美国金融模式的不稳定性:基于次贷危机的反思

直接融资和间接融资的高度融合以及复杂化的金融创新,是当前美国金融模式的核心特征。对次贷危机的分析表明:美国金融模式在风险转移和克服信息不对称方面具有优势,因此高风险且信息严重不对称的金融交易容易在此达成;美国金融模式将风险以高度流动和复杂化的方式分布于关键金融市场——货币市场,这使得金融危机具有腐蚀性,并难以根治;美国金融模式对风险管理提出了巨大挑战,风险控制的改进效力不容高估。     

The transformation of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Between 2000 and 2005, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, until recently, the Food Stamp Program) caseload increased by half. As the Great Recession unfolded, the SNAP caseload grew even more rapidly. Further, over the past two decades the composition of the caseload has shifted sharply away from families combining food and cash assistance and toward families receiving food assistance in the absence of any other major, means‐tested income support. By analyzing components of the caseload separately, we provide new and more insightful estimates of the effects of food and cash assistance policies and the economy on both the change in the composition of the caseload and the large caseload swings over the 1990s and 2000s. We find that the economy can explain a portion of caseload changes, but not compositional shifts. Food and cash assistance policies help to explain both changes. In total, the combination of SNAP and welfare policy changes account for about half of the sharp increase since 1994 in the share of SNAP households receiving food, but not cash, assistance. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Bitcoin and the GDPR: Allocating responsibility in distributed networks

This article uses the example of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to show how distributed networks challenge existing legal mechanisms of allocating responsibility. The Bitcoin network stores personal data by automated means. Furthermore, full nodes qualify as establishments and the network offers a service to citizens in the EU. The data processing within the Bitcoin network therefore falls into the material and territorial scope of the GDPR. To protect data subjects, the GDPR allocates responsibility to the controller, who determines the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of the data processing. However, the distributed structure of the Bitcoin network blurs the lines between actors who are responsible and actors who are worth protecting. Neither the Bitcoin users running lightweight nodes or full nodes nor the miners determine the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of the data processing. They carry out their network activities according to the Bitcoin protocol, which can only be adopted and enforced by a collective of full nodes and miners. Members of this collective are joint controllers under Article 26 GDPR, which obliges them to clearly and transparently determine their respective responsibilities for compliance with the GDPR. However, this mechanism fails because of the very structure it aims to eliminate. Therefore, a solution to allocating responsibility for data protection in distributed networks lies outside the GDPR.