Interdependence of Emerging Eastern European stock markets

One of the main developments in the global economy during the past decades has been the growth of emerging economies. Projections for their long-term growth, changes in the investment climate, corporate transparency and demography point to an increasing role for these emerging economies in the global economy. Today, emerging economies are usually considered as financial markets offering opportunities for high returns, good risk diversification and improved return-to-risk ratios. However, researchers have noted that these advantages may be in decline because of the increasing market integration. Nevertheless, it is likely that certain financial markets and specific sectors will remain partially segmented and somewhat insulated from the global economy for the year to come. This doctoral dissertation investigates several stock markets in Emerging Eastern Europe (EEE), including the ones in Russia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Slovenia. The objective is to analyze the returns and financial risks in these emerging markets from international investor’s point of view. This study also examines the segmentation/integration of these financial markets and the possibilities to diversify and hedge financial risk. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first includes a review of the theoretical background for the articles and a review of the literature on EEE stock markets. It includes an overview of the methodology and research design applied in the analysis and a summary of articles from the second part of this dissertation and their main findings. The second part consists of four research publications. This work contributes to studies on emerging stock markets in four ways. First, it adds to the body of research on the pricing of risk, providing new empirical evidence about partial stock market segmentation in EEE. The results suggest that the aggregate emerging market risk is a relevant driver for stock market returns and that this market risk can be used to price financial instruments and forecast their performance. Second, it contributes to the empirical research on the integration of stock markets, asset prices and exchange rates by identifying the relationships between these markets through volatility and asset pricing. The results show that certain sectors of stock markets in EEE are not as integrated as others. For example, the Polish consumer goods sector, the Hungarian telecommunications sector, and the Czech financial sector are somewhat isolated from their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. Nevertheless, an analysis of the impact of EU accession in 2004 on stock markets suggests that most of the EEE markets are becoming increasingly integrated with the global markets. Third, this thesis complements the scientific literature in the field of shock and volatility spillovers by examining the mechanism of spillover distribution among the EU and EEE countries. The results illustrate that spillovers in emerging markets are mostly from a foreign exchange to the stock markets. Moreover, the results show that the effects of external shocks on stock markets have increased after the enlargement of the EU in 2004. Finally, this study is unique because it analyzes the effects of foreign macroeconomic news on geographically closely related countries. The results suggest that the effects of macroeconomic announcements on volatility are significant and have effect that varies across markets and their sectors. Moreover, the results show that the foreign macroeconomic news releases, somewhat surprisingly, have a greater effect on the EEE markets than the local macroeconomic news. This dissertation has a number of implications for the industry and for practitioners. It analyses financial risk associated with investing in Emerging Eastern Europe. Investors may use this information to construct and optimize investment portfolios. Moreover, this dissertation provides insights for investors and portfolio managers considering asset allocation to protect value or obtain higher returns. The results have also implications for asset pricing and portfolio selection in light of macroeconomic news releases.

Emerging animal viruses: real threats or simple bystanders?

The list of animal viruses has been frequently added of new members raising permanent concerns to virologists and veterinarians. The pathogenic potential and association with disease have been clearly demonstrated for some, but not for all of these emerging viruses. This review describes recent discoveries of animal viruses and their potential relevance for veterinary practice. Dogs were considered refractory to influenza viruses until 2004, when an influenza A virus subtype H3N8 was transmitted from horses and produced severe respiratory disease in racing greyhounds in Florida/USA. The novel virus, named canine influenza virus (CIV), is considered now a separate virus lineage and has spread among urban canine population in the USA. A new pestivirus (Flaviviridae), tentatively called HoBi-like pestivirus, was identified in 2004 in commercial fetal bovine serum from Brazil. Hobi-like viruses are genetically and antigenically related to bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) and induce similar clinical manifestations. These novel viruses seem to be widespread in Brazilian herds and have also been detected in Southeast Asia and Europe. In 2011, a novel mosquito-borne orthobunyavirus, named Schmallenberg virus (SBV), was associated with fever, drop in milk production, abortion and newborn malformation in cattle and sheep in Germany. Subsequently, the virus disseminated over several European countries and currently represents a real treat for animal health. The origin of SBV is still a matter of debate but it may be a reassortant from previous known bunyaviruses Shamonda and Satuperi. Hepatitis E virus (HEV, family Hepeviridae) is a long known agent of human acute hepatitis and in 1997 was first identified in pigs. Current data indicates that swine HEV is spread worldwide, mainly associated with subclinical infection. Two of the four HEV genotypes are zoonotic and may be transmitted between swine and human by contaminated water and undercooked pork meat. The current distribution and impact of HEV infection in swine production are largely unknown. Avian gyrovirus type 2 (AGV2) is a newly described Gyrovirus, family Circoviridae, which was unexpectedly found in sera of poultry suspected to be infected with chicken anemia virus (CAV). AGV2 is closely related to CAV but displays sufficient genomic differences to be classified as a distinct species. AGV2 seems to be distributed in Brazil and also in other countries but its pathogenic role for chickens is still under investigation. Finally, the long time and intensive search for animal relatives of human hepatitis C virus (HCV) has led to the identification of novel hepaciviruses in dogs (canine hepacivirus [CHV]), horses (non-primate hepaciviruses [NPHV] or Theiler's disease associated virus [TDAV]) and rodents. For these, a clear and definitive association with disease is still lacking and only time and investigation will tell whether they are real disease agents or simple spectators.

Adult education policy in the European Union during the Lisbon decade : the shift to vocational adult learning and work skills matching

This doctoral dissertation investigates the adult education policy of the European Union (EU) in the framework of the Lisbon agenda 2000–2010, with a particular focus on the changes of policy orientation that occurred during this reference decade. The year 2006 can be considered, in fact, a turning point for the EU policy-making in the adult learning sector: a radical shift from a wide--ranging and comprehensive conception of educating adults towards a vocationally oriented understanding of this field and policy area has been observed, in particular in the second half of the so--called ‘Lisbon decade’. In this light, one of the principal objectives of the mainstream policy set by the Lisbon Strategy, that of fostering all forms of participation of adults in lifelong learning paths, appears to have muted its political background and vision in a very short period of time, reflecting an underlying polarisation and progressive transformation of European policy orientations. Hence, by means of content analysis and process tracing, it is shown that the new target of the EU adult education policy, in this framework, has shifted from citizens to workers, and the competence development model, borrowed from the corporate sector, has been established as the reference for the new policy road maps. This study draws on the theory of governance architectures and applies a post-ontological perspective to discuss whether the above trends are intrinsically due to the nature of the Lisbon Strategy, which encompasses education policies, and to what extent supranational actors and phenomena such as globalisation influence the European governance and decision--making. Moreover, it is shown that the way in which the EU is shaping the upgrading of skills and competences of adult learners is modeled around the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’, thus according a great deal of importance to the ‘new skills for new jobs’ and perhaps not enough to life skills in its broader sense which include, for example, social and civic competences: these are actually often promoted but rarely implemented in depth in the EU policy documents. In this framework, it is conveyed how different EU policy areas are intertwined and interrelated with global phenomena, and it is emphasised how far the building of the EU education systems should play a crucial role in the formation of critical thinking, civic competences and skills for a sustainable democratic citizenship, from which a truly cohesive and inclusive society fundamentally depend, and a model of environmental and cosmopolitan adult education is proposed in order to address the challenges of the new millennium. In conclusion, an appraisal of the EU’s public policy, along with some personal thoughts on how progress might be pursued and actualised, is outlined.

Internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises and impact of institutions on international entrepreneurship in emerging economies: the case of Russia

The doctoral study presents a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the institutional environment on the internationalization-based growth strategic choices of small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies. In responding to the calls for more research on institutions and international entrepreneurship, this dissertation extends the linkages between the two to the context of emerging economies. The study presents a comprehensive analysis of institutional challenges and their impact on the internationalization of SMEs in emerging economies, particularly in Russia. The research contributes to the adoption of the institution-based view in international entrepreneurship. The dissertation is presented through five research papers. Based on primary and secondary data, the study categorizes the possible sources of institutional influences on internationalization and empirically tests their impact by applying a method triangulation research design. The result of the conducted research is a proposed theoretical model of the institutional impact on the internationalization of SMEs in emerging economies. The model is specifically focused on the growth stage of the entrepreneurial process and considers only its internationalization facet. The research identifies and provides empirical support for the existence of a positive influence of a transparent and supportive regulatory environment, an institutionalized pool of general business knowledge, and collectivistic value orientation on the proclivity of SMEs to internationalize. A level of appreciation of entrepreneurial initiatives in home country and a greater positive institutional gap provide a positive impact on the international performance of SMEs. The research provides contextualized knowledge of the institutional impact on the internationalization of SMEs in Russia. The obtained results present theoretical value in terms of showing how the environmental conditions effect the entrepreneurial internationalization-based growth in emerging economies, providing the methodological insights into the measurement of the institutional effects, and empirically contextualizing the linkage between institutions and internationalization in the Russian business environment. The research also provides value for the business and policy making stakeholders by identifying ways of utilizing the conditions in the external institutional environment.

Germination ecology of Rhynchosia capitata: an emerging summer weed in Asia

Rhynchosia capitata is becoming an increasing problem in summer crops, such as cotton, soybean, pearl millet and mungbean in many Asian countries. Laboratory and greenhouse studies have been conducted to determine the effects of several environmental factors on seed germination patterns and seedling emergence of R. capitata. We investigated whether the diverse ecological factors such as temperature, light, salinity, moisture stress, pH, and soil depth affected germination and seedling emergence of R. capitata. Germination increased as temperature increased from 25ºC and significantly reduced at 45ºC. Presence or absence of light did not influence germination. Germination of R. capitata was sensitive to increased salt and moisture stress, as well as to seed burial depth. Only 48% of seeds germinated at 150 mM salt concentration compared to 100% in control (distilled water). Similarly, 15% of seeds germinated at an osmotic potential of ‑0.8 MPa compared to 88% at ‑0.2 MPa. The optimum pH for seed germination of R. capitata was 7 (98% germination), but the seeds also germinated at lower level of pH 5 (85%) and at higher level of pH 10 (75%). In seed burial trial, maximum seedling emergence of 93% occurred at 2 cm depth, and seedling did not emerge from a depth of 12 cm. The high germination ability of R. capitata under a wide range of ecological factors suggests that this species is likely to be the one to cause more problems in a near future, if not managed appropriately.

New and Emerging Challenges of the ICT-Mediated Health and Well-Being Services

This monograph dissertation looks into the field of ICT-mediated health and well-being services. Through six chapters that extend the work done in the reviewed and published articles, the dissertation focuses on new and emerging technologies, and to impact of their use on the beneficiary; the individual who eventually derives advantage from the services. As the field is currently going through major changes particularly in the OECD countries, the focus is on shortterm developments in the field and the analysis on the long term developments is cursory by nature. The dissertation includes theoretical and empirical elements. Most of the empirical elements are linked to product development and conceptualization performed in the national MyWellbeing project that ended in 2010. In the project, the emphasis was on conceptualization of a personal aid for the beneficiary that could be used for managing information and services in the field of health and well-being services. This work continued the theme of developing individual-centric solutions for the field; a work that started in the InnoElli Senior program in 2006. The nature of this thesis is foremost a conceptual elaboration based on a literature review, illustrated in empirical work performed in different projects. As a theoretical contribution, this dissertation elaborates the role of a mediator, i.e. an intermediary, and it is used as an overarching theme. The role acts as a ‘lens’ through which a number of technology-related phenomena are looked at, pinned down and addressed to a degree. This includes introduction of solutions, ranging from anthropomorphic artefacts to decision support systems that may change the way individuals experience clinical encounters in the near-future. Due to the complex and multiform nature of the field, it is impractical and effectively impossible to cover all aspects that are related to mediation in a single work. Issues such as legislation, financing and privacy are all of equal importance. Consideration of all these issues is beyond the scope of this dissertation and their investigation is left to other work. It follows from this that the investigation on the role is not intended as inclusive one. The role of the mediator is also used to highlight some of the ethical issues related to personal health information management, and to mediating health and well-being related issues on behalf of another individual, such as an elderly relative or a fellow member of a small unit in the armed forces. The dissertation concludes in a summary about the use and functions of the mediator, describing some potential avenues for implementing such support mechanisms to the changing field of ICT-mediated health and well-being services. The conclusions also describe some of the limitations of this dissertation, including remarks on methodology and content.

Assessing the Competitive Ability of Rhynchosia capitata; an Emerging Summer Weed in Asia

Rhynchosia capitata is a newly emerging threatening weed of summer crops in many Asian countries. We conducted 2-yr experiments to evaluate R. capitata competition with mungbean under irrigated conditions. Rhynchosia capitata was allowed to compete with mungbean for 0, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 weeks after planting and for full crop season. The competitive ability of R. capitata was assessed by measuring its dry weight, micro and macro nutrient contents and uptake; and its effects on mungbean growth and yield parameters. The results showed that full season weed competition produced highest dry weight of R. capitata and its macro and micronutrient contents and uptake. Yield and yield components of mungbean decreased in a linear fashion with increase in competition period of Rhynchosia capitata. Full season competition of R. capitata reduced the seed yield of mungbean by 49% and 46% during 2011 and 2012 respectively. In conclusion, damaging effect of R. capitata intrusion on mungbean yield is associated with duration of its presence in crop, accumulation of dry matter and the nutrient uptake by R. capitata, which otherwise should be available to crop.

The Russian National Innovation System - an International Perspective

Russia inherited a large research and development (R&D) sector from the Soviet times, and has retained a substantial R&D sector today, compared with other emerging economies. However, Russia is falling behind in all indicators measuring innovative output in comparison with most developed countries. Russia’s innovation performance is disappointing, despite the available stock of human capital and overall investment in R&D. The communist legacy still influences the main actors of the innovation system. The federal state is still the most important funding source for R&D. Private companies are not investing in innovative activities, preferring to “import” innovations embedded in foreign technologies. Universities are outsiders in the innovation system, only a few universities carry out research activities. Nowadays, Russia is a resource-depended country. The economy depends on energy and metals for growth. The Russian economy faces the challenge of diversification and should embrace innovation, and shift to a knowledge economy to remain competitive in the long run. Therefore, Russia has to tackle the challenge of developing an efficient innovation system with its huge potential in science expertise and engineering know-how.

Scheduling dynamic dataflow graphs with model checking

With the shift towards many-core computer architectures, dataflow programming has been proposed as one potential solution for producing software that scales to a varying number of processor cores. Programming for parallel architectures is considered difficult as the current popular programming languages are inherently sequential and introducing parallelism is typically up to the programmer. Dataflow, however, is inherently parallel, describing an application as a directed graph, where nodes represent calculations and edges represent a data dependency in form of a queue. These queues are the only allowed communication between the nodes, making the dependencies between the nodes explicit and thereby also the parallelism. Once a node have the su cient inputs available, the node can, independently of any other node, perform calculations, consume inputs, and produce outputs. Data ow models have existed for several decades and have become popular for describing signal processing applications as the graph representation is a very natural representation within this eld. Digital lters are typically described with boxes and arrows also in textbooks. Data ow is also becoming more interesting in other domains, and in principle, any application working on an information stream ts the dataflow paradigm. Such applications are, among others, network protocols, cryptography, and multimedia applications. As an example, the MPEG group standardized a dataflow language called RVC-CAL to be use within reconfigurable video coding. Describing a video coder as a data ow network instead of with conventional programming languages, makes the coder more readable as it describes how the video dataflows through the different coding tools. While dataflow provides an intuitive representation for many applications, it also introduces some new problems that need to be solved in order for data ow to be more widely used. The explicit parallelism of a dataflow program is descriptive and enables an improved utilization of available processing units, however, the independent nodes also implies that some kind of scheduling is required. The need for efficient scheduling becomes even more evident when the number of nodes is larger than the number of processing units and several nodes are running concurrently on one processor core. There exist several data ow models of computation, with different trade-offs between expressiveness and analyzability. These vary from rather restricted but statically schedulable, with minimal scheduling overhead, to dynamic where each ring requires a ring rule to evaluated. The model used in this work, namely RVC-CAL, is a very expressive language, and in the general case it requires dynamic scheduling, however, the strong encapsulation of dataflow nodes enables analysis and the scheduling overhead can be reduced by using quasi-static, or piecewise static, scheduling techniques. The scheduling problem is concerned with nding the few scheduling decisions that must be run-time, while most decisions are pre-calculated. The result is then an, as small as possible, set of static schedules that are dynamically scheduled. To identify these dynamic decisions and to find the concrete schedules, this thesis shows how quasi-static scheduling can be represented as a model checking problem. This involves identifying the relevant information to generate a minimal but complete model to be used for model checking. The model must describe everything that may affect scheduling of the application while omitting everything else in order to avoid state space explosion. This kind of simplification is necessary to make the state space analysis feasible. For the model checker to nd the actual schedules, a set of scheduling strategies are de ned which are able to produce quasi-static schedulers for a wide range of applications. The results of this work show that actor composition with quasi-static scheduling can be used to transform data ow programs to t many different computer architecture with different type and number of cores. This in turn, enables dataflow to provide a more platform independent representation as one application can be fitted to a specific processor architecture without changing the actual program representation. Instead, the program representation is in the context of design space exploration optimized by the development tools to fit the target platform. This work focuses on representing the dataflow scheduling problem as a model checking problem and is implemented as part of a compiler infrastructure. The thesis also presents experimental results as evidence of the usefulness of the approach.

International Partnering strategy for e-learning provider in emerging economies: Evidence from East Africa learning institutions

International partnership has received growing interest in the literature during the past decades due to globalization, increased technological approaches and rapid changes in competitive environments. The study specifically determines the support provided by international partners on promotion of e-learning in East Africa, assess the motives of partner selection criteria, the determinants of selecting partners, partner models and partner competence of e-learning provider. The study also evaluates obstacles of e-learning partnering strategy in East Africa learning institutions. The research adopts a descriptive survey design. Target population involved East Africa learning institutions with a list of potential institutions generated from the Ministry of Higher Education database. Through a targeted reduction of the initial database, consisting of all learning institutions, both public and private, the study created a target sample base of 200 learning institutions. Structured questionnaires scheduled were used to collect primary data. Study findings showed the approach way East African communities in selecting their e-learning partners depend on international reputation of partners, partner with ability to negotiate with foreign governments, partner with international and local experiences, nationality of foreign partner and partners with local market knowledge.

Cooperative strategy in emerging markets - analysis of interfirm r&d cooperation and performance in Russian manufacturing companies

Emerging markets have come to play a significant role in the world, not only due to their strong economic growth but because they have been able to foster an increasing number of innovative high technology oriented firms. However, as the markets continue to change and develop, there remain many companies in emerging markets that struggle with their competitiveness and innovativeness. To improve competitive capabilities, many scholars have come to favor interfirm cooperation, which is perceived to help companies access new knowledge and complementary resources and, by so doing, enables them to catch up quickly with Western competitors. Regardless of numerous attempts by strategic management scholars, the research field remains very fragmented and lacks understanding on how and when interfirm cooperation contributes to firm performance and competiveness in emerging markets. Furthermore, the reasons why interfirm R&D sometimes succeeds but fails at other times frequently remain unidentified. This thesis combines the extant literature on competitive and cooperative strategy, dynamic capabilities, and R&D cooperation while studying interfirm R&D relationships in and between Russian manufacturing companies. Employing primary survey data, the thesis presents numerous novel findings regarding the effect of R&D cooperation and different types of R&D partner on firms’ exploration and exploitation performance. Utilizing a competitive strategy framework enables these effects to be explained in more detail, and especially why interfirm cooperation, regardless of its potential, has had a modest effect on the general competitiveness of emerging market firms. This thesis contributes especially to the strategic management literature and presents a more holistic perspective on the usefulness of cooperative strategy in emerging markets. It provides a framework through which it is possible to assess the potential impacts of different R&D cooperation partners and to clarify the causal relationships between cooperation, performance, and long term competitiveness.

Brazil on the spot: Rio+20, sustainability and a role for science

Rio +20, or the United Nations Conference for Sustainable Development, will take place at the end of this month of June 2012. In this paper, our central argument is that Brazil, as the host of Rio+20, has a historic opportunity to make the conference a success and take a decisive step in becoming a world leader in the shift from the traditional development paradigm to a new, sustainable development paradigm. To do that, Brazil will have to resolve a paradox: on the one hand the country has modern legislation and world class science, and on the other hand very poor social and environmental decision-making in recent times. In this column, we examine the green economy as a trajectory that leads to sustainable development and describe some pilot experiences at the sub-national level in Brazil. We discuss how science, and particularly plant sciences, will be essential to the transition to sustainable development. Finally, we propose immediate actions that we call upon the Brazilian government to commit to and to announce during this pivotal Rio+20 moment, which should serve as a milestone for all nations in building a sustainable future.

Reading the human Y chromosome: the emerging DNA markers and human genetic history

Reading the human Y chromosome: the emerging DNA markers and human genetic history.