Fool the markets? Creative accounting, fiscal transparency and sovereign risk premia

We investigate the effects of official fiscal data and creative accounting signals on interest rate spreads between bond yields in the European Union. Our model predicts that risk premia contained in government bond spreads should increase in both, the official fiscal position and the expected "creative" part of fiscal policy. The relative importance of these two signals depends on the transparency of the country. Greater transparency reduces risk premia. The empirical results confirm the hypotheses. Creative accounting increases the spread. The increase of the risk premium is stronger if financial markets are unsure about the true extent of creative accounting. Fiscal transparency reduces risk premia. Instrumental variable regressions confirm these results by addressing potential reverse causality problems and measurement bias. --Risk premia,government bond yields,creative accounting,stock-flow adjustments,gimmickry,transparency

Fool the Markets? Creative Accounting, Fiscal Transparency and Sovereign Risk Premia

We investigate the effects of official fiscal data and creative accounting signals on interest rate spreads between bond yields in the European Union. Our model predicts that risk premia contained in government bond spreads should increase in both the official fiscal position and the expected “creative” part of fiscal policy. The relative importance of these two signals depends on the transparency of the country. Greater transparency reduces risk premia. The empirical results confirm the hypotheses. Creative accounting increases the spread. The increase of the risk premium is stronger if financial markets are unsure about the true extent of creative accounting. Fiscal transparency reduces risk premia.risk premia, government bond yields, creative accounting, stock-flow adjustments, gimmickry, transparency

Zipf's law in Nuclear Multifragmentation and Percolation Theory

We investigate the average sizes of the $n$ largest fragments in nuclear multifragmentation events near the critical point of the nuclear matter phase diagram. We perform analytic calculations employing Poisson statistics as well as Monte Carlo simulations of the percolation type. We find that previous claims of manifestations of Zipf's Law in the rank-ordered fragment size distributions are not born out in our result, neither in finite nor infinite systems. Instead, we find that Zipf-Mandelbrot distributions are needed to describe the results, and we show how one can derive them in the infinite size limit. However, we agree with previous authors that the investigation of rank-ordered fragment size distributions is an alternative way to look for the critical point in the nuclear matter diagram.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, submitted to PR

Cloning and functional characterisation of avian transcription factor E2A.

BACKGROUND: During B lymphocyte development the E2A gene is a critical regulator of cell proliferation and differentiation. With regards to the immunoglobulin genes the E2A proteins contribute to the regulation of gene rearrangement, expression and class switch recombination. We are now using the chicken cell line DT40 as a model system to further analyse the function of E2A. RESULTS: Here we report the cloning and functional analysis of the transcription factor E2A from chicken. Using RACE PCR on the chicken lymphoma cell line DT40 we have isolated full-length clones for the two E2A splice variants E12 and E47. Sequence conservation between the human and chicken proteins is extensive: the basic-helix-loop-helix DNA binding domain of human and chicken E47 and E12 are 93% and 92% identical, respectively. In addition high levels of conservation are seen in activation domain I, the potential NLS and the ubiquitin ligase interaction domain. E2A is expressed in a variety of tissues in chicken, with higher levels of expression in organs rich in immune cells. We demonstrate that chicken E12 and E47 proteins are strong transcriptional activators whose function depends on the presence of activation domain I. As in mammals, the dominant negative proteins Id1 and Id3 can inhibit the function of chicken E47. CONCLUSIONS: The potential for homologous recombination in DT40 allows the genetic dissection of biochemical pathways in somatic cells. With the cloning of avian E2A and the recent description of an in vitro somatic hypermutation assay in this cell line, it should now be possible to dissect the potential role of E2A in the regulation of somatic hypermutation and gene conversion.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Processing of transcripts of a dimeric tRNA gene in yeast uses the nuclease responsible for maturation of the 3′ termini upon 5 S and 37 S precursor rRNAs

AbstractThe rna82 mutation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae inactivates an RNA processing activity responsible for maturation of 3′-terminal sequences upon 5 S and 37 S ribosomal RNA precursors. This study describes a difference in the processing of transcripts of an S. cerevisiae dimeric tRNA gene (tRNAArg-tRNAAsp) in RNA polymerase III in vitro transcription extracts prepared from rna82 and wild-type cells. The mutant extract accumulated additional processing intermediates containing tRNAArg sequences as compared to the extract from wild-type cells. The structure of these intermediates revealed a defect in removal of the 10 nucleotides left 3′ to the tRNAArg sequence by the RNase P cleavage immediately 5′ to tRNAAsp. This is the first demonstration of a mutational defect affecting maturation of 3′ sequences upon a eukaryotic tRNA precursor

A Logic Programming Approach to Predict Effective Compiler Settings for Embedded Software

AbstractThis paper introduces a new logic-based method for optimising the selection of compiler flags on embedded architectures. In particular, we use Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) to learn logical rules that relate effective compiler flags to specific program features. Unlike earlier work, we aim to infer human-readable rules and we seek to develop a relational first-order approach which automatically discovers relevant features rather than relying on a vector of predetermined attributes. To this end we generated a data set by measuring execution times of 60 benchmarks on an embedded system development board and we developed an ILP prototype which outperforms the current state-of-the-art learning approach in 34 of the 60 benchmarks. Finally, we combined the strengths of the current state of the art and our ILP method in a hybrid approach which reduced execution times by an average of 8% and up to 50% in some cases.</jats:p

Relationship Between Household Socio-Economic Status and under-five Mortality in Rufiji DSS, Tanzania.

Disparities in health outcomes between the poor and the better off are increasingly attracting attention from researchers and policy makers. However, policies aimed at reducing inequity need to be based on evidence of their nature, magnitude, and determinants. The study aims to investigate the relationship between household socio-economic status (SES) and under-five mortality, and to measure health inequality by comparing poorest/least poor quintile mortality rate ratio and the use of a mortality concentration index. It also aims to describe the risk factors associated with under-five mortality at Rufiji Demographic Surveillance Site (RDSS), Tanzania. This analytical cross sectional study included 11,189 children under-five residing in 7,298 households in RDSS in 2005. Principal component analysis was used to construct household SES. Kaplan-Meier survival incidence estimates were used for mortality rates. Health inequality was measured by calculating and comparing mortality rates between the poorest and least poor wealth quintile. We also computed a mortality concentration index. Risk factors of child mortality were assessed using Poisson regression taking into account potential confounders. Under-five mortality was 26.9 per 1,000 person-years [95% confidence interval (CI) (23.7-30.4)]. The poorest were 2.4 times more likely to die compared to the least poor. Our mortality concentration index [-0.16; 95% CI (-0.24, -0.08)] indicated considerable health inequality. Least poor households had a 52% reduced mortality risk [incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.48; 95% CI 0.30-0.80]. Furthermore, children with mothers who had attained secondary education had a 70% reduced risk of dying compared to mothers with no education [IRR = 0.30; 95% CI (0.22-0.88)]. Household socio-economic inequality and maternal education were associated with under-five mortality in the RDSS. Targeted interventions to address these factors may contribute towards accelerating the reduction of child mortality in rural Tanzania

Five Dimensional Minimal Supergravities and Four Dimensional Complex Geometries

We discuss the relation between solutions admitting Killing spinors of minimal supergravities in five dimensions and four dimensional complex geometries. In the ungauged case (vanishing cosmological constant \Lambda=0) the solutions are determined in terms of a hyper-Kahler base space; in the gauged case (\Lambda<0) the complex geometry is Kahler; in the de Sitter case (\Lambda>0) the complex geometry is hyper-Kahler with torsion (HKT). In the latter case some details of the derivation are given. The method for constructing explicit solutions is discussed in each case.Comment: 8 pages. Contribution to the Proceedings of the Spanish Relativity Meeting 2008 in Salamanca, Spai