The Performance of International Equity Portfolios

This paper evaluates the ability of U.S. investors to allocate their foreign equity portfolios across 44 countries over a 25-year period. We find that U.S. portfolios achieved a significantly higher Sharpe ratio than foreign benchmarks, especially since 1990. We test whether this strong performance owed to trading expertise or longer-term allocation expertise. The evidence is overwhelmingly against trading expertise. While U.S. investors did abstain from momentum trading and instead sold past winners, we find no evidence that these past winners subsequently underperformed. In addition, conditional performance measures, which directly test reallocating into (out of) markets that subsequently outperformed (underperformed), suggest no significant trading expertise. In contrast, we offer strong evidence of longer-term allocation expertise: If we fix portfolio weights at the end of 1989 and do not allow reallocations, we still find superior performance in the recent period.

An Analytical Study for Subsonic Oblique Wing Transport Concept

The oblique wing concept has been investigated for subsonic transport application for a cruise Mach number of 0.95. Three different mission applications were considered and the concept analyzed against the selected mission requirements. Configuration studies determined the best area of applicability to be a commercial passenger transport mission. The critical parameter for the oblique wing concept was found to be aspect ratio which was limited to a value of 6.0 due to aeroelastic divergence. Comparison of the concept final configuration was made with fixed winged configurations designed to cruise at Mach 0.85 and 0.95. The crossover Mach number for the oblique wing concept was found to be Mach 0.91 for takeoff gross weight and direct operating cost. Benefits include reduced takeoff distance, installed thrust and mission block fuel and improved community noise characteristics. The variable geometry feature enables the final configuration to increase range by 10% at Mach 0.712 and to increase endurance by as much as 44%

Finite Density QCD in the Chiral Limit

We present the first results of an exact simulation of full QCD at finite density in the chiral limit. We have used a MFA (Microcanonical Fermionic Average) inspired approach for the reconstruction of the Grand Canonical Partition Function of the theory; using the fugacity expansion of the fermionic determinant we are able to move continuously in the ($\beta -\mu$) plane with $m=0$.Comment: 3 pages, LaTeX, 3 figures, uses espcrc2.sty, psfig. Talk presented by A. Galante at Lattice 97. Correction of some reference

Appraisal of an iterative method for bound states

Iterative method for calculating bound state eigenvalues and properties of radial Schroedinger equatio

Current Account Sustainability and Relative Reliability

The sustainability of the large and persistent U.S. current account deficits is one of the biggest issues currently being confronted by international macroeconomists. Some very plausible theories suggest that the substantial global imbalances can continue in a benign manner, other equally plausible theories predict a disorderly resolution, and in general it is very difficult to discern between competing theories. To inform the debates, we view competing theories through the perspective of the relative reliability of the data the theories rely on. Our analysis of the dark matter theory is cursory; from a relative reliability perspective, it fails as it is built on the assumption that an item that is largely unmeasured is the most accurate component of the entire set of international accounts. Similarly, the best data currently available suggest that U.S. returns differentials are much smaller than implied by the exorbitant privilege theory. Our analysis opens up questions about potential inconsistencies in the international accounts, which we address by providing rough estimates of various holes in the accounts.

U.S. International Equity Investment and Past and Prospective Returns

Counter to extant stylized facts, using newly available data on country allocations in U.S. investors’ foreign equity portfolios we find that (i) U.S. investors do not exhibit returns-chasing behavior, but, consistent with partial portfolio rebalancing, tend to sell past winners; and (ii) U.S. investors increase portfolio weights on a country’s equity market just prior to its strong performance, behavior inconsistent with an informational disadvantage. Over the past two decades, U.S. investors’ foreign equity portfolios outperformed a value-weighted foreign benchmark by 160 basis points per year.

Creating the ‘ethics industry': Mary Warnock, in vitro fertilization and the history of bioethics in Britain

Recent decades have seen a shift in the management and discussion of biomedicine. Issues once considered by doctors and scientists are now handled by a diverse array of participants, including philosophers, lawyers, theologians and lay representatives. This new approach, known as ‘bioethics', has become the norm in regulatory committees and public debate. In this article, I argue that bioethics emerged as a valued enterprise in Britain during the 1980s because it fulfilled, and linked, the concerns of several groups. My analysis centres on the moral philosopher Mary Warnock, who chaired a government inquiry into human fertilization and embryology between 1982 and 1984, and became a strong advocate of bioethics. I detail how Warnock's promotion of bioethics tallied with the Conservative government's desire for increased surveillance of hitherto autonomous professions – while fulfilling her own belief that philosophers should engage in public affairs. And I also show that Warnock simultaneously promoted bioethics to doctors and scientists as an essential safeguard against declining political and public trust. This stance, I argue, framed bioethics as a vital intermediary between politics, the public, and biomedicine, and explains the growth and endurance of what the Guardian identified as an ethics industry

Proactively Monitoring Departmental Clinical IT Systems with an Open Source Availability System

The goal of all radiology information technology (IT) support organizations is excellent customer service through the availability of critical clinical information services, such as picture archiving communication systems and radiology information systems. Despite these goals, IT support personnel often act like firefighters, reacting to each problem, but unable to prevent or predict other problems. Proactive support is always more desirable than reactive support. Warning signs may exist well before a technical issue becomes system wide or the user is affected. The objective for IT support organizations in health care should be to maximize system uptime by using proactive monitoring systems for failures and to automatically detect failures through systems management tools. We report on the implementation of Nagios, an open source monitoring tool, as an availability management system in a diagnostic imaging department and on customized applications and protocols specific to radiology needs