THE YIELD CURVE AS A LEADING INDICATOR ACROSS COUNTRIES AND TIME: THE EUROPEAN CASE

With the increasing demand for a better understanding about the relationship between yield curve and economic activities, this paper analyzes the data sets of seven countries in the European Union: Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Poland using quantitative analytical method. Based on previous literature, the expected hypothesis is: there is a strong relationship between the yield curve and the chance of an incoming economic contraction. The inverted yield curve, or the negative yield curve spread is considered as the tool to forecast the incoming contraction. Having been used as a rule of thumb for future reference of a contraction, whether yield curve and interest rates can be an accurate tool to predict the movement of business cycles should be studied more thoroughly, which will help not only the governments to reduce the loss from recession, but also equip financial sector valuable information to adjust itself before a contraction takes place. Further findings in this paper present a comparison between a group of Eurozone members and a group of non-Eurozone members. The similarities and differences give a broad idea of how the creation of the Eurozone has affected the area in the last decade

Classical solution of the Cauchy problem for biwave equation: Application of Fourier transform

In this paper, we use some Fourier analysis techniques to find an exact solution to the Cauchy problem for the $n$-dimensional biwave equation in the upper half-space $\mathbb{R}^n\times [0,+\infty)$.Comment: 11 page

Corporate Governance Structures and Performance of Firms in Asian Markets: a Comparative Analysis Between Singapore and Vietnam

A cross-country comparative analysis of corporate governance structures and financial performance of publicly listed companies in Singapore and Vietnam, covering a four-year period from 2008 to 2011, is undertaken in this study. More specifically, the similarities and differences in the corporate governance structures and financial performance of the companies are compared and interpreted in the institutional context of each market. On an average basis, we find that the size, composition and diversity of the boards in these two markets are statistically significantly different. In contrast, there is no statistical evidence to reject the similarities in ownership structure, board leadership structure, and financial performance between the firms of the two markets. In addition, our comparative analysis on the corporate governance structures–financial performance nexus also reveals that the performance effects of corporate governance structures vary significantly between the two markets, thus supporting the view that the performance effects of corporate governance structures are country-specific. Our findings suggest that country-level characteristics should be captured when modelling the corporate governance–firm performance relationship in cross-country comparative corporate governance research