Determinants of Stock Market Prices in Namibia

This paper investigates the macroeconomic determinants of stock market prices in Namibia. The investigation was conducted using a VECM econometric methodology and revealed that Namibian stock market prices are chiefly determined by economic activity, interest rates, inflation,money supply and exchange rates. An increase in economic activity and the money supply increases stock market prices, while increases in inflation and interest rates decrease stock prices. The results suggest that equities are not a hedge against inflation in Namibia, and contractionary monetary policy generally depresses stock prices. Increasing economic activity promotes stock market price developmentstock market prices; arbitrage pricing theory; cointegration; impulse reponses; Namibia

Real-Time Audio-to-Score Alignment of Music Performances Containing Errors and Arbitrary Repeats and Skips

This paper discusses real-time alignment of audio signals of music performance to the corresponding score (a.k.a. score following) which can handle tempo changes, errors and arbitrary repeats and/or skips (repeats/skips) in performances. This type of score following is particularly useful in automatic accompaniment for practices and rehearsals, where errors and repeats/skips are often made. Simple extensions of the algorithms previously proposed in the literature are not applicable in these situations for scores of practical length due to the problem of large computational complexity. To cope with this problem, we present two hidden Markov models of monophonic performance with errors and arbitrary repeats/skips, and derive efficient score-following algorithms with an assumption that the prior probability distributions of score positions before and after repeats/skips are independent from each other. We confirmed real-time operation of the algorithms with music scores of practical length (around 10000 notes) on a modern laptop and their tracking ability to the input performance within 0.7 s on average after repeats/skips in clarinet performance data. Further improvements and extension for polyphonic signals are also discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, version accepted in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processin

ESTIMATING THE TOURISM POTENTIAL IN NAMIBIA

This paper investigates the determinants of tourism in Namibia for the period 1996 to 2005. The results indicate that an increase in trading partners’ income, depreciation of the exchange rate, improvement in Namibia’s infrastructure, sharing a border with Namibia are associated with an increase in tourist arrivals. The results show that there is unexploited tourism potential from Angola, Austria, Botswana, Germany, South Africa and the United States of America. This suggests that it is important to exploit the tourism potential as this would help to accelerate economic growth and generate the much needed employment.

Biosynthetic studies of thiosugar-containing natural products, BE-7585A and Lincomycin A

Sulfur is an essential element found ubiquitously in living systems. However, there exist only a few sulfur-containing sugars in nature and their biosyntheses have not been well understood. On the other hand, a wide variety of sugar derivatives commonly found in natural products are often vital components for the efficacy and specificity of their parent molecules. Elucidation of such unusual sugar biosyntheses is important both for understanding their intriguing chemical mechanisms and creating unnatural compounds by altering their biosynthetic machineries, which could potentially exhibit enhanced or novel biological activities. This dissertation describes biosynthetic studies of two thiosugar-containing natural products, BE-7585A and lincomycin A, produced by Amycolatopsis orientalis and Streptomyces lincolnensis, respectively. While the former possess a C-2-thiosugar-containing disaccharide moiety, the latter contains a C-1-thio substituent on a characteristic eight-carbon backbone sugar. The focus of this research is to characterize the biological pathways and mechanisms responsible for the sulfur incorporation and the unique sugar scaffolds. BE-7585A, an angucycline-type natural product, contains the rare C-2-thiosugar moiety. PCR-based screening of a cosmid library constructed from the genomic DNA of A. orientalis led to the identification of the BE-7585A biosynthetic gene cluster. A gene, bexX, was found to be a candidate for a thiosugar synthase with moderate sequence similarity to a thiazole synthase. The gene, bexX, and a glycosyltransferase homologue, bexG2, were heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli. A variety of biochemical experiments provided a wealth of evidence supporting the proposed biosynthetic pathway for the C-2-thiodisaccharide moiety. Finally, whole genome sequencing and a genome mining approach led to the identification of a sulfur carrier protein to accomplish the in vitro enzymatic synthesis of the C-2-thiosugar for the first time. Lincomycin A is a lincosamide antimicrobial natural product with a C-1 methylthio substituent. Although the lincomycin A biosynthetic gene cluster has been reported, biochemical verification of the biosynthetic pathway has remained elusive. In this dissertation, the complete methlthiolincosamide biosynthetic pathway including the potential C-1 sulfur incorporation mechanism was proposed. Furthermore, two early intermediates of the pathway were characterized for the first time by demonstrating the LmbR (transaldolase) and LmbN (isomerase) reactions in vitro.Chemistr

Modelling Macroeconomic Determinants Of Stock Market Prices: Evidence From Namibia

This paper investigates the macroeconomic determinants of stock market prices in Namibia. The investigation was conducted using a VECM econometric methodology and revealed that Namibian stock market prices are chiefly determined by economic activity, interest rates, inflation, money supply and exchange rates. An increase in economic activity and the money supply increases stock market prices, while increases in inflation and interest rates decrease stock prices. The results suggest that equities are not a hedge against inflation in Namibia, and contractionary monetary policy generally depresses stock prices. Increasing economic activity promotes stock market price development

Interest Rate And Stock Market Returns In Namibia

This paper analyses the causal relationship between interest rate and stock market return in Namibia for the period 1996 to 2012. The analysis was done through cointegrated vector autoregression methods. The analysis reveals that there is a negative relationship between stock market returns and interest rates in Namibia. Causality test indicates that there is bi-directional causality between stock market returns and interest rate in Namibia. The results suggest that contractionary monetary policy through higher interest rate decreases stock market returns in Namibia