The relative price of non-traded goods under imperfect competition

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website. Copyright @ 2012 The Department of Economics, University of Oxford.We consider the role of imperfect competition in explaining the relative price of non-traded to traded goods within the Balassa–Samuelson framework. Under imperfect competition in these two sectors, relative prices depend on both productivity and mark-up differentials. We test this hypothesis using a panel of sectors for 12 OECD countries. The empirical evidence suggests that relative price movements are well explained by productivity and mark-up differentials.The Galician governmen

The relative price of non-traded goods under imperfect competition

We consider the role of imperfect competition in explaining the relative price of non-traded to traded goods within the Balassa-Samuelson framework. Under imperfect competition in these two sectors, relative prices depend on both productivity and mark-up differentials. We test this hypothesis using a panel of sectors for 12 OECD countries. The empirical evidence suggests that relative price movements are well explained by productivity and mark-up differentials.This study is partly funded by the Galician government under grants INCITE09201042PR and MTM2008-03010

Can gold be used as a hedge against the risks of Sharia-compliant securities? Application for Islamic portfolio management

In this paper, we investigate whether gold hedges Sharia-compliant stocks and Sukuk during the period from September 2005 to October 2017. The inference is taken by using both the DCC-GARCH model and the wavelet coherence analysis. On the whole, our finding suggests that gold is not effective in hedging the fluctuations of Sharia-compliant securities. However, we find that combining gold with stocks (and Sukuk) is useful in diversification and portfolio optimization. These results imply that, while gold is an excellent hedge for plain vanilla securities, it is not for Islamic exposures. This is important in light of the increasing amount of assets that are managed according to Islamic screening

Microfabrication of a biomimetic arcade-like electrospun scaffold for cartilage tissue engineering applications

Designing and fabricating hierarchical geometries for tissue engineering (TE) applications is the major challenge and also the biggest opportunity of regenerative medicine in recent years, being the in vitro recreation of the arcade-like cartilaginous tissue one of the most critical examples due to the current inefficient standard medical procedures and the lack of fabrication techniques capable of building scaffolds with the required architecture in a cost and time effective way. Taking this into account, we suggest a feasible and accurate methodology that uses a sequential adaptation of an electrospinning-electrospraying set up to construct a system comprising both fibres and sacrificial microparticles. Polycaprolactone (PCL) and polyethylene glycol were respectively used as bulk and sacrificial biomaterials, leading to a bi-layered PCL scaffold which presented not only a depth-dependent fibre orientation similar to natural cartilage, but also mechanical features and porosity compatible with cartilage TE approaches. In fact, cell viability studies confirmed the biocompatibility of the scaffold and its ability to guarantee suitable cell adhesion, proliferation and migration throughout the 3D anisotropic fibrous network. Additionally, likewise the natural anisotropic cartilage, the PCL scaffold was capable of inducing oriented cell-material interactions since the morphology, alignment and density of the chondrocytes changed relatively to the specific topographic cues of each electrospun layer.publishe

Relationship between the gold price and the Australian dollar - US dollar exchange rate

The United States (US) dollar-based gold price and the exchange rate between the Australian dollar and the US dollar (AUD/USD) have a combined and significant impact on both the trend of the Australian minerals industry and the overall Australian economy. The trend in this case refers to the economic sustainability and growth of the minerals industry as well as the physical extraction and production rates of the collective industry. To estimate gold mining project values, it is necessary to determine the correlation between the gold price, stated in US dollars per ounce (US$/oz), and the relevant exchange rate, being the Australian dollar against the US dollar (AUD/USD). In this empirical study, the aim is to investigate the long - run relationship between the US quoted gold price and the relevant periodic exchange rates (AUD/USD), and to determine the correlation coefficient between them using weekly average data over the period 1996 to 2014. In addition, the continuously compounded percentage return series for gold prices and AUD/USD exchange rates has been calculated, the results of which have exposed an interesting finding in that a bi-directional causality exists between the continuously compounded percentage return of periodic gold prices and the returns of the commensurate AUD/USD exchange rates. Especially for approximating mining project values, mine managers and other decision makers need to be cautious about different uncertainties including financial and economic uncertainties, and the inter correlation and long term relationships among economic variables. AAugmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and modified Dickey-Fuller methods of analysis have been performed using generalised least squares (DF-GLS) tests to examine whether the time series data are stationary. Arising from this it has been observed that all of the tests have confirmed both the gold price and the AUD/USD exchange rate data series are I (1) stationary at a 1 % significance level. In addition, Johansen cointegration tests for examining the long – run relationship have been performed, and it was determined that there is a long term relationship between the gold price and the exchange rate (AUD/USD). Vector auto regression (VAR) tests revealed that there is bi-directional causality between the gold price and the AUD/USD exchange rate, and it is also supported by the structural vector auto regression (SVAR) impulse – response functions (IRFs) analysis. Furthermore, the study revealed that a strong positive correlation between the gold price and the AUD/USD exchange rate exists, and it also exposed that a one percent increase in the nominal gold price leads to an appreciation of the AUD/USD nominal exchange rate by approximately 0.5 %