Household investments in structured financial products: pulled or pushed?

Session 175 - Crisis: Individual InvestorsStructured financial products including credit-linked notes and collateralized debt obligations were popular before the credit crisis but then delivered substantial loss to investors. Driver for investment decision in those products is key to understanding the fundamental causes of the crisis. Classical portfolio theory suggests that investors would shun away from unfamiliar financial products. This familiarity bias holds especially for unsophisticated household investors. The rapid growth of structured products market, the newest financial innovations, presents an opportune setting to test such conventional wisdoms. Using unique household investment data from Hong Kong, we show that product distributors' selling intensity is an important determinant for investors' allocation in structured products. On the other hand, more financially literate investors, who are more capable of optimizing asset allocation, include less structured products into their portfolios. Important determinants according to mean-variance analysis, such as product premium, have little explanatory power to investor's allocation decisions. Our finding suggests that investments in structured products prior to the credit crisis were more likely to be pulled by distributors. This paper demonstrates the importance of financial literacy for investment decisions.postprintThe 2010 Annual Meeting of the Financial Management Association (FMA), New York, N.Y., 20-23 October 2010

Household investments in structured financial products: pulled or pushed?

Why did individual investors buy structured financial products? Were they too greedy to consider the risk involved? Or did the banks lure them to buy? Using unique household investment data from Hong Kong, we show that investor demand of such products (the ‘push’ effect) was not the key driver. Important determinants according to portfolio theories, such as product premium, have little explanatory power to investor's actual allocation decisions. More financially literate investors who can form reasonable expectations about stocks bought less. Education, IQ, and relationship with the distributing banks are statistically significant explanatory variables. However, we can only explain one-fifth of the cross-sectional variations of investment in structured products. The rest could be due to bounded rational investor behaviors and mis-selling by distributors.postprintThe 17th Conference on the Theories and Practices of Securities and Financial Markets, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 11-12 December 2009

Intermediate spin state stabilized by the Jahn-Teller distortion in La1/2Ba1/2CoO3

The recent high-resolution neutron and synchrotron diffraction measurements by Fauth et al. [Phys. Rev. B 65, 060401(R) (2002)] demonstrated the existence of an intermediate spin state in half-doped La1/2Ba1/2CoO3 which is accompanied by a long-range tetragonal Jahn-Teller distortion. In this paper we find that the charge uniform ferromagnetic intermediate spin state strongly couples to the Jahn-Teller effect and is stable only at moderate distortion of 1%. While the calculated magnetic moment of this state is in agreement with the experimentally measured one, the corresponding orbital ordering is the nearest-neighboring alternating d3x2-r2/d3y2-r2, instead of the observed uniform d3z2-r2 orbital ordering. A calculation is carried out using the self-consistent unrestricted Hartree-Fock approximation on a realistic multiband d-p Hubbard Hamiltonian and a generalized Jahn-Teller coupling model, in which all possible spin-, charge-, and orbital-ordered states are considered.published_or_final_versio

Structural Simplification of Bedaquiline: the Discovery of 3-(4-(N,N-dimethylaminomethyl)phenyl)quinoline Derived Antitubercular Lead Compounds

Bedaquiline (BDQ) is a novel and highly potent last-line antituberculosis drug that was approved by the US FDA in 2013. Owing to its stereo-structural complexity, chemical synthesis and compound optimization are rather difficult and expensive. This study describes the structural simplification of bedaquiline while preserving antitubercular activity. The compound's structure was split into fragments and reassembled in various combinations while replacing the two chiral carbon atoms with an achiral linkage instead. Four series of analogues were designed; these candidates retained their potent antitubercular activity at sub-microgram per mL concentrations against both sensitive and multidrug-resistant (MDR) Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. Six out of the top nine MIC-ranked candidates were found to inhibit mycobacterial ATP synthesis activity with IC50 values between 20 and 40 μm, one had IC50>66 μm, and two showed no inhibition, despite their antitubercular activity. These results provide a basis for the development of chemically less complex, lower-cost bedaquiline derivatives and describe the identification of two derivatives with antitubercular activity against non-ATP synthase related targets

Safety of overlapping inpatient orthopaedic surgery: A multicenter study

BackgroundAlthough overlapping surgery is used to maximize efficiency, more empirical data are needed to guide patient safety. We conducted a retrospective cohort study to evaluate the safety of overlapping inpatient orthopaedic surgery, as judged by the occurrence of perioperative complications.MethodsAll inpatient orthopaedic surgical procedures performed at 5 academic institutions from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2015, were included. Overlapping surgery was defined as 2 skin incisions open simultaneously for 1 surgeon. In comparing patients who underwent overlapping surgery with those who underwent non-overlapping surgery, the primary outcome was the occurrence of a perioperative complication within 30 days of the surgical procedure, and secondary outcomes included all-cause 30-day readmission, length of stay, and mortality. To determine if there was an association between overlapping surgery and a perioperative complication, we tested for non-inferiority of overlapping surgery, assuming a null hypothesis of an increased risk of 50%. We used an inverse probability of treatment weighted regression model adjusted for institution, procedure type, demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, comorbidities), admission type, admission severity of illness, and clustering by surgeon.ResultsAmong 14,135 cases, the frequency of overlapping surgery was 40%. The frequencies of perioperative complications were 1% in the overlapping surgery group and 2% in the non-overlapping surgery group. The overlapping surgery group was non-inferior to the non-overlapping surgery group (odds ratio [OR], 0.61 [90% confidence interval (CI), 0.45 to 0.83]; p < 0.001), with reduced odds of perioperative complications (OR, 0.61 [95% CI, 0.43 to 0.88]; p = 0.009). For secondary outcomes, there was a significantly lower chance of all-cause 30-day readmission in the overlapping surgery group (OR, 0.67 [95% CI, 0.52 to 0.87]; p = 0.003) and shorter length of stay (e, 0.94 [95% CI, 0.89 to 0.99]; p = 0.012). There was no difference in mortality.ConclusionsOur results suggest that overlapping inpatient orthopaedic surgery does not introduce additional perioperative risk for the complications that we evaluated. The suitability of this practice should be determined by individual surgeons on a case-by-case basis with appropriate informed consent.Level of evidenceTherapeutic Level III. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence

High accuracy genotyping directly from genomic DNA using a rolling circle amplification based assay

BACKGROUND: Rolling circle amplification of ligated probes is a simple and sensitive means for genotyping directly from genomic DNA. SNPs and mutations are interrogated with open circle probes (OCP) that can be circularized by DNA ligase when the probe matches the genotype. An amplified detection signal is generated by exponential rolling circle amplification (ERCA) of the circularized probe. The low cost and scalability of ligation/ERCA genotyping makes it ideally suited for automated, high throughput methods. RESULTS: A retrospective study using human genomic DNA samples of known genotype was performed for four different clinically relevant mutations: Factor V Leiden, Factor II prothrombin, and two hemochromatosis mutations, C282Y and H63D. Greater than 99% accuracy was obtained genotyping genomic DNA samples from hundreds of different individuals. The combined process of ligation/ERCA was performed in a single tube and produced fluorescent signal directly from genomic DNA in less than an hour. In each assay, the probes for both normal and mutant alleles were combined in a single reaction. Multiple ERCA primers combined with a quenched-peptide nucleic acid (Q-PNA) fluorescent detection system greatly accellerated the appearance of signal. Probes designed with hairpin structures reduced misamplification. Genotyping accuracy was identical from either purified genomic DNA or genomic DNA generated using whole genome amplification (WGA). Fluorescent signal output was measured in real time and as an end point. CONCLUSIONS: Combining the optimal elements for ligation/ERCA genotyping has resulted in a highly accurate single tube assay for genotyping directly from genomic DNA samples. Accuracy exceeded 99 % for four probe sets targeting clinically relevant mutations. No genotypes were called incorrectly using either genomic DNA or whole genome amplified sample

QueryForm: A Simple Zero-shot Form Entity Query Framework

Zero-shot transfer learning for document understanding is a crucial yet under-investigated scenario to help reduce the high cost involved in annotating document entities. We present a novel query-based framework, QueryForm, that extracts entity values from form-like documents in a zero-shot fashion. QueryForm contains a dual prompting mechanism that composes both the document schema and a specific entity type into a query, which is used to prompt a Transformer model to perform a single entity extraction task. Furthermore, we propose to leverage large-scale query-entity pairs generated from form-like webpages with weak HTML annotations to pre-train QueryForm. By unifying pre-training and fine-tuning into the same query-based framework, QueryForm enables models to learn from structured documents containing various entities and layouts, leading to better generalization to target document types without the need for target-specific training data. QueryForm sets new state-of-the-art average F1 score on both the XFUND (+4.6%~10.1%) and the Payment (+3.2%~9.5%) zero-shot benchmark, with a smaller model size and no additional image input.Comment: Accepted to Findings of ACL 202

Hybrid plasmonic gap modes in metal film-coupled dimers and their physical origins revealed by polarization resolved dark field spectroscopy

2015-2016 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Removal of malachite green from water by Firmiana simplex wood fiber

This study shows that wood fiber of Phoenix tree (Firmiana simplex) is an effective adsorbent for malachite green (MG). MG sorption behavior onto the wood adsorbent was investigated in this study. Basic condition was favorable for MG adsorption to the adsorbent. The pseudo second order equation well described MG adsorption onto the wood adsorbent. The Freundlich Isotherm could describe the sorption data. The positive value of Delta H-0 showed that adsorption of malachite green onto the wood adsorbent was endothermic. The negative values of Delta G at various temperatures indicate the spontaneous nature of the adsorption process

Earthworms (Eisenia foetida, Savigny) mucus as complexing ligand for imidacloprid

Earthworms can excrete copious amounts of mucus that may affect the fraction, transport fate, and bioavailability of contaminants in soil. However, interaction of mucus with organic contaminants is still not well-known. In the present study, complexation properties of surface mucus (from the earthworm species Eisenia foetida, Savigny) with imidacloprid were investigated using fluorescence excitation emission matrix (EEM) spectroscopy. It was found that carbohydrates and proteins are major components in mucus of this species. Two fluorescent peaks belonging to protein-like substances were identified in the EEM spectrum of mucus. The protein-like fluorescence was clearly quenched by imidacloprid, indicating that the protein-like substances reacted strongly with imidacloprid. The fluorescence quenching processes was governed by a static process. The values of effective quenching constant (logK (a)) for these two peaks were 11.46 and 7.96, respectively, indicating that there is a strong interaction between mucus and imidacloprid and mucus-imidacloprid complexes are formed. Higher binding constants (logK (b) = 25.6 and 14.0) than those for heavy metals binding to dissolved organic matter or organic pollutants binding to proteins confirm the strong complexation between mucus and imidacloprid. Our study implies that earthworm surface mucus may significantly affect the fraction, toxicity, and bioavailability of organic contaminants in the soil due to its high affinity for organic contaminants