Finances of Egyptian listed firms and the performance of the Egyptian stock exchange

This paper analyzes the finances of Egypt's listed firms and the performance of the Egyptian stock exchange during the period 2003-07/08. Egyptian companies can be clearly divided into a top tier and a second tier. Egypt's top tier of listed firms tends to finance themselves mainly from operating cash flows, trade credits, and other short-term borrowing. This raises questions as to whether recent performance could have been even better had these firms done more in the way of long-term financing and long-term investment. This issue is even starker for a large second tier of much smaller firms. Regarding the stock market, the analysis finds that the Egyptian Exchange has experienced extraordinary market capitalization growth fueled by strong price increases. Market activity has been increasing as well, but reached expected levels only recently. Despite strong improvement, however, many companies remain illiquid. In its ability to raise capital, Egypt seems to do well, but privatizations and relatively low gross fixed capital formation might distort this picture.Debt Markets,Access to Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Emerging Markets

Bank ownership and performance in the Middle East and North Africa region

Although both domestic and foreign private banks have gained ground in MENA in recent years, state banks continue to play an important role in many countries. Using a MENA bank-level panel dataset for the period 2001-08, the paper contributes to the empirical literature by documenting recent ownership trends and assessing the role of ownership and bank performance in MENA while accounting for key bank characteristics such as size and balance sheet composition. The paper analyzes headline performance indicators as well as their key drivers and finds that state banks exhibit significantly weaker performance, despite their larger size. This result is mainly driven by a larger holding of government securities, higher costs due to larger staffing numbers, and larger loan loss provisions reflecting weaker asset quality. The results reflect both operational inefficiencies and policy mandates. The paper also provides a detailed performance analysis of foreign and listed banks. Foreign banks are fairly new in MENA, yet perform on par with domestic banks despite their smaller size and higher investment costs. Listed banks exhibit superior performance driven by higher interest margins even in the face of higher costs associated with listing. Taken together, the results do not reject the development role for state banks, but do show that their intervention comes at a cost. As such, there is scope to reduce the share of state banks in some countries and to clarify the mandates, improve the governance, and strengthen the operational efficiency of most state banks in MENA.Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Finance,Debt Markets,Corporate Law,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress

Large Scale Groundwater Modelling

The goal of this report is to evaluate large scale groundwater modelling techniques to be used at the European scale for flood and drought forecasting. In the current LISFLOOD model, the groundwater component is represented by two interconnected linear reservoirs, with the outflow in some unit of time being proportional to the volume of water stored in the reservoirs. Simulations with this setup have shown to yield acceptable reproductions of the observed hydrograph, hence the model can be considered to be sufficiently detailed to predict floods. However, a good reproduction of river discharges does not imply that other hydrological variables (soil moisture, groundwater levels) or processes (percolation, plant water uptake, and retention processes) are well reproduced. LISFLOOD is not able to simulate the spatial distribution of groundwater levels, hence a comparison with groundwater observations is not possible. This document proposes possible ways to adapt LISFLOOD such that it can provide an estimate of the groundwater elevation in space and time. This would also allow distributed groundwater measurements to be used in the calibration and validation of the model, and to gain insight in the local hydrological processes and their representation in the model.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

The effects of neutropenia and G-CSF on the hematopoietic stem cell

In chapter one an introduction to this thesis is given. Hematopoiesis is introduced,as a process of blood formation from hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) to effector cell;a differentiation process which takes place in the bone marrow. The indispensablecontribution of the HSC’s microenvironment (HSC niche) within this process is discussed.Neutrophils, one of the effector cells coming forth from myeloid differentiation, is presentedas a possible contributor to the HSC niche. In the chapters that follow we aim to interrogatethe neutrophil as an HSC regulating niche cell by studying a neutropenia mouse model,G-CSF contribution and zooming in on a neutropenic patient.In chapter two we exploit our conditional knockout mouse model of neutropenia, whereHSCs remain genetically intact, to thoroughly test the neutrophil as an HSC regulating nichecell. We observed that HSCs were kept quiescent in the absence of neutrophils, in itselfan intriguing counterintuitive finding. Upon transcriptional analysis of HSCs residing in aneutropenic environment it was clear that HSCs were myeloid biased, yet not excessivelycycling to fill the void in the periphery. Interestingly HSCs did not show an age-relatedimmunophenotype as their control counterparts did. This spiked our interest, and we thuscompared transcriptomes of our model to readily available aged murine transcriptomes.Leading us to the finding that neutrophils play a role in steady-state interferon tonus,through natural killer cells, speculating on the consequential role of neutrophils in aging.Chapter three focuses on the role of chronic exposure of G-CSF, one of the mainhematopoietic cytokines responsible for neutrophil production, in steady statehematopoiesis and neutropenia. We demonstrate that long-term exposure to G-CSF at dosesrelevant to the treatment of neutropenia does not attenuate the long-term competitiverepopulation ability of HSCs in a mouse model of neutropenia. HSCs in neutropenic micedisplay transcriptional wiring consistent with endogenously elevated levels of G-CSF, butadministration of exogenous G-CSF does not induce exit of quiescence, DNA damage, or lossof serial repopulation ability of HSCs.In chapter four we describe a congenital neutropenic patient with a homozygousmutation in the hinge motif of the G-CSF receptor (CSF3R). By analysis of the bone marrowwe conclude that the di-proline hinge motif in the extracellular cytokine receptor homologydomain of CSF3R is critical for adequate neutrophil production, but dispensable for in vivoterminal neutrophil maturation. Our in vitro experiments suggest that crippling mutationsof the hinge motif cause hypo-responsiveness to G-CSF treatment, marking them as aseparate clinical entity.Finally, in chapter five, divers aspects of the thesis are summarized, discussed and putinto future perspective

Financial development : structure and dynamics

This paper analyzes the bright and dark sides of the financial development process through the lenses of the four fundamental frictions to which agents are exposed -- information asymmetry, enforcement, collective action, and collective cognition. Financial development is shaped by the efforts of market participants to grind down or circumvent these frictions, a process further spurred by financial innovation and scale and network effects. The analysis leads to broad predictions regarding the sequencing and convexity of the dynamic paths for a battery of financial development indicators. The method used also yields a robust way to benchmark the financial development paths followed by individual countries or regions. The paper explores the reasons for path deviations and gaps relative to the benchmark. Demand-related effects (past output growth), financial crashes, and supply-related effects (the quality of the enabling environment) all play an important role. Informational frictions are easier to overcome than contractual frictions, not least because of the transferability of financial innovation across borders.Debt Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Emerging Markets,Access to Finance,Banks&Banking Reform

Benchmarking financial development

Capitalizing on recent improvements in the availability of cross-country financial sector data, this paper proposes a standard methodology for benchmarking the policy component of financial development. Systematic controls are introduced to isolate main structural country characteristics and a principal components analysis is used to help identify a parsimonious set of ten"core"outcome indicators from a broader set of twenty seven potential indicators covering different dimensions of development in both financial institutions and financial markets. Such a broad-based approach helps reveal important determinants and regularities of the process of financial development. The paper also identifies some of the main data gaps that will need to be filled to allow further progress in financial benchmarking looking forward.Debt Markets,,Emerging Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Finance

Thermal bulk polymerization of cholesteryl acrylate

The thermal bulk polymerization of cholesteryl acrylate was carried out in the solid phase, the mesomorphic phase, and the liquid phase to study the effect of monomer ordering on polymerization rate and polymer properties. The rate increased with decreasing ordering (or enhanced mobility) of the monomer. Formation of inhibitive by-products during the polymerization limited conversions to 35%. The sedimentation constant S0 = 6.2 S was the same for the polymers obtained in the three phases. The weight-average molecular weight (w) was 480,000 as determined by ultracentrifugation. Poly-(cholesteryl acrylate) formed in bulk is randomly coiled when dissolved in tetrahydrofuran. The thermal properties of the monomer are given