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Greece: National Bank Holiday, 2015, Stella Schaefer-Brown

Journal of Financial Crises

In December 2014, deposit outflows from Greek banks intensified owing to political uncertainty following the announcement of a snap presidential election and a subsequent crash of the Greek stock market. This led to a liquidity crisis in the first half of 2015. Intensifying political uncertainty, worsening liquidity, and volatility in the macroeconomic and financial markets environment peaked in the first half of 2015. The crisis was exacerbated by a February decision by the European Central Bank (ECB) that made it difficult for Greek banks to continue borrowing from its monetary policy-related liquidity programs. On June 28, 2015, the ECB announced …

Cyprus: National Bank Holiday, 2013, Stella Schaefer-Brown

Journal of Financial Crises

The Greek government debt crisis was especially hard on the two largest Cypriot banks. Bank of Cyprus (BoC) and Laiki Bank lost EUR 1.8 billion and EUR 2.3 billion, respectively, on their Greek government bonds after the European Union (EU) decision in October 2011 to haircut the bonds. Over the next year, Laiki Bank faced severe liquidity problems from depositor withdrawals, the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) extended to it significant emergency liquidity assistance, and the government owned 84% of the bank after injecting EUR 1.8 billion. The Cypriot economy also suffered negative effects and in March 2013, authorities negotiated …

Ecuador: National Bank Holiday, 1999, Bailey Decker

Journal of Financial Crises

After a series of exogenous shocks hit Ecuador’s economy in 1997 and 1998, foreign creditors reduced external credit lines to the country, draining liquidity. The newly created Deposit Guarantee Agency (Agencia de Garantía de Depósitos, AGD) administered deposit insurance and a new blanket guarantee and had the authority to resolve failing banks. Despite these actions, bank runs continued. After depositors reportedly withdrew USD 400 million from banks over a two-week period, on Monday, March 8, 1999, one hour before banks were supposed to open, the bank superintendent declared a surprise bank holiday effective that day; banks reopened a week later …

Argentina: National Bank Holidays, 2001, Owen Heaphy

Journal of Financial Crises

Starting in 1991, Argentina operated a currency board regime under which the central bank guaranteed a one-to-one peg of the Argentine peso to the US dollar. But in 2001, markets became increasingly concerned that the central bank would be unable to maintain the peg and would allow the peso to devalue against the dollar. At that time, more than two-thirds of Argentine bank deposits were denominated in dollars. Throughout 2001, depositors withdrew funds from banks; by November, peso deposits had declined by more than one-third and dollar deposits had fallen by one-tenth. On November 28, 2001, the systemwide banking run …

Survey Of Bank Holidays And Fund Suspensions, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Owen Heaphy, Anmol Makhija, Stella Schaefer-Brown, Greg Feldberg, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

In this paper, we analyze seven case studies involving bank holidays and two involving mutual fund suspensions produced by the Yale Program on Financial Stability. Our main purpose is to assist policymakers who are considering utilizing a bank holiday in designing the most effective program as efficiently as possible. We find that a bank holiday may be most useful when designing and implementing a comprehensive remedy to an underlying problem distressing banks, particularly when an exogenous shock rather than balance sheet weaknesses is the cause of general distress to the system. A holiday is also useful to “ring-fence” one or …

Argentina: Mutual Fund Suspensions, 2019, Owen Heaphy, Anmol Makhija

Journal of Financial Crises

With Argentina facing a liquidity crisis and collapse in demand for government debt, on Wednesday, August 28, 2019, the country's minister of economy, Hernán Lacunza, announced after markets closed that the government was extending the maturity of USD 7 billion of its short-term public debt securities, among other measures. Lacunza stated that domestic retail investors would not be subject to the terms of the maturity extension and would be paid principal and interest on the affected securities per the original maturity schedule. This announcement caused confusion about the treatment of individual investors who held the affected securities indirectly through mutual …

Non-Discriminatory Personalized Pricing, Philipp Strack, Kai Hao Yang

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A monopolist offers personalized prices to consumers with unit demand. Consumers differ in their values, costs, and \emph{protected characteristics}---such as race or gender. The seller is subject to a non-discrimination constraint: consumers with the same cost, but different protected characteristics must face identical price distributions. Such regulations are present in markets like credit or insurance. We characterize the optimal pricing rule. Under this rule, surplus accrues to both protected groups, but only to those with intermediate values. Strengthening the constraint to cover transaction prices redistributes surplus, harming the low-value group and benefiting the high-value group. Meanwhile, prohibiting the use of …

Efficient Difference-In-Differences And Event Study Estimators, Xiaohong Chen, Pedro H. C. Sant’Anna, Haitian Xie

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper investigates efficient Difference-in-Differences (DiD) and Event Study (ES) estimation using short panel data sets within the heterogeneous treatment effect framework, free from parametric functional form assumptions and allowing for variation in treatment timing. We provide an equivalent characterization of the DiD potential outcome model using sequential conditional moment restrictions on observables, which shows that the DiD identification assumptions typically imply nonparametric overidentification restrictions. We derive the semiparametric efficient influence function (EIF) in closed form for DiD and ES causal parameters under commonly imposed parallel trends assumptions. The EIF is automatically Neyman orthogonal and yields the smallest variance among …

A Stairway To Success: How Parenting Shapes Culture And Social Stratification, Francesco Agostinelli, Matthias Doepke, Giuseppe Sorrenti, Fabrizio Zilibotti

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This chapter argues that parenting choices are a central force in the joint evolution of culture and economic outcomes. We present a framework in which parents-motivated by both their children’s future success and their own normative beliefs-choose parenting styles and transmit cultural traits responding to economic incentives. Values such as work ethic, patience, and religiosity are more likely to be instilled when their anticipated returns, economic or otherwise, are high. The interaction between parenting and economic conditions gives rise to endogenous cultural and economic stratification. We extend the model to include residential sorting and social interactions, showing how neighborhood choice …

Complementarities In High School And College Investments, John Eric Humphries, Juanna Schrøter Joensen, Gregory Veramendi

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper examines how high school specialization shapes college investment decisions and their subsequent returns through dynamic complementarities. Using Swedish administrative data, we estimate a dynamic Roy model that accounts for selection on multidimensional skills, family background, prior investments, and unobserved heterogeneity. We identify the model using rich skill measures and quasi-experimental variation in program popularity. For marginal students, STEM specialization in high school increases wages by 9%, with more than half this return attributed to dynamic complementarities that enhance the productivity of subsequent college investments. Consequently, we find that counterfactual policies encouraging high school STEM specialization generate twice the …

Review Of Trans And Gender Diverse Voices In Libraries, Adrian Johnson

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This book review summarizes and discusses Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries, a compilation of fifty-three individual essays by and for trans and gender diverse people in the library and information science (LIS) profession. Edited by Kalani Keahi Adolpho, Stephen G. Krueger, and Krista McCraken, the 547-page work was published by Library Juice Press in 2023. This review provides a thorough look at each of the book’s seven sections, which are designated by professional focus or career stage, and emphasizes and contextualizes the importance of the title within the landscape of LIS literature.

Tracing Transformations: (Digitized) World War Ii Correspondence Through The Lens Of The Records Continuum Model, Milan M. Van Lange, Carlijn Keijzer

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This paper traces the transformations of a historical archival collection of personal wartime correspondence. Most of the records in this collection were created in the context of the German Occupation of the Netherlands during World War II (1940–1945) and/or the War of Independence in Indonesia (1945-1950). The collection was gathered and curated by the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam from 1945 onwards and was digitised between 2020 and 2023. We navigate the convergence of past and future transformations of the records and illuminate the intricate web of considerations and decisions of historical preservation, archiving, digitisation, …

Scalable Targeting Of Social Protection: When Do Algorithms Out-Perform Surveys And Community Knowledge?, Emily Aiken, Anik Ashraf, Joshua E. Blumenstock, Raymond P. Guiteras, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

Discussion Papers

Innovations in big data and algorithms are enabling new approaches to target interventions at scale. We compare the accuracy of three different systems for identifying the poor to receive benefit transfers — proxy means-testing, nominations from community members, and an algorithmic approach using machine learning to predict poverty using mobile phone usage behavior — and study how their cost-effectiveness varies with the scale and scope of the program. We collect mobile phone records from all major telecom operators in Bangladesh and conduct community-based wealth rankings and detailed consumption surveys of 5,000 households, to select the 22,000 poorest households for $300 …

Scalable Targeting Of Social Protection: When Do Algorithms Out-Perform Surveys And Community Knowledge?, Emily Aiken, Anik Ashraf, Joshua E. Blumenstock, Raymond Guiteras, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Innovations in big data and algorithms are enabling new approaches to target interventions at scale. We compare the accuracy of three different systems for identifying the poor to receive benefit transfers — proxy means-testing, nominations from community members, and an algorithmic approach using machine learning to predict poverty using mobile phone usage behavior — and study how their cost-effectiveness varies with the scale and scope of the program. We collect mobile phone records from all major telecom operators in Bangladesh and conduct community-based wealth rankings and detailed consumption surveys of 5,000 households, to select the 22,000 poorest households for $300 …

Quantile-Optimal Policy Learning Under Unmeasured Confounding, Zhongren Chen, Siyu Chen, Zhengling Qi, Xiaohong Chen, Zhuoran Yang

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We study quantile-optimal policy learning where the goal is to find a policy whose reward distribution has the largest α-quantile for some α P p0, 1q. We focus on the offline setting whose generating process involves unobserved confounders. Such a problem suffers from three main challenges: (i) nonlinearity of the quantile objective as a functional of the reward distribution, (ii) unobserved confounding issue, and (iii) insufficient coverage of the offline dataset. To address these challenges, we propose a suite of causal-assisted policy learning methods that provably enjoy strong theoretical guarantees under mild conditions. In particular, to address (i) and (ii), …

Daughters Left Behind: How Trade Liberalization Harms Girls In China When Government Restricts Migration, Xuwen Gao, Wenquan Liang, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Ran Song

Discussion Papers

China’s accession to the WTO created new economic opportunities in certain cities. A shiftshare identification strategy shows that residents of adjacent rural areas migrated in and advanced economically. Longitudinal panel data on children reveals that their sons benefit, but counter-intuitively, daughters suffer worse mental and physical health, complete fewer years of schooling, and remain poor later in life. We explore why, and learn that hukou policy that restricts migrant children’s access to urban public schools is a factor. Triple difference research designs reveal that migrant parents become discontinuously more likely to leave daughters (but not sons) behind in rural areas …

Citrus Farming, Tourism, And Globalization: Jeju Island’S Transformation Under South Korea’S State-Led Development, Caitlin Hong

Student Work

The Williams Prize in East Asian Studies is awarded to Caitlin Hong for her outstanding senior thesis, “Citrus, Capital, and Control: Jeju Island’s Transformation under State-Led Development.”

Hong’s work exemplifies intellectual ambition, methodological rigor, and original insight. Through an interdisciplinary blend of historical analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, she offers the first comprehensive English-language account of Jeju Island’s citrus farming industry, tracing its development from the postwar period to the present day.

Demonstrating extraordinary initiative, Hong designed and executed an independent research trip to Jeju Island, conducting interviews with citrus farmers, laborers, and experts, while also consulting numerous primary sources in …

Intergenerational Mobility In Ottoman Istanbul: Evidence From Court Records, Metin M. Coşgel, José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez, Emre Özer

Discussion Papers

We use data from the Istanbul court registers spanning from the 16th -19th centuries to establish, for the first time, long-term trends in intergenerational mobility in a major premodern city. The dataset contains information on over 270,000 individuals who appeared in court in various roles, including litigants, witnesses, and representatives. Crucially, it records the honorific titles (if any) of individuals and their fathers, which we use as measures for socioeconomic status. Our goal is to trace long-term changes in Istanbul’s social structure, analyze the relationship between fathers’ and sons’ titles to assess shifts in intergenerational mobility, and determine whether these …

The Price Of Intelligence: How Should Socially-Minded Firms Price And Deploy Ai?, Nils H. Lehr, Pascual Restrepo

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Leading AI firms claim to prioritize social welfare. How should firms with a social mandate price and deploy AI? We derive pricing formulas that depart from profit maximization by incorporating incentives to enhance welfare and reduce labor disruptions. Using US data, we evaluate several scenarios. A welfarist firm that values both profit and welfare should price closer to marginal cost, as efficiency gains outweigh distributional concerns. A conservative firm focused on labormarket stability should price above the profit-maximizing level in the short run, especially when its AI may displace low-income workers. Overall, socially minded firms face a trade-off between expanding …

Towards Multi-Modal Multi-Document Understanding Capabilities In Foundation Models, Chuhan Li

Computer Science Theses

Contemporary foundation models are predominantly evaluated on isolated documentor image-understanding tasks, thereby overlooking the inherent multimodal multi-document reasoning that characterizes scientific inquiry. To bridge this gap, M3SCIQA is introduced, aMulti-Modal,Multi-document Scientific Question Answering benchmark crafted to test foundation models in practical scientific research settings. A comprehensive evaluation of 18 leading foundation models shows a substantial performance gap between models and human experts. Detailed error analysis reveals persistent deficiencies in both scientific visual reasoning tasks and long-range retrieval. Addressing the former, SPACECUE offers a concise yet effective visual prompting that overlays grid coordinates and Semantic-SAM masks …

Towards Practical And Real-Time Decoding Of Quantum Hypergraph Codes, Binghong (Leo) Li

Computer Science Theses

Quantum error correction (QEC) enables scalable quantum computation by detecting and correcting physical errors. However, decoding remains a key bottleneck—particularly for quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes, whose hypergraph structures demand complex reasoning. Most existing decoders are either too slow for real-time use or lack formal guarantees, and often struggle to generalize across diverse quantum hardware.

This thesis introduces the Minimum-Weight Parity Factor (MWPF) algorithm, a unified and certifiable decoding formulation that extends minimum-weight perfect matching to general hypergraph-based stabilizer codes. We focus on making MWPF practical and performant through a two-phase decoding architecture, consisting of a fast search phase and …

B-Spline Representations For Hyperspectral Inverse Rendering, Rachel Liang

Computer Science Theses

This work explores the use of a B-spline-based approach for hyperspectral inverse rendering from RGB images, experimenting on both spectral and geometric reconstruction. While the B-spline method is less accurate than brute-force optimization, it offers significant improvements in computational efficiency- reducing both runtime and memory usage.

Our experiments show that the B-spline representation can approximate smooth spectral data effectively but struggles with sharper spectral features unless more knots are introduced. Notably, wavelengths near the edges of the visible spectrum (around 400 nm and 700 nm) were less stable during optimization, reflecting lower convergence reliability. Despite these challenges, the final RGB …

Exploring The Limits Of Multimodal Foundation Models For Visual Temporal Reasoning And Gesture Recognition Tasks, Ziyao Shangguan

Computer Science Theses

Multimodal foundation models (MFMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in static vision-language tasks such as image captioning, video summarization, and cross modal retrieval. However, their ability to reason over time—especially in gesture-rich video inputs—remains limited. This thesis investigates the temporal reasoning capabilities of MFMs in the context of gesture understanding, a critical component for enabling more expressive human-robot interaction. Through a preliminary study, we show that prompting-based strategies offer only marginal improvements in temporal reasoning, despite producing accurate frame-by-frame descriptions.

To more rigorously evaluate these limitations, we introduce TOMATO, a benchmark designed to assess visual …

Disclosure Under Regulation 30 Of Sebi (Lodr) Regulations, 2015 Divestment Of 13.19% Stake In Yes Bank Limited (Ybl), State Bank Of India (Sbi)

Documents

No abstract provided.

Disclosure Under Regulation 30 Of The Securities And Exchange Board Of India (Listing Obligations And Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, As Amended, Yes Bank Limited

Documents

No abstract provided.

Trade And Domestic Distortions: The Case Of Informality, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, Pinelopi Goldberg, Costas Meghir, Gabriel Ulyssea

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We examine the effects of international trade in the presence of a set of domestic distortions giving rise to informality, a prevalent phenomenon in developing countries. In our quantitative model, the informal sector arises from burdensome taxes and regulations that are imperfectly enforced by the government. In equilibrium, smaller, less productive firms face fewer distortions than larger, more productive ones, potentially leading to substantial misallocation. We show that in settings with a large informal sector, the gains from trade are significantly amplified, as reductions in trade barriers imply a reallocation of resources from initially less distorted to more distorted firms. …

Fatigue, Recovery, And The Economics Of Remote Work, María Sáez Martí

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

I propose a model in which workers experience fatigue over time and can restore productivity by taking breaks. Optimal schedules feature evenly spaced, full-recovery breaks; when breaks are costless, they should occur frequently, but switching costs make the optimal number finite. The model is embedded in a principal-agent framework with contractual frictions. When employers control the schedule, workers overwork; when workers self-manage, they overrest. Both lead to inefficiencies. These results shed light on the trade-offs in remote work arrangements, especially following COVID-19. The analysis highlights how control rights, incentive design, and recovery constraints interact—and why neither rigid supervision nor full …

Gene X Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores And The Impact Of A Early Childhood Intervention In Colombia, Orazio Attanasio, Gabriella Conti, Pamela Jervis, Costas Meghir, Aysu Okbay

Discussion Papers

We evaluate impacts heterogeneity of an Early Childhood Intervention, with respect to the Educational Attainment Polygenic Score (EA4 PGS) constructed from DNA data based on GWAS weights from a European population. We find that the EA4 PGS is predictive of several measures of child development, mother’s IQ and, to some extent, educational attainment. We also show that the impacts of the intervention are significantly greater in children with low PGS, to the point that the intervention eliminates the initial genetic disadvantage. Lastly, we find that children with high PGS attract more parental stimulation; however, the latter increases more strongly in …

The Movement Ecology, Ranging Patterns, And Territoriality Of Azara’S Owl Monkeys (Aotus Azarae) In The Argentinean Chaco Forest, Jeremy D. Pustilnik

Master of Environmental Science Theses

Azara’s owl monkeys (Aotus azarae) are small, pair-living, socially monogamous primates that inhabit the Chaco Forest of South America. Their activity and life history patterns have been particularly well studied, however, their movement ecology and ranging patterns within their home ranges remains largely unknown. Herein I descriptively analyze these patterns with respect to time, space, ambient environment, and physical environment using spatial information on five owl monkey groups that were followed over the course of a year between 1998 and 1999 at a multi-decade-operating field site near Formosa, Argentina. Analysis of distance and speed moved during different diel …

Reclaiming The Body: A Womanist Bioethics Approach To Christian Authoritarianism, Laron Bryant Dowdell

Yale Divinity School Theses

This paper uses womanist bioethics as a theoretical lens to explore how authoritarian leadership practices violate Black women's well-being and autonomy. Womanist bioethics uniquely centers Black women's lived experiences, integrating spiritual, historical, and social dimensions of justice that mainstream bioethics often ignores. The womanist bioethics framework is applied to critique religious authoritarianism and to propose alternative leadership models rooted in shared leadership and communal accountability. The discussion unfolds in four parts: (1) how womanist bioethics critiques the bodily and moral harm authoritarian leadership inflicts on Black women, (2) testimonials of Black women who resisted high-control church systems, (3) an exploration …