Uncovered Interest Parity and the Risk Premium

The aim of this study is to analyze the potential risk premium inherent in the uncovered interest parity (UIP) condition. In this approach the GARCH class models, including Component GARCH are used to measure the time-varying risk premium and the results show that it is significant in most countries studied in this analysis. This suggests that risk is an important part of modeling exchange rates and needs to be considered in both empirical and theoretical models. In general, the results suggest emerging countries work better in terms of UIP and the risk premium than developed countries.

SOYBEAN QTL FOR YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS ASSOCIATED WITH GLYCINE SOJA ALLELES

USA soybean germplasm has a narrow genetic base that could be augmented by alleles from the wild species Glycine soja which positively influence agronomic traits. The objective of this study was to identify such alleles for yield and yield component QTL (quantitative trait loci). Two populations of 150 BC2F4 lines were generated from a mating between recurrent parent Glycine max 7499 and donor parent Glycine soja PI 245331 with one line in each population tracing back to the same BC2 plant. Population A was used for the QTL identification analysis and population B was used for the QTL verification test. The population A lines were genotyped at 120 SSR marker loci and one phenotype marker, covering a total map length of 1506 cM in 20 linkage groups with an average interval size of 12.5 cM. There were nine putative QTL significantly (Pandlt;0.0001, LODandgt;3.0) associated with yield and yield component traits across 3 environments. One QTL for seed yield was identified using the combined data; the G. soja allele at satt511 on LG-A1 was associated with increased seed yield (LOD=4.3) with an additive yield effect of 190 235 kg ha-1 depending on the QTL analysis method. The phenotypic variance accounted for by the QTL at satt511 was 12%. This QTL also provided a significant yield increase across environments in the validation population; lines that were homozygous for the G. soja allele at satt511 demonstrated a 6.3% (P=0.037) yield increase over lines that were homozygous for the G. max allele. One seed filling period QTL was identified at satt335 (LOD=4.0) on LG-F with an additive effect of +1 day. This QTL also provided a +1 day additive effect (LOD=3.3) on maturity. These results demonstrate the potential of using exotic germplasm to improve soybean yield

Investigation Of Bacterial Rna-Directed Dna Methylation Via Dcm And Hfq

Bacterial small RNAs and the RNA chaperone Hfq play crucial roles in post-transcriptional gene regulation, often as parts of stress-response pathways, but little is known about their roles in regulation of gene transcription. A recent report showed that changes in methylation patterns caused by DNA cytosine methyltransferase (Dcm) were linked to gene regulation occurring during the transition to stationary phase. Here, we show that Dcm involves in the stress responses under nutrient starvation and cold stress. Dcm and Hfq together mediate gene expression under cold stress. Hfq promotes Dcm-catalyzed cytosine methylation at specific sites near the rpoS promoter, which is consistent with the genome-wide analysis and linking known stress response pathways to altered methylation. Overexpressing DsrA, an sRNA induced at low temperature to regulate genes required for cold adaptation, stimulates this DNA methylation behavior, showing that the regulation is sRNA-dependent. This represents the first example of an RNA-directed DNA methylation mechanism in bacteria responsible for modulating gene expression

Solvability for second order nonlinear impulsive boundary value problems

In this paper, we are concerned with the solvability for a class of second order nonlinear impulsive boundary value problem. New criteria are established based on Schaefer's fixed-point theorem. An example is presented to illustrate our main result. Our results essentially extend and complement some previous known results

The Effect of Brand Position on Consumer Choices of Luxury Brands: A Cross-Cultural Study Between British and Chinese Consumers

This dissertation is grouped by topics—luxury brands, values, consumer luxury shopping behaviour, luxury brand management, and luxury brand differentiations. It intends to address the influence of luxury brand positioning on consumer choices.Despite various changes in internal and external environment, little research has investigated the differences of Chinese and British luxury markets. Therefore, in this article, an approach to understanding the positioning of luxury brands and luxury consumption behaviour is presented. The existing definitions are reviewed, which suggests that consumer consumption decisions of luxury brands can be evaluated by 39 items models. Based on this, the purpose of this paper is to focus on and to offer a deeper understanding of the luxury brand positioning effects. In order to fulfil this purpose, four research objectives and three propositions are expounded focusing on the variables of consumer choice decision as well as an explanation of the brand unique personality. By following the research objectives and propositions as a direction guide, literature studies are critically analysed resulting in a composite framework which guides the data interpretation. This research takes a qualitative case study for collecting secondary data by means of previous research data. The analysed results demonstrate that there would be a difference in the effect of brand positioning between the Chinese and British consumers. By identifying the equity of different luxury brands, consumer choice behaviour can be better understood, and this may assist luxury brand managers in their exploration of luxury market

A Survey and Analysis of Outsourcing in East China

The aim of this study is to investigate whether outsourcing activities in east china are associated with a theoretical framework derived from the literature. By the methodology of Statistics Package for the Social Science (SPSS), the results of survey indicate that outsourcing will more extensively practiced in the future, the principal outsourcing motivation are to reduce costs and focus on core businesses. The purchasing outsourcing has the largest correlation coefficients with short-term contract, the total outsourcing has a significant correlation coefficient with long-term contract at the level of =0.05. The findings indicate that high service quality and mutual trust are the main criteria for selecting outsourcing vendors. However, it is found that outsourcing satisfaction is generally low. The main benefits of outsourcing are to reduce cost, concentrate on core businesses and improve the service quality, while the main problems with outsourcing are legal disputes, disclosure of commercial secrets and conflicts with vendors.Outsourcing; strategy; contract; survey

Does sustainable financial inclusion and energy efficiency ensure green environment? Evidence from B.R.I.C.S. countries

Continuous rise in a global economy with a 3–4% annual growth rate poses a severe risk to environmental sustainability due to high energy demand. Since the Paris climate accord, countries worldwide have implemented numerous strategies to attain the target of carbon neutrality. With the rising environmental challenges, it is important to consider global financial inclusion (F.I.) policies. This study uses panel data for the B.R.I.C.S. countries to investigate the impact of F.I. and energy efficiency in limiting trade adjusted emissions (T.A.E.) taking technological innovation and trade as control variables. This study uses panel data consisting small sample size and large time period; therefore, keeping in mind the potential econometric problems, this study uses AMG method, which can efficiently deal with endogeneity problems and small sample bias. We find a positive impact of F.I. and energy efficiency on CO2 emissions. Moreover, we find that technological innovation, exports and output amplify CO2 emissions

The origin and properties of massive prolate galaxies in the Illustris simulation

We study galaxy shapes in the Illustris cosmological hydrodynamic simulation. We find that massive galaxies have a higher probability of being prolate. For galaxies with stellar mass larger than $10^{11}\rm M_{\odot}$, 35 out of total 839 galaxies are prolate. For 21 galaxies with stellar mass larger than $10^{12}\rm M_{\odot}$, 9 are prolate, 4 are triaxial while the others are close to being oblate. There are almost no prolate galaxies with stellar mass smaller than $3\times10^{11}\rm M_{\odot}$. We check the merger history of the prolate galaxies, and find that they are formed by major dry mergers. All the prolate galaxies have at least one such merger, with most having mass ratios between $1:1$ and $1:3$. The gas fraction (gas mass to total baryon mass) of the progenitors is 0-3 percent for nearly all these mergers, except for one whose second progenitor contains $\sim 15\%$ gas mass, while its main progenitor still contains less than $5\%$. For the 35 massive prolate galaxies that we find, 18 of them have minor axis rotation, and their angular momenta mostly come from the spin angular momenta of the progenitors (usually that of the main progenitor). We analyse the merger orbits of these prolate galaxies and find that most of them experienced a nearly radial merger orbit. Oblate galaxies with major dry mergers can have either radial or circular merger orbits. We further discuss various properties of these prolate galaxies, such as spin parameter $\lambda_{\rm R}$, spherical anisotropy parameter $\beta$, dark matter fraction, as well as inner density slopes for the stellar, dark matter and total mass distributions.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 24 pages, 14 figure