The causal relationships in mean and variance between stock returns and foreign institutional investment in India

This paper examines the causalities in mean and variance between stock returns and Foreign Institutional Investment (FII) in India. The analysis in this paper applies the Cross Correlation Function approach from Cheung and Ng (1996), and uses daily data for the timeframe of January 1999 to March 2008 divided into two periods before and after May 2003. Empirical results showed that there are uni-directional causalities in mean and variance from stock returns to FII flows irrelevant of the sample periods, while the reverse causalities in mean and variance are only found in the period beginning with 2003. These results point to FII flows having exerted an impact on the movement of Indian stock prices during the more recent period.

Interaction of powers in the Philippine presidential system

The executive - legislative relations in the Philippines have been described in two contrasting stories, namely the "strong president" story, and the "strong congress" story. This paper tries to consolidate the existing arguments and propose a new perspective focusing on the "compromise exchange" between the president and the congress across the different policy areas. It considers that the policy outcome is not brought by unilateral power of the president or the congress, but formed as the product of such an exchange. Interaction of powers and their complementary function are addressed. Furthermore, aside from the constitutional power, the weak party discipline is pointed out as a key factor in making the exchange possible.