Return-volatility linkages in the international equity and currency markets

This paper, which is motivated by the literature on international asset pricing and recent work on exchange rate determination, investigates dynamic relationshiops between major currency and equity markets. Using a multivariate GARCH framework, we examine conditional cross- autocorrelations between pairs of national equity markets and related exchange rates. This provides a parsimonious way of testing mean- volatility relationships in currency and equity markets and re-examining the robustness of relationships between equity markets, while controlling for exchange rate effects. We find that the relationship between currency and equity markets is bi-directional, significant, persistent, and independent of the relationship strictly between equity markets, and that it is better captured by the conditional second momentsinternational asset pricing, exchange rate determination, equity markets, relationships between currency and equity markets

Return-volatility linkages in the international equity and currency markets

This paper, which is motivated by the literature on international asset pricing and recent work on exchange rate determination, investigates dynamic relationshiops between major currency and equity markets. Using a multivariate GARCH framework, we examine conditional cross-autocorrelations between pairs of national equity markets and related exchange rates. This provides a parsimonious way of testing mean-volatility relationships in currency and equity markets and re-examining the robustness of relationships between equity markets, while controlling for exchange rate effects. We find that the relationship between currency and equity markets is bi-directional, significant, persistent, and independent of the relationship strictly between equity markets, and that it is better captured by the conditional second moments.international asset pricing; exchange rate determination; equity markets; relationships between currency and equity markets

Does hedging tell the full story? Reconciling differences in US aggregate and industry-level exchange rate risk premia

While the importance of currency movements to industry competitiveness is theoretically well established, there is little evidence that currency risk impacts US industries. Applying a conditional asset-pricing model to 36 US industries, we find that all industries have a significant currency premium that adds about 2.47 percentage points to the cost of equity and accounts for approximately 11.7% of the absolute value of total risk premia. Cross-industry variation in the currency premium is explained by foreign income, industry competitiveness, leverage, liquidity and other industry characteristics, while its time variation is explained by US aggregate foreign trade, monetary policy, growth opportunities and other macro variables. The results indicate that methodological weakness, not hedging, explains the insignificant industry currency risk premium found in previous work, thus resolving the conundrum that the currency risk premium is important at the aggregate stock market level, but not at industry level.exposure; currency risk premium; cost of equity; industry competition; international asset pricing

The Impact of an Immunization Training Certificate Program on the Perceived Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes of Pharmacy Students Toward Pharmacy-Based Immunizations

Objective: To assess the impact of a national immunization training certificate program on the perceived knowledge, skills and attitudes of pharmacy students toward pharmacy-based immunizations. Methods: The study design utilized a pre- and post- survey administered to pharmacy students before and after the American Pharmacists Association’s (APhA) Pharmacy-Based Immunization Delivery program. The primary outcome explored was a change in the perceived knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the pharmacy students. A five-point Likert scale (i.e. strongly agree = 5, strongly disagree = 1) was used for measuring the main outcomes, which was summated by adding the individual item scores in each section to form a composite score for each outcome. Results: The certificate training program resulted in a significant improvement in knowledge (38.5% increase in score, p\u3c0.001) and skills (34.5% increase in score, p\u3c0.001), but not attitudes (1% increase in score, p=0.210). Conclusions: The national immunization training certificate program had a positive impact on the perceived knowledge and skills of pharmacy students. However, no change was observed regarding students’ perceived attitudes toward pharmacy-based immunizations

Governance of Ecosystem Services Across Scales in Bangladesh

Ecosystem services are governed and affected by different legal, institutional and policy frameworks. Hence, formal documented policies, regulations and statutes of Bangladesh are examined where relevant. This facilitates greater understanding of the influence that governance has on the accessibility to the benefits derived and how this might then affect livelihoods and well-being. A range of factors are found to determine effectiveness in terms of general adaptive governance principles, with coordination, enforcement and rigidity being important issues. In addition, policy development in crucial areas may not be supported by associated legal frameworks, undermining implementation. However, workable (and dynamic) combinations of primary and secondary legislation are both possible and desirable to achieve flexible policy instruments.<br/

Integrating BDI agents with Agent-based simulation platforms

Agent-Based Models (ABMs) is increasingly being used for exploring and supporting decision making about social science scenarios involving modelling of human agents. However existing agent-based simulation platforms (e.g., SWARM, Repast) provide limited support for the simulation of more complex cognitive agents required by such scenarios. We present a framework that allows Belief-Desire Intention (BDI) cognitive agents to be embedded in an ABM system. Architecturally, this means that the "brains" of an agent can be modelled in the BDI system in the usual way, while the "body" exists in the ABM system. The architecture is exible in that the ABM can still have non-BDI agents in the simulation, and the BDI-side can have agents that do not have a physical counterpart (such as an organisation). The framework addresses a key integration challenge of coupling event-based BDI systems, with time-stepped ABM systems. Our framework is modular and supports integration off-the-shelf BDI systems with off-the-shelf ABM systems. The framework is Open Source, and all integrations and applications are available for use by the modelling community