The U.S.-Rok Bilateral Economic Relationship: The 2008 Crisis and Beyond

SAIS: U.S.-Korea 2009 Yearboo

FECKLESS AND FICKLE: CENTRAL AND SHADOW BANKING DURING THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

This dissertation studies the relationship between economic ideas and financial crises. It focuses on a subset of economic ideas, economic conventions, of which there are three types: ergodicity, expert opinion, and conventional expectations. This dissertation argues that conventions account for six inter-related phenomena in financial markets. First, stable economic conventions produce stable markets. Second, some conventions are more likely to produce asset market imbalances than others are. Third, conventions sow epistemic blindness to the prospect of non-routine change in financial markets. Fourth, shocks to agents’ convention-given expectations catalyze convention uncertainty in financial markets. Fifth, given sufficient financial fragility, convention uncertainty causes agents to revert to first principles of survival, hoarding liquid capital and disrupting the market’s normal price mechanism. Sixth, conventions set the bounds of elite responses to financial crises. These six propositions emerge from a theoretical synthesis of several paradigms of understanding agent behavior in complex social systems, including Post-Keynesian asset market theory, Keynesian epistemology, Charles Doran’s power cycle theory, and economic constructivism. The study employs counter-factual, process-tracing, and econometric techniques to demonstrate empirically its causal propositions via a case study of central banking and shadow banking during the global financial crisis. The dissertation finds that economic conventions explain the Federal Reserve’s accommodative monetary policy from 2001-2006, and that conventions such as bond ratings, value-at-risk, and conventional expectations in shadow banking markets were key drivers of financial fragility ex-ante the global financial crisis. This dissertation finds that regulators’ repeated interventions in financial markets, including their orchestration of the bailout of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, bailout of investment bank Bear Stearns, and bailouts for the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008, established a conventional expectation in financial markets that regulators would serve as de facto deposit guarantors for shadow banking conduits. It is proposed that the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 eviscerated the market’s tenuous, convention-engendered stability, thus initiating a period of convention uncertainty in financial markets. Convention uncertainty disrupted the market’s normal price mechanism and explains the market’s “flight to quality” after Lehman’s bankruptcy. Regulators’ unconditional bailouts of the U.S. financial system can be understood as an attempt to restore convention certainty to wholesale funding markets. All told, the findings of this dissertation provide support for the argument that economic ideas, and in particular economic conventions, need to be taken seriously as important causal drivers of stability, fragility, and change in financial markets

Crown dilacerations - Two case reports

Crown dilaceration is a relatively abnormal clinical finding when compared to root dilacerations. The incidence of crown dilacerations is stated to be as low as 3%. This report presents two cases of crown dilacerations in two different locations. A brief review of the literature pertinent to the condition, and the clinical and radiological features of this rarer entity are discussed

A Study to Analyze Different Patterns of Quid Usage among Subjects with Oral Submucous Fibrosis in Mangalore Population

Aim and Objectives. Oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) is a potentially malignant disorder associated with the usage of areca nut. Usage of processed forms of areca nut is popular among the youth and its carcinogenic effects are not well known. Due to large immigrant population, various patterns of areca nut usage are seen. The aim of this study is to assess the various quid chewing patterns and their association with severity of OSF. Materials and Methods. A cross-sectional study was carried out with 250 cases clinically and histologically diagnosed as having OSF lesion that were selected and subjected to a detailed habit history which was recorded through preformed questionnaire. The data obtained was statistically analyzed. Results. Among the 250 subjects, males were seen to be affected more than females within the age group of 26-35 years and were having clinical stage I OSF. A combination of processed areca nut and processed tobacco was used by the majority of the subjects with duration of 1 to 5 years, at a frequency of 3 to 5 quids per day. Conclusion. The present study confirms the association between oral submucous fibrosis and the quid containing processed areca nut and processed tobacco and also highlights the increasing youth population using the processed forms of areca nut

Neonatal head and torso vibration exposure during inter-hospital transfer

Inter-hospital transport of premature infants is increasingly common, given the centralisation of neonatal intensive care. However, it is known to be associated with anomalously increased morbidity, most notably brain injury, and with increased mortality from multifactorial causes. Surprisingly, there have been relatively few previous studies investigating the levels of mechanical shock and vibration hazard present during this vehicular transport pathway. Using a custom inertial datalogger, and analysis software, we quantify vibration and linear head acceleration. Mounting multiple inertial sensing units on the forehead and torso of neonatal patients and a preterm manikin, and on the chassis of transport incubators over the duration of inter-site transfers, we find that the resonant frequency of the mattress and harness system currently used to secure neonates inside incubators is ~9Hz. This couples to vehicle chassis vibration, increasing vibration exposure to the neonate. The vibration exposure per journey (A(8) using the ISO 2631 standard) was at least 20% of the action point value of current European Union regulations over all 12 neonatal transports studied, reaching 70% in two cases. Direct injury risk from linear head acceleration (HIC15) was negligible. Although the overall hazard was similar, vibration isolation differed substantially between sponge and air mattresses, with a manikin. Using a Global Positioning System datalogger alongside inertial sensors, vibration increased with vehicle speed only above 60 km/h. These preliminary findings suggest there is scope to engineer better systems for transferring sick infants, thus potentially improving their outcomes

Mining a Cathepsin Inhibitor Library for New Antiparasitic Drug Leads

The targeting of parasite cysteine proteases with small molecules is emerging as a possible approach to treat tropical parasitic diseases such as sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, and malaria. The homology of parasite cysteine proteases to the human cathepsins suggests that inhibitors originally developed for the latter may be a source of promising lead compounds for the former. We describe here the screening of a unique ∼2,100-member cathepsin inhibitor library against five parasite cysteine proteases thought to be relevant in tropical parasitic diseases. Compounds active against parasite enzymes were subsequently screened against cultured Plasmodium falciparum, Trypanosoma brucei brucei and/or Trypanosoma cruzi parasites and evaluated for cytotoxicity to mammalian cells. The end products of this effort include the identification of sub-micromolar cell-active leads as well as the elucidation of structure-activity trends that can guide further optimization efforts

Biochemical Properties of a Novel Cysteine Protease of Plasmodium vivax, Vivapain-4

Plasmodium vivax affects hundreds of millions each year and results in severe morbidity and mortality. Plasmodial cysteine proteases (CPs) play crucial roles during the progression of malaria since inhibition of these molecules impairs parasite growth. These CPs might be targeted for new antimalarial drugs. We characterized a novel P. vivax CP, vivapain-4 (VX-4), which appeared to evolve differentially among primate Plasmodium species. VX-4 showed highly unique substrate preference depending on surrounding micro-environmental pH. It effectively hydrolyzed benzyloxycarbonyl-Leu-Arg-4-methyl-coumaryl-7-amide (Z-Leu-Arg-MCA) and Z-Phe-Arg-MCA at acidic pH and Z-Arg-Arg-MCA at neutral pH. Three amino acids (Ala90, Gly157 and Glu180) that delineate the S2 pocket were found to be substituted in VX-4. Alteration of Glu180 abolished hydrolytic activity against Z-Arg-Arg-MCA at neutral pH, indicating Glu180 is intimately involved in the pH-dependent substrate preference. VX-4 hydrolyzed actin at neutral pH and hemoglobin at acidic pH, and participated in plasmepsin 4 activation at neutral/acidic pH. VX-4 was localized in the food vacuoles and cytoplasm of the erythrocytic stage of P. vivax. The differential substrate preferences depending on pH suggested a highly efficient mechanism to enlarge biological implications of VX-4, including hemoglobin degradation, maturation of plasmepsin, and remodeling of the parasite architecture during growth and development of P. vivax