Emerging Debt Markets: What Do Correlations and Spreads Tell Us?

This paper proposes a conceptual framework to identify the potential sources of contagion in emerging bond markets and the mechanisms through which shocks originating in a particular emerging or mature market are likely to be transmitted across countries and markets. We then apply this framework to the emerging countries initially included in the EMBI Global Index over the period 1997-2005. We put into light that emerging markets became less and less intertwined over the recent period, and that, at present, the risk of contagion may come mainly from events taking place into mature markets. Finally, we derive policy recommendations in order to reduce emerging countries debt variability thus making them less vulnerable to a shock that takes place in mature markets. Sound macroeconomic policies, and in particular, prudent fiscal ones, could enhance government discipline and limit contagion effects in a wake of a global shock or a shock affecting another emerging country.Emerging bond markets, International financial crises, Excess comovement, Contagion, Public debt

COMOVEMENTS IN EMERGING MARKET BOND RETURNS: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT

The objective of the paper is to empirically assess the comovement of emerging bond returns of the key constituent countries of the EMBI Global benchmark Index since their introduction (broadly in 1997) up to the present. We aim at disentangling the respective roles of common external factors and "pure" contagion in the recent events of market spillovers. The unweighted average of cross-country rolling correlation coefficients, adjusted and unadjusted for the presence of common external factors, provides a first assessment of the joint behavior of emerging markets bond returns during the sample period. We furthermore show that the cross-country average correlations method may not be useful in summarizing market results if the underlying distribution of bond returns is not unimodal (i.e., if there are underlying groups that exhibit high within-group comovement but not between-group comovement). Several methods are used on a year-to-year basis in order to identify periods where the “two-tier paradigm” of emerging markets prevails. The analysis of correlation matrices enables us to identify groups of countries moving together during the recent events in emerging markets. These findings are further refined by performing Principal Component and Cluster Analysis. We provide a method in order to quantify the excess comovement common to all emerging countries as well as the country-specific one. Finally, we find evidence of “market tiering” and investors' discrimination especially during tranquil times: the first three quarters of 1997, from the third quarter of 1999 to the end of 2000 and from 2003 to 2005. We suggest that regional patterns and credit quality differentiation have an important role to play in the investors' discriminating behavior regarding the emerging bond markets whenever the period is free of strong and unforeseen shocks leading to spillover across countries and markets.emerging bond markets, excess comovement, contagion, market segmentation

Language, Education and the Peace Process in Myanmar

This article analyses the relationship between the politics of education and language, and armed conflict and ongoing peace process in Myanmar. It discusses the state education system, which since the military coup of 1962 has promoted the idea of the country based on the language and culture of the Bamar (Burman) majority community, and the school systems developed by ethnic armed groups which oppose the military government. Ethnic opposition education regimes have developed mother tongue-based school systems. In some cases, the Mon for example, these broadly follow the government curriculum, while being locally owned and delivered in ethnic languages; in others, such as the Karen, the local education system diverges significantly from the Myanmar government curriculum, making it difficult for students to transition between the two systems. This article explores the consequences of these developments, and how reforms in Myanmar since 2011 — including the peace process, which remains incomplete and contested — have opened the space for educational reform, and the possible “convergence” of state and non-state education regimes. Ethnic nationality communities remain determined to conserve and [End Page 128] reproduce their own languages and cultures, adopting positions in relation to language and education which reflect broader state-society relations in Myanmar, and in particular ethnic politicians’ demands for a federal political settlement to decades of armed conflict. The article concludes that sustainable resolution to Myanmar’s protracted state-society conflict is unlikely to be achieved until elites can negotiate agreement on ethnic language and teaching policies

Power dynamics of language and education policy in Myanmar's contested transition

This article examines the development of education policy in Myanmar/Burma at a period of “critical juncture.” There are two major strands to this article, regarding policy process and stakeholder voices that we bring together. We argue that powerful actors such as the government and international agencies frame policy in ways that often exclude the concerns and aspirations of education users and that there are often significant gaps between their positions and the realities of “ordinary” citizens. Such issues are of particular concern, given the importance of education and language as key elements of ethnic stakeholders’ identities and interests, in relation to the ongoing and still deeply contested peace process. As a result, opportunities opened by the critical juncture in the reform process are being missed. The article is based on data collected in interviews and focus groups with over 500 respondents between 2011 and 2016 in Myanmar

Balloon tank skin strain measurements at liquid-hydrogen temperature on centaur flight vehicle

Balloon tank skin strain measurements at liquid hydrogen temperature on Centaur flight vehicl

Location and welfare in cities: impacts of policy interventions on the urban poor

Informal settlements are an integral part of the urban landscape in developing countries. These settlements are widely distributed within cities, including central business centers and peripheral areas with environment hazards. In most cases, residents of these settlements do not have access to basic public services and amenities. In this paper, the authors examine the impact of interventions, such as upgrading basic services and resettlement policies, on the welfare of residents of these informal settlements, who are typically the urban poor. To examine these interventions, they estimate models of residential location choice and allow households to be sensitive to commuting costs to work, demand for public services, and preferences for community composition. The authors'empirical analysis is based on recently collected survey data from Pune, India, and shows that poor households prefer to live close to work and in communities that consist of people sharing common socio-demographic characteristics. From the perspective of households living in informal settlements, upgrading settlements in the original place is welfare enhancing. If a household must be relocated, it greatly prefers to be moved to a community that resembles its current community.Municipal Financial Management,Public Health Promotion,Decentralization,Housing&Human Habitats,Urban Services to the Poor,Municipal Financial Management,Housing&Human Habitats,VN-Acb Mis -- IFC-00535908,Urban Housing,City Development Strategies

Nonparametric Stratigraphic Interpretation from Drill Log Data

Near surface groundwater contamination is a widespread problem. The potential for contamination of deep aquifers in such areas depends on the vertical hydraulic gradient as well as the extent and location of interconnection between the upper and lower aquifers. In alluvial, sedimentary environment, the geologic units are typically weakly connected lenses or layers of high or low conductivity with variable size, geometry and orientation. Drill logs provide qualitative, local information on such aquifer heterogeneities. A binary (high or low conductivity) indicator function is used to describe the aquifer system. A nonparametric statistical methodology for assessing the probability that a particular location in the aquifer has high or low conductivity using drill log information is developed. The stochastic behavior of the sedimentary process in the vertical is of particular interest. Example applications using data from Lake Bonneville deposits in Salt Lake County, Utah are presented

Teachers’ Voices on the Impact of COVID-19 on School Education: Are Ed-Tech Companies Really the Panacea?

COVID-19 has brought about changes to the education system that impact teachers in multiple ways. The article discusses the views of affected teachers under the three-gap framework: access, usage, and pedagogical skills gap. Between 29 April 2020, and 29 May 2020, an online survey was administered to 550 Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR) teachers, of which 288 responded. The data show that the inequalities between private schools and government schools are sharpened by the move to online education. This is compounded by the fact that students from economically weaker sections of society have become hard to reach, and teachers do not know how to support hardto-reach students who are also severely affected by the pandemic. The data also show that teachers have not been trained in online pedagogies. Ed-Tech companies have been stepping in, presenting themselves as a panacea to the problem with further consequences to teachers’ profession, standing, and livelihoods. However, Ed-Tech solutions are not relevant for hard-to-reach students or teachers in schools that serve hard-to-reach communities. The article first presents the voices of teachers affected by the pandemic and then critically examines the role of Ed-Tech companies, which pertain to fill the online pedagogical ga

Model reduction for analysis of cascading failures in power systems

In this paper, we apply a principal-orthogonal decomposition based method to the model reduction of a hybrid, nonlinear model of a power network. The results demonstrate that the sequence of fault events can be evaluated and predicted without necessarily simulating the whole system

Emerging Debt Markets: What Do Correlations and Spreads Tell Us?

This paper proposes a conceptual framework to identify the potential sources of contagion in emerging bond markets and the mechanisms through which shocks originating in a particular emerging or mature market are likely to be transmitted across countries and markets. We then apply this framework to the emerging countries initially included in the EMBI Global Index over the period 1997-2005. We put into light that emerging markets became less and less intertwined over the recent period, and that, at present, the risk of contagion may come mainly from events taking place into mature markets. Finally, we derive policy recommendations in order to reduce emerging countries debt variability thus making them less vulnerable to a shock that takes place in mature markets. Sound macroeconomic policies, and in particular, prudent fiscal ones, could enhance government discipline and limit contagion effects in a wake of a global shock or a shock affecting another emerging country