Macroeconomic fluctuations and asset markets in Korea

ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on the dynamic interactions between macroeconomic activities and asset markets in Korea following financial liberalization in the early 1990s. Using a sequence of empirical models, I examine three key issues concerning the Korean economy characterized by an emerging and volatile capital market and a unique housing market system. The first issue is concerned with the effects of changes in country risk and world interest rates on macroeconomic fluctuations in Korea. To examine these effects, an SVAR model of a small open economy is estimated, and a small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of Uribe and Yue (2006) is calibrated to the Korean data. To check the robustness, the theoretical impulse responses from the calibrated model are compared against the impulse responses from the estimated SVAR model. Regarding the second issue of the changes in international stock market and country risk effects on changes in Korean stock market, the trivariate VAR BEKK GARCH (1,1) model is employed to estimate the presence of return and volatility spillover effects between internal and external financial markets. The third issue is related to the relationship between macroeconomic fluctuations and housing markets in Korea. In particular, three relationships are considered: between the business cycle and housing prices, between housing prices and chonsei prices, key feature of the unique rental system in Korea, and between monetary policy and housing prices. To investigate these three respective relationships in a single framework, a vector error correction model (VECM) is estimated and Gonzalo and Ng’s (2001) two-step procedure is used to identify the structural shocks into permanent and transitory components. The main findings of the thesis are as follows. First, there exists a countercyclical relationship between country risk and the business cycle in Korea. The U.S. interest rate shock and the Japanese interest rate shock have different effects on the business cycle in Korea. Second, there are significant return and volatility spillover effects between the Korean credit default swap (CDS) market and the Korean stock market in most cases. In addition, the return spillover effects from foreign exchange markets and the U.S. stock market to the Korean stock market, and the volatility spillover effect from the Japanese stock market to the Korean stock market are both significant. Third, housing market prices have a positive effect on output while a favourable supply shock leads housing market prices to respond positively. When the housing price rises, the chonsei price shows a transitory increase while the chonsei price rises are associated with permanent increases in housing price. A contractionary monetary policy shock leads to a significant fall in both housing and chonsei prices, implying that monetary policy in Korea is an effective policy tool to control housing prices. Overall, the thesis concludes that changes in domestic and international financial and asset markets have a significant influence on the macroeconomic fluctuations in Korea. In addition, macroeconomic fluctuations also account for significant movements in Korean asset markets

Pandemic and public health controls: toward an equitable compensation system

There is increasing global concern about the potential impact of pandemic infections, including influenza, SARS and bioterrorist attacks involving infectious diseases. Many countries have prepared plans for responding to a major pandemic. In Australia, the Federal and State pandemic plans include measures such as contact tracing, ensuring availability of antimicrobials, quarantine and social distancing. Many of these measures would involve severe restrictions on individual citizens and small businesses. Issues of compensation for cooperation and compliance with pandemic plans need to be addressed in policy discussion. The instrumental benefits of compensation in the event of a pandemic have not been sufficiently recognised. Greater attention paid now to mechanisms to compensate individual and business costs associated with compliance would increase trust in government pandemic plans, encourage compliance and reduce the health and economic impact of a pandemic

Linking changes in land cover and land use of the lower Mekong Basin to instream nitrate and total suspended solids variations

Population growth and economic development are driving changes in land use/land cover (LULC) of the transboundary Lower Mekong River Basin (LMB), posing a serious threat to the integrity of the river system. Using data collected on a monthly basis over 30 years (1985–2015) at 14 stations located along the Lower Mekong river, this study explores whether spatiotemporal relationships exist between LULC changes and instream concentrations of total suspended solids (TSS) and nitrate—as proxies of water quality. The results show seasonal influences where temporal patterns of instream TSS and nitrate concentrations mirror patterns detected for discharge. Changes in LULC influenced instream TSS and nitrate levels differently over time and space. The seasonal Mann–Kendall (SMK) confirmed significant reduction of instream TSS concentrations at six stations (p < 0.05), while nitrate levels increased at five stations (p < 0.05), predominantly in stations located in the upper section of the basin where forest areas and mountainous topography dominate the landscape. Temporal correlation analyses point to the conversion of grassland (r = −0.61, p < 0.01) to paddy fields (r = 0.63, p < 0.01) and urban areas (r = 0.44, p < 0.05) as the changes in LULC that mostly impact instream nitrate contents. The reduction of TSS appears influenced by increased forest land cover (r = −0.72, p < 0.01) and by the development and operation of hydropower projects in the upper Mekong River. Spatial correlation analyses showed positive associations between forest land cover and instream concentrations of TSS (r = 0.64, p = 0.01) and nitrate (r = 0.54, p < 0.05), indicating that this type of LULC was heavily disturbed and harvested, resulting in soil erosion and runoff of nitrate rich sediment during the Wet season. Our results show that enhanced understanding of how LULC changes influence instream water quality at spatial and temporal scales is vital for assessing potential impacts of future land and water resource development on freshwater resources of the LMB

Suelos volcanicos endurecidos

The agricultural rehabilitation of tepetates, indurated and sterile volcanic tuffs located along the mexican neovolcanic ridge, is technically possible. However, it is necessary to know in detail the agro-socioeconomical factors of the peasant communities which have these kind of lands, to give them technical answers appropiate to local realities. The studies of 4 communities located in the states of Mexico. Tlaxcala, Jalisco and Michoacan, show that the climatic conditions are mostly difficult (long dry season, irregular rains, early frosts). The use of irrigation is limited. Each producer family cultivates a small surface of land which is principally ejidal. Tepetates areas are the last pieces of land still not distributed and of common use (firewood ans pasture).Most peasants can survive with the help of an external job, while field production is mainly for self-consumption. During the last 20 years, capitalisation occured through the purchase of cattle. So, the number of animals is growing up and by consequence, the pressure on the natural pastures too, favouring the apparition and extension of tepetates. Breaking the tepetates to give them a new agricultural use means, in addition to technical help at the beginning, the creation and development of forage crops. Actually, this type of crops are not very common. It is also necessary to propose forest management and/or wood-fire plantations. The costs of this rehabilitation are too high (nearly 1,000 $/ha) for most peasants, in spite of the increasing value of the land after this work and a recuperation of the investment after 5 and 8 years in the production systems which use animal and mechanical tractions. So those investments require external help (State, NGOs, credits...) at the beginning. (Résumé d'auteur)

Effects of culture on musical pitch perception.

The strong association between music and speech has been supported by recent research focusing on musicians' superior abilities in second language learning and neural encoding of foreign speech sounds. However, evidence for a double association--the influence of linguistic background on music pitch processing and disorders--remains elusive. Because languages differ in their usage of elements (e.g., pitch) that are also essential for music, a unique opportunity for examining such language-to-music associations comes from a cross-cultural (linguistic) comparison of congenital amusia, a neurogenetic disorder affecting the music (pitch and rhythm) processing of about 5% of the Western population. In the present study, two populations (Hong Kong and Canada) were compared. One spoke a tone language in which differences in voice pitch correspond to differences in word meaning (in Hong Kong Cantonese, /si/ means 'teacher' and 'to try' when spoken in a high and mid pitch pattern, respectively). Using the On-line Identification Test of Congenital Amusia, we found Cantonese speakers as a group tend to show enhanced pitch perception ability compared to speakers of Canadian French and English (non-tone languages). This enhanced ability occurs in the absence of differences in rhythmic perception and persists even after relevant factors such as musical background and age were controlled. Following a common definition of amusia (5% of the population), we found Hong Kong pitch amusics also show enhanced pitch abilities relative to their Canadian counterparts. These findings not only provide critical evidence for a double association of music and speech, but also argue for the reconceptualization of communicative disorders within a cultural framework. Along with recent studies documenting cultural differences in visual perception, our auditory evidence challenges the common assumption of universality of basic mental processes and speaks to the domain generality of culture-to-perception influences.published_or_final_versio

Continuum removal in H\alpha\ extragalactic measurements

We point out an important source of error in measurements of extragalactic H-alpha emission and suggest ways to reduce it. The H-alpha line, used for estimating star formation rates, is commonly measured by imaging in a narrow band and a wide band, both which include the line. The image analysis relies on the accurate removal of the underlying continuum. We discuss in detail the derivation of the emission line's equivalent width and flux for extragalactic extended sources, and the required photometric calibrations. We describe commonly used continuum-subtraction procedures, and discuss the uncertainties that they introduce. Specifically, we analyse errors introduced by colour effects. We show that the errors in the measured H-alpha equivalent width induced by colour effects can lead to underestimates as large as 40% and overestimates as large as 10%, depending on the underlying galaxy's stellar population and the continuum-subtraction procedure used. We also show that these errors may lead to biases in results of surveys, and to the underestimation of the cosmic star formation rate at low redshifts (the low z points in the Madau plot). We suggest a method to significantly reduce these errors using a single colour measurement.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, MNRAS in pres

The Outstanding Decisions of the United States Supreme Court in 1954

We perform a kinematic and morphological analysis of 44 star-forming galaxies at z ̃ 2 in the COSMOS legacy field using near-infrared spectroscopy from Keck/MOSFIRE and F160W imaging from CANDELS/3D-HST as part of the ZFIRE survey. Our sample consists of cluster and field galaxies from 2.0 &lt; z &lt; 2.5 with K-band multi-object slit spectroscopic measurements of their Hα emission lines. Hα rotational velocities and gas velocity dispersions are measured using the Heidelberg Emission Line Algorithm (HELA), which compares directly to simulated 3D data cubes. Using a suite of simulated emission lines, we determine that HELA reliably recovers input S 0.5 and angular momentum at small offsets, but V 2.2/σ g values are offset and highly scattered. We examine the role of regular and irregular morphology in the stellar mass kinematic scaling relations, deriving the kinematic measurement S 0.5, and finding {log}({S}0.5)=(0.38+/- 0.07){log}(M/{M}☉ -10)+(2.04+/- 0.03) with no significant offset between morphological populations and similar levels of scatter (̃0.16 dex). Additionally, we identify a correlation between M ⋆ and V 2.2/σ g for the total sample, showing an increasing level of rotation dominance with increasing M ⋆, and a high level of scatter for both regular and irregular galaxies. We estimate the specific angular momenta (j disk) of these galaxies and find a slope of 0.36 ± 0.12, shallower than predicted without mass-dependent disk growth, but this result is possibly due to measurement uncertainty at M ⋆ &lt; 9.5 However, through a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test we find irregular galaxies to have marginally higher j disk values than regular galaxies, and high scatter at low masses in both populations

Activity and Process Stability of Purified Green Pepper (Capsicum annuum) Pectin Methylesterase

Pectin methylesterase (PME) from green bell peppers (Capsicum annuum) was extracted and purified by affinity chromatography on a CNBr-Sepharose-PMEI column. A single protein peak with pectin methylesterase activity was observed. For the pepper PME, a biochemical characterization in terms of molar mass (MM), isoelectric points (pI), and kinetic parameters for activity and thermostability was performed. The optimum pH for PME activity at 22 °C was 7.5, and its optimum temperature at neutral pH was between 52.5 and 55.0 °C. The purified pepper PME required the presence of 0.13 M NaCl for optimum activity. Isothermal inactivation of purified pepper PME in 20 mM Tris buffer (pH 7.5) could be described by a fractional conversion model for lower temperatures (55?57 °C) and a biphasic model for higher temperatures (58?70 °C). The enzyme showed a stable behavior toward high-pressure/temperature treatments. Keywords: Capsicum annuum; pepper; pectin methylesterase; purification; characterization; thermal and high-pressure stabilit