Information asymmetry, trading volume and returns in the Malaysian stock market

This paper examines investors’ motive to trade on the Malaysian stock market from 1st July 1997 to 30th June 2005. By applying ordinary least square (OLS) to 272 stocks as well as in three size groups, both the time series and cross-sectional results indicate that speculation on firm specific asymmetric information is the primary motive to trade on Malaysian stock market for the full and two sub-sample periods. The results show that most of the investors in Malaysian stock market tend to speculate firm related information to maximize their profits. The findings of this study provide important implications to policy makers in addition to investors in this developing market. Proper management of foreign portfolio investment is crucial to prevent manipulative moves and excessive speculative forms of portfolio investments that may cause excessive surges of inflows and massive panic outflows of short-term capital and thus collapse the financial system and downturn economy

Factorization of Multivariate Positive Laurent Polynomials

Recently Dritschel proves that any positive multivariate Laurent polynomial can be factorized into a sum of square magnitudes of polynomials. We first give another proof of the Dritschel theorem. Our proof is based on the univariate matrix Fejer-Riesz theorem. Then we discuss a computational method to find approximates of polynomial matrix factorization. Some numerical examples will be shown. Finally we discuss how to compute nonnegative Laurent polynomial factorizations in the multivariate setting

Disaster Governance and Challenges in a Rural Nepali Community: Notes from Future Village NGO

More than two years after the 2015 earthquakes devastated Nepal, Katunge village in Dhading district, Nepal, remained as destroyed as it was right after the earthquake. While the villagers were rather hopeful about rebuilding their houses and lives during the immediate relief effort in which we engaged, one month after the earthquake, now only a few are confident that they will ever rebuild their homes. In this article, we describe the reconstruction progress, followed by a critique of why the reconstruction progress has been so slow. We conclude with reflections on reconstruction challenges interwoven into the context of our NGO experience. During our trips to the region, we have observed and experienced the difficulties people and organizations are facing in the reconstruction process. We interviewed government officials and NGOs that have been involved in reconstruction, which helped us to gain insight into broader perspectives on the community or family-level realities that hinder rebuilding and community revitalization. We conclude that by mobilizing earthquake victims, it is possible to rebuild houses and revitalize communities. Conversely, little progress can be expected in Nepal’s rebuilding as long as poor governance and poor coordination between major reconstruction actors prevails

Efficient spatial modelling using the SPDE approach with bivariate splines

Gaussian fields (GFs) are frequently used in spatial statistics for their versatility. The associated computational cost can be a bottleneck, especially in realistic applications. It has been shown that computational efficiency can be gained by doing the computations using Gaussian Markov random fields (GMRFs) as the GFs can be seen as weak solutions to corresponding stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) using piecewise linear finite elements. We introduce a new class of representations of GFs with bivariate splines instead of finite elements. This allows an easier implementation of piecewise polynomial representations of various degrees. It leads to GMRFs that can be inferred efficiently and can be easily extended to non-stationary fields. The solutions approximated with higher order bivariate splines converge faster, hence the computational cost can be alleviated. Numerical simulations using both real and simulated data also demonstrate that our framework increases the flexibility and efficiency.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures and 3 table

Cournot Competition Yields Spatial Avoiding Competition in Groups

This paper characterizes the properties of equilibrium location patterns in an Anderson-Neven-Pal model and uses these characteristics to comprehensively find the subgame perfect Nash equilibria, most of which are not yet found in the literature. Since the external competition effect may be exactly canceled out, or internal competition strictly dominates external competition, or the internal competition effect is consistent with the external competition effect, therefore without any externality and prior collusion, a competitive group structure may form endogenously in equilibrium and firms tend to avoid competition inside each group. The analyses of an Anderson-Neven-Pal model are instructive in studying the conditions for a capacity to implement a ``Nash combination."Cournot competition; Spatial competition; Nash equilibrium