Radiative Penguin Decays at the B Factories

An overview of the measurements of b->s\gamma, b->d\gamma and b->sll penguin transitions at the B Factories is presented.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the "Flavor Physics & CP Violation Conference, Vancouver, 2006". 6 pages, 6 figures. (Revisions move two figure for better alignment, fix a typo in one of the references and add one theory reference.

Where does Capital Flow? A Comparison of U.S. States and EU Countries 1950-2000

We find that the United States in the 1950s and 1960s was characterized by strong "catch-up growth" in the south with capital owing from rich northern states to poorer southern states - consistent with the predictions of the simple neoclassical model. After the 1970s, "catch-up growth" is mainly over in the United States and capital is owing to productive (rich) states. For Europe, we find that capital has been owing from the richer countries to the poorer countries since the 1970s with no signs yet of the "catch-up" phase having run its course, except for the country of Ireland.european capital markets, regional capital flows, institutions, regulations, Kalemli-Ozcan, Sorensen, Turan

Deep Financial Integration and Volatility

We investigate the relationship between financial integration and output volatility at micro and macro levels. Using a very large firm-level dataset (AMADEUS) from 16 European countries, we construct a measure of "deep" financial integration at the regional level based on observations of foreign ownership at the firm-level. We find a significant positive effect of foreign ownership on the volatility of firms' outcomes in static as well as dynamic empirical frameworks. This effect survives aggregation and carries over to regional output, leading to a positive association between deep financial integration and aggregate fluctuations. To identify the causal effect of financial integration on volatility we exploit variation in the transposition dates of the European Union-wide legislative acts from the Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP). We find that high trust regions located in countries who harmonized their capital markets sooner have increased levels of financial integration and volatility.firm volatility, foreign ownership, regional integration, social capital, macro volatility

Asymmetric Shocks and Risk Sharing in a Monetary Union: Updated Evidence and Policy Implications for Europe

We find that risk sharing in the European Union (EU) has been increasing over the past decade due to increased cross-ownership of assets across countries. Industrial special- ization has also been increasing over the last decade and we conjecture that risk sharing plays an important causal effect by allowing countries to specialize without being subject to higher income risk even though the variability of output may increase. We believe that lower trade barriers may not have played a dominant causal role during this decade be- cause the effect of lower trade barriers has probably already played itself out. We further find that the asymmetry of GDP fluctuations in the EU has declined steeply over the last two decades. This may be due to economic policies becoming more similar as countries were adjusting fiscal policy in order to meet the Maastricht criteria, but a similar result was found for U.S. states so the finding may be due to a different nature of the shocks to the world economy in the 1990s. We expect to see a further rise in risk sharing between EU countries, accompanied by more specialization. However, the resulting increase in GDP asymmetry should be minor and will have small welfare costs because increased risk sharing should lower income (GNP) asymmetry.financial integration, regional specialization, international portfolio diversification, income insurance

Fourth Family Neutrinos and the Higgs Boson

We evaluate the LHC discovery potential for the fourth family Standard Model neutrinos in the process $pp\to Z/h\to\nu_{4}{\bar{\nu}_{4}}\to W\mu W\mu$. We show that, depending on their masses, the simultaneous discovery of both the Higgs boson and the heavy neutrinos is probable at early stages of LHC operation. Results are presented for both Majorana and Dirac type fourth family neutrinos.Comment: 12 pages, uses axodraw.sty, v2: includes typo fixes, improved analysis, v4: minor modifications in response to the JHEP refere