Revisiting Budget and Trade Deficits in Lebanon: A Critique

This study re-examines the relationship between the budget deficit and the trade deficit in Lebanon. In contrast to earlier studies, we start by testing for a unit root in the presence of structural change using the Innovational Outlier (IO) model. This study also utilizes the newly proposed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to examine such a relationship. The results show that the endogenously determined times of the breaks coincide with observed real events occurring during the years of Civil War in Lebanon and especially after the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. This study finds, as well, that the trade deficit in Lebanon has a long run impact on the budget deficit.Budget deficit, trade deficit, structural break, ARDL, Lebanon

The rational design of a Au(I) precursor for focused electron beam induced deposition

Au(I) complexes are studied as precursors for focused electron beam induced processing (FEBIP). FEBIP is an advanced direct-write technique for nanometer-scale chemical synthesis. The stability and volatility of the complexes are characterized to design an improved precursor for pure Au deposition. Aurophilic interactions are found to play a key role. The short lifetime of ClAuCO in vacuum is explained by strong, destabilizing Au-Au interactions in the solid phase. While aurophilic interactions do not affect the stability of ClAuPMe3\, they leave the complex non-volatile. Comparison of crystal structures of ClAuPMe3 and MeAuPMe3 shows that Au-Au interactions are much weaker or partially even absent for the latter structure. This explains its high volatility. However, MeAuPMe3 dissociates unfavorably during FEBIP, making it an unsuitable precursor. The study shows that Me groups reduce aurophilic interactions, compared to Cl groups, which we attribute to electronic rather than steric effects. Therefore we propose MeAuCO as a potential FEBIP precursor. It is expected to have weak Au-Au interactions, making it volatile. It is stable enough to act as a volatile source for Au deposition, being stabilized by 6.5 kcal/mol. Finally, MeAuCO is likely to dissociate in a single step to pure Au

Financial integration of the MENA emerging stock markets

The main objective of this study is to examine the financial integration among four emerging stock markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, namely, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and Morocco. Their interrelationships with three developed markets, the US, UK and Germany, are also examined. The motivation behind this study is that, although a lot of research has been focused on stock market integration, the emphasis has been mostly on developed markets. Stock market integration in the MENA region has not been investigated deeply enough despite the region being of a global economic and political importance. To attain this objective, the study conducts recent econometric techniques on the monthly time series of stock market price indices. It starts with testing for a unit root in the presence of structural change at an unknown time of the break, using the Innovational Outlier (IO) model. To empirically examine the financial integration, the study utilizes the newly proposed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration. The ARDL approach has been recognized as more preferable in estimating the long-run equilibrium relationship than other cointegration approaches in small samples with mixed order process. Finally, the study explores the short and longrun dynamic relationships among these markets using Granger-causality within a correctly specified vector error correction model (VECM). The empirical results indicate that all variables show evidence of nonstationarity, even in the presence of structural change. The endogenously determined times of the breaks for all markets coincide with observed real events which affected each market. This result is consistence with the efficient market hypothesis as the nonstationarity random walk is associated with the weak form of the efficient market hypothesis. Consequently, this result emphasises that the stock markets in the MENA region are efficient. The cointegration test results show that there are long-run equilibrium relationships among all stock markets in the MENA region. This indicates that stock markets in the MENA region move together in the long-run. So, at the regional level all markets are integrated. At the same time no long-run equilibrium relationship is found between MENA markets and developed markets. This means that the MENA stock markets are segmented from developed markets. However, Egypt was the exceptional case; the study found that the stock market of Egypt has long-run equilibrium relationship with the US and UK markets. The implications of these findings are analysed at two levels, the regional and international. At the regional level, the existence if cointegration among the MENA markets implies the existence of the law of one price (LOOP). This means that the potential of regional investors for obtaining abnormal profits through portfolio diversification is limited in the long-run. The reason for this is that as the MENA stock markets are cointegrated, abnormal profits will be arbitraged away in the long-run. However, despite no arbitrage opportunities in the long-run, investors can still achieve arbitrage profits through portfolio diversification in the short-run. At the international level, the results show that stock markets in Turkey, Jordan and Morocco are not integrated with developed markets. This means that there is no long-run impact from developed stock markets towards these markets. However, a longrun relationship is found between Egypt and both US and UK when Egypt is a dependent variable. Based on these results, there are opportunities for international investors to obtain long-run gains through international portfolio diversification in stock markets of Turkey, Jordan and Morocco. Also at the same time, investors from these three countries have the opportunities to obtain long-run gains through investing in developed markets. The existence of long-run relationships between Egypt and both US and UK implies that the potential for investors from the Egyptian stock market to obtain abnormal profit through portfolio diversification in the US and UK is limited in the long-run. However, there are opportunities for achieving abnormal profit by investing in Germany as it is not cointegrated with the MENA markets. In the short-run, arbitrage opportunities and possible profits may also be achieved from diversification as the LOOP may not hold. In addition to these findings, an important contribution is made by this study. It contradicted Granger’s (1986) theory on the relationship between the existence of cointegration and market efficiency. Granger (1986) asserted that the existence of cointegration between two stock prices implies the ability to predict each price movement, which indicates market inefficiency. Also, this study does not fully agree with another stream of studies, such as Wallace (1992), Baffes (1994), Engle (1996), Ahlgren and Antell (2002) and Masih and Masih (2002) in which they asserted that cointegration does not necessarily imply market inefficiency or efficiency. However, what this study tries to bring out is that if cointegration exists between two stock markets then these markets are efficient in the long-run because the existence of cointegrated vector implies the (LOOP). Therefore, little or no arbitrage opportunities or possible benefit can be achieved from the diversification of a portfolio across markets. However, with the short-run error correction model (ECM), there could exist arbitrage opportunities and possible benefits from diversification. That is, the LOOP may not hold in the short run. The results of Granger-causality test based on the vector error correction model (VECM) reveal the existence of short-run causal relationships among the MENA markets. This means that these markets influence each other. Also, the results show that developed markets influenced stock markets in the MENA region. In the short-run, there is unidirectional Granger-causality running from stock prices in Turkey, Morocco, the US and UK to Egypt. Also, there is unidirectional Granger-causality running from Germany and the US towards Turkey. In addition, The UK and Turkey are found to Granger-cause the stock prices in Jordan. Finally, there is a unidirectional Grangercausality from Germany to Morocco. Finally, despite the empirical results show that there is a possibility of an increase in the portfolio equity flow to the MENA stock markets, the statistics of portfolio equity flow show little portfolio inflow to the region from developed countries over the period of study. Some of the reasons behind this situation are that most of these markets are still from some perspective underdeveloped, vulnerable to macroeconomic shocks and political instability in the region. Based on this, the study suggests that huge efforts should be carried on to improve the institutional reforms in these markets and increase the degree of openness for foreign capital. Also increasing the markets capitalization and adopting new technology are very crucial factors for attracting equity portfolio to the region

Re-visiting budget and trade deficit in Lebanon: a critique

This study re-examines the reletionship between the budget deficit and the trade deficit in Lebanon during 1970-2004. In contrast to earlier studies, we test for a unit root in the presence of structural change using the innovational outlier (IO) model. We also utilize the newly proposed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to examine this relationship. The endogenously determined break times coincide with observed real events which occurred during the Lebanon Civil War and after the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. The results show that the trade deficit in Lebanon has a long-run impact on the budget deficit

Development of accounting regulation in Jordan

This study examines the development of accounting regulation in Jordan with emphasis on the dominant environmental factors that influence it. In order to have a better understanding of Jordan's present accounting practices, and its future development tendencies, we examine the path of accounting in Jordan since the early days of the nineteenth century, and analyze how Jordan's accounting environment — political, economic, legal and cultural — influenced the development of accounting in Jordan. We also examine Jordan's recent move towards full adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and find that Jordan's colonial past has exerted a strong influence. In addition, we conclude that political and economic factors, through privatization and the resulting accounting reforms, contributed more to the development of accounting practices than other environmental factors. Privatization led to reforming Jordan's disclosure regulation and laying down of the corporate-governance policy framework. Our conclusions could be of interest to other countries, particularly developing countries, who want to improve the quality of their accounting disclosures and practices

Development of accounting regulation in Jordan

This study examines the development of accounting regulation in Jordan with emphasis on the dominant environmental factors that influence it. In order to have a better understanding of Jordan's present accounting practices, and its future development tendencies, we examine the path of accounting in Jordan since the early days of the nineteenth century, and analyze how Jordan's accounting environment -- political, economic, legal and cultural -- influenced the development of accounting in Jordan. We also examine Jordan's recent move towards full adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and find that Jordan's colonial past has exerted a strong influence. In addition, we conclude that political and economic factors, through privatization and the resulting accounting reforms, contributed more to the development of accounting practices than other environmental factors. Privatization led to reforming Jordan's disclosure regulation and laying down of the corporate-governance policy framework. Our conclusions could be of interest to other countries, particularly developing countries, who want to improve the quality of their accounting disclosures and practices.Accounting regulation International Financial Reporting Standards Corporate governance Accounting practices Jordan

Effect of transition metal dopants on initial mass transport in the dehydrogenation of NaAlH4: Density functional theory study

Sodium alanate (NaAlH4) is a prototype system for storage of hydrogen in chemical form. However, a key experimental finding, that early transition metals (TMs) like Ti, Zr, and Sc are good catalysts for hydrogen release (and reuptake) whereas traditional hydrogenation catalysts like Pd and Pt are poor catalysts for NaAlH4, has so far received little attention. We performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations at the PW91 generalized gradient approximation level on Ti, Zr, Sc, Pd, and Pt interacting with the (001) surface of nanocrystalline NaAlH4, employing a cluster model of the complex metal hydride to study the initial mass transport in the dehydrogenation process. A key difference between Ti, Zr, and Sc on one hand and Pd and Pt on the other is that exchange of the early TM atoms with a surface Na ion, whereby Na is pushed on to the surface, is energetically preferred over surface absorption in an interstitial site, as found for Pd and Pt. These theoretical findings are consistent with a crucial feature of the TM catalyst being that it can be transported with the reaction boundary as it moves into the bulk, enabling the starting material to react away while the catalyst eats its way into the bulk and affecting a phase separation between a Na-rich and an Al-rich phase. Additional periodic DFT/PW91 calculations in which NaAlH 4 is modeled as a slab to model dehydrogenation of larger NaAlH 4 particles and which only consider adsorption and absorption of Ti suggest that Ti prefers to absorb interstitially but with only a small energy preference over a geometry in which Ti has exchanged with Na. Additional nudged elastic band calculations based on periodic DFT show only a small barrier (0.02 eV) for exchange of Ti with a surface Na atom. The mechanism inferred from the cluster calculations is therefore consistent with the slab calculations and may well be important. © 2012 American Chemical Society.The work presented here has been supported by a grant from the Dutch research council NWO under the ACTS Hydrogen programme and by a grant of computer time by the Dutch National Computing facilities Foundation (NCF).Peer Reviewe

Effect of Transition Metal Dopants on Initial Mass Transport in the Dehydrogenation of NaAlH₄: Density Functional Theory Study

Sodium alanate (NaAlH₄) is a prototype system for storage of hydrogen in chemical form. However, a key experimental finding, that early transition metals (TMs) like Ti, Zr, and Sc are good catalysts for hydrogen release (and reuptake) whereas traditional hydrogenation catalysts like Pd and Pt are poor catalysts for NaAlH₄, has so far received little attention. We performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations at the PW91 generalized gradient approximation level on Ti, Zr, Sc, Pd, and Pt interacting with the (001) surface of nanocrystalline NaAlH₄, employing a cluster model of the complex metal hydride to study the initial mass transport in the dehydrogenation process. A key difference between Ti, Zr, and Sc on one hand and Pd and Pt on the other is that exchange of the early TM atoms with a surface Na ion, whereby Na is pushed on to the surface, is energetically preferred over surface absorption in an interstitial site, as found for Pd and Pt. These theoretical findings are consistent with a crucial feature of the TM catalyst being that it can be transported with the reaction boundary as it moves into the bulk, enabling the starting material to react away while the catalyst eats its way into the bulk and affecting a phase separation between a Na-rich and an Al-rich phase. Additional periodic DFT/PW91 calculations in which NaAlH₄ is modeled as a slab to model dehydrogenation of larger NaAlH₄ particles and which only consider adsorption and absorption of Ti suggest that Ti prefers to absorb interstitially but with only a small energy preference over a geometry in which Ti has exchanged with Na. Additional nudged elastic band calculations based on periodic DFT show only a small barrier (0.02 eV) for exchange of Ti with a surface Na atom. The mechanism inferred from the cluster calculations is therefore consistent with the slab calculations and may well be important

Robust Barium Phosphonate Metal–Organic Frameworks Synthesized under Aqueous Conditions

The design and discovery of three-dimensional crystalline metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) from linkers with phosphonate coordinating groups and even alkaline earth metals is largely undeveloped. Herein, we report a strategy for realizing new, stable, and robust barium phosphonate MOFs, termed Empa-1 and Empa-2. The two-dimensional (2D) Empa-1 or three-dimensional (3D) Empa-2 could be realized by way of systematically modulating the ratio of Ba2+ with a tetratopic phosphonate-based linker that was crafted to incorporate nitrogen-rich triazine units bridged by a fixed piperazine core. In addition to this synthetic approach, temperature-dependent synchrotron-radiation powder X-ray diffraction analysis demonstrated that the 2D Empa-1 undergoes an irreversible phase transition upon heating and subsequent dehydration to form the 3D Empa-2. Given the presence of uncoordinated phosphonic acid moieties within the structure of 3D Empa-2, the CO2 sorption capabilities are reported. We believe our ability to link the alkaline earth metal barium with a novel tetratopic phosphonate linker, as evidenced by the robust structures of Empa-1 and -2, paves the way for further exploration and discovery of new crystalline, porous frameworks with greater structural diversity, stability, and wide-scale practical applicability