The microstructure of the U.S. treasury market

This article discusses the microstructure of the U.S. Treasury securities market. Treasury securities are nominally riskless debt instruments issued by the U.S. government. Microstructural analysis is a field of economics/finance that examines the roles played by heterogenous agents, institutional detail, and asymmetric information in the trading process. The article describes types of Treasury issues; stages of the Treasury market; the major players, including the role of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the interdealer brokers; the structure of both the spot and futures markets; the findings of the seasonality/announcement and order book literature; and research on price discovery. We conclude by discussing possible future avenues of research.Government securities

Information shares in the U.S. treasury market

This paper is the first to characterize the tatonnement of high-frequency returns from U.S. Treasury spot and futures markets. In particular, we highlight the previously neglected role of the futures markets in price discovery. The lower-bound estimate of bivariate information shares for 30-year Treasury futures typically exceeds 50% from 1998 on. Standard liquidity measures, including the proportion of trades and relative bid-ask spreads, explain daily information shares. These conclusions still hold when one controls for days of macroeconomic announcements. Finally, a 5-dimensional cointegrated system explains a high percentage of Treasury returns. In that system, the 30-year futures contract and the 5-year spot market dominate price discovery. ; Earlier title: The microstructure of bond market tatonnement; Price discovery in the U.S. treasury marketBond market

The transition to electronic communications networks in the secondary treasury market

This article reviews the history of the recent shift to electronic trading in equity, foreign exchange, and fixed-income markets. The authors analyze a new data set: the eSpeed electronic Treasury network. They contrast the market microstructure of the eSpeed trading platform with the traditional voice-assisted networks that report through GovPX. The electronic market (eSpeed) has greater volume, smaller spreads, and a lower estimated trade impact than the voice market (GovPX). ; Appeared earlier as Working Paper 2006-012Electronic commerce ; Electronic funds transfers

Up Front and Beyond the Centre Line: Australian Aborigines in Elite Australian Rules Football

Although there has been a substantial growth in the number of Aboriginal players in the Australian Football League over the past decade, issues of structural and institutional racism have not been explored. This investigation of the assignment of players by position revealed marked patterns of difference, which tend to reflect stereotypes about Aboriginal athletes. The results are similar to research conducted in the USA and the UK but suggest even stronger patterns of differentiation

Modular categories as representations of the 3-dimensional bordism 2-category

We show that once-extended anomalous 3-dimensional topological quantum field theories valued in the 2-category of k-linear categories are in canonical bijection with modular tensor categories equipped with a square root of the global dimension in each factor.Comment: 71 page

Approaching Evaluation in Youth Community Informatics

In the Youth Community Informatics project, young people from disadvantaged communities use audio and video recording and editing tools, GPS/GIS, presentation software, graphics, and other digital technologies as the means for addressing community needs. They build community asset maps, document community history, develop exhibits in collaboration with libraries and museums, present cultural heritage, organize political action, operate community radio, create and maintain community technology centers, and express themselves through multiple media. These activities typically involve multiple partners and develop in unpredictable ways in response to community life. In order to understand what they mean in the lives of the youth and the community we need richer evaluation approaches.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

The Role of Information Concerning the Arbitrator’s Preferences

Au cours des derniers dix ans, beaucoup de choses se sont écrites sur l'arbitrage des conflits d'intérêts qui ont consisté à mettre en contraste deux façons de procéder: l'arbitrage traditionnel, dans lequel l'arbitre est libre de choisir la décision qu'il désire, et l'arbitrage des propositions finales où il est forcé de choisir l'une ou l'autre des deux propositions finales des parties. En outre, ces études comparatives visaient d'abord à faire ressortir la valeur relative des deux processus pour amener les parties à conclure elles-mêmes des conventions collectives.Le présent article considère que l'intérêt porté à l'examen de ces deux processus a eu pour effet de mettre en veilleuse une deuxième caractéristique du régime d'arbitrage, qui est tout aussi importante pour déterminer si les parties peuvent s'entendre de gré à gré, soit le degré de connaissance que possèdent les parties contractantes de la décision de l'arbitre s'il y avait impasse ou rupture. Le but de l'article est d'évaluer le résultat de cette connaissance tant dans le système d'arbitrage traditionnel que sous le système d'arbitrage dit des propositions finales.Ou les parties peuvent connaître la décision de l'arbitre (celui-ci leur dit ce que serait sa décision); ou elles en ont une connaissance relative, limitée (il s'agit alors de décisions antérieures du même arbitre, de précédents, de critères préfix); ou elles n'en savent rien du tout (l'arbitre garde toute liberté de décision). Le fait que les parties connaissent les conclusions de l'arbitre les incite fortement à s'entendre, qu'il s'agisse de l'arbitrage traditionnel ou de l'arbitrage des propositions finales. Cependant, comme la connaissance des intentions de l'arbitre est beaucoup plus convaincante dans le deuxième cas que dans le premier, l'arbitrage traditionnel est préférable à l'arbitrage des propositions finales, lorsque les préférences de l'arbitre sont connues. En effet, les propositions finales exigent que les négociateurs sachent en tout temps laquelle de leurs propositions serait choisie, tandis que l'arbitrage traditionnel exige seulement qu'ils soient au courant de la décision que l'arbitre favorisera.En deuxième lieu, on peut affirmer que la possibilité pour les deux parties d'en venir à une entente lorsqu'elles n'ont qu'une connaissance limitée des intentions de l'arbitre dépendra de leurs attitudes face au risque. Si les deux parties aiment à risquer, on peut s'attendre à ce qu'elles aient de la difficulté à s'entendre de gré à gré, particulièrement si leurs estimations de la conclusion de l'arbitre ne coïncident pas. Ce n'est que si les négociateurs ne tiennent pas à courir des risques que le modèle théorique exposé conduit à une double conclusion: 1) soit que les parties seront en mesure de régler volontairement la plupart de leurs différends lorsqu'elles disposent d'une connaissance relative des préférences de l'arbitre; 2) soit, également, qu'il y aura plus de règlements de gré à gré dans le cas de l'arbitrage des propositions finales que dans le cas de l'arbitrage traditionnel.En troisième lieu, les parties peuvent généralement en arriver à un accord volontaire et efficace, si l'arbitre choisit sa décision sans fournir aucun indice de ses préférences. Cependant, ce système est inférieur aux autres, lorsqu'il n'y a pas d'accord.Finalement, l'article conclut que l'une des conséquences de ce modèle, c'est que les comparaisons des règlements obtenus sous les systèmes d'arbitrage traditionnel ou d'arbitrage des propositions finales ne vaudraient pas, à moins qu'un ajustement ne soit effectué pour tenir compte des différences se rapportant à la connaissance des tendances exprimées par l'arbitre. Ainsi, le modèle démontre que le nombre d'ententes de gré à gré dans le cas de l'arbitrage des propositions finales en pleine connaissance des préférences de l'arbitre est plus élevé que dans le cas de l'arbitrage traditionnel avec connaissance limitée des tendances de l'arbitre, non pas à cause de la différence entre les deux systèmes d'arbitrage, mais à cause de la différence du degré de connaissance des préférences de l'arbitre.The purpose of this paper is to propose to extend the theoretical literature on bargaining under arbitration by categorising arbitration Systems not only by the type of selection procedure employed but also by the amount of information conveyed to the parties about the preference function of the arbitrator

Industrial Groupings and Strategic FDI: Theory and Evidence

We show that industrial ownership structures, such as keiretsu groupings in Japan, may significantly impact firms' incentives to engage in FDI. While the previous literature has mainly focused on the cost of capital advantages enjoyed by keiretsu firms, this paper examines two relatively unexplored channels by which ownership structure matters for FDI incentives. The first channel involves the direct incentives generated via standard product and factor market interactions whereby keiretsu firms with cross-ownership consider more directly the congestion effects of further FDI into a market. The second channel involves the indirect incentives generated by sharing of information across keiretsu firms which reduces entry costs for subsequent FDI. Using data on Japanese FDI activity by both keiretsu and non-keiretsu manufacturing firms, we find evidence to support the importance of the second channel (information-sharing incentives) as an explanation for firm-level FDI patterns, but not for the first channel.

Using World-Wide-Web technology for pathology education

In this article, we describe the development of computer-based learning programs for pathology students at Jefferson Medical College. These programs are authored using HTML (HyperText Markup Language), and are available to students on campus and via the internet. Our computer-based learning resources include scheduling information, course goals and objectives, glossary of key words, self-assessment programs and image-based case studies. These educational programs are popular with the students. We recommend the use of World Wide Web technology to improve teaching and learning in pathology education

Data Collection Methods in Prospective Economic Evaluations: How Accurate Are the Results?

AbstractObjectivesOften in economic evaluations a division is made between those studies that have a high level of accuracy versus those that are easily generalized. This interstudy dichotomy is often translated into prospective, randomized controlled trials with high internal validity and observational and modeling studies with a high level of external validity. This article challenges this conventional view and examines intrastudy effects on validity.MethodA review and summary of the literature was conducted in order to assess the impact that data collection strategies will have on internal validity. Two scenario models were created in order to gain a preliminary understanding of the magnitude of the problem.ResultsData collection strategies have an impact on the level of internal validity found in an economic evaluation. Comparisons of studies that are prospective in nature is misleading as data collection strategy can lead to different resource and cost estimates even when all other relevant factors are similar. It is possible to shift and improve the level of validity by combining different collection methods.ConclusionInstead of viewing internal and external validity as polar opposites, validity should be considered in terms of a continuum within a particular study. The use of proxies to collect resource utilization estimates, the reliance on patient self-reported data, and the method of collecting this type of data all impact the validity of study results. National guidelines for the economic evaluation of agents and devices should consider this issue in more depth, and existing evidence rankings should be adapted to be more appropriate to pharmacoeconomic studies