Evolving Market Efficiency with an Application to Some Bulgarian Shares

With new technically advanced methods and computers at our disposal, the efficient market hypothesis is once again being debated. At the same time, we are witnessing an unprecedented growth in both existing and new financial markets. These new markets are often in economies which have just recently embraced free market economics; we term these stock markets infant markets. Such stock markets are obviously not efficient in allocating the supply of savings to productive capital. We do not test whether or not these infant markets are informationally efficient, but instead examine whether and how they are becoming more efficient. We propose modelling the excess returns of individual securities using a multi-factor model with time-varying coefficients and generalised auto-regressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH) errors. If the markets are becoming more informationally efficient or the agents are learning, we would expect this to manifest itself as the time-varying coefficients becoming more stable as time increases. We test our model using data on four Bulgarian shares. First, we estimate an AR(2) model and a GARCH-M(1,1) model for the shares. Then, we estimated our AR(2) model with time varying coefficients and GARCH type errors. We find varying levels of efficiency and varying speeds of movement towards efficiency within our sample of four shares.     

Terrorist sympathizers in The Netherlands

Abstract

The following remarks are excerpted from the 1987 Annual Conference on Domestic and International Terrorism sponsored by the Anti‐Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Foundation of the Anti‐Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, in cooperation with the Institute for Studies in International Terrorism at the State University of New York (SUNY) and the U.S. Global Strategy Council. The meeting was held on December 14, 1987 in Washington, D.C., and chaired by Professor Yonah Alexander of State University of New York and The George Washington University.     

Radical Neglect? The “War on Terror” and Latin America

The rise of leftist governments in the Americas and the adoption of policy initiatives contrary to U.S. interests highlight a disconnect in interamerican relations, which cannot be understood simply as U.S. "neglect" of Latin America. In contrast to arguments that attribute the deteriorating relations to U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East, the article examines whether the "War on Terror" acted as a guiding paradigm for the George W. Bush administration in Latin America. Opposition to this "War on Terror" paradigm was evident following Colombia's 2008 air strike in Ecuador. Justified as a preemptive strike against a terrorist threat, Colombia's action met regional condemnation. The article argues that this Colombia-Latin America division reflects a larger geostrategic disconnect, whereby the "War on Terror" is challenged, causing the increasing marginalization of Washington and resistance to U.S. policy.     

Laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry of triacylglycerols and other components in fingermark samples

The chemical composition of fingermarks could potentially be important for determining investigative leads, placing individuals at the time of a crime, and has applications as biomarkers of disease. Fingermark samples containing triacylglycerols (TAGs) and other components were analyzed using laser desorption/ionization (LDI) time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF MS). Only LDI appeared to be useful for this application while conventional matrix-assisted LDI-TOF MS was not. Tandem MS was used to identify/confirm selected TAGs. A limited gender comparison, based on a simple t-distribution and peaks intensities, indicated that two TAGs showed gender specificity at the 95% confidence level and two others at 97.5% confidence. Because gender-related TAGs differences were most often close to the standard deviation of the measurements, the majority of the TAGs showed no gender specificity. Thus, LDI-TOF MS is not a reliable indicator of gender based on fingermark analysis. Cosmetic ingredients present in some samples were identified.     

A note on Nanson's rule

E.J. Nanson, in 1883, proposed a voting rule designed mainly to select the Condorcet winner. Unfortunately, much of the collective choice literature has misstated Nanson's rule. This note shows that the misstated versions of the rule and Nanson's actual rule can yield different outcomes, and it provides a counter example, which shows that Nanson's rule, although it satisfies the strong Condorcet condition, does not satisfy the weak Condorcet condition.