Caracterització estructural i funcional del gen de la miogenia en l’orada (Sparus aurata )

Report for the scientific sojourn at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute from February to August 2007. Myogenesis of skeletal muscles in vertebrates is controlled by extracellular signalling molecules together with intracellular transcription factors. Among the transcriptional factors, the members of the myogenic regulatory family play important roles regulating skeletal muscle development and growth. To characterize the gene structure and expression of fish myogenin, we have isolated the myogenin genomic gene and cDNA from gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) and analyzed the genomic structure, pattern of expression and the regulation of musclespecific expression. Sequence analysis revealed that the seabream myogenin shares a similar gene structure with other fish myogenins, with three exons, two introns and the highly conserved bHLH domain. Expression studies demonstrated that myogenin is expressed in both slow and fast muscles as well as in muscle cells in primary culture. In situ hybridization showed that myogenin was specifically expressed in developing somites of seabream embryos. Promoter activity analysis demonstrated that the myogenin promoter could drive green fluorescence protein expression in muscle cells of zebrafish embryos, as well as in myofibers of adult zebrafish and juvenile seabream.

Hawtreyan “Credit Deadlock” or Keynesian “Liquidity Trap”? Lessons for Japan from the Great Depression

This paper outlines the ideas of Ralph Hawtrey and Lauchlin Currie on the need for monetised fiscal deficit spending in 1930s USA to combat the deep depression into which the economy had been allowed to sink. In such exceptional circumstances of “credit deadlock” in which banks were afraid to lend and households and business afraid to borrow, the deadlock could best be broken through the spending of new money into circulation via large fiscal deficits. This complementarity of fiscal and monetary policy was shown to be essential, and as such indicates the potential power of monetary policy – in contrast to the Keynesian “liquidity trap” view that it is powerless This lesson was not learned by the Japanese authorities in their response to the asset price collapse of 1991-92, resulting in a lost decade as ballooning fiscal deficits were neutralised throughout the 1990s by unhelpfully tight monetary policy with the Bank of Japan refusing to monetise the deficits.

Understanding Interactions in Social Networks and Committees

While much of the literature on cross section dependence has focused mainly on estimation of the regression coefficients in the underlying model, estimation and inferences on the magnitude and strength of spill-overs and interactions has been largely ignored. At the same time, such inferences are important in many applications, not least because they have structural interpretations and provide useful interpretation and structural explanation for the strength of any interactions. In this paper we propose GMM methods designed to uncover underlying (hidden) interactions in social networks and committees. Special attention is paid to the interval censored regression model. Our methods are applied to a study of committee decision making within the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee.

Financial liberalisation and industrial development in Malawi

It has been suggested that financial liberalisation may be a key policy to promote industrialisation as it removes the credit access constraint on firms, especially small and medium ones. We investigate the effect of credit expansion in the wake of liberalisation on the structure of the industrial sectors in Malawi and find that, in contrast to the hypothesis above, it resulted in an increase in industrial concentration and a decrease in net firm entry, especially in sectors that are more finance dependent. The case of Malawi is interesting because financial liberalisation has been justified precisely as a means for industrial development and because the implementation of the policy has been regarded as relatively successful.

Does Ricardian Equivalence Hold When Expectations are not Rational?

This paper considers the Ricardian Equivalence proposition when expectations are not rational and are instead formed using adaptive learning rules. We show that Ricardian Equivalence continues to hold provided suitable additional conditions on learning dynamics are satisfied. However, new cases of failure can also emerge under learning. In particular, for Ricardian Equivalence to obtain, agents’ expectations must not depend on government’s financial variables under deficit financing.

Understanding Liquidity and Credit Risks in the Financial Crisis

This paper develops a structured dynamic factor model for the spreads between London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and overnight index swap (OIS) rates for a panel of banks. Our model involves latent factors which reflect liquidity and credit risk. Our empirical results show that surges in the short term LIBOR-OIS spreads during the 2007-2009 fi nancial crisis were largely driven by liquidity risk. However, credit risk played a more signifi cant role in the longer term (twelve-month) LIBOR-OIS spread. The liquidity risk factors are more volatile than the credit risk factor. Most of the familiar events in the financial crisis are linked more to movements in liquidity risk than credit risk.