Capital mobility and global factor shocks

© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reservedThis paper focuses on the effects of global factors on the saving–investment relationship. We prove that, if investments and savings are affected by idiosyncratic and global components, they must be cointegrated to obtain reliable estimates of the saving-retention coefficient. When global shocks are taken into account throughcommonfactors,wefind that the estimated saving-retention coefficient is close to zero for a panel of 21 OECD countrie

Inventories and sales uncertainty

We investigate the empirical linkages between sales uncertainty and firms´ inventory investment behavior while controlling for firms´ financial strength. Using large panels of manufacturing firms from several European countries we find that higher sales uncertainty leads to larger stocks of inventories. We also identify an indirect effect of sales uncertainty on inventory accumulation through the financial strength of firms. Our results provide evidence that financial strength mitigates the adverse effects of uncertainty

Subjective Equilibria under Beliefs of Exogenous Uncertainty

We present a subjective equilibrium notion (called "subjective equilibrium under beliefs of exogenous uncertainty (SEBEU)" for stochastic dynamic games in which each player chooses its decisions under the (incorrect) belief that a stochastic environment process driving the system is exogenous whereas in actuality this process is a solution of closed-loop dynamics affected by each individual player. Players observe past realizations of the environment variables and their local information. At equilibrium, if players are given the full distribution of the stochastic environment process as if it were an exogenous process, they would have no incentive to unilaterally deviate from their strategies. This notion thus generalizes what is known as the price-taking equilibrium in prior literature to a stochastic and dynamic setup. We establish existence of SEBEU, study various properties and present explicit solutions. We obtain the $\epsilon$-Nash equilibrium property of SEBEU when there are many players

Inventories and sales uncertainty

We investigate the empirical linkages between sales uncertainty and firms´ inventory investment behavior while controlling for firms´ financial strength. Using large panels of manufacturing firms from several European countries we find that higher sales uncertainty leads to larger stocks of inventories. We also identify an indirect effect of sales uncertainty on inventory accumulation through the financial strength of firms. Our results provide evidence that financial strength mitigates the adverse effects of uncertainty

On the use of the sterile insect technique or the incompatible insect technique to reduce or eliminate mosquito populations

Vector control is critical to limit the circulation of vector-borne diseases like chikungunya, dengue or zika which have become important issues around the world. Among them the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) and the Incompatible Insect Technique (IIT) recently aroused a renewed interest. In this paper we derive and study a minimalistic mathematical model designed for Aedes mosquito population elimination by SIT/IIT. Contrary to most of the previous models, it is bistable in general, allowing simultaneously for elimination of the population and for its survival. We consider dierent types of releases (constant, periodic or impulsive) and show necessary conditions to reach elimination in each case. We also estimate both sucient and minimal treatment times. Biological parameters are estimated from a case study of an Aedes polynesiensis population, for which extensive numerical investigations illustrate the analytical results. The applications of this work are twofold: to help identifying some key parameters that may need further eld investigations, and to help designing release protocols

Molecular studies of Wolbachia and sex-determination genes in Australian Bactrocera species : complementary approaches to improved fruit fly control

Bactrocera tryoni (Diptera, Tephritidae), the Queensland fruit fly (Qfly), is the most significant horticultural pest species in Australia. The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), which relies on the release of vast numbers of irradiated sterile insects to suppress field populations, has been used in this species and, globally, is a successful pest management strategy for many insect species. For Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata, the incorporation of a genetic sexing system (GSS), that allows male-only releases, can increase effectiveness of SIT by 3-5 times. However, there is currently no GSS for B. tryoni. Furthermore, field performance of sterile flies, mass-reared and irradiated, can be generally lower than of wild individuals. Novel strategies such as Incompatible Insect Technique (IIT) exploit the reproductive manipulations of the maternally-inherited common endosymbiotic bacterium of insects, Wolbachia, to induce unidirectionally incompatible matings between uninfected field-females and released males carrying Wolbachia. While this method circumvents irradiation, a male-only release cohort is essential because females carrying Wolbachia are fully fertile; accidental release of infected females and thus inheritance of released Wolbachia in field populations would soon lead to a breakdown of the mating incompatibility essential for pest suppression. This thesis details the results of three fundamental and independent, yet complementary, experiments designed to investigate prospects for IIT and improvement of SIT, namely: an assessment of the incidence, prevalence and type of Wolbachia strains in Australian tephritid fruit fly species across their geographic range; a survey of the general microbiome of tephritid fruit fly species from different ecological niches and both natural and laboratory sources; an examination of genes expressed in early embryos of two Australian Bactrocera pest species, to generate molecular tools for GSS. Moreover, this work represents a valuable contribution to the ecological and epidemiological understanding of Wolbachia infection life cycles in insect communities, through discovery of a new model system for examining the distribution of Wolbachia along a climatic gradient, and the horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among a community of tephritid fruit flies. This work also presents important molecular studies of sex-specific gene expression over early embryonic development, with the aim of clarifying the function of M in tephritid fruit flies as models for the many insect species with similar sex-determination systems

The persistence of poverty: true state dependence or unobserved heterogeneity? Some evidence from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth

Evidence from several countries is that any household experiencing poverty today is much more likely to experience it again, which may be due to both unobserved heterogeneity (UH) and true state dependence (TSD). We point out that in this context there are two sources of UH: (1) the household ability to obtain income at a specific time period and (2) the way in which this ability evolves from that time period onwards. We test for TSD using a panel from Italy. After testing for the ignorability of the massive attrition plaguing the panel and accepting it, we do not find any sign of TSD.Attrition ignorability, Discrete response panel data models, Poverty dynamics