Understanding Urban Processes in Flint,Michigan: Approaching ‘Subaltern Urbanism’ Inductively

Ananya Roy introduces the concept ‘subaltern urbanism’ in her 2011 article ‘Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism’. She challenges researchers to move beyond existing epistemological and methodological limits, and offers four concepts which, taken together, serve as a useful starting point for understanding and representing subaltern urban space. In this article I argue that instead of a deductive approach that begins with an a priori identification of slums as subaltern urban space, an inductive approach of identifying subaltern urban space would expand the concept and show that subaltern urbanism exists in the global North. I present original research to show that Flint, Michigan, can be considered subaltern urban space. In the final section of the article I argue that this inductive approach to subaltern urbanism can foster comparative research across the North‐South divide, and generate the transfer of knowledge from South to North.     

How long until human-level AI? Results from an expert assessment

The development of human-level AI has been a core goal of the AI field since its inception, though at present it occupies only a fraction of the field's efforts. To help understand the viability of this goal, this article presents an assessment of expert opinions regarding human-level AI research conducted at AGI-09, a conference for this AI specialty. We found that various experts strongly disagree with each other on certain matters, such as timing and ordering of key milestones. However, we did find that most experts expect human-level AI to be reached within upcoming decades, and all experts give at least some chance that some milestones will be reached within this time. Furthermore, a majority of experts surveyed favor an integrative approach to human-level AI rather than an approach centered on a particular technique. Finally, experts are skeptical about the impact of massive research funding, especially if it is concentrated in relatively few approaches. These results suggest that the possibility of achieving human-level AI in the near term should be given serious consideration.     

Exploring the animosity domain and the role of affect in a cross-national context

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of animosity theory in three areas; construct domain, the mediating role of affect and model testing.Design/methodology/approachExploratory and empirical research is carried out in two countries in order to explore the domain and to test the factor structure and the hypotheses through confirmatory analysis.FindingsWe find animosity is a four-dimensional construct which impacts buying behavior through affect.Originality/valueThe research extends the domain of the animosity construct to a four-dimensional structure rather than the two-dimensional structure used in most previous studies. It is the first study to empirically test an extended animosity domain and investigate the mediating role of affective emotional responses between animosity and buying intentions.     

The Sri Lankan Unemployment Problem Revisited

High unemployment in Sri Lanka has been attributed to unrealistic expectations, to queuing for public sector jobs, and to stringent job security regulations. However, the empirical evidence supporting these explanations is weak. This paper analyzes individual records from the 1995 Labor Force Survey, and time series for wages in the formal and informal sectors of the economy. The paper rejects the unrealistic‐expectations hypothesis by comparing the impact of education on the actual wages of those who have a job and on the lowest acceptable wages of the unemployed. But it finds substantial rents associated with jobs in the public sector, and in activities protected by high tariffs or covered by job security regulations. A time‐series analysis of the impact of unemployment on wage increases across sectors suggests that many among the unemployed are waiting for “good” job openings, but are not interested in readily available “bad” jobs.     

A MULTIFACTOR ANALYSIS OF COUNTRY FUND RETURNS

Previous closed‐end country fund research concludes that returns behave more like the U.S. market than like their target markets. We argue this finding may be biased by model misspecification and inappropriate estimation techniques. We propose a single‐equation model containing five hypothesized factors of fund returns. We estimate this model for nineteen pooled seasoned funds using a time‐series cross‐section regression that corrects for two types of autocorrelation. We show that returns are strongly related to target markets. Returns are also related to changes in discounts, exchange rates, and other countries' markets, but are only weakly related to the U.S. market. JEL classification: G10, G12     

The cost of bank loans in relation to bonds swapped into a floating rate

Banks never lend at less than the interbank floating rate, LIBOR. We argue that this must be because it is insufficiently profitable for those that could lend at less than LIBOR to do so and discuss circumstances in which this would be the case. Using data from 1988–1991, we show that LIBOR varies in relation to the cost of corporate bonds swapped into a floating rate, and suggest that the relative cost of LIBOR may affect bank and bond market pricing policies. the data also indicates that changes in the compensation for credit risk demanded by the bank and bond markets are not synchronous, and that swap rates have an appreciable impact on the cost of bonds swapped into floating.     

MODEL UNCERTAINTY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE PRICING OF DERIVATIVE INSTRUMENTS

Uncertainty on the choice of an option pricing model can lead to "model risk" in the valuation of portfolios of options. After discussing some properties which a quantitative measure of model uncertainty should verify in order to be useful and relevant in the context of risk management of derivative instruments, we introduce a quantitative framework for measuring model uncertainty in the context of derivative pricing. Two methods are proposed: the first method is based on a coherent risk measure compatible with market prices of derivatives, while the second method is based on a convex risk measure. Our measures of model risk lead to a premium for model uncertainty which is comparable to other risk measures and compatible with observations of market prices of a set of benchmark derivatives. Finally, we discuss some implications for the management of "model risk."     

The realized forward term premium in the repo market

Repurchase agreements for general-collateral government debt measure the short-term cost of riskless borrowing, thus avoiding issues relating to specialness of Treasury offerings or irregular term-to-maturity in the Treasury bill market. The spread between reverse and repo rates has previously been ignored by researchers who find that the pure expectation hypothesis either holds at this extremely short end of the term structure or that observed deviations from the expectations hypothesis are not economically significant. This paper shows that the time-varying realized forward premium at the short-end of the yield curve is consistently positive when accounting for the spread between repurchase and reverse repurchase agreement rates.     

The Market Value of UK Dividends From Shares With Differing Entitlements

Abstract:   This paper determines the market value of dividends in the UK during periods before and after 1997. Previous studies, which use the ex‐dividend day method, tend to provide noisy and potentially biased measures of dividend value. We estimate the value of dividends from the prices of shares that are identical except for their dividend entitlements, and are traded concurrently (within the same hour). We argue that our estimates of dividend value are the cleanest yet available for the UK. Our evidence suggests that ex‐dividend day estimates are biased downwards, but that this bias may be mitigated by the use of robust regression. Dividend values are heterogeneous and are not explained by the tax‐clientele hypothesis.     

RUNNING FOR THE EXIT: DISTRESSED SELLING AND ENDOGENOUS CORRELATION IN FINANCIAL MARKETS

We propose a simple multiperiod model of price impact from trading in a market with multiple assets, which illustrates how feedback effects due to distressed selling and short selling lead to endogenous correlations between asset classes. We show that distressed selling by investors exiting a fund and short selling of the fund’s positions by traders may have nonnegligible impact on the realized correlations between returns of assets held by the fund. These feedback effects may lead to positive realized correlations between fundamentally uncorrelated assets, as well as an increase in correlations across all asset classes and in the fund’s volatility which is exacerbated in scenarios in which the fund undergoes large losses. By studying the diffusion limit of our discrete time model, we obtain analytical expressions for the realized covariance and show that the realized covariance may be decomposed as the sum of a fundamental covariance and a liquidity‐dependent “excess” covariance. Finally, we examine the impact of these feedback effects on the volatility of other funds. Our results provide insight into the nature of spikes in correlation associated with the failure or liquidation of large funds.