Revisiting the Migration-Development Nexus: A Gravity Model Approach

This paper presents empirical estimates of a gravity model of bilateral migration that properly accounts for non-linearities and tackles causality issues through an instrumental variables approach. In contrast to the existing literature, which is limited to OECD data, we have estimated our model using a matrix of bilateral migration stocks for 127 countries. We find that the inverted-U relationship between income at origin and migration found by other authors survives the more demanding bilateral specification but does not survive both instrumentation and introduction of controls for the geographical and cultural proximity between country pairs. We also evaluate the effect of migration on origin and destination country income using the geographically determined component of migration as a source of exogenous variation and fail to find a significant effect of migration on origin or destination income.Gravity models, international migration, economic growth

Bacteria and tumours: causative agents or opportunistic inhabitants?

Associations between different bacteria and various tumours have been reported in patients for decades. Studies involving characterisation of bacteria within tumour tissues have traditionally been in the context of tumourigenesis as a result of bacterial presence within healthy tissues, and in general, dogma holds that such bacteria are causative agents of malignancy (directly or indirectly). While evidence suggests that this may be the case for certain tumour types and bacterial species, it is plausible that in many cases, clinical observations of bacteria within tumours arise from spontaneous infection of established tumours. Indeed, growth of bacteria specifically within tumours following deliberate systemic administration has been demonstrated for numerous bacterial species at preclinical and clinical levels. We present the available data on links between bacteria and tumours, and propose that besides the few instances in which pathogens are playing a pathogenic role in cancer, in many instances, the prevalent relationship between solid tumours and bacteria is opportunistic rather than causative, and discuss opportunities for exploiting tumour-specific bacterial growth for cancer treatment

Outperformance in exchange traded fund pricing deviations: generalised control of data snooping bias

An investigation into Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) outperformance during the period 2008-2012 is undertaken utilising a data set of 288 US traded securities. ETFs are tested for Net Asset Value (NAV) premium, underlying index and market benchmark outperformance, with Sharpe, Treynor and Sortino ratios employed as risk adjusted performance measures. A key contribution is the application of an innovative generalised stepdown procedure in controlling for data snooping bias. It is found that a large proportion of optimized replication and debt asset class ETFs display risk adjusted premiums with energy and precious metals focused funds outperforming the S&P500 market benchmark

Oil Market Modelling: A Comparative Analysis of Fundamental and Latent Factor Approaches

International audienceWe formally compare fundamental factor and latent factor approaches to oil price modelling. Fundamental modelling has a long history in seeking to understand oil price movements, while latent factor modelling has a more recent and limited history, but has gained popularity in other financial markets. The two approaches, though competing, have not formally been compared as to effectiveness. For a range of short-medium-and long-dated WTI oil futures we test a recently proposed five-factor fundamental model and a Principal Component Analysis latent factor model. Our findings demonstrate that there is no discernible difference between the two techniques in a dynamic setting. We conclude that this infers some advantages in adopting the latent factor approach due to the difficulty in determining a well specified fundamental model

Lost in translation? Theory, policy and practice in systems-based environmental approaches to obesity prevention in the Healthy Towns programme in England.

This paper explores how system-wide approaches to obesity prevention were 'theorised' and translated into practice in the 'Healthy Towns' programme implemented in nine areas in England. Semi-structured interviews with 20 informants, purposively selected to represent national and local programme development, management and delivery were undertaken. Results suggest that informants articulated a theoretical understanding of a system-wide approach to obesity prevention, but simplifying this complex task in the context of uncertainty over programme aims and objectives, and absence of a clear direction from the central government, resulted in local programmes relying on traditional multi-component approaches to programme delivery. The development of clear, practical guidance on implementation should form a central part of future system-wide approaches to obesity prevention

Healthy Cities: The Impact of Food Retail-led Regeneration on Food Access, Choice and Retail Structure

The health, social and planning policy agendas which have focused on the issue of food deserts, food access and food choice provide the context for this study of the outcomes of a large scale food retail intervention in Springburn, Glasgow. Through an analysis of changing retail structure and foodscape health impacts on food provision, food choice and physical and economic accessibility. This is set within the regeneration context of the Tesco St Rollox Partnership. Conclusions are reached on the potential for such schemes to deliver a range of diet, health, social, regeneration and planning policy goals

Optimal statistical arbitrage : a model specification analysis on ISEQ equity data

A comprehensive empirical analysis of the novel optimal statistical arbitrage trading model of Bertram (2010) is performed on a dataset of stocks quoted on the Irish Stock Exchange. Evidence of significant errors on average in the key measures underlying the trading model is presented, reflecting the mis-specification of the underlying Gaussian Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) process. Overestimation of the expected return per unit time measure and underestimation of the expected trade cycle time measure are most notable. It is further shown that the Bertram (2010) trading model is more robust to high mean reversion and/or volatility parameter estimates compared to two benchmark models based on the exact and approximate first-hitting time densities of Linetsky (2004) for an OU process

A high-frequency analysis of price resolution and pricing barriers in equities on the adoption of a new currency

We use ultra high frequency (trade by trade) data to demonstrate that equity price clustering and pricing predictability around psychologically important prices in Greece switches away from drachma-focused with the introduction of the euro, but does not immediately switch to euroclustering. The change in trader price focus around the euro introduction addresses an open debate in the clustering literature on whether the presence of clustering is a bias related to the current prices or anchoring to past prices. Our findings of a decline in drachma clustering, but lack of switch to euro effects supports the case for clustering being a trading feature that is slow to transfer to new pricing regimes. A key advantage of the ultra high frequency dataset is we arealso able to demonstrate the presence of psychological pricing barriers related to each currency that are not detectable in daily data