Endogenous capital depreciation and technology shocks

I examine the dynamic impact of capital maintenance on key aggregates through the depreciation rate. I find that two factors are crucial for the short-run effects of Total Factor Productivity and Investment-Specific shocks: (i) the marginal efficiency of maintenance and its connection with the rate of utilization, and (ii) the interplay between the intertemporal effect of maintenance and the substitution effect between maintenance and utilization. The latter is expressed by the relative size of the elasticity of maintenance to the Hicksian elasticity of complementarity between maintenance and utilization. These theoretical results suggest that to match the observed responses of the macroeconomic aggregates the sign of the cross derivative should be negative and that the relative size of the Hicksian elasticity should be smaller than the maintenance elasticity of marginal depreciation. Finally, the model suggests that the main macroeconomic aggregates react procyclically, with the exception of maintenance, the behavior of which depends on the type of the shock

Real effects of bank capital regulations: global evidence

We examine the effect of the full set of bank capital regulations (capital stringency) on loan growth, using bank-level data for a maximum of 125 countries over the period 1998-2011. Contrary to standard theoretical considerations, we find that overall capital stringency only has a weak negative effect on loan growth. In fact, this effect is completely offset if banks hold moderately high levels of capital. Interestingly, the components of capital stringency that have the strongest negative effect on loan growth are those related to the prevention of banks to use as capital borrowed funds and assets other than cash or government securities. In contrast, compliance with Basel guidelines in using Basel- and credit-risk weights has a much less potent effect on loan growth

Locating Decision Rights: Evidence from the Mutual Fund Industry

Mutual fund advisors make portfolio decisions for their funds on a daily basis. We examine the location of these portfolio decision rights on two dimensions. First, we consider the geographic location of the decision rights. Second, we consider whether the decision rights remain with an advisor or are allocated to an independent sub-advisor. We argue that the allocation of portfolio decision rights involves a tradeoff between the opportunity cost of not matching decision rights with specific knowledge, and the agency costs associated with moving the decision rights to the specific knowledge. The patterns in the location of decision rights are consistent with the tradeoff being a meaningful determinant of the allocation of decision rights in the mutual fund industry. We also find that funds that are predicted to be sub-advised and are sub-advised outperform those that are predicted to be sub-advised but are not

Investor Behavior in the Mutual Fund Industry: Evidence from Gross Flows

Using a large sample of monthly gross flows from 1997 to 2003, we uncover several previously undocumented regularities in investor behavior. First, investor purchases and sales produce fund-level gross flows that are highly persistent. Persistence in fund flows dominates performance as a predictor of future fund flows. More importantly, failing to account for flow persistence leads to incorrect inferences with respect to the relation between performance and flows. Second, we document that investors react differently to performance depending on the type of fund, and that investor trading activity produces meaningful differences in the persistence of fund flows across mutual fund types. Third, at least some investors appear to evaluate and respond to mutual fund performance over much shorter time spans than previously assessed. Additionally, we document differences in the speed and magnitude of investors’ purchase and sales responses to performance

Investors Do Respond to Poor Mutual Fund Performance: Evidence from Inflows and Outflows

Abstract We examine the relation between mutual fund performance and gross flows for a large sample of actively managed U.S. mutual funds. Unlike previous studies that have only examined periods of generally increasing net flows, our sample includes periods of both increasing and decreasing net flows. We find that outflows are related to performance, with investors withdrawing money from poor performers. We also find that outflows and inflows respond asymmetrically to performance, outflows increase more aggressively following poor performance, and inflows increase more aggressively following good performance. Additionally, we find a symmetric performance net flow relation

Improving Pedagogic Competence of Non-Education Teachers in Preparing Lesson Plan Through Supervision Academic of the Headmaster

Educational reform is not enough with changes in the curriculum sector, both the structure and the writing procedure. Updating the curriculum will be more meaningful if followed by changes in learning practices inside and outside the classroom. The success of curriculum implementation is strongly influenced by the ability of teachers to apply and actualize the curriculum. Not infrequently the failure of curriculum implementation is caused by the lack of knowledge, skills and ability of teachers in understanding the tasks that must be implemented. This means that the teacher as the executor of the learning activities becomes the key to the implementation of the curriculum in the school.   &nbsp

3-D Tracking and Visualization of Hundreds of Pt-Co Fuel Cell Nanocatalysts During Electrochemical Aging

We present an electron tomography method that allows for the identification of hundreds of electrocatalyst nanoparticles with one-to-one correspondence before and after electrochemical aging. This method allows us to track, in three-dimensions (3-D), the trajectories and morphologies of each Pt-Co nanocatalyst on a fuel cell carbon support. The use of atomic-scale electron energy loss spectroscopic imaging enables the correlation of performance degradation of the catalyst with changes in particle/inter-particle morphologies, particle-support interactions and the near-surface chemical composition. We found that, aging of the catalysts under normal fuel cell operating conditions (potential scans from +0.6 V to +1.0 V for 30,000 cycles) gives rise to coarsening of the nanoparticles, mainly through coalescence, which in turn leads to the loss of performance. The observed coalescence events were found to be the result of nanoparticle migration on the carbon support during potential cycling. This method provides detailed insights into how nanocatalyst degradation occurs in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), and suggests that minimization of particle movement can potentially slow down the coarsening of the particles, and the corresponding performance degradation.Comment: Nano Letters, accepte