Will Japan increase aid and improve its allocation to help the poorer countries achieve the millennium development goals?

Developed countries have pledged to increase financial assistance to poor countries in order to help them achieve the Millennium Development Goals. A few donors such as the US and the UK have been increasing their financial assistance in the recent past, but this trend has yet to be generalised across the donor community. Japan is among the largest aid donors, but has as yet not followed the US and the UK in increasing her aid budget. This paper sets the task of examining the prospects of Japanese aid to increase significantly in the coming years, and its allocation to be re-directed towards the most aid needy countries. To this end, we turn to the past to investigate how Japanese aid policies have changed over time and also identify empirically the major determinants of aid allocation. Our study shows that whilst Japan’s aid has increased in the past, in response to the broadening of its aid policy to include humanitarian and development objectives, the empirical analysis on aid allocation shows that geo-economic interests have played a crucial role. Given the historical trend one can conclude that the same determinant factors may keep on playing vital roles in aid allocation decision-making at least for some years to come, even though there has been an increased call for more assistance to poor regions

Equity market contagion during global financial and Eurozone crises: Evidence from a dynamic correlation analysis

The devastation resulting from the recent global financial and Eurozone crises is immense. Most researchers commonly believe that the global financial crisis originated in the United States, and spread immediately to global financial hubs where it eventually became the Eurozone crisis. Several studies have been conducted on financial market contagion during both global and Eurozone crises; however, the issue of whether equity market contagion spreads from the United States to the world equity markets during these crises has not been addressed yet. Through using US dollar-denominated MSCI daily indices from fifty-five equity markets for the period 2003–2013, we have found evidence of contagion in developed and emerging markets during the global and Eurozone crises. We show that contagion spread from the United States to the world markets during both crises. Our regression results identify that the bank risk transfer between the United States and other countries is the key transmission channel for cross-country correlations. This study has an important policy implication for portfolio diversification between the United States and other countries during these crises

A Screening Pipeline for Antiparasitic Agents Targeting Cryptosporidium Inosine Monophosphate Dehydrogenase

Persistent diarrhea is a leading cause of illness and death among impoverished children, and a growing share of this disease burden can be attributed to the parasite Cryptosporidium. There are no vaccines to prevent Cryptosporidium infection, and the treatment options are limited and unreliable. Critically, no effective treatment exists for children or adults suffering from AIDS. Cryptosporidium presents many technical obstacles for drug discovery; perhaps the most important roadblock is the difficulty of monitoring drug action. Here we have developed a set of methods to accelerate the drug discovery process for cryptosporidiosis. We exploit the opportunities for experimental manipulation in the related parasite Toxoplasma to genetically engineer a Cryptosporidium model. This new model parasite mirrors the metabolism of Cryptosporidium for a particularly promising drug target that supplies the building blocks for DNA and RNA. Drug effectiveness can be assayed through simple fluorescence measurements for many candidates. Using this assay as an initial filter, and adapting other assays to a high throughput format, we identify several novel chemical compounds that exhibit markedly improved anti-cryptosporidial activity and excellent selectivity

Should Bangladesh monitor core inflation for conducting monetary policy?

One of the central objectives of traditional monetary policy is inflation control since the belief is that, among others, low inflation helps to improve resource allocation and fosters rapid and stable economic growth. The view also holds that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon so that low inflation is to be achieved mainly through aggregate demand control by pursuing contractionary monetary (and fiscal) policies. It is argued that these policies should also be supported by liberalization, privatization, and other macroeconomic reforms to create a more open and competitive economy driven by the private sector. In short, the argument is that there exists a trade off between inflation and growth (alternatively between inflation and unemployment) that makes inflation targeting as the dominant paradigm in monetary policy

In vitro anthelmintic effects of some indigenous plants against gastrointestinal nematodes of goats

Aqueous and ethanol extracts of twelve indigenous plants were screened for in vitro anthelmintic effect against adult gastrointestinal nematodes of goat origin (Haemonchus contortus, Trichostrongylus spp., Trichuris spp., Strongyloides papillosus, Oesophagostomum columbianum, Cooperia spp. and Buno.stomum trigonocephalum) and their infective larval stage (L3) obtained from in vitro culture. Aqueous extract of the plants showed potent (90-100%) effects against adult g/i nematodes at a concentration of 100 mg/ml whereas in ethanol extracts all plants except Amrul (Oxalis comiculata) were potent only at 50mg/m1 concentration. Ethanol extracts were found to be more effective than aqueous extract against both adult and infective larval stage (L3) comparing at different concentrations. In both cases in vitro activities against adults were much higher than that of infective larvae. Two patent drugs Deminthe (Morantel citrate) and Helmex0 (Albendazole) were included as positive control showed 100% effective against adult worms in vitro

Integer-valued moving average modelling of the number of transactions in stocks

The Integer-valued Moving Average Model (INMA) is advanced to model the number of transactions in intra-day data of stocks. The conditional mean and variance properties are discussed and model extensions to include explanatory variables are offered. Least squares and generalized method of moment estimators are presented. In a small Monte Carlo study a feasible least squares estimator comes out as the best choice. Empirically we find support for the use of long-lag moving average models in a Swedish stock series. There is evidence of asymmetric effects of news about prices on the number of transactions.

Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Long Memory Stock Transaction Data—Under Conditional Heteroskedasticity Framework

This paper introduces Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Long Memory Stock Transaction Data of unknown underlying distribution. The moments with conditional heteroscedasticity have been discussed. In a Monte Carlo experiment, it was found that the QML estimator performs as well as CLS and FGLS in terms of eliminating serial correlations, but the estimator can be sensitive to start value. Hence, two-stage QML has been suggested. In empirical estimation on two stock transaction data for Ericsson and AstraZeneca, the 2SQML turns out relatively more efficient than CLS and FGLS. The empirical results suggest that both of the series have long memory properties that imply that the impact of macroeconomic news or rumors in one point of time has a persistence impact on future transactions

Impact of Geopolitical Risk on the Information Technology, Communication Services and Consumer Staples Sectors of the S&P 500 Index

We investigate the effect of geopolitical risk on the returns of firms in the Information Technology, Communication Services, and Consumer Staples sectors within the S&P 500 index. We use the event study methodology and perform more than 17,000 regressions to provide empirical evidence at sector level that geopolitical risk leads to different responses across these three sectors. The response of the Information Technology sector is negative for all event windows under study, except the one spanning 10 days prior to the geopolitical event and 10 days after. The Communication Services sector has positive returns as a result of geopolitical events for all event windows, except the one from the geopolitical event date and 5 days after. The Consumer Staples sector shows a negative impact on geopolitical risk for all event windows except the one from the geopolitical event date and 5 days after, demonstrating a negative correlation to the Communication Services sector

Epidemiological investigation of amphistomiasis in ruminants in Bangladesh

Epidemiological investigation on amphistomiasis through examination of viscera and faeces of 267 cattle, 120 goats, 67 sheep and 36 buffaloes in some parts of flood plains, hilly and coastal areas of Bangladesh during July, 1998 to June, 2001 revealed all types of animals infected with at least three or more species of amphistomes in all seasons of the year. The amphistome species were Gastrothylax crumemfer, Paramphistomum cervi, Cotylophoron cotylophorum; GiOntocotyle explanatum and Hom—alogaster ploniae. Simultaneous examination of 10,404 freshwater snails revealed 9 species of which at least five species namely Indoplanorbis exustus, Lymnaea spp. Thiara tubrculata, Bithynia tentaculata and Gyraulus convexiusculus were detected as the possible intermediate host of amphistome flukes. The vector snails were prevalent rouhd the year in almost all areas of the country except the extreme sea shores. There was a significant (p4 years) than in young (<2 years)