UNDERSTANDING THE MACROECONOMIC IMPACT OF ILLIQUIDITY SHOCKS IN THE UNITED STATES

In this paper, we empirically investigate the role of stock market illiquidity shocks, stemming from Amihud's illiquidity measure, in explaining U.S. macroeconomic fluctuations from 1973 to 2018. We find that the impact of illiquidity shocks on economic activity is substantial, and historical decomposition analysis shows that cumulative illiquidity shocks were an essential contributor to the prolonged economic slump of the Great Recession. Moreover, our identified illiquidity shocks represent a distinct source of macroeconomic instability. This suggests that illiquidity shocks, measured by the stock price impacts, may contain more information than other types of shocks in recent studies, such as financial shocks and uncertainty shocks. (JEL C32, E32)     

Social and Economic Impacts of International Marriages in Europe

The effect of international marriage - a union between a country native and an immigrant - on social and family outcomes is endogenous due to the selection into marriage markets and non-random spousal choice. In this paper we use availability of cheap airline flights as region-specific instrumental variable that increased the probability of intermarriage in Europe. The two-stage least squares analysis applied to 1977–2006 IPUMS International Project Census micro data shows no significant difference in the family size or number of children between intermarried and same-nativity couples. However, it does reveal higher labor force participation rates and much lower marriage rates among mixed nationality couples.     

Telecommunications Network Design—Comparison of Alternative Approaches

The design and development of the network infrastructure to support mission‐critical applications has become a critical and‐complex activity. This study explores the use of genetic algorithms (GA) for network design in the context of degree‐constrained minimal spanning tree (DCMST) problem; compares for small networks the performance of GA with a mathematical model that provides optimal solutions; and for larger networks, compares GA's performance with two heuristic methods—edge exchange and primal algorithm. Two performance measures, solution quality and computation time, are used for evaluation. The algorithms are evaluated on a wide variety of network sizes with both static and dynamic degree constraints on the network nodes. The results indicate that GA provides optimal solutions for small networks. For larger networks it provides better solution quality compared to edge exchange and primal method, but is worse than the two methods in computation time.     

Spatial variability of fish communities in a highly urbanised reef system

Urban Ecosystems - Rapid coastal development has generated interest in the ecology of human-modified marine environments. Coastal defence structures such as breakwaters and seawalls are...     

A Survey of Asset Poverty Among Older Adults of Hong Kong

This study proposes a framework that quantifies and integrates both the tangible and intangible aspects of HC to comprehensively measure the overall level of human capital index (HCI) in small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMEs). Data were collected from 100 SME experts through the use of questionnaires in two stages. The data collected were first, used for selection purpose, and second, for the prioritization of relevant dimensions and sub-dimensions of HC. The analytic hierarchy process was adopted to prioritize and assign dimension and sub-dimension weights to HC to derive the HCI. The results indicate that not all dimensions and sub-dimensions of HC are important for the HCI. Namely, the HCI can be best represented by 9 dimensions and 35 sub-dimensions of HC. The core dimensions are experience, skills, education, abilities and training. Indeed, within experience, the main sub-dimensions are work-related experience and organizational tenure. The results suggest the importance of experience relative to skills and education. The proposed framework can also be applied to derive industry specific HCI.     

Burn-in Time and Estimation of Change-Point with Weibull-Exponential Mixture Distribution*

Many industrial products have three phases in their product lives: infant-mortality, normal, and wear-out phases. In the infant-mortality phase, the failure rate is high, but decreasing; in the normal phase, the failure rate remains constant; and in the wear-out phase, the failure rate is increasing. A burn-in procedure may be used to reduce early failures before shipping a product to consumers. A cost model is formulated to find the optimal burn-in time, which minimizes the expected sum of manufacturing cost, burn-in cost, and warranty cost incurred by failed items found during the warranty period. A mixture of Weibull hyperexponential distribution with shape parameter less than one and exponential distribution is used to describe the infant-mortality and the normal phases of the product life. The product under consideration can be either repairable or non-repairable. When the change-point of the product life distribution is unknown, it is estimated by using the maximum-likelihood estimation method. The effects of sample size on estimation error and the performance of the model are studied, and a sensitivity analysis is performed to study the effects of several parameters of the W-E distribution and costs on the optimal burn-in time.     

Postmodern Dramaturgy,Premodern Drama: The Global Resurgence of Greek Tragedy Today

Numerous commentators have recently noted that the ancient art form of Greek tragedy has been undergoing something of a worldwide resurgence in popularity. This, they argue, can be attributed to the fact that contemporary societies are no less fertile a stage for tragedy than their ancient Greek antecedent. The objective of this article is to examine whether the resurgence of Greek tragedy possesses the potential to speak, metaphorically or otherwise, to political concerns today as the tragedies of Greece once did. In order to address this question, the article does two things. Firstly, it briefly outlines the political nature of tragic drama in ancient Athens, especially the connection between the political ascendency of tragedy and the rise of democracy. As illustrations of this claim, the article alludes to the political implications surrounding two notable Greek tragedies: Aeschylus' Suppliants and Sophocles' Antigone. Following this, it then makes the case for the political implications of tragic drama in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. To do so, it returns to the examples of Suppliants and Antigone to show how Greek tragedy can still be read as a powerful form of political discourse.     

中国角色在欧美电影中的形象变迁

电影角色是塑造意识形态、传播国家主流文化价值的重要工具。对1919—2020年中国角色在欧美电影中的形象变迁的分析发现,在各个历史阶段,中国角色的形象并不单一,但中国角色形象的变化具有时间上的连续性。欧美电影创作者对中国文化的态度从主观臆想转变为客观接纳,从对中国人或恐惧或蔑视的态度转变为局部的肯定。然而在目前欧美的主流电影中,中国人及中国文化总体上还是一种抽象符号,缺乏坚实的文化内涵。在方法论方面,利用自然语言处理技术对文本进行数据挖掘的研究方法既有客观、高效的优势,也有受制于原始文本材料质量的局限性。