiO₃ (001) substrates using La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ as bottom electrode. Detailed microstructural investigations of these films were carried out using X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Polarization-field hysteresis curves were measured at room temperature. Spontaneous polarization P s , remnant polarization P r and coercive voltage V c were found to be 25 μC/cm², 15 μC/cm² and 0.81 V, respectively. Field dependent dielectric constant measurements exhibited butterfly shaped curves, indicating the true ferroelectric nature of these films at room temperature. The dielectric constant and the dielectric loss at 100 kHz were found to be 238 and 0.14, respectively. The local piezoelectric properties of PMN-PT films were investigated by piezoelectric force microscopy and were found to exhibit a local piezoelectric coefficient of 7.8 pm/V.