784 research outputs found
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
Comparative and Competitive Advantage of the Shrimp Industry in Mekong River Delta, Vietnam
Given the growing prominence of Vietnam's fishery products in the world market, this study examines data on shrimp aquaculture in the country, as practiced through intensive and semi-intensive methods, in two provinces in the Mekong River Delta region. The study estimates the comparative and competitive advantage of the shrimp industry using various approaches, namely: 1) the RCA or revealed comparative advantage; 2) the Policy Analysis Method (PAM) method to calculate the resource cost ratio (RCR) and RCR* indices; and 3) the Net Social Profitability (NSP) and Net Private Profitability (NPP). To identify the effects of changes in key factors affecting competitive and comparative advantage, a sensitivity analysis is conducted. The results show that Vietnam's shrimp products maintain a strong competitive position in the world market, as evidenced by an RCA greater than 1. The RCR and RCR* estimates bordering on zero also indicate the strong comparative and competitive advantage of the shrimp industry. These findings are bolstered as well by the resulting NSP and NPP estimates. Furthermore, in terms of farming methods, the lower RCR and RCR* estimates for the intensive farms confirm their higher comparative and competitive advantage, compared to the semi-intensive model. Finally, the sensitivity analysis shows that the comparative and competitive advantage of shrimp is strongly sensitive to the price of feed, exchange rate, shrimp yield, and export price. The wage rate also exhibits a slight effect on the industry's standing in the world market. Improving the productivity and quality of shrimp is shown to be vital to the MRD shrimp industry because this would translate into a higher export price and higher yield of shrimp, which will further enhance the industry's comparative and competitive advantage.
Isogeometric analysis for functionally graded microplates based on modified couple stress theory
Analysis of static bending, free vibration and buckling behaviours of
functionally graded microplates is investigated in this study. The main idea is
to use the isogeometric analysis in associated with novel four-variable refined
plate theory and quasi-3D theory. More importantly, the modified couple stress
theory with only one material length scale parameter is employed to effectively
capture the size-dependent effects within the microplates. Meanwhile, the
quasi-3D theory which is constructed from a novel seventh-order shear
deformation refined plate theory with four unknowns is able to consider both
shear deformations and thickness stretching effect without requiring shear
correction factors. The NURBS-based isogeometric analysis is integrated to
exactly describe the geometry and approximately calculate the unknown fields
with higher-order derivative and continuity requirements. The convergence and
verification show the validity and efficiency of this proposed computational
approach in comparison with those existing in the literature. It is further
applied to study the static bending, free vibration and buckling responses of
rectangular and circular functionally graded microplates with various types of
boundary conditions. A number of investigations are also conducted to
illustrate the effects of the material length scale, material index, and
length-to-thickness ratios on the responses of the microplates.Comment: 57 pages, 14 figures, 18 table
Scalar sextet in the 331 model with right-handed neutrinos
A Higgs sextet is introduced in order to generate Dirac and Majorana neutrino
masses in the 331 model with right-handed neutrinos. As will be seen, the
present sextet introduction leads to a rich neutrino mass structure. The
smallness of neutrino masses can be achieved via, for example, a seesaw limit.
The fact that the masses of the charged leptons are not effected by their new
Yukawa couplings to the sextet is convenient for generating small neutrino
masses.Comment: RevTeX4, 5 pages, no figure. To appear in Phys. Rev. D. Misprints
removed (v.2
Stability investigations of isotropic and anisotropic exponential inflation in the Starobinsky-Bel-Robinson gravity
In this paper, we would like to examine whether a novel
Starobinsky-Bel-Robinson gravity model admits stable exponential inflationary
solutions with or without spatial anisotropies. As a result, we are able to
derive an exact de Sitter inflationary to this Starobinsky-Bel-Robinson model.
Furthermore, we observe that an exact Bianchi type I inflationary solution does
not exist in the Starobinsky-Bel-Robinson model. However, we find that a
modified Starobinsky-Bel-Robinson model, in which the sign of coefficient of
term is flipped from positive to negative, can admit the corresponding
Bianchi type I inflationary solution. Unfortunately, stability analysis using
the dynamical system approach indicates that both of these inflationary
solutions turn out to be unstable. Interestingly, we show that a stable de
Sitter inflationary solution can be obtained in the modified
Starobinsky-Bel-Robinson gravity.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures. V2 with the abstract revised to improve its
clarity, some relevant references added, and some typos fixed. All main
calculations and conclusions remain unchanged. Comments are welcom
Myc-induced liver tumors in transgenic zebrafish can regress in tp53 null mutation
10.1371/journal.pone.0117249PLoS ONE101e011724
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