The philosophical paradigm of financial market contagion research

Philosophical underpinning is important in research as this leads to the investigation as per a specific paradigm. Every subject domain has a dominant paradigm in which the research is carried out. This paper surveys various journal articles in finance, specifically in financial markets contagion and spillover effects, to find the research paradigms and finds that the dominant paradigm in finance and market contagion research is functionalism-positivist. This provides opportunities to conduct research in other paradigmatic approaches. This paper explores the possibility of using an interpretivist paradigm to the financial market contagion research

Computational Modeling of Alternating Current Potential Drop Measurement for Crack Detection of Multi-Functional Ceramic Coated Structures

Non-destructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) is a set of techniques commonly used to evaluate a material for the presence of any flaws without actually degrading the material itself. The Alternating Current Potential Drop (ACPD) test method is one of the NDT surface methods used to determine the electrically insulating defects beneath the surface by injection of currents in the structure and measurement of the resulting voltage difference between two or more points on the surface. The presence of defects generally increases the resistance of the structure and hence causes the drop of measured voltage. The inversion of this data can give information about the size and shape of the defects. In the petrochemical and power generation industries, ceramic coatings have been used to be applied to pipe lines in order to increase the strength and high temperature resistance, as well as prevent the pipe lines from corrosion and oxidation. However, traditional ceramic coating materials are electrically insulating. The ACPD testing method cannot be adopted for the NDT purpose. In order to overcome this disadvantage, we proposed a concept of a multi-functional ceramic coating material, in which the metal nanoparticles (such as Nickel) can be uniformly embedded into the ceramic matrix (mullite). This multi-functional ceramic matrix nanocomposite can conduct current via tunneling when the percolation threshold of the filler phase is reached. Therefore, the ACPD test method can still be adopted to predict the defect and crack beneath the surface. In this research, we adopt the commercial finite element package, COMSOL Multiphysics, to first understand the mechanism of the ACPD method (electromagnetic coupling, skin effect and proximity effect) by the two parallel conductor\u27s model; then investigate the ACPD co-planar conductor model and understand the effect of the ceramic coating material on the sensing signal with various coating conductivities, permeability\u27s and frequencies. Finally, we draw conclusions and make proposals for future research

Logistic modeling of university choice among student migrants to Karnataka for higher education

In India, universities often study the broad characteristics of students who migrate to their state for educational purposes. This provides them with opportunities to collaborate with the state government in order to introduce education policies that can influence future students’ migration decisions. While studies already exist that focus on the determinants of student migration, this paper uses the logistic regression model to assess the probability of choice of private universities while using primary data collected from students who migrated to Karnataka. This paper also reports on tests of various hypotheses and on the finding that the admission quota has no significant effect on migrant students’ choice to enroll at a private university

Migration estimation in India: a monsoon migration model

Rural-Urban and Rural-Rural migration has become one of the most common phenomena of population demographic changes. Several factors which contribute towards the improvement of the livelihood and opportunities to the migrated labourers have been studied. More than 69 per cent of the 1.21 billion people live in rural India (2011 Census) and agriculture is their main source of income. Agriculture contributes to 18 per cent to the GDP of India. Due to lack of adequate public irrigation facilities, most of these farmers are dependent heavily on monsoon as the main source of water for agriculture. Since a large percentage of these farmers are into subsistence farming, they lack the capital required to set up their own irrigation facilities. When the monsoon fails, or when there is excess rain, there is loss of crop and hence rural-to-urban migration results

Corporate borrowing and investment decisions under regulatory and climate risk

This thesis examines corporate decisions under the legal and environmental dimension of the PESTLE model using two exogenous shocks. First, using a regulatory intervention, I examine the corporate borrowing decision among firms having constrained access to internal capital under the legal dimension of the model. Second, using extreme rainfall conditions, I examine the corporate investment decisions among rain-sensitive firms under the environmental dimension of the model. To answer the research question as to whether increased creditor rights on corporate borrowing depend on the firm’s access to internal capital, I use the creditor protection reform in India as an exogenous regulatory shock. Under this empirical setting, results indicate that strengthening of creditor rights leads to increased corporate borrowing among firms that have constrained access to internal capital compared to those firms having relatively easier access to internal capital. Further, the increased corporate borrowing by firms with constrained access to internal capital, in the post-reform period, is associated with a greater expansion of real investments, improved operational performance, and better market valuation. My findings indicate that, following creditor reforms, firms having constrained access to internal capital decide to borrow more. A version of this empirical study is now published in the Journal of Corporate Finance. Next, using Indian monsoon data, I study whether firms in the rain-sensitive sectors differentially time their investments to generate value in response to diverse abnormal rainfall conditions. I find that rain-sensitive firms suffer a significant decline in their market values in the immediate aftermath of extreme rainfall conditions. Consistent with the investment timing economic argument, my results show that the follow-up investment response by rain-sensitive firms depends on the nature of extreme rainfall conditions. While rain-sensitive firms increase their investments following excess rainfall conditions, the affected firms shrink investments in the aftermath of deficit rainfall periods. However, in terms of market-based value implications, all rain-sensitive firms regain their lost market values following both the investment strategies. In all, my findings indicate that corporate investment decision to invest or not invest is dependent on the heterogeneity of exogenous conditions and such decisions when timed well are value relevant. A version of this empirical study has now received a ‘minor revise and resubmit’ by the Journal of Corporate Finance. Overall, through the findings of my thesis, it can be concluded that corporate borrowing and investment decisions among firms are subject to the heterogeneity of both firm characteristics and exogenous events.This thesis examines corporate decisions under the legal and environmental dimension of the PESTLE model using two exogenous shocks. First, using a regulatory intervention, I examine the corporate borrowing decision among firms having constrained access to internal capital under the legal dimension of the model. Second, using extreme rainfall conditions, I examine the corporate investment decisions among rain-sensitive firms under the environmental dimension of the model. To answer the research question as to whether increased creditor rights on corporate borrowing depend on the firm’s access to internal capital, I use the creditor protection reform in India as an exogenous regulatory shock. Under this empirical setting, results indicate that strengthening of creditor rights leads to increased corporate borrowing among firms that have constrained access to internal capital compared to those firms having relatively easier access to internal capital. Further, the increased corporate borrowing by firms with constrained access to internal capital, in the post-reform period, is associated with a greater expansion of real investments, improved operational performance, and better market valuation. My findings indicate that, following creditor reforms, firms having constrained access to internal capital decide to borrow more. A version of this empirical study is now published in the Journal of Corporate Finance. Next, using Indian monsoon data, I study whether firms in the rain-sensitive sectors differentially time their investments to generate value in response to diverse abnormal rainfall conditions. I find that rain-sensitive firms suffer a significant decline in their market values in the immediate aftermath of extreme rainfall conditions. Consistent with the investment timing economic argument, my results show that the follow-up investment response by rain-sensitive firms depends on the nature of extreme rainfall conditions. While rain-sensitive firms increase their investments following excess rainfall conditions, the affected firms shrink investments in the aftermath of deficit rainfall periods. However, in terms of market-based value implications, all rain-sensitive firms regain their lost market values following both the investment strategies. In all, my findings indicate that corporate investment decision to invest or not invest is dependent on the heterogeneity of exogenous conditions and such decisions when timed well are value relevant. A version of this empirical study has now received a ‘minor revise and resubmit’ by the Journal of Corporate Finance. Overall, through the findings of my thesis, it can be concluded that corporate borrowing and investment decisions among firms are subject to the heterogeneity of both firm characteristics and exogenous events

Migration estimation in India : a monsoon migration model

Rural-Urban and Rural-Rural migration has become one of the most common phenomena of population demographic changes. Several factors which contribute towards the improvement of the livelihood and opportunities to the migrated labourers have been studied. More than 69 per cent of the 1.21 billion people live in rural India (2011 Census) and agriculture is their main source of income. Agriculture contributes to 18 per cent to the GDP of India. Due to lack of adequate public irrigation facilities, most of these farmers are dependent heavily on monsoon as the main source of water for agriculture. Since a large percentage of these farmers are into subsistence farming, they lack the capital required to set up their own irrigation facilities. When the monsoon fails, or when there is excess rain, there is loss of crop and hence rural-to-urban migration results

The electrostatic profile of consecutive Cβ atoms applied to protein structure quality assessment.

The structure of a protein provides insight into its physiological interactions with other components of the cellular soup. Methods that predict putative structures from sequences typically yield multiple, closely-ranked possibilities. A critical component in the process is the model quality assessing program (MQAP), which selects the best candidate from this pool of structures. Here, we present a novel MQAP based on the physical properties of sidechain atoms. We propose a method for assessing the quality of protein structures based on the electrostatic potential difference (EPD) of Cβ atoms in consecutive residues. We demonstrate that the EPDs of Cβ atoms on consecutive residues provide unique signatures of the amino acid types. The EPD of Cβ atoms are learnt from a set of 1000 non-homologous protein structures with a resolution cuto of 1.6 Å obtained from the PISCES database. Based on the Boltzmann hypothesis that lower energy conformations are proportionately sampled more, and on Annsen's thermodynamic hypothesis that the native structure of a protein is the minimum free energy state, we hypothesize that the deviation of observed EPD values from the mean values obtained in the learning phase is minimized in the native structure. We achieved an average specificity of 0.91, 0.94 and 0.93 on hg_structal, 4state_reduced and ig_structal decoy sets, respectively, taken from the Decoys `R' Us database. The source code and manual is made available at https://github.com/sanchak/mqap and permanently available on 10.5281/zenodo.7134

IMACULAT - an open access package for the quantitative analysis of chromosome localization in the nucleus

The alteration in the location of the chromosomes within the nucleus upon action of internal or external stimuli has been implicated in altering genome function. The effect of stimuli at a whole genome level is studied by using two-dimensional fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to delineate whole chromosome territories within a cell nucleus, followed by a quantitative analysis of the spatial distribution of the chromosome. However, to the best of our knowledge, open access software capable of quantifying spatial distribution of whole chromosomes within cell nucleus is not available. In the current work, we present a software package that computes localization of whole chromosomes - Image Analysis of Chromosomes for computing localization (IMACULAT). We partition the nucleus into concentric elliptical compartments of equal area and the variance in the quantity of any chromosome in these shells is used to determine its localization in the nucleus. The images are pre-processed to remove the smudges outside the cell boundary. Automation allows high throughput analysis for deriving statistics. Proliferating normal human dermal fibroblasts were subjected to standard a two-dimensional FISH to delineate territories for all human chromosomes. Approximately 100 images from each chromosome were analyzed using IMACULAT. The analysis corroborated that these chromosome territories have non-random gene density based organization within the interphase nuclei of human fibroblasts. The ImageMagick Perl API has been used for pre-processing the images