Ethics in bioengineering

Bioengineering, as the decisive extension of engineering action to human life itself, constitutes a fundamental enlargement of the technical realm, and calls for a commensurate expansion of ethical reflection. In fact, the engineering profession has been actively pursuing the development of new ethical codes, and the promotion of ethics by bioengineers both in the United States and on the international level deserves philosophical recognition and support.     

Transferring hybrid maize technology : The role of the private sector

Developing countries have tried a variety of policies concerning new technology as a source of agricultural growth; there is still much debate on which is the most efficient. More study of private methods of technology transfer is needed. This article presents some preliminary statistical tests of the relationships among seed imports, private research, public research and yield. Seed imports and private research are found to be important potential sources of improved technology. Countries which restrict imports and activities by multinational seed companies may impose costs on their farmers and consumers in terms of foregone productivity.     

Detecting and modelling nonlinearity in flexible exchange rate time series

The aim of this paper is to examine the appropriateness of nonlinear time series analysis as a framework in which to model the dynamics of exchange rates. This aim has been motivated by the questioning of the power of classical unit root tests, the accumulating amount of evidence which suggests that exchange rates follow some kind of nonlinear process, and the fact that standard asset pricing theories do not explain well the empirical observations of exchange rate movements. The paper has three major objectives. First, to test for the presence of unit roots in nominal exchange rate time series. Second, for those nominal exchange rate time series found to be stationary, to test for nonlinearity using both tests derived without a specific nonlinear alternative in mind and tests against a specific nonlinear model. Finally, we motivate the types of nonlinearity for which we test by examining a recently proposed nonlinear model of exchange rate dynamics.The authors are from the School of Finance and Economics, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. We are extremely grateful to Alex Beliak and Alexander Khomin for their research assistance and help in developing our computer programs.     

Mortgagees and receivers exercising powers of sale – An English and Australian comparative analysis

For many years, the English and Australian courts have been at odds in their respective treatment of the obligations imposed on mortgagees and receivers when exercising powers of sale. Indeed, a Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia has recently confirmed that the more onerous test under English law, as enunciated in Cuckmere Brick, 1 does not reflect the current general law in Australia. 2 This paper examines the current state of the law in England and Australia and argues that the widely held belief that mortgagees and receivers in Australia are under a lesser duty than their English counterparts is largely misconceived. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analysis of the effect of noise in a heterogeneous agent financial market model

Heterogeneous agent models (HAMs) in finance and economics are often characterised by high dimensional nonlinear stochastic differential or difference systems. Because of the complexity of the interaction between the nonlinearities and noise, a commonly used, often called indirect, approach to the study of HAMs combines theoretical analysis of the underlying deterministic skeleton with numerical analysis of the stochastic model. However, it is well known that this indirect approach may not properly characterise the nature of the stochastic model. This paper aims to tackle this issue by developing a direct and analytical approach to the analysis of a stochastic model of speculative price dynamics involving two types of agents, fundamentalists and chartists, and the market price equilibria of which can be characterised by the stationary measures of a stochastic dynamical system. Using the stochastic method of averaging and stochastic bifurcation theory, we show that the stochastic model displays behaviour consistent with that of the underlying deterministic model when the time lag in the formation of price trends used by the chartists is far away from zero. However, when this lag approaches zero, such consistency breaks down.     

Some estimation problems connected with compound poisson processes

Abstract

The problems of this report have, for the particular case where the process considered in section 1 below reduces to a time- and spacehomogeneous Poisson process, been propounded by Gunnar Benktander who kindly gave his comments to the author.     

Does mother nature punish rotten kids?

The theory of parent-offspring conflict predicts that mothers and their offspring may not agree about how resources should be allocated among family members. An offspring, for example, may favor a later weaning date than does its mother. Despite a parent's physical superiority, it may be that offspring are able to manipulate their parents' behavior. In this paper, we investigate a two-locus population genetic model of weaning conflict in which offspring can attempt to extort resources from their parents by reducing their own chances of survival if their demands are not met. We find that the frequency of recombination between the genes controlling maternal behavior and those controlling juvenile behavior determines the evolutionary outcome of this genetic conflict. When these genes are tightly linked, the mother will be able to get her way. When they are not, offspring can successfully 'blackmail' their parents into providing additional resources.     

The Performance of Hedge Funds: Risk, Return, and Incentives

Hedge funds display several interesting characteristics that may influence performance, including: flexible investment strategies, strong managerial incentives, substantial managerial investment, sophisticated investors, and limited government oversight. Using a large sample of hedge fund data from 1988–1995, we find that hedge funds consistently outperform mutual funds, but not standard market indices. Hedge funds, however, are more volatile than both mutual funds and market indices. Incentive fees explain some of the higher performance, but not the increased total risk. The impact of six data-conditioning biases is explored. We find evidence that positive and negative survival-related biases offset each other.