January 27, 2017 at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: créolisation, disruption
January 04, 2017 at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: bibliothèque, créolisation, destruction créatrice, digital, disruption, Edouard Glissant, Internet, maîtres de forges numériques, MOOC
April 14, 2013 at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Europe, Jean Guéhenno, Jules Romains, poésie
SMARTLIBRIS est en ligne depuis hier!
Les passionnés de cinéma assouvissent leur passion pour le 7ième art avec NETFLIX® (www.netflix.com). Les amateurs de chansons vivent en musique avec DEEZER® (www.deezer.com) et SPOTIFY® (www.spotify.com).
QUID DES AMATEURS DE LIVRES ET DE LECTURE ?
Désormais, grâce à Cyberlibris® (www.cyberlibris.com), les férus de livres et de lecture disposent de SMARTLIBRIS® (www.smartlibris.com)
Avec SMARTLIBRIS, les livres numériques sont enfin accessibles au grand public en ligne (streaming), en texte intégral et sur abonnement forfaitaire :
- SMARTLIBRIS a été conçu pour une utilisation en famille. Le service donne accès à une bibliothèque numérique trilingue (français, anglais, espagnol) riche d’environ 9000 livres qui couvrent un large champ thématique, de la fiction à la non-fiction. Cette bibliothèque s’enrichira des apports réguliers des maisons d’édition partenaires de Cyberlibris.
- SMARTLIBRIS a été principalement pensé et dessiné à partir de l’iPad®. L’iPad et les tablettes tactiles rivales, véritables machines à surfer domestiques, procurent à la lecture sur écran des sensations agréables en redonnant aux mains un rôle moteur.
Avec SMARTLIBRIS, Cyberlibris nourrit une ambition simple:
« Fournir à chaque foyer à un coût raisonnable et dans le strict respect de la propriété intellectuelle un accès démocratique à l’outil de Savoir, d’Evasion, de Réussite et de Découverte qu’est une bibliothèque numérique. »
Une fois l’abonnement familial acquitté, chaque membre de la famille accède à la bibliothèque, à ses livres et ses outils :
- À la maison : Raconter une histoire aux enfants au bord du lit, guider les adolescents dans leurs études, choisir la prochaine destination de vacances de la famille, comprendre les avantages de l’énergie photovoltaïque, connaître le droit de la copropriété, cuisiner thaï pour ses amis, lire un roman, un polar ou une nouvelle... les livres attendent d’être (déc)ouverts et lus en ligne.
- En mobilité : Vérifier une définition juridique, lire un poème, envoyer la fiche d’un livre sur Twitter ou Facebook ... rien de plus facile. Et c’est aussi possible en WiFi, en 3G, à partir de son iPod ou de son iPhone.
Avec Smartlibris, Cyberlibris élargit les opportunités de visibilité et de revenus des catalogues des maisons d’édition:
- Jusqu’à présent, les bibliothèques numériques conçues par Cyberlibris et accessibles par abonnement institutionnel étaient réservées aux écoles, aux universités, aux institutions et aux bibliothèques. Ces bibliothèques numériques, utilisées quotidiennement par des centaines de milliers de professeurs, étudiants, professionnels et bibliothécaires, sont depuis près de dix ans la source de substantiels revenus complémenaires (à ceux du livre papier) pour les maisons d’édition concernées et leurs auteurs.
- Dorénavant, la famille, au gré de ses découvertes et de ses lectures, participe, elle aussi, sous la forme originale de l’abonnement, à la rémunération des auteurs et de leurs maisons d’édition.
March 15, 2011 at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: abonnement, Apple, bibliothèque numérique, Cyberlibris, digital libraries, e-books, enfance, famille, fiction, iPad, littérature, livre numérique, Smartlibris, streaming, éducation
Le communiqué de presse des Editions Maxima : CP MARCHES DE DUPES
September 02, 2010 at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: bourguinat, briys, crise, crise économique, finance, maxima, récession, subprimes
August 18, 2009 at 06:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
August 11, 2009 at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Securitization has become a panacea on financial markets.
Indeed, it is predicated on the simple idea that balance sheets are more often than not the best parking for risks. In other (shareholders) words, they are the most costly parking you can find. Hence, commercial banks with the structuring help of Wall Street firms have "shipped" assets and liabilities that were so far stored in their balance sheets to investors.
It sounds like a marvelous and lucrative never ending innovation spiral à la Merton where banks can do more business, investors have access to a wider spectrum of securities and risks are more efficiently shared.
Too good to be true: The subprime mess is a wake up call, one that calls for deep thinking.
There are some things that do not change. In October 1987, the equity market crashed and portfolio insurance was designated as the culprit. Portfolio insurance used to be considered as the solution to downside risk protection. Investors hate downside risk even more than they love upside. University of Berkeley mavericks, Hayne Leland and Mark Rubinstein (co-founders if LOR), came up with a technique that promised to replicate what a long put option does, namely pay off, when the market goes south. The "trick" was simply to use Black-Scholes-Merton option hedging argument to replicate the put option payoff. In other words, they were selling stock index futures (mechanically/dynamically) and going long T-bills (cash) when the equity market was tanking. When the market was rallying up, they did the opposite. That's why when the market crashed in October 87, LOR was accused of provoking/amplifying the downward trend. The argument is a bit odd: Mark Rubinstein rightly pointed out that nobody praised LOR when the market was going up for making the growth even stronger.
The truth is that while portfolio insurance is in effect more of car insurance than earthquake insurance type there is an important market item that it paradoxically "destroys": Information. Indeed, when lots of investors are willing to buy put options bidding the price up they signal their bearishness to the market. What portfolio insurance does is to break down a single (put) transaction into two separate transactions: stock index futures and T-bills. Information about market expectations may get distorted in the process as it is hard for the rest of the market to decipher the initial intent. Worse, as shown by Sanford Grossman and others when portfolio insurers sell mechanically to dynamically replicate the target put, people may mistakenly think that this signals bad news. Asymmetric information problems have increased and we know both from the seminal works of George Akerlof, Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz and casual business experience that this is a sure recipe for trouble.
Sadly enough, the same holds true with securitization as witnessed by the subprime mess. Bad loans have been securitized. As a result the shareholders of the originating banks do not bear the consequences, good or bad, of their loan activity anymore. They have no incentive anymore to monitor these loans that get "diluted" in securitization vehicles. Hence while risks seem to have been more efficiently cut into pieces and shared the overall situation has worsened drastically because asymmetric information problems are now more toxic (1). Asymmetric information is a market killer and we end up collectively harvesting what others have planted.
Not convinced. Well, think of what microfinance does. It does exactly the opposite: It reduces information asymmetries by putting monitoring and safety devices in the micro-lending process: Lend only to women, in a village where everybody knows each other, make the borrowers collectively liable when one of them defaults etc... This is why it is successful.
So, next time innovation in the form of sophisticated securitization knocks at your door, ask yourself whether information and incentives have been reduced or not before joining the bandwagon. If portfolio insurance and the subprime can teach us one thing or two, it is precisely this.
(1) Not to mention the fact that it becomes very hard, almost impossible, to restructure the (securitized) loans when disaster strikes.
April 22, 2008 at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It is a striking fact that finance academics are not very interested in history and that history academics seem to have a fairly restrictive view of finance.
This is sad: The two fields have much to learn from each other. My co-author, Didier Joos de ter Beerst, and myself have been fascinated by a contract that was signed in 1298 in Genoa between Benedetto Zaccaria, a powerful merchant and admiral, and two Genoese financiers, Enrico Suppa and Baliano Grillo.
To the point that we have conducted an in-depth research about this contract (Didier was able to get a copy of the original version). This contract is a masterpiece of strategy and financial engineering and a great source of inspiration for economists, finance and history scholars.
After months of reading, struggling with the contract, going into intense discussions, we wrote a paper that has already been presented in several conferences. Lastly, Didier presented the paper at the XIVth International Economic History Congress in Helsinki.
If finance, options, derivative and structured products are your pet topics, if you have an interest in insurance and banking; if you are keen on history, especially medieval history, we think you will enjoy this paper.
The latest French version forthcoming in Revue du Financier is here: article_zaccaria.pdf
The current English version (IEHCPAPERBRIYSJOOS.pdf) is fairly long (worth it ;-) but still at the rough draft stage (with typos, sorry!)) We include a shorter (IEHC.ppt). A French version will be published soon.
We'd be delighted to receive your comments!
September 30, 2006 at 05:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (1)