Essays on Tax Credits, Job Mobility, and Personal Bankruptcy

This dissertation consists of three essays on macroeconomics and forecasting. Central banks have recently engaged in unconventional monetary policies at the zero lower bound, where their forecasts play a crucial role in signaling the future path of monetary policy. The work presented herein investigates the effect of monetary policy announcements at the zero lower bound in Japan, and evaluates the efficiency of forecasts that are explicitly tied to monetary policy decisions in the United States. The first chapter investigates the effects of monetary policy announcements at the zero lower bound using Japanese data from 1998 to 2013. I find that the effect of expansionary monetary policy shocks is directly passed on to corporate bond yields, notably for high-grade corporate bond yields. However, the magnitude of estimated pass-through to stock prices and the exchange rate is substantially smaller than in the U.S., and not statistically significant in most cases. Such differences may reflect a higher degree of market segmentation or smaller scope to achieve further accommodation in Japan. The second chapter evaluates the efficiency of the FOMC's new economic projections. Since 2007, FOMC policymakers have been publishing detailed numerical projections of macroeconomic series over the next three years. By testing whether the revisions to these projections are unpredictable, I find that FOMC's efficiency is generally accepted for inflation, but often rejected for real economic variables, notably for the unemployment rate. The rejection is due to the strong autocorrelation of revisions, which may reflect information rigidity of FOMC's unemployment projections. The joint efficiency of the entire projection is accepted in most cases. The third chapter evaluates the efficiency of Fed's Greenbook forecast and uses this evaluation to improve the accuracy of the Greenbook forecast. Recently, \cite{PT2012} proposed a more powerful kind of forecast efficiency regression at multiple horizons, and showed that it provides evidence against the efficiency of the Fed's Greenbook forecasts. I use their forecast efficiency evaluation to propose a method for adjusting the Greenbook forecasts. Using this method in a real-time out-of-sample forecasting exercise, I find that it gives modest improvements in the accuracy of the forecasts for GDP deflator and CPI, but not for other variables. The improvements are statistically significant in some cases, the magnitude of which can be as high as an 18 percent reduction in the root mean square prediction error

Evaluation of complications and quality of life of patient after surgical extraction of mandibular impacted third molar teeth

Abstract Background The aim of our study is to evaluate the postoperative complications after the extraction of impacted third molar teeth and to investigate the effects of these complications on the quality of life of patients. Methods Demographic, clinical, and radiological evaluations were conducted, covering factors like age, gender, and tooth position. Clinical measurements, pain and edema assessments, and quality of life evaluations through OHIP-14 scores were performed. Preoperative and postoperative mouth opening, trismus, alveolitis and dehiscence were evaluated. Results A total of 100 patients were included in our study. No significant gender-based differences were found in measurements, pain, or swelling. There was no statistically significant difference between the preoperative and postoperative results of difference A-C, difference B-E, difference A-D, and difference mouth opening. Procedure duration correlated positively with age, alveolar osteitis, trismus, and swelling. Postoperative quality of life, assessed by OHIP-14, demonstrated a negative correlation with age and trismus. It was observed that the gender and the tooth positions of the patients had no effect on the severity of postoperative pain and edema. Conclusions As the age of the patients increases and the duration of the procedure increases, the rate of postoperative complications increases and it is concluded that the quality of life decreases significantly

Local Carpet Bombardment of Immobilized Cancer Cells With Hydrodynamic Cavitation

This study presents a method based on carpet bombardment of immobilized cells with cavitating flows. For this, immobilized cancer cell lines are exposed to micro scale cavitating flows from the tip of a micro nozzle under the effect of cavitation microbubbles. The deformation as a result of cavitation bubbles on exposed cells differs from one cell type to another. Therefore, the difference in cell deformation upon cavitation exposure (carpet bombardment) acts as a valuable indicator for cancer diagnosis. The developed system is tested on HCT-116 (Human Colorectal Carcinoma), MDA-MB-231 (Breast Adenocarcinoma), ONCO-DG-1 (Ovarian Adenocarcinoma) cell lines due to their clinical importance. The mechanical effects of cavitation are examined by considering the single-cell lysis effect (the cell membrane is ruptured, and the cell is destroyed) with the help of the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) technique. Our study proposes a promising label-free method for the potential use in cancer diagnosis with cavitation bubble collapse, where microbubbles could be precisely controlled and directed to the desired locations, as well as the characterization of the biophysical properties of cancer cells. The proposed approach tool has the advantages of label-free approach, simple structure and low cost and is a substantial alternative for the existing tools

Acute infectious exacerbations in chronic obstructive lung disease and effects of azithromycine, sultamycilline, ciprofloxacin and cefaclor monohydrate Kronik obstruktif akciger hastaligi olgularinda akut infeksiyon doneminde patojen ajanin saptanmasi ve azitromisin, sultamisilin, siprofloksasin ve sefaklor monohidratin etkinligi

Background and Design. Lower respiratory tract infections cause great morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The aim of this study was to find out the causative organism and the effects of azithromycine, ampicillin sulbactam (sultamycilline), ciprofloxacin and cefaclor monohydrate therapy in COPD. One hundred and sixteen patients with COPD in acute exacerbation were randomized into four groups for antibiotic treatment following lung function test and sputum. Results. The most common strains were H. influenzae (30.8%), S. pneumoniae (12.0%) and M. catarrhalis (7.7%). Conclusion. H. influenza is the most common causative organism in acute infectious attacks of COPD. Azithromycine, ampicilline sulbactam (Sultamycilline), ciprofloxacin and cefaclor monohydrate are of value in the treatment of acute infectious attacks of COPD