What drives stock prices? The Present Value Model revisited in a comparison of developed and emerging markets

Using a dynamic version of the present value model and a range of developed and Asian emerging markets, this paper considers what stock market prices ‘should have been’, given expectations on index cash dividends and on, more broadly defined, index earnings, and compares these fundamental prices with actual prices. Revealed deviations from fundamental value are investigated by considering types of investor behaviour which might drive such departures and whether they are influenced by spillover effects from other markets

Chinese-American Community Center: Expressing Community and Immigrant Identity

Monterey Park is a small suburban community, ten miles east of downtown Los Angeles, with a population of 60,269 residents. The largest percentage of Chinese immigrants in suburban America can currently be found in Monterey Park, California. Monterey Park has rightfully earned the title as "The First Suburban Chinatown" (Fong). It is the only city in America with a majority Asian population. Bounded by three major freeways, Monterey Park serves as the gateway to the San Gabriel Valley. Though a majority of the residents are of Asian descent, the community also consists of Caucasian, Hispanic, and African American residents. The goal of this thesis is to design a community center that will serve as a gathering space to bring the different populations together. The center will house public functions important for understanding Chinese culture. This will include a restaurant and teaching kitchen, theater, library, exhibit space, courtyard, garden, workshops, dance rooms and classrooms. The arrangement of these spaces, the choice of materials, and the expression of the façade reflect a unique Chinese-American style. This thesis explores the multi-faceted meanings of "identity" and how architecture can express the Chinese-American struggle to hold on to heritage while assimilating to a new culture

Besov class via heat semigroup on Dirichlet spaces III: BV functions and sub-Gaussian heat kernel estimates

With a view toward fractal spaces, by using a Korevaar-Schoen space approach, we introduce the class of bounded variation (BV) functions in a general framework of strongly local Dirichlet spaces with a heat kernel satisfying sub-Gaussian estimates. Under a weak Bakry-\'Emery curvature type condition, which is new in this setting, this BV class is identified with a heat semigroup based Besov class. As a consequence of this identification, properties of BV functions and associated BV measures are studied in detail. In particular, we prove co-area formulas, global $L^1$ Sobolev embeddings and isoperimetric inequalities. It is shown that for nested fractals or their direct products the BV class we define is dense in $L^1$. The examples of the unbounded Vicsek set, unbounded Sierpinski gasket and unbounded Sierpinski carpet are discussed.Comment: The notes arXiv:1806.03428 will be divided in a series of papers. This is the third paper. v2: Final versio

Practical speed meter designs for quantum nondemolition gravitational-wave interferometers

In the quest to develop viable designs for third-generation optical interferometric gravitational-wave detectors (e.g., LIGO-III and EURO), one strategy is to monitor the relative momentum or speed of the test-mass mirrors, rather than monitoring their relative position. A previous paper analyzed a straightforward but impractical design for a speed-meter interferometer that accomplishes this. This paper describes some practical variants of speed-meter interferometers. Like the original interferometric speed meter, these designs in principle can beat the gravitational-wave standard quantum limit (SQL) by an arbitrarily large amount, over an arbitrarily wide range of frequencies. These variants essentially consist of a Michelson interferometer plus an extra ``sloshing'' cavity that sends the signal back into the interferometer with opposite phase shift, thereby cancelling the position information and leaving a net phase shift proportional to the relative velocity. In practice, the sensitivity of these variants will be limited by the maximum light power W-circ circulating in the arm cavities that the mirrors can support and by the leakage of vacuum into the optical train at dissipation points. In the absence of dissipation and with squeezed vacuum (power squeeze factor e(-2R)similar or equal to0.1) inserted into the output port so as to keep the circulating power down, the SQL can be beat by h/h(SQL)similar torootW(circ)(SQL)e(-2R)/W-circ at all frequencies below some chosen f(opt)similar or equal to100 Hz. Here W(circ)(SQL)similar or equal to800 kW(f(opt)/100 Hz)(3) is the power required to reach the SQL in the absence of squeezing. (However, as the power increases in this expression, the speed meter becomes more narrow band; additional power and reoptimization of some parameters are required to maintain the wide band. See Sec. III B.) Estimates are given of the amount by which vacuum leakage at dissipation points will debilitate this sensitivity (see Fig. 12); these losses are 10% or less over most of the frequency range of interest (fgreater than or similar to10 Hz). The sensitivity can be improved, particularly at high freqencies, by using frequency-dependent homodyne detection, which unfortunately requires two 4-km-long filter cavities (see Fig. 4)

Motivational Mindsets about Change: Integrating Lay Theories of Personal and Situational Malleability.

The study of lay theories focuses on understanding people’s fundamental beliefs, the interpretations of the world that they shape, and their regulatory consequences. Central to this scientific endeavor is the subject of stability and changeability—a cornerstone concept of human motivation (Weiner, 1985). Theories of attribute stability motivate self-validation through performance and dispositional judgments of others, whereas theories of attribute malleability facilitate change-directed efforts and expectations of improvement (Kammrath & Peetz, 2012; Molden & Dweck, 2006). Thus far, research has primarily focused on people’s beliefs about their personal attributes (“self theories”); comparatively less has elucidated the implications of people’s beliefs about the external world (“situation theories”). The goal of this dissertation is to expand our understanding of how self theories and situation theories work and to introduce a new theoretical framework that integrates them. In Chapter 1, I introduce the lay theories of change literature and provide a general overview of the following chapters. In Chapter 2, I test an important boundary condition of previous self theory research: choice context. Four studies show that offering people the choice between persisting or quitting on an intellectual task replicates conventional lay theory differences in persistence, but these differences are eliminated when people’s choices are expanded to include switching problems. In Chapter 3, I examine the effects of people’s situation theories on behavior. Four studies show that construing situations as malleable rather than fixed galvanizes action to change unfavorable circumstances. In Chapter 4, I assess the implications of lay theories about how people should interact with their environments to achieve their goals. When it comes to achieving passion for work, some people believe that they should find work compatible with their interests whereas others believe that it comes through cultivating competence. These two mindsets lead to different affective forecasts and choices, but both are similarly effective at attaining passion. Assimilating these and past findings in Chapter 5, I propose the “Self by Situation Change” (SSC) model as a heuristic framework that integrates self and situation theories. Finally, I wrap up the dissertation with future directions and concluding thoughts in Chapter 6.PhDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113483/1/patchen_1.pd

Using individual growth model to analyze the change in quality of life from adolescence to adulthood

BACKGROUND: The individual growth model is a relatively new statistical technique now widely used to examine the unique trajectories of individuals and groups in repeated measures data. This technique is increasingly used to analyze the changes over time in quality of life (QOL) data. This study examines the change from adolescence to adulthood in physical health as an aspect of QOL as an illustration of the use of this analytic method. METHODS: Employing data from the Children in the Community (CIC) study, a prospective longitudinal investigation, physical health was assessed at mean ages 16, 22, and 33 in 752 persons born between 1965 and 1975. RESULTS: The analyses using individual growth models show a linear decline in average physical health from age 10 to age 40. Males reported better physical health and declined less per year on average. Time-varying psychiatric disorders accounted for 8.6% of the explained variation in mean physical health, and 6.7% of the explained variation in linear change in physical health. Those with such a disorder reported lower mean physical health and a more rapid decline with age than those without a current psychiatric disorder. The use of SAS PROC MIXED, including syntax and interpretation of output are provided. Applications of these models including statistical assumptions, centering issues and cohort effects are discussed. CONCLUSION: This paper highlights the usefulness of the individual growth model in modeling longitudinal change in QOL variables