Rethinking the Regulation of Financial Influencers

in Goanta, Catalina (Ed.) Social Media Contracts – The Quest for Fairness and the Need for Reform (2023)

The growth of social media has led to an unprecedented rise in financial influencers, so- called finfluencers, who share investment ideas and opinions with a global audience. Finfluencers have various ... [more ▼]

The growth of social media has led to an unprecedented rise in financial influencers, so- called finfluencers, who share investment ideas and opinions with a global audience. Finfluencers have various business models, from endorsing products to advertising their mutual funds. Retail investors are particularly vulnerable to the risks posed by financial influencers because most lack financial literacy, according to a UK Financial Conduct Authority study from 2021. Additionally, the power dynamic inherent in the influencer- follower relationship can also increase consumers’ susceptibility, particularly through one- sided parasocial relationships. Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships where one person extends emotional energy and interest towards the financial influencer, who may be completely unaware of the follower’s existence. Such relationships can lead to a higher level of trust, credibility, and reliance on the advice and recommendations of financial influencers, even if they are not qualified or licensed to provide financial advice. This can be particularly dangerous for retail investors with low levels of financial literacy, who may be more vulnerable to the risks posed by finfluencers. Thus, the current regulatory framework may not be adequate to protect consumers from the potential harms of financial influencers. This Article starts by briefly examining the current regulatory framework for financial influencers (based on Pflücke 2020 and 2022), including how the EU and five platforms govern it. It then proceeds by critically analysing and proposing targeted and actionable policy considerations to increase fairness and transparency on social media platforms. The Article argues that the current approach is neither evidence-based nor tailored to the activities and potential harms of financial influencers, requiring radical reforms to protect consumers and capital markets. [less ▲]

Using Empathy-Centric Design in Industry: Reflections from the UX Researcher, the Client, and the Method Expert

in EMPATHICH '23: Proceedings of the 2nd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop (2023, May)

Empathic design provides tools and frameworks supporting designers to understand users’ experiences with products or services. However, how does one hand over this empathic understanding of users to other ... [more ▼]

Empathic design provides tools and frameworks supporting designers to understand users’ experiences with products or services. However, how does one hand over this empathic understanding of users to other internal stakeholders shaping the service experience? In this contribution, we reflect on a three-year implementation of an empathy-centric design approach in an industrial context with a low user experience maturity from three different professional viewpoints: ours as UX researchers, the one of a company manager, and an expert researcher on empathy in design. These narrative introspective accounts unveil some of the main benefits, opportunities, and challenges of implementing an empathy-centric design approach in the industry. We discuss and confront them to prior work. We contribute to the field of empathic design with rich in-situ research insights and principles for a successful empathic approach. [less ▲]

Initial Orbit Determination Results from the University of Luxembourg using Spire GNSS Tracking Data

Poster (2023, April 28)

CubeSats constellations using commercial off-the-shelf components have been studied for different applications, such as GNSS Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO). Furthermore, precise orbit determination of Low ... [more ▼]

CubeSats constellations using commercial off-the-shelf components have been studied for different applications, such as GNSS Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO). Furthermore, precise orbit determination of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) CubeSats based on multiple GNSS constellations would open new opportunities for scientific applications such as Earth’s gravity field measurements. In GNSS kinematic orbit determination, which is the common method used for small sats, the derived orbits are affected by noise, data gaps, outliers, measurement errors as well as poor geometry of the observations. Our work seeks to mitigate these issues and we present two areas of research: 1) GNSS network processing of GPS and Galileo constellations and 2) kinematic orbit determination of a set of Spire CubeSats that host a GNSS-RO payload. An initial architecture of kinematic orbit processing for the Spire GNSS-RO CubeSats constellation is obtained and the details on validations and limitations are discussed in more details. In addition, we showcase the agreement between the GNSS orbit products produced at the University of Luxembourg (UL) with those of the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE). Finally, the Spire kinematic orbits based on the raw observation approach are derived and compared to the L1B Spire orbit products. [less ▲]

Convergence of national prudential supervision under the European Single Supervisory Mechanism

Doctoral thesis (2023)

This dissertation starts with an overview of the recent and ongoing efforts to achieve greater convergence in national banking supervision within the European Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). However ... [more ▼]

This dissertation starts with an overview of the recent and ongoing efforts to achieve greater convergence in national banking supervision within the European Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). However, the persistence of distinct national preferences on banking supervision has resulted in ongoing differences in the practice of banking supervision at the national level. More specifically, the supervision of Less Significant Institutions (LSIs) has remained under the direct control of national supervisors and to, a certain extent, under national law, thus allowing significant ongoing margin of manoeuvre on supervision. This dissertation examines the consequences of this margin for manoeuvre left to national supervisors, despite strong convergence pressures through post-financial crisis EU institutional developments. The analysis focus upon the national supervision of LSIs. The main research question guiding this work is, therefore: under what conditions do pre-existing national institutional configurations continue to determine the trajectory of national supervisory practice in the context of European-level convergence pressures (through the European Banking Authority and the SSM)? To answer this question, I use a four-part analytical framework based on, first, Europeanisation which provides insight into top-down processes of integration, second, Historical Institutionalism which provides an understanding of path dependency from earlier policy decisions shaping national supervisory institutions and practice, third, the Epistemic Communities approach and fourth Transnational Policy Network framework. Based on this combined analytical framework, I formulate the following hypothesis: the more discretion exercised by the national supervisor in relation to its government, the more likely the adoption of policies and practices that result in greater convergence with the rules and practices developed at the EU / Banking Union level. To test this hypothesis, I start with a broad assessment of the provisions that provide margin of manoeuvre to national authorities, specifically the options and national discretions (ONDs) explicitly granted to national authorities — member state governments or supervisors — in EU capital requirements legislation: the CRD IV/V and CRR I/II. This assessment provides an initial confirmation of my hypothesis, showing a more important degree of convergence in the cases where national supervisors benefit from full discretion with no intervention from national governments. I then test the hypothesis on a typical case where NCAs can exercise discretion — the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) — and a typical case with national government intervention that limits supervisory discretion — Non Performing Loans (NPLs). Through an analysis of the French and German national cases with regard to SREP and NPLs, I conclude that the convergence of prudential supervision within the SSM was largely observed in cases where the national supervisor benefitted from discretion as a result of cooperation opportunities and socialisation processes. [less ▲]

Möglichkeiten, Herausforderungen und Grenzen von Mixed-Methods-Designs: Erfahrungen aus einer empirischen Jugendstudie

Presentation (2023, April 20)

Conditional on the Environment? The Contextual Embeddedness of Age, Health, and Socioeconomic Status as Predictors of Remote Work among Older Europeans through the COVID-19 Pandemic

Scientific Conference (2023, April 14)

COVID-19 era lockdown measures resulted in many workers performing their employment tasks remotely. While identifying individual-level predictors of COVID-19 era remote work, scholarship has neglected ... [more ▼]

COVID-19 era lockdown measures resulted in many workers performing their employment tasks remotely. While identifying individual-level predictors of COVID-19 era remote work, scholarship has neglected heterogeneity based on contextual characteristics. Using the first COVID-19 module (2020) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 8,121) and multinomial logistic regression analyses, this study examined how country-level digitalization, stringency of government COVID-19 containment measures, and COVID-19 era excess mortality moderated how individual-level age, health, education, and income affected working partly or fully remotely among older Europeans (50-89 years) continuing to work through the pandemic. The central findings are that higher societal digitalization reduced the positive association between education and fully remote work, and greater country-level excess mortality accentuated how more education and poorer health increased the probability of fully remote work. These findings are interpreted through the fundamental cause theory of health and the health belief model. They further lead to recommendations that during future epidemics, policies and programs should address the remote working capabilities of older persons with fewer years of education, with fewer skills with modern digital technologies, and in worse health, especially within nations that are less digitally developed and harder hit by the epidemic in question. [less ▲]

Long-Term Use of QTrobot Platform for Autism in Families: The Parents’ Reports

Scientific Conference (2023, April)

Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society ed. by Janet Abbate and Stephanie Dick (review)

in Technology and Culture (2023), 64(2), 611-613

Book review of bstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society ed. by Janet Abbate and Stephanie Dick

Efficient resource prediction framework for software-defined heterogeneous radio environmental infrastructures

in Advanced Engineering Informatics (2023), 56

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is defining the future of next-generation infrastructures as proactive and data-driven systems. AI-empowered radio systems are replacing the existing command and control radio ... [more ▼]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is defining the future of next-generation infrastructures as proactive and data-driven systems. AI-empowered radio systems are replacing the existing command and control radio networks due to their intelligence and capabilities to adapt to the radio environmental infrastructures that include intelligent networks, smart cities and AV/VR enabled factory premises or localities. An efficient resource prediction framework (ERPF) is proposed to provide proactive knowledge about the availability of radio resources in such software-defined heterogeneous radio environmental infrastructures (SD-HREIs). That prior information enables the coexistence of radio users in SD-HREIs. In a proposed framework, the radio activity is measured in both the unlicensed bands that include 2.4 and 5 GHz, respectively. The clustering algorithms k- means and DBSCAN are implemented to segregate the already measured radioactivity as signal (radio occupancy) and noise (radio opportunity). Machine learning techniques CNN and LRN are then trained and tested using the segregated data to predict the radio occupancy and radio opportunity in SD-HREIs. Finally, the performance of CNN and LRN is validated using the cross-validation metrics. [less ▲]

Accurate long-read sequencing identified GBA variants as a major genetic risk factor in the Luxembourg Parkinson\textquoterights study 2023.03.29.23287880

E-print/Working paper (2023)

Heterozygous variants in the glucocerebrosidase GBA gene are an increasingly recognized risk factor for Parkinson's disease (PD). Due to the pseudogene GBAP1 that shares 96\% sequence homology with the ... [more ▼]

Heterozygous variants in the glucocerebrosidase GBA gene are an increasingly recognized risk factor for Parkinson's disease (PD). Due to the pseudogene GBAP1 that shares 96\% sequence homology with the GBA coding region, accurate variant calling by array-based or short-read sequencing methods remains a major challenge in understanding the genetic landscape of GBA-related PD. We established a novel long-read sequencing technology for assessing the full length of the GBA gene. We used subsequent regression models for genotype-phenotype analyses. We sequenced 752 patients with parkinsonism and 806 healthy controls of the Luxembourg Parkinson's study. All GBA variants identified showed a 100% true positive rate by Sanger validation. We found 12% of unrelated PD patients carrying GBA variants. Three novel variants of unknown significance (VUS) were identified. Using a structure-based approach, we defined a potential risk prediction method for VUS. This study describes the full landscape of GBA-related parkinsonism in Luxembourg, showing a high prevalence of GBA variants as the major genetic risk for PD. Our approach provides an important advancement for highly accurate GBA variant calling, which is essential for providing access to emerging causative therapies for GBA carriers. [less ▲]