Liquidity, risk and the global transmission of the 2007-08 financial crisis and the 2010-2011 sovereign debt crisis

The paper analyses the transmission of liquidity shocks and risk shocks to global financial markets. Using a Global VAR methodology, the findings reveal fundamental di¤erences in the transmission strength and pattern between the 2007-08 financial crisis and the 2010-11 sovereign debt crisis. Unlike in the former crisis, emerging market economies have become much more resilient to adverse shocks in 2010-11. Moreover, a flight-to-safety phenomenon across asset classes has become particularly strong during the 2010-11 sovereign debt crisis, with risk shocks driving down bond yields in key advanced economies. The paper relates this evolving transmission pattern to portfolio choice decisions by investors and finds that countries' sovereign rating, quality of institutions and their financial exposure are determinants of cross-country differences in the transmission. JEL Classification: E44, F3, C5.Global financial crisis, sovereign debt crisis, liquidity, risk, capital flows, transmission, high dimensional VARs, advanced economies, emerging market economies.

Identifying the global transmission of the 2007-09 financial crisis in a GVAR Model

The paper analyses and compares the role that the tightening in liquidity conditions and the collapse in risk appetite played for the global transmission of the financial crisis. Dealing with identification and the large dimensionality of the empirical exercise with a Global VAR approach, the findings highlight the diversity of the transmission process. While liquidity shocks have had a more severe impact on advanced economies, it was mainly the decline in risk appetite that affected emerging market economies. The tightening of financial conditions was a key transmission channel for advanced economies, whereas for emerging markets it was mainly the real side of the economy that suffered. Moreover, there are some striking differences also within types of economies, with Europe being more adversely affected by the fall in risk appetite than other advanced economies. JEL Classification: E44, F3, C5advanced economies, Emerging market economies, financial crisis, global transmission, Global VAR (GVAR), liquidity, modelling, risk, shocks, US

Referral and Job Performance: Evidence from the Ghana Colonial Army

As formalized by Montgomery (1991), referral by employees improves efficiency if the unobserved quality of a new worker is higher than that of unrefereed workers. Using data compiled from army archives, we test whether the referral system in use in the British colonial army in Ghana served to improve the unobserved quality of new recruits. We find that it did not: referred recruits were more likely than unreferred recruits to desert or be dismissed as ‘inefficient’ or ‘unfit’. We find instead evidence of referee opportunism. The fact that refreed recruits have better observed characteristics at the time of the recruitment suggests that army recruiters may have been aware of this problem.

Economic and political effects on currency clustering

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Quantitative Finance vol. 19, no. 5, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14697688.2018.1532101.We propose a new measure named the symbolic performance to better understand the structure of foreign exchange markets. Instead of considering currency pairs, we isolate a quantity that describes each currency’s position in the market, independent of a base currency. We apply the k-means++ clustering algorithm to analyze how the roles of currencies change over time, from reference status or minimal apprecia- tions and depreciations with respect to other currencies to large appreciations and depreciations. We show how different central bank interventions and economic and political developments, such as the cap on the Swiss franc to the euro enforced by the Swiss National Bank or the Brexit vote, affect the position of a currency in the global foreign exchange market.Accepted manuscrip

Efficacy of Antibiotic Therapy in Those Diagnosed With Chronic Lower Back Pain

Chronic back pain affects approximately eight percent of the American population, yet no treatment has been agreed upon universally. Recent studies suggest that between 20-30 percent of lower back pain cases are caused by a low-virulence bacterial infection of the intervertebral disks in those who suffered disc herniation. This scholarly project is to investigate: In patients with chronic lower back pain and Modic changes after disc herniation, what is the effect of antibiotic therapy on reducing pain symptoms compared to placebo. This literature review used the following electronic databases: ClinicalKey, Cochrane Library, Embase, and PubMed. Keywords and mesh terms refined searches to the most recent and relevant literature. The articles were then analyzed and refined, revealing 10 for critical review. The studies included are peer-reviewed and include a double-blind randomized control trial, pilot study, systemic literature reviews, literature reviews, monocentric study, and cohort study. A majority of the research presented shows evidence that Cutibacterium acnes, formerly known as Propionibacterium acnes presence in intervertebral discs, is not from contamination but rather is an infectious process that occurs after disc herniation. The research suggests that antibiotic treatment in those with chronic lower back pain and Modic changes after disc herniation is beneficial. Additional studies are required, but antibiotic therapy appears efficacious in reducing pain symptoms in those with chronic lower pain and Modic changes after disc herniation

Statist utopianism and the Cuban socialist transition

This thesis argues that the nature of ‘idealism’ or ‘utopianism’ in Cuba’s post-1959 socialist transition and the peculiarity of Cuban state socialism have been inadequately conceptualised in the literature. It hypothesises that the pervasive state-centrism of Cuba’s prevailing socialist model is a hybrid of ‘statist utopianism’ and the Stalinist imprint of a post-1970, relative Sovietisation of the Cuban Revolution. Statist utopianism is conceptualised in a Marxist theoretical framework as a distinctive approach to the socialist transition: imposing a communist vision on society rather than striving for its organic realisation. Unlike 16th–19th century Utopian socialism, statist utopianism rests on proletarian state power and has a state-centric dynamic. Statist utopianism is conceptualised as having intrinsic subjective as well as political-economic dimensions. The thesis distinguishes between, and contrasts, ‘organic transcendence’ and statist utopian approaches to the socialist transition. The concept of statist utopianism is grounded historically in the late 1960s Cuban and early Soviet experiences of socialist transition. Cuba’s 1968–70 Revolutionary Offensive, which nationalised the remnant urban private sector, is characterised as a statist utopian ‘great leap forward’. The significance of certain continuities and convergences between Cuba’s late 1960s ‘idealist’ phase and subsequent partial and uneven Sovietisation have been understated or overlooked. The thesis identifies methodological weaknesses in the ‘historical pendulum’ approach to the periodisation of the Cuban Revolution. It concludes that certain conceptual identities and institutional peculiarities of the prevailing (and now receding) Cuban socialist model comprise a mutually reinforcing state-centric nexus that cannot be explained on the basis of Sovietisation alone, and which therefore seems to be a peculiar hybrid of statist utopianism and the Stalinist imprint of Sovietisation. The concept of statist utopianism developed in this thesis casts the Cuban socialist transition and the Cuban Communist Party’s contemporary renovation project in a distinct light

Determination of the top quark mass circa 2013: methods, subtleties, perspectives

We present an up-to-date overview of the problem of top quark mass determination. We assess the need for precision in the top mass extraction in the LHC era together with the main theoretical and experimental issues arising in precision top mass determination. We collect and document existing results on top mass determination at hadron colliders and map the prospects for future precision top mass determination at e+e- colliders. We present a collection of estimates for the ultimate precision of various methods for top quark mass extraction at the LHC.Comment: 26 pages. Snowmass White Pape

Revisiting The First Galaxies: The effects of Population III stars on their host galaxies

We revisit the formation and evolution of the first galaxies using new hydrodynamic cosmological simulations with the ART code. Our simulations feature a recently developed model for H2 formation and dissociation, and a star formation recipe that is based on molecular rather than atomic gas. Here, we develop and implement a recipe for the formation of metal-free Population III stars in galaxy-scale simulations that resolve primordial clouds with sufficiently high density. We base our recipe on the results of prior zoom-in simulations that resolved the protostellar collapse in pre-galactic objects. We find the epoch during which Pop III stars dominated the energy and metal budget of the first galaxies to be short-lived. Galaxies which host Pop III stars do not retain dynamical signatures of their thermal and radiative feedback for more than 10^8 yr after the lives of the stars end in pair-instability supernovae, even when we consider the maximum reasonable efficiency of the feedback. Though metals ejected by the supernovae can travel well beyond the virial radius of the host galaxy, they typically begin to fall back quickly, and do not enrich a large fraction of the intergalactic medium. Galaxies with total mass in excess of 3 x 10^6 Msun re-accrete most of their baryons and transition to metal-enriched Pop II star formation.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, published in Ap