Search

• 18 new Ancestry informative markers (AIMs) were screened from the 1000 Genomes Project. • A novel panel of 18 AIMs can improve ancestry distinctions among Asian populations. • Our panel could distinguish the GIH (Gujarati Indian in Houston, TX) from other South Asian groups. At present, several mature ancestry informative SNP (AISNP) panels are used to distinguish between continental regions of the world, but a more accurate division within the continent requires a secondary panel to complete. However, many AISNPs for the subgroup ancestry inference are selected from the Kidd Lab panel of 55 AISNPs or other published papers. These panels inevitably lack valuable markers for subgroup ancestry inference. Therefore, instead of choosing from the published panels, we used the 1000 Genomes Project to screen potentially informational markers in Asian populations, including single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertion/deletion polymorphisms (InDels). The allele frequencies of all autosomal SNPs and InDels of the 1000 Genomes Project were compared between 10 populations in Asia to identify markers with the largest pairwise allele frequency differences. Finally, we established a second-tier panel of 18 AIMs in this study, which not only divided the 26 populations of the 1000 Genomes Project into six clusters, but also divided the Asia subgroup into four clusters: Gujarati, East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on the dispersion in analysts' recommendations in Asian emerging markets. Using a large dataset of analyst recommendations, we document a significantly higher dispersion in analysts' recommendations during the pre-crisis period (poor governance regime) relative to the post-crisis period (better governance regime). We argue that higher dispersion in analysts' recommendations was due to ineffective governance mechanisms prevailing during the pre-crisis period. However, as governance mechanisms improved, reduction in information asymmetries resulted in convergence of analysts' information, thereby lowering the dispersion in analysts' recommendations during the post-crisis period. Consistent with our arguments, our results show that corporate governance mechanisms can explain the bulk of difference in dispersion between the two periods. This study adds to the debate on effectiveness of corporate governance reforms in Asian emerging markets. Our results, overwhelmingly, indicate the success of governance reforms initiated after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is a political culture approach fruitful in understanding democratization in East Asia? Certainly in cases of East Asian democratization there are complex interactions between institutional, economic, and cultural dynamics. Sometimes political culture can be seen as an expression of differences in historical, political, and economic development. Sometimes political culture must be seen as an independent variable. Often political cultural analysis points in the same direction as institutional or economic analyses and can be seen as one aspect of a phenomenon with many dimensions. Political culture should never be reified. Political culture is dynamic. It evolves over time in response to changes in people's lives. In this paper I would like to lay great stress on the importance of Confucianism in understanding the political cultures of East Asia. But what Confucianism is, how it is understood, and what it means for human behavior is radically different today than two thousand years ago, or even 50 years ago, just as the effect of Christianity on western political culture has changed over historical time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]