European sovereign debt crisis and linkage of long-term government bond yields

Based on the robust cross-correlation function approach developed by Hong (2001),　this paper investigates the causality-in-mean and the causality-in-variance of long-term bond yields in seven countries including “PIIGS†(Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain), Germany, and France. A main contribution of the study is to assess the impacts of the recent European sovereign debt crisis on relationships of the bond yields. We find some evidence of the mean spillover effects, especially from Portugal and France before the crisis and from Portugal and Italy after the crisis. In contrast, the variance spillover effects from Germany interestingly strengthened through the debt crisis in particular despite the apparent lack of its mean transmission effects, whilst major sources of volatility spillover effects had been Portugal and France prior to the crisis.Volatility spillover, European sovereign debt crisis

Transmission of stock prices amongst European countries before and during the Greek sovereign debt crisis

This article employs the lag-augmented VAR (LA-VAR) approach developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) to analyze the transmission of stock indices among the European PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), Germany and the UK before and during the European sovereign debt crisis. The entire sample period is broken down into two periods: Sample A (from January 2, 2007 to November 4, 2009) and Sample B (from November 5, 2009 to June 30, 2011). Our analysis revealed evidence of interdependence as reflected by the Granger causality primarily from Portugal and Ireland to several countries including Germany prior to the crisis. The study also found that a significant causal relationship mostly disappeared during the Greek sovereign debt crisis.

Five-Dimensional Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theories and Random Plane Partitions

Five-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories are investigated from the viewpoint of random plane partitions. It is shown that random plane partitions are factorizable as q-deformed random partitions so that they admit the interpretations as five-dimensional Yang-Mills and as topological string amplitudes. In particular, they lead to the exact partition functions of five-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills with the Chern-Simons terms. We further show that some specific partitions, which we call the ground partitions, describe the perturbative regime of the gauge theories. We also argue their role in string theory. The gauge instantons give the deformation of the ground partition.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figures, typos correcte

Enacting Scientific Knowledge : A Case Study of the Japanese HPV Vaccine Crisis

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is responsible for most cervical cancer cases. In Japan, the HPV vaccination coverage has dramatically fallen since the government suspended proactive recommendations for the vaccines in 2013, following sensational media reports on alleged adverse reactions. The suspension has not been lifted till today. The government has been criticized by medical establishment for lacking evidence-based policymaking. Grounded on the constructivist approach to scientific knowledge, the study examines how scientific knowledge has been enacted, interpreted, translated into policies by the government and the pro-vaccine institutions throughout the HPV vaccine crisis in Japan. Method: The study analyses the minutes of the governmental expert committee, as well as the proceedings, statements, and publications of three pro-vaccine and pro-resumption institutions. The analysis is conducted using the qualitative content analysis method. Results: The study shows that the government suspended recommendations based on an etiological uncertainty instead of epidemiological calculations and has prolonged the suspension based on the framing of HPV vaccination as an individual’s protection by choice in contrast to seeing it as a public health issue to be promoted in a national effort. It also shows that there is ample heterogeneity among the pro-vaccine and pro-resumption institutions in terms of grounds of arguments and scientific evidence they use to call for an early resumption of governmental recommendations for the HPV vaccines. Conclusions: The study shows a way to understand the Japanese government’s HPV vaccination policy over the past eight years, beyond criticizing it as lacking evidence that supports their policy. This analysis highlights the complexity of scientific knowledge, thus how contingently scientific knowledge come to be enacted as a basis for policy decisions, depending on the values and purposes the decision makers believes in

The Core, Periphery, and Beyond: Stock Market Comovements among EU and Non-EU Countries

We thank conference participants at the 2016 Financial Management Association and our discussant Fernando Moreira, and two anonymous referees for immensely helpful comments. We also thank Andrew Patton and James P. LeSage for sharing their MATLAB codes for computing quantile dependence. The authors of this paper are responsible for any errors or omissions. The Securities and Exchange Commission, as a matter of policy, disclaims responsibility for any private publication or statement by any of its employees. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission or the authors\u27 colleagues on the staff of the Commission

Real Oil Prices, Real Economic Activity, Real Interest Rates, and the US Dollar: A Cointegration Analysis with Structural Breaks

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the relationship among real oil prices, global economic activity, real value of the US dollar, and real interest rates during the period 1988:1 to 2011:12. We employ the Gregory and Hansen (1996) cointegration test with structural breaks to investigate the long-run equilibrium and analyze the short-term Granger causality as well. Our findings indicate that real oil prices are cointegrated with the three factors mentioned above and are affected positively by real economic activity and negatively by real interest rates and the real value of the US dollar. We also find significant short-run causality from real economic activity to real oil prices, but no significant causality from real interest rate and real value of US dollar to real oil price is detected. These findings are relevant for both policymakers and investors who wish to conduct forecasts for future oil prices on the basis of a solid understanding of its key drivers

Molecular characterization of O-methyltransferases involved in isoquinoline alkaloid biosynthesis in Coptis japonica

O-Methyltransferases, which catalyze the production of small molecules in plants, play a crucial role in determining biosynthetic pathways in secondary metabolism because of their strict substrate specificity. Using three O-methyltransferase (OMT) cDNAs that are involved in berberine biosynthesis, we investigated the structure that was essential for this substrate specificity and the possibility of creating a chimeric enzyme with novel substrate specificity. Since each OMT has a relatively well-conserved C-terminal putative S-adenosyl-L-methionine-binding domain, we first exchanged the N-terminal halves of different OMTs. Among the 6 combinations that we tested for creating chimeric OMTs, 5 constructs produced detectable amounts of recombinant proteins, and only one of these with an N-terminal half of 6-OMT and a C-terminal half of 4′-OMT (64′-OMT) showed methylation activity with isoquinoline alkaloids as a substrate. Further enzymological analysis of 64′-OMT reaction product indicated that 64′-OMT retained the regio-specificity of 6-OMT. Further examination of the N-terminal region of 64′-OMT showed that about 90 amino acid residues in the N-terminal half were critical for reaction specificity. The creation of OMTs with novel reactivity is discussed