Enlightened Romanticism: Mary Gartside’s colour theory in the age of Moses Harris, Goethe and George Field

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the work of Mary Gartside, a British female colour theorist, active in London between 1781 and 1808. She published three books between 1805 and 1808. In chronological and intellectual terms Gartside can cautiously be regarded an exemplary link between Moses Harris, who published a short but important theory of colour in the second half of the eighteenth century, and J.W. von Goethe’s highly influential Zur Farbenlehre, published in Germany in 1810. Gartside’s colour theory was published privately under the disguise of a traditional water colouring manual, illustrated with stunning abstract colour blots (see example above). Until well into the twentieth century, she remained the only woman known to have published a theory of colour. In contrast to Goethe and other colour theorists in the late 18th and early 19th century Gartside was less inclined to follow the anti-Newtonian attitudes of the Romantic movement

Fatal Familial Insomnia: An Overview

Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) is an insidious prion disorder that tends to manifest itself as a patient reaches middle age following a pattern consistent with autosomal dominance. A wide range of symptoms are represented, many related to motor function and autonomic regulation, but degeneration of certain areas of the thalamus is present in every case. Genetically, the condition is transmitted only within families, but it has been demonstrated by Jackson et al. (2009) that FFI can be transmitted by exposure to/ingestion of infected material. A number of groundbreaking studies are discussed. These include the initial documentation of FFI as a prion disorder by Medori et al. (1992), the identification of codon 129 on PRNP as a locus for prion disease susceptibility by Palmer et al. (1991), the discovery that the aberrant isoform PrPsc requires the normal PrP protein in order to produce infectivity by Mallucci et al. (2003), and others. There are no effective treatments for FFI as of yet; scientists are still searching for all the pieces to the puzzle

Financial Repression, Bank Deposits, Real Assets and Black Money

Consider real assets and bank deposits. If returns on deposits improve due to reduction in financial repression, then investment in real assets can fall. However, if role of black money in real asset (secondary) market falls, then investment in the primary market can rise. So financial development will occur if the effect of reduction in financial repression is stronger than that of reduction of black money. This is shown in a model, with forced sales (due to liquidity shock), and strategic sales of real assets (under asymmetric information). Under some conditions, price is irrelevant for strategic trades.

Lacunae in Financial Regulatory Framework Vis-?-Vis Financial Repression.

This article makes four points. First, it suggests regulation of entry into the finance profession, whose tasks would include prescribing? a portfolio choice for (financially) uninformed investors. Second, it suggests that the government should encourage information collection to help ensure informational efficiency of markets. Third, it introduces a new academic concept - optimal noise in financial markets. Fourth, in the context of financial intermediaries, given that deposit insurance, lender of last resort, capital adequacy, and supervision of banks are in place, there is no need to impose the following beyond reasonable prudential norms: (a) cash reserve ratio requirement, (b) statutory liquidity ratio requirement, and (c) barriers to entry.

FDI, Technology Transfer and Spillover —A Case Study of India

As developing countries increasingly open their economies to foreign direct investment (FDI) one of their principal objective has been to achieve technology transfer from foreign firms to host country firms. This study for India shows that this technology transfer is more likely to be achieved by the presence of foreign firms rather than by simple purchase of foreign technology. It is also seen that technology transfer is dependent on the absorptive capacity of firms and the competitive nature of the industry. Finally, this study finds that institutional factors like the degree of competition positively impact the effects of traditional factors like absorptive capacity in determining technology transfer.

Corporate governance and Competition: A Case Study of India.

The aim of this paper is to show the interaction effect of product market competition and corporate governance variables on firm performance. While the linkage between internal governance mechanism and firm performance is well established in several studies, the interaction between internal and external governance mechanism has received very little attention in emerging market economies. Here we have shown the independent and interaction effect of ownership and competition variable on firm level productivity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we document that competition has in reality become a discernible force in developing economies. The econometric modeling result confirms while the standalone effect of ownership variable on productivity is mostly insignificant, there is a strong positive interaction effect with competition variables.