Incomplete financial markets and jumps in asset prices

For incomplete financial markets, jumps in both prices and consumption can be unavoidable. We consider pure-exchange economies with infinite horizon, discrete time, uncertainty with a continuum of possible shocks at every date. The evolution of shocks follows a Markov process, and fundamentals depend continuously on shocks. It is shown that: (1) equilibria exist; (2) for effectively complete financial markets, asset prices depend continuously on shocks; and (3) for incomplete financial markets, there is an open set of economies U such that for every equilibrium of every economy in U, asset prices at every date depend discontinuously on the shock at that date

High efficient differentiation of functional hepatocytes from porcine induced pluripotent stem cells

Hepatocyte transplantation is considered to be a promising therapy for patients with liver diseases. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) provide an unlimited source for the generation of functional hepatocytes. In this study, we generated iPSCs from porcine ear fibroblasts (PEFs) by overexpressing Sox2, Klf4, Oct4, and c-Myc (SKOM), and developed a novel strategy for the efficient differentiation of hepatocyte-like cells from porcine iPSCs by following the processes of early liver development. The differentiated cells displayed the phenotypes of hepatocytes, exhibited classic hepatocyte-associated bio-functions, such as LDL uptake, glycogen storage and urea secretion, as well as possessed the metabolic activities of cytochrome P-450 (CYP) 3A and 2C. Furthermore, we compared the hepatocyte differentiation efficacy of our protocol with another published method, and the results demonstrated that our differentiation strategy could significantly improve the generation of morphological and functional hepatocyte-like cells from porcine iPSCs. In conclusion, this study establishes an efficient method for in vitro generation of functional hepatocytes from porcine iPSCs, which could represent a promising cell source for preclinical testing of cell-based therapeutics for liver failure and for pharmacological applications. © 2014 Ao et al