Processi e impatti della migrazione. L'esperienza di chi resta in tre famiglie peruviane

Questo studio propone un’esplorazione dei nessi tra fenomeno migratorio, dinamiche transnazionali e quadri familiari, in un contesto specificato che è quello peruviano. Dal confronto critico con i paradigmi disciplinari in uso negli ambiti dell’antropologia delle migrazioni, degli studi sul transnazionalismo e sulle famiglie transnazionali, e dell’etnografia multi-situata, si è tentata una lettura teorica e metodologica che renda conto del contesto socio-familiare di partenza non come parte periferica di una completa visione del migrante, ma quale oggetto specifico della ricerca. L’obbiettivo è verificare, a livello locale, quale siano gli impatti della migrazione esterna di uno o più membri sulle strutture e sulle dinamiche, sui codici e sui ruoli del nucleo parentale originario. E individuare, sul piano transnazionale, quali reti, quali rituali o pratiche di connessione funzionino tra coloro che vanno e coloro che restano, quali discorsi e quali culture migratorie si sviluppino e si condividano. La ricerca si è svolta in Perù tra il 2009 ed il 2011. Il campo dell’indagine si è diviso tra due località nell’area della Costa del Perù. Lima, la capitale, e Chiclín, un villaggio rurale nella regione settentrionale de La Libertad. Attraverso le tecniche d’inchiesta della pratica etnografica, una permanenza prolungata sul terreno e l’osservazione partecipante, si è lavorato con i membri adulti di ambo i sessi di tre gruppi parentali distribuiti tra i due luoghi menzionati, selezionati in partenza sulla base dei contatti forniti da alcuni dei loro familiari emigrati in Italia tra il 1990 ed il 2000. Centrare l’analisi sulle figure per certi aspetti marginali dell’esperienza della migrazione normalmente considerata, è servito da un lato a rovesciare parzialmente la prospettiva transnazionale aggiustandola proprio rispetto a quegli attori sociali; dall’altro e ad un tempo, ha permesso di fare luce su dinamiche migratorie più generali, di ricostruirle e di ri-teorizzarle.

Essays on Bank Risk

This PhD Thesis is composed of three chapters, each discussing a specific type of risk that banks face. The first chapter talks about Systemic Risk and how banks get exposed to it through the Interbank Funding Market. Exposures in the said market have Systemic Risk implications because the market creates linkages, where the failure of one party can affect the others in the market. By showing that CDS Spreads, as bank risk indicators, are positively related to their Net Interbank Funding Market Exposures, this chapter establishes the above Systemic Risk Implications of Interbank Funding. Meanwhile, the second chapter discusses how banks may handle Illiquidity Risk, defined as the possibility of having sudden funding needs. Illiquidity Risk is embodied in this chapter through Loan Commitments as they oblige banks to lend to its clients, up to a certain amount of funds at any time. This chapter points out that using Securitization as funding facility, could allow the banks to manage this Illiquidity Risk. To make this case, this chapter demonstrates empirically that banks having an increase in Loan Commitments, may experience an increase in risk profile but such can be offset by an accompanying increase in Securitization Activity. Lastly, the third chapter focuses on how banks manage Credit Risk also through Securitization. Securitization has a Credit Risk management property by allowing the offloading of risk. This chapter investigates how banks use such property by looking at the effect of securitization on the banks’ loan portfolios and overall risk and returns. The findings are that securitization is positively related to loan portfolio size and the portfolio share of risky loans, which translates to higher risk and returns. Thus, this chapter points out that Credit Risk management through Securitization may be have been done towards higher risk taking for high returns.

Committed to reform? Pragmatic antitrust enforcement in electricity markets

This thesis is a collection of essays about the instrumental use of commitment decisions to facilitate the completion of the European internal electricity market. European policy can shape markets in many ways, two most evident being regulation and competition enforcement. The interplay between these two instruments attracts a lot of scholarly attention. One of the major concerns in the competition vs. regulation debate is the instrumental use of competition rules. It has been observed that competition enforcement is triggered not only as a response to an anticompetitive harm occurring in the market, but that it sometimes becomes a powerful tool in the European Commission’s hands to pursue regulatory goals. This thesis looks for examples of such instrumentalisation in the context of electricity markets and finds that the Commission is very pragmatic in using all the possible instruments it has at hand to push forward its project of creating the internal electricity market. This includes regulation, competition enforcement and all sorts of political pressure. To the extent that commitment decisions accelerate sector-specific regulation and overcome political deadlocks, they contribute to the Commission’s energy policy goals. However, instrumentalisation of competition rules comes at a certain cost to competition policy, energy policy and, most importantly, to electricity markets themselves. Markets might be negatively affected either indirectly, by application of sector-specific regulation or competition policy building on previous commitment decisions, or directly, through the implementation of inadequate commitments in individual cases. Concluding, commitment decisions generally contributed to achieving the policy objectives of the internal electricity market, but their use for that purpose does not come without cost. Given that this cost is ultimately borne by the internal electricity market, the Commission should take a more balanced approach to the instrumental use of commitment decisions so that it does not do more harm than good.