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One of the features of the sub-prime crisis, that began in August 2007, was its unexpected nature. It came as a surprise not only to most financial market participants but also in some degree to the policy community. In this context, we seek to assess whether early warning systems based on the logit and binomial tree approaches on the UK and US economies could have helped to warn about the crisis. We also consider a 'check list approach' of indicators based on history. Although not all of the complementary approaches are successful, we contend that our work suggests that a broadening of approaches to macroprudential analysis is appropriate.

The financial crisis that started in August 2008 has reached a climax in the autumn of 2008 with a wave of bank nationalisations across North America and Europe. Although banking crises are not uncommon, this is the largest since 1929–33. This paper discusses the build-up to the crisis, looking at the role of low real interest rates in stimulating an asset price bubble. That bubble was stocked by financial innovation and increases in lending. New financial products were not stress tested and have failed in the downturn. After discussing the bubbles we look at the collapse of the complex asset structure, and then put the crisis in the context of the literature. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy implications of the crisis, and advocates a significant improvement in the regulatory structure.

ABSTRACTWe estimate the impact of financial liberalisation on consumption in seven major industrial countries, and find a marked shift in behaviour, notably a decline in short‐run income elasticities and a rise in short‐run wealth and interest rate elasticities. A corollary is that consumption equations estimated over both pre‐ and post‐liberalisation regimes may be misleading, and either a form of testing as presented here or a shortening of the sample period may be appropriate for accurate forecasting and simulation.

Macroeconomic policy in Europe is now oriented to creating a stable environment in which the scope for output growth is enhanced. However, we maintain that not all dimensions of a stability-oriented policy framework appear to be in place. Fiscal policy rules and arrangements have been much discussed, but their design is not yet settled. The Single Market Programme has transformed competition in Europe, but its full implications for macroeconomic stability, especially its implications for financial market stability in combination with the Single Currency, have not yet been fully appreciated by policymakers. Future pension issues in the context of population ageing will pose a major challenge. We discuss the design of fiscal policy in (a Single Market) Europe, looking at fiscal pacts and the need for Europe-wide financial regulation in an integrated financial market as well as pension reform aspects.

Is the Government privatising efficiently? Is it floating the shares in nationalised industry economically? Will British Telecom be under‐priced? Professor Davis and Roger Buckland have studied the privatisation issues of shares over five years and found large but avoidable losses. They argue that the Government's marketing technique could be improved by making less use of the large financial institutions and more use of competitive tenders.

One hundred and nineteen white student Ss responded to semantic differential, behavioral differential, Likert scales and other measures tapping attitudes, perceptions and factual information relevant to the race riots of the mid to late 1960's. Items were factor analyzed and composite scores on the resulting factors were used in later analyses. Thirty-seven experimental Ss were given reading material containing a summary of the salient points made in the Kerner Commission Report. Twenty-nine controls received dummy reading material. The questionnaire was re-administered three weeks later to both groups. A number of significant shifts in attitudes were obtained; these were typically in a direction more consistent with the findings of the Kerner Commission Report, which advocated social change. Significant shifts occurred in Ss' evaluation of changing social policy as well as in their expression of behavioral intentions toward stimulus persons of both races who strongly favored civil rights action. Attitude shifts were accompanied by increases in factual information. Negative relationships between measures of racial prejudice and semantic differential evaluations of busing children to promote school integration (r =-.39; p<.001) and federal enforcement of open housing (r =-.47; p<.OOl) were obtained, suggesting that attitudes toward such issues are significantly related to racial prejudice. It was suggested that, as potential instruments of attitude change, reports of this and similar Commissions set up to study social problems and make recommendations for social policy should be studied to determine the extent of their impact on attitudes.

The NIDDK Information Network (dkNET; http://dknet.org) was launched to serve the needs of basic and clinical investigators in metabolic, digestive and kidney disease by facilitating access to research resources that advance the mission of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). By research resources, we mean the multitude of data, software tools, materials, services, projects and organizations available to researchers in the public domain. Most of these are accessed via web-accessible databases or web portals, each developed, designed and maintained by numerous different projects, organizations and individuals. While many of the large government funded databases, maintained by agencies such as European Bioinformatics Institute and the National Center for Biotechnology Information, are well known to researchers, many more that have been developed by and for the biomedical research community are unknown or underutilized. At least part of the problem is the nature of dynamic databases, which are considered part of the "hidden" web, that is, content that is not easily accessed by search engines. dkNET was created specifically to address the challenge of connecting researchers to research resources via these types of community databases and web portals. dkNET functions as a "search engine for data", searching across millions of database records contained in hundreds of biomedical databases developed and maintained by independent projects around the world. A primary focus of dkNET are centers and projects specifically created to provide high quality data and resources to NIDDK researchers. Through the novel data ingest process used in dkNET, additional data sources can easily be incorporated, allowing it to scale with the growth of digital data and the needs of the dkNET community. Here, we provide an overview of the dkNET portal and its functions. We show how dkNET can be used to address a variety of use cases that involve searching for research resources.