Interest in access to finance and awareness of its importance have increased significantly since the early 2000s. Growing evidence suggests that lack of access to credit prevents many households and firms from financing high-return investment projects, which has an adverse effect on growth and poverty alleviation. Despite the increasing awareness of the importance of access to finance among both researchers and policymakers, there are still some major gaps in our understanding of the main drivers of access, as well as about the impact of different policies in this area. This book aims to fill some of these gaps by discussing recent innovative experiences in broadening access to credit in Latin America. These experiences are consistent with an emerging new view that, while recognizing the central role of the public sector in improving the contractual and informational environment for financial markets, also contends that there might be room for well-designed, restricted interventions in collaboration with the private sector to foster the development of financial markets and broaden access to them. In particular, the book analyzes, among other things, some interesting experiences from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico that use different instruments to broaden access to credit in a sustainable way, such as structured finance, factoring, credit guarantees, and correspondent banking. Most of these experiences have led to financial innovation by developing new financial products and coordinating different players in the financial and real sectors to overcome barriers to access to credit. The book provides a first systematic analysis of these innovative experiences, including an analytical framework to understand problems of access to finance and a discussion of the effects and optimal design of public interventions. Finally, the book discusses some open policy questions about the role of the private and public sectors (including state†?owned banks) in broadening access to finance in a sustainable and market-friendly manner.
This book can be presented in two different ways. Firstly, it introduces a particular methodology to build adaptive Web sites and secondly, it presents the main concepts behind Web mining and then applying them to adaptive Web sites. In this case, Adaptive Web Sites is the case study to exemplify the tools introduced in the text. The authors start by introducing the Web and motivating the need for adaptive Web sites. The second chapter introduces the main concepts behind a Web site: its operation, its associated data and structure, user sessions, etc. Chapter three explains the Web mining process and the tools to analyze Web data, mainly focused in machine learning. The fourth chapter looks at how to store and manage data. Chapter five looks at the three main and different mining tasks: content, links and usage. The following chapter covers Web personalization; a crucial topic if we want to adapt our site to specific groups of people. Chapter seven shows how to use information extraction techniques to find user behavior patterns. The subsequent chapter explains how to acquire and maintain knowledge extracted from the previous phase. Finally, chapter nine contains the case study where all the previous concepts are applied to present a framework to build adaptive Web sites. In other words, the authors have taken care of writing a self-contained book for people that want to learn and apply personalization and adaptation in Web sites. This is commendable considering the large and increasing bibliography in these and related topics. The writing is easy to follow and although the coverage is not exhaustive, the main concepts and topics are all covered.
The study of complex, interconnected mechanical systems with rigid and flexible articulated components is of growing interest to both engineers and mathematicians. Recent work in this area reveals a rich geometry underlying the mathematical models used in this context. In particular, Lie groups of symmetries, reduction, and Poisson structures play a significant role in explicating the qualitative properties of multibody systems. In engineering applications, it is important to exploit the special structures of mechanical systems. For example, certain mechanical problems involving control of interconnected rigid bodies can be formulated as Lie-Poisson systems. The dynamics and control of robotic, aeronautic, and space structures involve difficulties in modeling, mathematical analysis, and numerical implementation. For example, a new generation of spacecraft with large, flexible components are presenting new challenges to the accurate modeling and prediction of the dynamic behavior of such structures. Recent developments in Hamiltonian dynamics and coupling of systems with symmetries has shed new light on some of these issues, while engineering questions have suggested new mathematical structures. These kinds of considerations motivated the organization of the AMS-IMS-SIAM Joint Summer Research Conference on Control Theory and Multibody Systems, held at Bowdoin College in August, 1988. This volume contains the proceedings of that conference. The papers presented here cover a range of topics, all of which could be viewed as applications of geometrical methods to problems arising in dynamics and control. The volume contains contributions from some of the top researchers and provides an excellent overview of the frontiers of research in this burgeoning area.
* Winner of the Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize in 2000. * Reviews the necessary prerequisites, beginning with an introduction to Lie symmetries on Poisson and symplectic manifolds. * Currently in classroom use in Europe. * Can serve as a resource for graduate courses and seminars in Hamiltonian mechanics and symmetry, symplectic and Poisson geometry, Lie theory, mathematical physics, and as a comprehensive reference resource for researchers.
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