Consumer Expertise or Credit Risk? An empirical analysis of mortgage pricing

Loan mortgage interest rates are usually the result of a bank-customer negotiation process. Credit risk, consumer cross-buying potential, bundling, financial market competition and other features affecting the bargaining power of the parties could affect price. We argue that, since mortgage loan is a complex product, consumer expertise could be a relevant factor for mortgage pricing. Using data on mortgage loan prices for a sample of 1055 households for the year 2005 (Bank of Spain Survey of Household Finances, EFF-2005), and including credit risk, costs, potential capacity of the consumer to generate future business and bank competition variables, the regression results indicate that consumer expertise-related metrics are highly significant as predictors of mortgage loan prices. Other factors such as credit risk and consumer cross-buying potential do not have such a significant impact on mortgage prices. Our empirical results are affected by the credit conditions prior to the financial crisis and could shed some light on this issue.

High-Throughput Sequencing of microRNAs in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells: Identification of Potential Weight Loss Biomarkers

INTRODUCTION: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are being increasingly studied in relation to energy metabolism and body composition homeostasis. Indeed, the quantitative analysis of miRNAs expression in different adiposity conditions may contribute to understand the intimate mechanisms participating in body weight control and to find new biomarkers with diagnostic or prognostic value in obesity management. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was the search for miRNAs in blood cells whose expression could be used as prognostic biomarkers of weight loss. METHODS: Ten Caucasian obese women were selected among the participants in a weight-loss trial that consisted in following an energy-restricted treatment. Weight loss was considered unsuccessful when <5% of initial body weight (non-responders) and successful when >5% (responders). At baseline, total miRNA isolated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) was sequenced with SOLiD v4. The miRNA sequencing data were validated by RT-PCR. RESULTS: Differential baseline expression of several miRNAs was found between responders and non-responders. Two miRNAs were up-regulated in the non-responder group (mir-935 and mir-4772) and three others were down-regulated (mir-223, mir-224 and mir-376b). Both mir-935 and mir-4772 showed relevant associations with the magnitude of weight loss, although the expression of other transcripts (mir-874, mir-199b, mir-766, mir-589 and mir-148b) also correlated with weight loss. CONCLUSIONS: This research addresses the use of high-throughput sequencing technologies in the search for miRNA expression biomarkers in obesity, by determining the miRNA transcriptome of PBMC. Basal expression of different miRNAs, particularly mir-935 and mir-4772, could be prognostic biomarkers and may forecast the response to a hypocaloric diet.

Viability Conditions for a Compartmentalized Protometabolic System: A Semi-Empirical Approach

In this work we attempt to find out the extent to which realistic prebiotic compartments, such as fatty acid vesicles, would constrain the chemical network dynamics that could have sustained a minimal form of metabolism. We combine experimental and simulation results to establish the conditions under which a reaction network with a catalytically closed organization (more specifically, an (M, R)-system) would overcome the potential problem of self-suffocation that arises from the limited accessibility of nutrients to its internal reaction domain. The relationship between the permeability of the membrane, the lifetime of the key catalysts and their efficiency (reaction rate enhancement) turns out to be critical. In particular, we show how permeability values constrain the characteristic time scale of the bounded protometabolic processes. From this concrete and illustrative example we finally extend the discussion to a wider evolutionary context.

Density-potential mapping in the standard and quantum electrodynamical time-dependent density functional theory

131 p.