Proceedings of the Conference on Globalization and Its Discontents

There are variant findings regarding whether the foreign investors’ trading decisions have a significant impact on emerging markets’ future stock returns or whether their decisions are primarily driven by past returns. This study attempts to determine the bilateral interaction between foreign investors’ trading activity and returns in Turkish stock market by utilizing Granger-causality and OLS methodologies. The results gathered from VAR analysis imply a strong Granger-causality between foreign net portfolio inflows and stock returns in Turkish stock market. The results indicate that foreign investors follow a negative (contrarian) feedback strategy by buying (selling) past losers (winners). The results gathered from OLS analyses further support the VAR analysis findings indicating that, contemporaneously, there is a significant bilateral interaction between foreign portfolio inflows and stock returns reflecting the existence of price pressure effect and return chasing behavior in Turkish stock market. Overall, both analyses demonstrate that current and lagged stock returns are important determinants in foreign investors’ asset allocation strategies. Furthermore, the findings of this study reveal that foreign investors frequently change their positions on majority of the stocks in Turkish stock market which might basically stem from the absence of exit barriers in Turkish financial markets.

A High permormance hardware architecture for an sad reuse based hierarchical motion estimation algorithm for H.264 video coding

In this paper, we present a high performance and low cost hardware architecture for real-time implementation of an SAD reuse based hierarchical motion estimation algorithm for H.264 / MPEG4 Part 10 video coding. This hardware is designed to be used as part of a complete H.264 video coding system for portable applications. The proposed architecture is implemented in Verilog HDL. The Verilog RTL code is verified to work at 68 MHz in a Xilinx Virtex II FPGA. The FPGA implementation can process 27 VGA frames (640x480) or 82 CIF frames (352x288) per second

Genetic and Phenotypic Parameters of Body Weight in Ettawa Grade Goats

The aim of this study was to estimate genetic and phenotypic parameters of growth traits consisting of birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW), 6 mo body weight (6WM), 12 mo body weight (12WM), and 18 mo body weight (18WM) of Ettawa Grade goats. The number of goat used to determine growth traits of BW, WW, 6WM, 12WM, and 18WM were 316; 316; 259; 259 and 165 heads, respectively. Data were analyzed using General Linear Model (GLM) to identify non-genetic effect. Estimation of genetic and phenotypic parameters including heritability, repeatability, genetic and phenotypic correlation were calculated using Restricted Maximum Likelihood and GLM. Genetic trends were calculated using the regression of mean breeding values on birth year. The results showed that parity and type of birth had significant (P<0.05) influence on all growth traits. Estimated heritability of birth, weaning, 6WM, 12WM, and 18WM were 0.54±0.12; 0.35±0.07; 0.37±0.09; 0.68±0.16 and 0.63±0.19, respectively. Estimated repeatability of WW, 6WM, 12WM and 18WM, WW, 6WM, 12WM and 18WM were 0.98±0.01; 0.97±0.01; 0.94±0.03; 0.71±0.12 and 0.91±0.04, respectively. The genetic trends for traits of BW and 18MW were decreased fluctuatively. However, the WW, 6MW, 12MW were increased fluctuatively. The high and positive genetic correlations between all growth traits and 12WM traits in this study indicated that selection for high 12WM will improve genetic merit in Ettawa Grade goats

Strategic, tactical decisions and information in Rapid Manufacturing supply chain

The efficiency and agility of its supply chain is vital to the commercial success of any product. Sharing strategic and tactical information effectively within the supply chain is often a key factor in achieving this goal. This paper proposes a framework to identify strategic, tactical decisions and information. The framework is used to conduct a sector based analysis of the Rapid Manufacturing (RM) industry. The decisions and information identified include amongst others various supply chain strategies and technical information

Neutrino Constraints on the Dark Matter Total Annihilation Cross Section

In the indirect detection of dark matter through its annihilation products, the signals depend on the square of the dark matter density, making precise knowledge of the distribution of dark matter in the Universe critical for robust predictions. Many studies have focused on regions where the dark matter density is greatest, e.g., the Galactic Center, as well as on the cosmic signal arising from all halos in the Universe. We focus on the signal arising from the whole Milky Way halo; this is less sensitive to uncertainties in the dark matter distribution, and especially for flatter profiles, this halo signal is larger than the cosmic signal. We illustrate this by considering a dark matter model in which the principal annihilation products are neutrinos. Since neutrinos are the least detectable Standard Model particles, a limit on their flux conservatively bounds the dark matter total self-annihilation cross section from above. By using the Milky Way halo signal, we show that previous constraints using the cosmic signal can be improved on by 1-2 orders of magnitude; dedicated experimental analyses should be able to improve both by an additional 1-2 orders of magnitude.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; Matches version published in Phys. Rev.

Further evidence on the link between finance and growth: An international analysis of community banking and economic performance

We seek to contribute to both the finance-growth literature and the community banking literature by testing the effects of the relative health of community banks on economic growth and investigating potential transmission mechanisms for these effects using data from 1993–2000 on 49 nations. Data from both developed and developing nations suggest that larger market shares and higher efficiency rankings for small, private, domestically owned banks are associated with better economic performance, and that the marginal benefits of larger shares are greater when the banks are more efficient. Only mixed support is found for hypothesized transmission mechanisms through improved financing for SMEs or greater overall bank credit flows. The data from developing nations is also consistent with favourable economic effects from foreign-owned banks, but unfavourable effects from state-owned banks.banks, community banking, SMEs, financial development, economic growth, international

Further evidence on the link between finance and growth: An international analysis of community banking and economic performance

We seek to contribute to both the finance-growth literature and the community banking literature by testing the effects of the relative health of community banks on economic growth and investigating potential transmission mechanisms for these effects using data from 1993–2000 on 49 nations. Data from both developed and developing nations suggest that larger market shares and higher efficiency rankings for small, private, domestically owned banks are associated with better economic performance, and that the marginal benefits of larger shares are greater when the banks are more efficient. Only mixed support is found for hypothesized transmission mechanisms through improved financing for SMEs or greater overall bank credit flows. The data from developing nations is also consistent with favourable economic effects from foreign-owned banks, but unfavourable effects from state-owned banks.banks; community banking; SMEs; financial development; economic growth; international