@phdthesis{Geiger2010,
  author    = {Geiger, Michael},
  title     = {Monetary Policy in China: Institutions, Targets, Instruments and Strategies},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-69945},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {China's monetary policy aims to reach two final targets: a paramount economical target (i.e. price stability) and a less important political target (i.e. economic growth). The main actor of monetary policy is the central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBC). But the PBC is a non-independent central bank. The State Council approves the goals of monetary policy. Very limited instrument independence means that interest rates cannot be set at the PBC's discretion, and in-sufficient personal independence fails to insulate central bank officials from political influence. Monetary policy in China applies to two sets of monetary policy instruments: (i) instruments of the PBC; and (ii) non-central bank policy instruments. The instruments of the PBC include price-based indirect and quantity-based direct instruments. Non-central bank policy instruments include price and wage controls. The simultaneous usage of all these instruments leads to various distortions that ultimately prevent the interest rate channel of monetary transmission from functioning. Moreover, the strong influences of quantity-based direct instruments and non-central bank policy instruments bring into question the approach of indirect monetary policy in general. The PBC officially follows the monetary targeting approach with monetary aggregates as intermediate targets. Domestic loan growth and the exchange rate are defined as additional intermediate targets. In an in-depth analysis of the intermediate targets two main issues are primarily explored: (i) Are the intermediate targets of the Chinese monetary policy controllable? (ii) Is a sufficient relationship between these targets and the inflation rate observable? It is then shown that monetary aggregates are very difficult to control, but they have a satisfactory relationship with the inflation rate. Similarly, domestic loan growth is difficult to control - a fact largely attributed to the interest rate elasticity of loans - while there is a particularly close relationship between credit growth and the inflation rate. The exchange rate as an intermediate target can be controlled through foreign exchange market interventions; at the same time the exchange rate appears to have a significant relationship to the domestic inflation rate. Discussing the special issue of sterilizing foreign exchange inflows, the study concludes that between 2002 and 2008 not only no costs were incurred by sterilization operations, but that the central bank was actually able to realize a profit through foreign exchange market interventions. Based on this, it is concluded that the exchange rate target has not adversely affected the domestic orientation of monetary policy on the whole. The final part of the study examines whether there are any alternative monetary policy approaches that may be able to describe the policy approach in China; special focus is placed on nominal GDP targeting, the Taylor rule, and inflation targeting. A literature review reveals that the concept of nominal GDP targeting may be able to detect inflationary tendencies in the economy and, in combination with other indicators, it could be a suitable concept to assess the overall economic situation. The author calculates a Taylor rule for China from 1994 to 2008 and concludes that there is no close relationship between the PBC lending and the Taylor rate. The author then designs an augmented Taylor rule expanded to include a credit component (credit-augmented Taylor rule). The study shows that the augmented Taylor rule does not perform much better than the original one, but that it maps high inflationary periods relatively well. This is attributed to direct interventions into the credit markets, which have played a major role in combating inflationary cycles over the past decades. The analysis ends with an introduction of the concept of inflation targeting and an examination of whether this could describe monetary policy in China. It is clear that the PBC does not currently follow the inflation targeting approach, although the Chinese authorities could actually be able to influence inflation expectations effectively, not least through direct instruments such as price controls. The author notes that the PBC indeed had a good track record of fighting inflation between 1994 and 2008, and that this may now indicate a good time to think about introducing inflation targeting in China. The central conclusion of the study is that the proven gradual approach to economic and monetary reforms in China is reaching its limit. To break the vicious cycle that relies on the continuous use of quantity-based instruments to compensate for the ineffective price-based instruments - which in turn arises from the simultaneous use of both types of instruments - a complete shift away from quantity-based instruments is needed. Only then the approach of indirect monetary policy, which was officially introduced in 1998, could come into full play.},
  subject      = {Geldpolitik},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{GeigerAcharyaReutteretal.2020,
  author    = {Geiger, Michael and Acharya, Rachana and Reutter, Eric and Ferschke, Thomas and Zschieschang, Ute and Weis, J{\"u}rgen and Pflaum, Jens and Klauk, Hagen and Weitz, Ralf Thomas},
  title     = {Effect of the Degree of the Gate-Dielectric Surface Roughness on the Performance of Bottom-Gate Organic Thin-Film Transistors},
  series = {Advanced Materials Interfaces},
  volume    = {7},
  journal   = {Advanced Materials Interfaces},
  number    = {10},
  doi       = {10.1002/admi.201902145},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-214830},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {In organic thin-film transistors (TFTs) fabricated in the inverted (bottom-gate) device structure, the surface roughness of the gate dielectric onto which the organic-semiconductor layer is deposited is expected to have a significant effect on the TFT characteristics. To quantitatively evaluate this effect, a method to tune the surface roughness of a gate dielectric consisting of a thin layer of aluminum oxide and an alkylphosphonic acid self-assembled monolayer over a wide range by controlling a single process parameter, namely the substrate temperature during the deposition of the aluminum gate electrodes, is developed. All other process parameters remain constant in the experiments, so that any differences observed in the TFT performance can be confidently ascribed to effects related to the difference in the gate-dielectric surface roughness. It is found that an increase in surface roughness leads to a significant decrease in the effective charge-carrier mobility and an increase in the subthreshold swing. It is shown that a larger gate-dielectric surface roughness leads to a larger density of grain boundaries in the semiconductor layer, which in turn produces a larger density of localized trap states in the semiconductor.},
  language  = {en}
}