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This paper examines regime switching behaviour and dynamic linkages among currency and equity markets of Eurozone, India, Japan and U.S. using a Markov-switching framework. First, we seek to characterize the market specific and common regime shifts in international stock and currency markets. Second, we aim to study regime-dependent conditional correlations across these markets. We estimate state-dependent models for the financial markets in a univariate Markov-switching Autoregression (MS-AR) as well as a multivariate Markov-switching Vector Autoregression (MS-VAR) framework. The paper utilizes weekly data from July, 1999 to October, 2020 to model the interactions among the markets. Our univariate results identify two-states viz. bull state (bear state) characterized by high returns (low returns) and low volatility (high volatility) for the stock market indices and Euro/USD and INR/USD returns. For the Yen/USD market the bull state corresponds to depreciation accompanied by low volatility. Further, we employ a multivariate formulation to study the regimes across asset classes which provides additional insights into the common states across the markets. Using the MS-VAR model encompassing stocks and currencies, we find a tranquil regime characterized by lower volatility and higher returns and a turbulent regime depicted by higher volatility and lower returns. Contemporaneous correlations among asset market pairs are sharper during the crises. Some of the turbulent periods highlighted in the analysis include the dot-com bubble burst, South American crisis, 9/11, Iraq war, housing bubble burst, global financial crisis, Eurozone debt crisis, Taper Tantrum, Brexit, U.S. Federal Government Shutdown, U.S.-China Trade War and the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Research background: The analysis of the genesis and the way of defining clinical hospitals allows us to conclude that the evaluation of their activities should consider many criteria, not only the treatment process in itself. Activities characteristic for a clinical hospital include, apart from the medical, also prophylaxis and preventative measures, preceded by the identification of health risks, soliciting research and creating new directions of medical research, as well as implementing new medical technologies and treatment methods (Article 3, paragraph 2, points 1–2, Journal of Laws of 2020, items 295, 567, 1493, 2112, i.e.) combined with the training of medical personnel. Which all makes those units unique among hospitals. Purpose: The article aims to confirm the thesis that, despite significant organizational and functional differences, due to the specific nature of their activities, clinical hospitals do not differ significantly in the structure of generated costs. Research methodology: The article proposes using the taxonomic method as a tool for a comparative analysis of Polish clinical hospitals between the years 2012–2016. The study was conducted from a space-time perspective and concerned 20 hospitals. The use of the hierarchical agglomeration method to assess the cost structure of clinical hospitals is, according to the author, a tool that should be used, in addition to standard methods, by both external and internal decision-makers, in the process of assessing the coherence of the activities of units. Results: The conducted research confirmed that despite the differences between the analyzed units, they are characterized by the same structure of prime costs. Novelty: These studies should form the basis for further, a more detailed, cause-and-effect analysis of the cost structure to identify the main determinants shaping total operating costs.

Bullying cannot be tolerated as a normal social behavior portraying a child's life. This paper quantifies its negative consequences allowing for the possibility that victims and nonvictims differ in unobservable characteristics. To this end, we introduce a factor analytic model for identifying treatment effects of bullying in which latent cognitive and noncognitive skills determine victimization and multiple outcomes. We use early test scores to identify the distribution of these skills. Individual‐, classroom‐ and district‐level variables are also accounted for. Applying our method to longitudinal data from South Korea, we first show that while noncognitive skills reduce the chances of being bullied during middle school, the probability of being victimized is greater in classrooms with relatively high concentration of boys, previously self‐assessed bullies and students that come from violent families. We report bullying at age 15 has negative effects on physical and mental health outcomes at age 18. We also uncover heterogeneous effects by latent skills, from which we document positive effects on the take‐up of risky behaviors and negative effects on schooling attainment. Our findings suggest that investing in noncognitive development should guide policy efforts intended to deter this problematic behavior.

The global demand for cashew nuts continues to increase steadily. However, many African countries face difficulties in marketing and adding value to the product. Using recent survey data of 391 cashew farmers in Ghana, this paper contributes to the grow- ing evidence on the significance of contract farming (CF) in improving the welfare of rural households in developing countries. Specifically, the paper analyzes the fac- tors that influence cashew farmers’ decisions to participate in CF, and the impact of participation on farmers’ performance. We employ a recently developed switch- ing regression model with endogenous explanatory variables and endogenous switch- ing to control for selection bias caused by observable and unobservable factors. The empirical results show that participation in CF significantly increases labor produc- tivity and price margins, as well as cashew yields, and net revenues. A disaggregated analysis of the sample into farm size categories reveals that small-sized cashew farms tend to benefit more through CF, compared to medium- and large-sized farms.

The fusion between the viral and the target cell membrane is a crucial step in the life cycle of enveloped viruses. The blocking of this process is a well-known therapeutic approach that led to the development of the fusion inhibitor peptide enfuvirtide, clinically used against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1. Despite this significant advance on viral treatment, the appearance of resistance has limited its clinical use. Such a limitation has led to the development of other fusion inhibitor peptides, such as C34, that present the same structural domain as enfuvirtide (heptad repeat sequence) but have different functional domains (pocket-binding domain in the case of C34 and lipid-binding domain in the case of enfuvirtide). Recently, the antiviral properties of 25-hydroxycholesterol were demonstrated, which boosted the interest in this oxysterol. The combination of two distinct antiviral molecules, C34 and 25-hydroxycholesterol, may help to suppress the emergence of resistant viruses. In this work, we characterized the interaction of the C34-25-hydroxycholesterol conjugate with biomembrane model systems and human blood cells. Lipid vesicles and monolayers with defined lipid compositions were used as biomembrane model systems. The conjugate interacts preferentially with membranes rich in sphingomyelin (a lipid enriched in lipid rafts) and presents a poor partition to membranes composed solely of phosphatidylcholine and cholesterol. We hypothesize that cholesterol causes a repulsive effect that is overcome in the presence of sphingomyelin. Importantly, the peptide shows a preference for human peripheral blood mononuclear cells relative to erythrocytes, which shows its potential to target CD4 + cells. Antiviral activity results against different wild-type and drug-resistant HIV strains further demonstrated the potential of C34-HC as a good candidate for future studies. Fil: Gomes, Bárbara. Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Faculdade de Ciencias Medicas; Portugal Fil: Sanna, Giusepinna. University of Cagliary; Italia Fil: Madeddu, Silvia. University of Cagliary; Italia Fil: Hollmann, Axel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet Noa Sur. Centro de Investigación en Biofísica Aplicada y Alimentos. - Universidad Nacional de Santiago del Estero. Centro de Investigación en Biofísica Aplicada y Alimentos; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes; Argentina Fil: Santos, Nuno C.. Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Faculdade de Ciencias Medicas; Portugal

This study provides novel evidence on the resilience of regional labour markets in Italy by applying the nonlinear smooth transition autoregressive modelling approach to newly released data on total, female and industrial employment. Five main conclusions derive from the empirical results. The concept of ecological resilience describes regional evolution in Italy over the past 40 years. Spatial differences in resilience result significant across Italian regions. Female employment registers low resilience dynamics and increasing vulnerability during shocks. Since the first half of nineties national and international destabilizing events contributed to amplify regional divergences. The uneven evolution and performance of the manufacturing sector across Italy provides some explanations on the asymmetric geographical distribution of resilience in this country. The concluding section summarizes the main findings of the work and proposes future avenues of research.

In many self-report measures (i.e., personality survey items and diagnostic test items) the collected samples often include fake records. A case of particular interest in selfreport measures is the presence of caricature effects in participants’ responses under faking good motivation conditions. We say that a pattern of fake responses is a caricature pattern if it shows higher structural intercorrelations among faked items relative to the expected intercorrelations under the corresponding uncorrupted responses. In this paper we generalized a recent probabilistic perturbation procedure, called SGR - Sample Generation by Replacements - (Lombardi and Pastore (2012) Multivar Behav Res 47:519–546), to simulate caricature effects in fake good responses. To represent this particular faking behavior we proposed a novel extension of the SGR conditional replacement distribution which is based on a discrete version of the truncated multivariate normal distribution. We also applied the new procedure to real behavioral data on the role of perceived affective self-efficacy in social contexts and on self-report behaviors in reckless driving.

In the past three decades, farm families have relied on government payments and off-farm income to reduce income risk and increase total household income. Many studies have analyzed the role of government payments; however, little is known about the impact of health insurance coverage on labor allocation. This study builds on previous literature by using copulas to test for dependence in the labor allocation, addressing the importance of fringe benefits to the farm household, and determining how these considerations affect our knowledge of the impact of fringe benefits on off-farm labor. The results indicate that the off-farm hours worked by the operator and spouse are jointly determined; health insurance coverage is an endogenous variable. Using the predicted probability of insurance coverage and joint estimation techniques, we find a positive and highly significant relationship with the hours worked off-farm. Further, we find that both coupled and decoupled payments are negatively correlated with the hours worked off-farm.

Abstract This study estimates the impact of migrants’ remittances on households’ spending decisions in Ecuador. Applying both parametric and semiparametric techniques, we find strong evidence that remittances enhance expenditures on education, health, and housing, but decrease expenditures on food. This supports the hypotheses that these inflows result in a stronger human capital accumulation and therefore improve the long‐run production possibilities. We do not find strong differences in the impact on expenditure patterns of male and female household heads. The sex of the remitter and the receiver affects the expenditure behavior only slightly. JEL Codes C14, C34, D12, F24, J16

The German employment miracle with a weak decline in employment and low unemployment during the great recession seems to be a good example for a successful labour market reform. While the aggregate level of job turnover seems to be stable over time, there are nevertheless concerns about rising inequality in the labour market. In this paper we analyze the quality of newly started jobs between 1998 and 2010 using a huge administrative data set which allows to look at job durations and earnings for different groups of workers over time. Microeconometric models of job stability and wages are estimated to control for a wide range of individual, firm and regional characteristics. Our results show a fairly constant level of overall job stability but decreasing wages and rising wage dispersion over time, which is in line with wage moderation explanations of the employment miracle. In a further analysis we focus on certain groups of workers with disadvantages in job duration and wages, like low skilled, formerly unemployed and temporary agency workers. Again, we find evidence of a rise in job durations of new jobs accompanied by a decrease in wages.

We have constructed a Doppler-shifter-type pulsed ultra-cold neutron (UCN) source at the Materials and Life Science Experiment Facility of the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex. Very cold neutrons (VCNs) with 136 m s[−1] velocity in a neutron beam supplied by a pulsed neutron source are decelerated by reflection on an m=10 wide-band multilayer mirror, yielding pulsed UCNs. The mirror is fixed to the tip of a 2000 rpm rotating arm moving with 68 m s[−1] velocity in the same direction as the VCNs. The repetition frequency of the pulsed UCNs is 8.33 Hz and the time width of the pulse at production is 4.4 ms. In order to increase the UCN flux, a supermirror guide, wide-band monochromatic mirrors, focus guides, and a UCN extraction guide have been newly installed or improved. The 1 MW-equivalent count rate of the output neutrons with longitudinal wavelengths longer than 58 nm is 1.6×10[2] cps, while that of the true UCNs is 80 cps. The spatial density at production is 1.4 UCN cm[−3]. This new UCN source enables us to research and develop apparatuses necessary for the investigation of the neutron electric dipole moment.

We investigate whether people enrolled into voluntary health insurance (VHI) substitute public consumption with private (opt out) or just enlarge their private consumption, without reducing reliance upon public provisions (top up). We study the case of Italy, where a mixed insurance system is in place. To this purpose, we specify a joint model for public and private specialist visits counts, and allow for different degrees of endogenous supplementary insurance coverage, looking at the insurance coverage as driven by a trinomial choice process. We disentangle the effect of income and wealth by going through two channels: the direct impact on the demand for healthcare and that due to selection into VHI. We find evidence of opting out: richer and wealthier individuals consume more private services and concomitantly reduce those services publicly provided through selection into for-profit VHI. These results imply that the market for VHI eases the redistribution from high income (doubly insured) individuals to low income (not doubly insured) ones operated by the Italian National Health Service (NHS). Accounting for VHI endogeneity in the joint model of the two counts is crucial to this conclusion.

Drawing on data from the twenty year long German Socioeconomic Panel Study, we show that partisanship is bounded. Almost every West German, East German, and immigrant never supports one or both of the major parties and most people vary support for their party by claiming no partisan preference. Hardly anyone ever selects each of the parties at different points in time. Immediate social networks join with social class and religious factors to structure partisanship. The same social logic underpins partisan choice among West Germans, East Germans, and immigrants, though factors unique to each population are also present.

We analyze households' joint investment decisions for financial wealth and homes. We use a bivariate censored regression model with endogenous switching. Fixed costs or transaction costs are captured by an unobserved nonzero censoring threshold. The model allows for spill-over effects of a binding threshold for one asset on the demand for the other asset. We find that tenure choice affects the level of financial wealth. Our results do not support the view that people first accumulate financial wealth before acquiring homes.This can be due to the absence of down payments constraints in the Netherlands.