Financial Repression, Bank Deposits, Real Assets and Black Money

Consider real assets and bank deposits. If returns on deposits improve due to reduction in financial repression, then investment in real assets can fall. However, if role of black money in real asset (secondary) market falls, then investment in the primary market can rise. So financial development will occur if the effect of reduction in financial repression is stronger than that of reduction of black money. This is shown in a model, with forced sales (due to liquidity shock), and strategic sales of real assets (under asymmetric information). Under some conditions, price is irrelevant for strategic trades.

Fatal Familial Insomnia: An Overview

Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) is an insidious prion disorder that tends to manifest itself as a patient reaches middle age following a pattern consistent with autosomal dominance. A wide range of symptoms are represented, many related to motor function and autonomic regulation, but degeneration of certain areas of the thalamus is present in every case. Genetically, the condition is transmitted only within families, but it has been demonstrated by Jackson et al. (2009) that FFI can be transmitted by exposure to/ingestion of infected material. A number of groundbreaking studies are discussed. These include the initial documentation of FFI as a prion disorder by Medori et al. (1992), the identification of codon 129 on PRNP as a locus for prion disease susceptibility by Palmer et al. (1991), the discovery that the aberrant isoform PrPsc requires the normal PrP protein in order to produce infectivity by Mallucci et al. (2003), and others. There are no effective treatments for FFI as of yet; scientists are still searching for all the pieces to the puzzle

Does Regionalism Hinder Multilateralism: A Case Study of India.

Today many developing countries fear that regional movements in other parts of the world will adversely impact their trade as regionalism overtakes multilateralism. The response has been that most of them are trying to get into one regional bloc or the other via regional trade arrangements (RTAs). In this paper we have investigated how India as a non-member country is affected by formation of RTAs like ASEAN, EU, NAFTA, and MERCOSUR..Controlling for non-RTA factors that influence exports, we find thatIndia?s exports to these RTAs seem to be affected not by the formation of these RTAs pese but by demand side factors.

Corporate Governance, Competition and Firm Performance: Evidence from India.

The aim of this paper is to show the interaction effect of product market competition and corporate governance variables on firm performance. While the linkage between internal governance mechanism and firm performance is well established in several studies, the interaction between internal and external governance mechanism has received scanty attention in emerging market economies. Here we have shown the independent and interaction effect of ownership and competition variable on firm productivity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we document that competition has in reality become a discernible force in developing economies. The econometric modelling result shows while the standalone effect of ownership variable on productivity is mostly insignificant, there is a strong positive interaction effect with competition variables.

Editorial Introduction: The utility and futility of 'the nation' in histories of Aotearoa New Zealand.

An introduction is presented which discusses articles in the issue on New Zealand history, including one on interracial rape and sexual violence in the 1860s, one on postcolonial methodology and the historical concept of the British World, and one on Whanganui Māori claims to the Whanganui River

Invading the Waikato: A postcolonial re-view

The article discusses images of the Waikato Region of New Zealand from the 1860s, examining them within the context of British colonization and invasion. It comments on photographs by surveyor Daniel Manders Beere and British Army Royal Artillery Regiment Assistant Surgeon William Temple. The author also comments on a map of New Zealand's North Island made by surveyor Charles Heaphy and a map of Newcastle, New Zealand, depicting its earlier names of Ngāruawāhia and Queenstown. Other topics include spatial history, postcolonialism, and the 1863 to 1864 British invasion of Waikato

Why is 100% Reserve Banking Inefficient?

Financial crises are an important concern today. One part of the problem is banking crises, at the root of which is the bank run problem. One solution is 100% reserve banking. But this is inefficient. The reasons are, however, not obvious. The literature on bank runs following Diamond and Dybvig (1983) is based on banks? role in consumption smoothing. However, the earlier (rich) literature is based on banks? role in issuing deposits, which are a component of money and are a source of credit. In this context, a high reserve ratio for commercial banks obviously decreases commercial bank credit. However, in general, it does not decrease total credit. Despite this, 100% reserve banking is inefficient if competitive banks have a comparative advantage over the central bank in providing credit. The paper ends by examining the implications of a decrease in gold reserves held by the central banks.

Environmental Sustainability and the Account of Genuine Wealth in India

In order to gauge the sustainability of the economic growth of nations, genuine savings rates are used as a ready comparable measure. Essentially it provides a measure of the sum of the change in various forms of capital, including manufactured, ecological (natural resource and pollution), human and knowledge capital. The depreciation in manufactured and natural capital during the economic growth process is deducted from the conventional national savings to measure genuine wealth. With increasing attention to global warming, the loss due to the increase in stock pollution of carbon emissions has also entered into the accounting exercise. However the damage from local flow and stock pollutants to human capital productivity has not got the same attention. This paper argues that in a developing country like India, where adverse human health impacts are known to be significant from local pollution and defensive expenditure is not forthcoming from the population at large, ignoring human productivity losses introduces a serious upward bias in the genuine wealth and savings measure especially with an increasing trend in emission of hazardous wastes. To this effect, it considers human capital as a function of both education and the stock pollutant in the Hamilton model that further raises the cost of pollutants. The paper suggests that, the depreciation in human capital may be taken as an increasing function of the local pollution generated in the system (following the current logic of using education expenditure as a proxy for enhancement in human capital). The attention to the local pollutants in the genuine wealth and savings measure would help focus developing country government policy on local pollution concurrently with their focus on global pollutants. The paper observes that current development of green accounting system in India is a step in the right direction, since it has attempted to account for health costs of pollution in some of the states.