Rethinking macroeconomics: how G5 currency markets have responded to unconventional monetary policy

The G5 carry trade, where high interest rate currencies appreciate and low interest rate currencies depreciate, had been a persistent anomaly in financial markets since the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971. Conventional economics said that the reverse should happen: low interest rates were supposed to stimulate the domestic economy, leading to growth and currency appreciation, rather than fund cross-border positions in search of higher yields. The Global Financial Crisis resulted in a major dislocation of currency markets, after which the G5 carry trade reversed. This paper is an empirical study of this reversal, and the implications for macroeconomic theory. Using overnight and one-month carry trades as a proxy for market reactions to monetary policy, the period leading up to the Global Financial Crisis and this reversal was increasingly subdued: the so-called ‘Great Moderation’. Financial crises show up as outliers in the data: temporary reversals of the carry trade during which periods central banks provide additional liquidity in the form of lower interest rates. These results suggest that, prior to 2008, conventional monetary policy – using high/low interest rates to dampen/boost growth and inflation – was being counteracted by capital flows in the opposite direction, in search of high yields. Only since 2008, with unconventional monetary policy – QE, negative interest rates and a reduction in banks’ proprietary trading – have G5 currencies responded as predicted by conventional economics: low/high interest rates G5 currencies have appreciated/depreciated. The results suggest that macroeconomic theories need to be reconsidered, to take account of cross-border capital flows in search of yield, and the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy

GRAPE-5: A Special-Purpose Computer for N-body Simulation

We have developed a special-purpose computer for gravitational many-body simulations, GRAPE-5. GRAPE-5 is the successor of GRAPE-3. Both consist of eight custom pipeline chips (G5 chip and GRAPE chip). The difference between GRAPE-5 and GRAPE-3 are: (1) The G5 chip contains two pipelines operating at 80 MHz, while the GRAPE chip had one at 20 MHz. Thus, the calculation speed of the G5 chip and that of GRAPE-5 board are 8 times faster than that of GRAPE chip and GRAPE-3 board. (2) The GRAPE-5 board adopted PCI bus as the interface to the host computer instead of VME of GRAPE-3, resulting in the communication speed one order of magnitude faster. (3) In addition to the pure 1/r potential, the G5 chip can calculate forces with arbitrary cutoff functions, so that it can be applied to Ewald or P^3M methods. (4) The pairwise force calculated on GRAPE-5 is about 10 times more accurate than that on GRAPE-3. On one GRAPE-5 board, one timestep of 128k-body simulation with direct summation algorithm takes 14 seconds. With Barnes-Hut tree algorithm (theta = 0.75), one timestep of 10^6-body simulation can be done in 16 seconds.Comment: 19 pages, 24 Postscript figures, 3 tables, Latex, submitted to Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japa

Global monetary policy shocks in the G5: a SVAR approach

The paper constructs a global monetary aggregate, namely the sum of the key monetary aggregates of the G5 economies (US, Euro area, Japan, UK, and Canada), and analyses its indicator properties for global output and inflation. Using a structural VAR approach we find that after a monetary policy shock output declines temporarily, with the downward effect reaching a peak within the second year, and the global monetary aggregate drops significantly. In addition, the price level rises permanently in response to a positive shock to the global liquidity aggregate. The similarity of our results with those found in country studies might supports the use of a global monetary aggregate as a summary measure of worldwide monetary trends. JEL Classification: E52, F0

Bolstering cholesteryl ester hydrolysis in liver: A hepatocyte-targeting gene delivery strategy for potential alleviation of atherosclerosis

Current atherosclerosis treatment strategies primarily focus on limiting further cholesteryl esters (CE) accumulation by reducing endogenous synthesis of cholesterol in the liver. No therapy is currently available to enhance the removal of CE, a crucial step to reduce the burden of the existing disease. Given the central role of hepatic cholesteryl ester hydrolase (CEH) in the intrahepatic hydrolysis of CE and subsequent removal of the resulting free cholesterol (FC), in this work, we applied galactosefunctionalized polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer generation 5 (Gal-G5) for hepatocyte-specific delivery of CEH expression vector. The data presented herein show the increased specific uptake of Gal-G5/CEH expression vector complexes (simply Gal-G5/CEH) by hepatocytes in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, the upregulated CEH expression in the hepatocytes significantly enhanced the intracellular hydrolysis of high density lipoprotein-associated CE (HDL-CE) and subsequent conversion/secretion of hydrolyzed FC as bile acids (BA). The increased CEH expression in the liver significantly increased the flux of HDL-CE to biliary as well as fecal FC and BA. Meanwhile, Gal-G5 did not induce hepatic or renal toxicity. It was also not immunotoxic. Because of these encouraging pre-clinical testing results, using this safe and highly efficient hepatocyte-specific gene delivery platform to enhance the hepatic processes involved in cholesterol elimination is a promising strategy for the alleviation of atherosclerosis

Global Monetary Policy Shocks in the G5: A SVAR Approach

The paper constructs a global monetary aggregate, namely the sum of the key monetary aggregates of the G5 economies (US, Euro area, Japan, UK, and Canada), and analyses its indicator properties for global output and inflation. Using a structural VAR approach we find that after a monetary policy shock output declines temporarily, with the downward effect reaching a peak within the second year, and the global monetary aggregate drops significantly. In addition, the price level rises permanently in response to a positive shock to the global liquidity aggregate. The similarity of our results with those found in country studies might supports the use of a global monetary aggregate as a summary measure of worldwide monetary trends.Monetary Policy, Structural VAR, Global Eco

Prevalence of anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease in Japan: A nationwide, cross-sectional cohort study using data from the Japan Chronic Kidney Disease Database (J-CKD-DB)

Background: The Japan Chronic Kidney Disease Database (J-CKD-DB) is a nationwide clinical database of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) based on electronic health records. The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of anemia and the utilization rate of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) in Japanese patients with CKD. Methods: In total, 31, 082 adult outpatients with estimated glomerular filtration rates of 5–60 ml/min/1.73 m2 in seven university hospitals were included this analysis. The proportions of patients with CKD stages G3b, G4, and G5 were 23.5%, 7.6%, and 3.1%, respectively. Results: The mean (standard deviation) hemoglobin level of male patients was 13.6 (1.9) g/dl, which was significantly higher than the mean hemoglobin level of female patients (12.4 (1.6) g/dl). The mean (standard deviation) hemoglobin levels were 11.4 (2.1) g/dl in patients with CKD stage G4 and 11.2 (1.8) g/dl in patients with CKD stage G5. The prevalences of anemia were 40.1% in patients with CKD stage G4 and 60.3% in patients with CKD stage G5. Logistic regression analysis showed that diagnoses of CKD stage G3b (adjusted odds ratio [95% confidence interval]: 2.32 [2.09–2.58]), G4 (5.50 [4.80–6.31]), and G5 (9.75 [8.13–11.7]) were associated with increased prevalence of anemia. The utilization rates of ESAs were 7.9% in patients with CKD stage G4 and 22.4% in patients with CKD stage G5. Conclusions: We determined the prevalence of anemia and utilization rate of ESAs in Japanese patients with CKD using data from a nationwide cohort study

Productivity Effects and Determinants of the Allocation of Public Infrastructure

Inefficient use of public money is a policy issue of concern in Japan. Some contend that spending towards the formation of public capital does not promote economic growth, one reason being that such investment is concentrated in underdeveloped regions which have a low impact on the growth of economic activity. Investment in underdeveloped regions might be the result of political misallocation or simply the fact that public capital no longer contributes to private productivity. Our study addresses these two important issues: whether or not public infrastructure contributes to production in the private sector, and whether or not political factors really affect the allocation of public infrastructure investment. If the political factors indeed affect allocation, what kinds of political factors are the most deterministic? First, we survey studies on this topic published since the 1970s. For methodology, we plan to take a simultaneous approach to examine these issues. Second, because some data are not publicly available, we construct a data set of public infrastructure and related variables. Public capital in this study is limited to public infrastructure such as roads, ports, airports, banks and dams. Railroads and electric power plants are excluded because these were built by the private sector in Japan. In this study, we plan to use a panel data set covering 46 prefectures and 9 time periods for every 5 years from 1955 to 1995 in Japan. Therefore, the total sample size in this study is 414. Third, after constructing the data set, we overview the regional distribution of public infrastructure and the relationship between public infrastructure allocation and political factors. Last, we estimate simultaneous equations regarding regional production function, infrastructure investment function and grant allocation function. By using these estimated functions, we evaluate whether or not public capital contributes to production and what kind of political factors affect the allocation of public infrastructure investment.

Understanding the UK's poor technological performance

In this Briefing Note, we document and disentangle the trends in UK research and development (R&D) over the period 1981-2000, and compare the UK's performance with that of the USA

Effect of zwitterions on electrochemical properties of oligoether-based electrolytes

Solid polymer electrolytes show great potential in electrochemical devices. Poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) has been studied as a matrix for solid polymer electrolytes because it has relatively high ionic conductivity. In order to investigate the effect of zwitterions on the electrochemical properties of poly(ethylene glycol) dimethyl ether (G5)/lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl) amide (LiFSA) electrolytes, a liquid zwitterion (ImZ2) was added to the G5-based electrolytes. In this study, G5, which is a small oligomer, was used as a model compound for PEO matrices. The thermal properties, ionic conductivity, and electrochemical stability of the electrolytes with ImZ2 were evaluated. The thermal stabilities of all the G5-based electrolytes with ImZ2 were above 150 °C, and the ionic conductivity values were in the range of 0.8–3.0 mS cm−1 at room temperature. When the electrolytes contained less than 5.5 wt% ImZ2, the ionic conductivity values were almost the same as that of the electrolyte without ImZ2. The electrochemical properties were improved with the incorporation of ImZ2. The anodic limit of the electrolyte with 5.5 wt% ImZ2 was 5.3 V vs. Li/Li+, which was over 1 V higher than that of G5/LiFSA

Pressure screening in the interior of primary shells in double-wall carbon nanotubes

The pressure response of double-wall carbon nanotubes has been investigated by means of Raman spectroscopy up to 10 GPa. The intensity of the radial breathing modes of the outer tubes decreases rapidly but remain observable up to 9 GPa, exhibiting a behavior similar (but less pronounced) to that of single-wall carbon nanotubes, which undergo a shape distortion at higher pressures. In addition, the tangential band of the external tubes broadens and decreases in amplitude. The corresponding Raman features of the internal tubes appear to be considerably less sensitive to pressure. All findings lead to the conclusion that the outer tubes act as a protection shield for the inner tubes whereas the latter increase the structural stability of the outer tubes upon pressure application.Comment: PDF with 15 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; submitted to Physical Review