Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Macrofinancial Causes of Optimism in Growth Forecasts
We analyze the causes of the apparent bias towards optimism in growth forecasts underpinning the design of IMF-supported programs, which has been documented in the literature. We find that financial variables observable to forecasters are strong predictors of growth forecast errors. The greater the expansion of the credit-to-GDP gap in the years preceding a program, the greater its over-optimism about growth over the next two years. This result is strongest among forecasts that were most optimistic, where errors are also increasing in the economy’s degree of liability dollarization. We find that the inefficient use of financial information applies to growth forecasts more broadly, including the IMF’s forecasts in the World Economic Outlook and those produced by professional forecasters compiled by Consensus Economics. We conclude that improved macrofinancial analysis represents a promising avenue for reducing over-optimism in growth forecasts.
Understanding and Predicting Systemic Corporate Distress: A Machine-Learning Approach
In this paper, we study systemic non-financial corporate sector distress using firm-level probabilities of default (PD), covering 55 economies, and spanning the last three decades. Systemic corporate distress is identified by elevated PDs across a large portion of the firms in an economy. A machine-learning based early warning system is constructed to predict the onset of distress in one year’s time. Our results show that credit expansion, monetary policy tightening, overvalued stock prices, and debt-linked balance-sheet weaknesses predict corporate distress. We also find that systemic corporate distress events are associated with contractions in GDP and credit growth in advanced and emerging markets at different degrees and milder than financial crises.
Predicting Financial Crises: The Role of Asset Prices
We explore the early warning properties of a composite indicator which summarizes signals from a range of asset price growth and asset price volatility indicators to capture mispricing of risk in asset markets. Using a quarterly panel of 108 advanced and emerging economies over 1995-2017, we show that the combination of rapid asset price growth and low asset price volatility is a good predictor of future financial crises. Elevated levels of our indicator significantly increase the probability of entering a crisis within the next three years relative to normal times when the indicator is not elevated. The indicator outperforms credit-based early warning metrics, a result robust to prediction horizons, methodological choices, and income groups. Our results are consistent with the idea that measures based on asset prices can offer critical information about systemic risk levels to policymakers.
Currency Usage for Cross Border Payments
While the global usage of currencies other than the U.S. dollar and the euro for cross-border payments remains limited, rapid technological (e.g. digital money) or geopolitical changes could accelerate a regime shift into a multipolar or more fragmented international monetary system. Using the rich Swift database of cross-border payments, we empirically estimate the importance of legal tender status, geopolitical distance, and other variables vis-à-vis the large inertia effects for currency usage, and perform several forecasting simulations to better understand the role of these variables in shaping the future payments landscape. While our results suggest a substantially more fragmented international monetary system would be unlikely in the short and medium term, the impact of new technologies remains highly uncertain, and much more rapid geopolitical developments than expected could accelerate the transformation of the international monetary system towards multipolarity.
Morphogenesis and Pathogenicity in Fungi
Infectious fungal diseases continue to take their toll in terms of human suffering and enormous economic losses. Invasive infections by opportunistic fungal pathogens are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in immuno-compromised individuals. At the same time, plant pathogenic fungi have devastating effects on crop production and human health. New strategies for antifungal control are required to meet the challenges posed by these agents, and such approaches can only be developed through the identification of novel biochemical and molecular targets. However, in contrast to bacterial pathogens, fungi display a wealth of “lifestyles” and modes of infection. This diversity makes it extr...
Mycorrhizas - Functional Processes and Ecological Impact
Mycorrhizal symbioses are central to the multitrophic interactions that impact plant productivity, competitiveness and survival. This book integrates present-day knowledge from well-known research groups on some of the topics which are at the forefront of mycorrhizal research. Topics include the cell programmes that drive mycorrhiza formation and function, the processes sustaining symbiotic mutualism, stress response mechanisms in mycorrhizal symbionts, and the diversity and ecological impacts of mycorrhizal systems. The efficient management of mycorrhizal systems has the potential to support the sustainable production of quality foods while ensuring environmental quality for future generations.
Microbial Gene Techniques, Part B
Microbial Gene Techniques is a practical laboratory guide to current techniques of molecular biology and genetics. The focus of the volume is on microbial cells, particularly eukaryotic microbes and bacteria, as well as plasmids and bacteriophages.* * Methods presented for ease of use and ready adaptation to new systems.* Detailed protocols included for:* Eukaryotic microbes - protozoan parasites (forward and reverse genetics, genome analysis), filamentous fungi (chromosome and gene analysis)* Yeast chromosomes - YACs, genome mapping, transcription factors, nucleosomes, recombination, RNA polymerase, pheromones.* Bacterial gene structure and regulation - E. coli (DNA methylation, mRNA characterization, gene regulation), B Subtilis (genetic mapping, chemotaxis), computer identification of genes.* Plasmids and bacteriophages - plasmid templates for transcription assays, plasmid replication: bacteriophage transcription, molecular genetic analysis using phages, phage assembly.
Methods for General and Molecular Microbiology
A first source for traditional methods of microbiology as well as commonly used modern molecular microbiological methods. • Provides a comprehensive compendium of methods used in general and molecular microbiology. • Contains many new and expanded chapters, including a section on the newly important field of community and genomic analysis. • Provides step-by-step coverage of procedures, with an extensive list of references to guide the user to the original literature for more complete descriptions. • Presents methods for bacteria, archaea, and for the first time a section on mycology. • Numerous schematics and illustrations (both color and black and white) help the reader to easily understand the topics presented.
