Period Of Turmoil Research Articles

A SHORT HISTORY OF PALEONTOLOGY IN TURKEY, PART II: PALEONTOLOGY IN THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY

ABSTRACT Succeeding a period of wars and political turmoil, the reassuring policies of the new regime of Turkey positively influenced all branches of science, including geology which provided a basis for the earliest studies in paleontology, as it had done in the former Ottoman Turkey. Although most of the specialists were still foreigners during the early years of the republic, the government of Turkey under the leadership of Atatürk, rapidly established modern institutions in order to train native earth scientists and engineers of all sorts. Turkish paleontologists began to replace their foreign colleagues by the 1940s; and female Turkish paleontologists became especially prominent not only in the universities but also in the national geological surveys and mapping, and in fossil fuel exploration. Subsequent to their separation from departments of natural sciences, teaching fundamentals of paleontology was taken on by geology departments which, by the 1960s, started to evolve into departments of geological engineering. As a result, most Turkish paleontologists are geologists and most of them specialized either in micropaleontology or paleobotany. In contrast, paleontology of late Cenozoic mammals is dominated by graduates of anthropology programs.

How Do Institutional Investors React to Geographically Dispersed Information Shocks? A Test Using the COVID-19 Pandemic

We examine how institutional investors react to geographically dispersed local shocks during periods of market turmoil. Using a sample of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) that enables us to link the locations of institutional investors, REIT headquarters, and the locations of assets held by REITs, we find that the ownership of firms with an economic interest in the investor’s home MSA declined more in markets heavily affected by the pandemic. In addition, the responses to shocks in markets where REITs had an economic interest were larger in those markets in which REITs had larger portfolio allocations and in markets that are home to the investors. Importantly, based on the performance of their REIT portfolios after the onset of the COVID-19 shock, our results suggest that some institutional investors may have overreacted to the shock. Our study highlights the importance of geography in the formation of investors’ expectations during market crises.

Safe Haven Assets - The Bigger Picture

This paper proposes a new approach to identify safe haven assets and to characterize their relationship with the market. We use quantile regression to analyze the returns of potential safe haven assets conditional on all market conditions including periods of financial turmoil. We find a trade-off, i.e., stronger in-crisis performance of safe haven assets is associated with weaker out-crisis performance and vice versa for risky assets. Our analysis confirms the safe haven properties of gold and U.S. government bonds and presents clear differences between safe haven assets and safe assets, and between safe haven assets and risky assets such as Bitcoin.

ВАЖНЫЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ВОСПРИЯТИЯ РОССИИ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ АМЕРИКАНСКОЙ ЭЛИТЕ

The article examines some of the key issues that most directly affect the prevailing attitude towards Russia in the United States. In particular, it is argued that the sharpness of contradictions in relations with Russia is largely due to the fact that the American elite has proved largely unable to recognize its own assertions about the “final collapse” and weakening of Russia and perceive it not as a “departing nature”, but as a global player who has regained his strength on the political arena. In this, the Americans were far from China, which even in the “darkest” period of the Russian turmoil was convinced that Russia will return and influence the development of international relations in the most decisive way.

Uwarunkowania i wyzwania kreacji safe assets – szczególna rola długu publicznego

Przedmiot badań: Aktywa bezpieczne (safe assets) są definiowane na różne sposoby, w zależ­ności od ich atrybutów i funkcji. Najczęściej przyjmuje się, że są to płynne instrumenty finanso­we, głównie dłużne, które gwarantują inwestorom zachowanie wartości w trakcie niekorzystnych zjawisk gospodarczych. Podkreśla się, że dług publiczny ze względu na jego cechy charaktery­styczne, najlepiej może wypełnić tę funkcję. Jednakże, ze względu na oddziaływanie czynników popytowych i podażowych, w gospodarce światowej powstaje problem niedoboru aktywów bez­piecznych. Możliwość uzupełniania podaży jest ograniczona zdolnością głównego globalnego dostawcy aktywów bezpiecznych – USA do zwiększania skali długu publicznego.
 Cel badawczy: Celem artykułu jest odpowiedź na kluczowe pytanie, jak dostarczać gospodarce globalnej wymaganą ilość aktywów bezpiecznych, zachowując stabilność zadłużenia publiczne­go emitentów oraz wymagany poziom bezpieczeństwa. 1
 Metoda badawcza: Artykuł stanowi syntezę studiów teoretycznych podejmowanych w litera­turze światowej i jednocześnie próbę wprowadzenia do polskiej literatury zakresu pojęciowego związanego z aktywami bezpiecznymi. Rozważania teoretyczne opierają się na założeniu, że dług publiczny jest kluczowym czynnikiem determinującym wielkość ich emisji. W konsekwencji, w artykule wyodrębniono zestaw ekonomicznych i pozaekonomicznych czynników kreacji pu­blicznych aktywów bezpiecznych. Na podstawie analizy opisowej wskaźników makroekonomicznych (fiskalnych) podjęto ocenę zdolności emitentów walut rezerwowych, w tym głównie USA, do dostarczania safe assets.
 Wyniki: Wyniki badań pozwalają wyciągnąć trzy kluczowe wnioski. Po pierwsze, w procesach kreacji safe assets, ze względu na ich specyficzne funkcje i atrybuty, dominującą rolę odgrywa sektor publiczny. Z tego powodu głównymi dostawcami safe assets są kraje emitujące waluty rezerwowe, w szczególności USA, ze względu na ich monopolistyczną pozycję w międzynaro­dowym systemie walutowym. Po drugie, potencjał tych krajów do emisji aktywów bezpiecznych jest ograniczony. Świadczą o tym zarówno rozważania teoretyczne (krzywa Laffera dla safe as­sets, dylemat Triffina), jak i rosnące poziomy zadłużenia publicznego. Po trzecie, dla utrzymania globalnej stabilności finansowej, konieczne jest uzupełnienie puli aktywów bezpiecznych. Poten­cjalnie rolę tę mogłyby odgrywać Chiny i UGiW.

Canadian Labour Market Dynamics During COVID-19

The Canadian labour market experienced a period of unprecedented turmoil following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyze the main changes using standard labour force statistics and new data on job postings. Envisaging a phase of temporary severing of employment relationships followed by a phase of more standard labour market search and matching, we use stock and flow data to understand key developments. We find dramatic changes in employment, unemployment and labour market attachment in 2020 and, looking forward to 2021, signs of an unusual recovery with co-existing strong labour demand and stubborn persistence in depressed employment rates.

The Effectiveness of the Transaction Systems on the Dax Index

The purpose of the article/hypothesis: The aim of this article is to examine the effectiveness of trading systems built on the basis of technical analysis tools in 2015–2020 on the DAX stock exchange index. Efficiency is understood as generating positive rates of return, taking into account the risk incurred by the investor, as well as achieving better results than passive strategies. Presenting empirical evidence implying the value of technical analysis is a difficult task not only because of a huge number of instruments used on a daily basis, but also due to their almost unlimited possibility to modify parameters and often subjective evaluation.Methodology: The effectiveness of technical analysis tools was tested using selected investment strategies based on oscillators and indicators following the trend. All transactions were carried out on the Meta Trader 4 platform. The analyzed strategies were comprehensively assessed using the portfolio management quality measures, such as the Sharpe measure or the MAR ratio (Managed Account Ratio).Results of the research: The test results confirmed that the application of described investment strategies contributes to the achievement of effective results and, above all, protects the portfolio against a significant loss in the period of strong turmoil on the stock exchange. During the research period, only two strategies (Ichimoku and ETF- Exchange traded fund) would produce negative returns at the worst possible end of the investment. At the best moment, however, the „passive” investment achieved the lowest result. Looking at the final balance at the end of 2019, as many as four systems based on technical analysis were more effective than the „buy and hold” strategy, and at the end of the first quarter of 2020 – all of them. When analyzing the management quality measures, it turned out that taking into account the 21 quarters, the passive strategy had the lowest MAR index. The Sharpe’s measure is also relatively weak compared to the four leading strategies.

Network approach to the dynamic transformation characteristics of the joint impacts of gold and oil on copper

Previous studies often established econometric models to investigate the long-term relationship between the copper price and other commodity prices, but these models ignored the dynamic transformation characteristics of these relationships. This paper examines the dynamic transformation characteristics of the joint impacts of gold and oil on the copper log-return. We employed the joint impact transformation network based on the multiple regression model and the sliding time window approach. The results indicate that ‘NN’ (gold and oil both have no impact on the copper log-return), ‘N+Y’ (gold has no impact on the copper log-return and oil has a positive impact on the copper log-return) and ‘+YN’ (gold has a positive impact on the copper log-return and oil has no impact on the copper log-return) are the three most common joint impact modes over the entire time. ‘-Y+Y’ (gold has a negative impact on the copper log-return and oil has a positive impact on the copper log-return) and ‘-Y-Y’ (gold and oil both have a negative impact on the copper log-return) are the two joint impact modes that may emerge in the deepest period of economic turmoil. The joint impact modes have a tendency to transform to the modes transformed into them in a period when the economy is relatively stable or fluctuating due to financial factors. However, this trend becomes less evident when the economic fluctuations are subject to national policies. Our research not only provides a process orientation to explore the characteristics of the dynamic transformation of the relationship between commodity prices but also offers important implications for stakeholders to make decisions.

FIIs herding in energy sector of Indian stock market

PurposeThis paper investigates herding behavior and its persistence among foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in the individual stocks of the energy sector of Indian stock exchange by focusing on post turmoil period. The study also examines the relation of herding with the individual return, market return, trading volume and conditional volatility of individual and market return.Design/methodology/approachThe presence of herding is investigated by Lakonishok et al. (1992) model, value-based and count-based herd ratio measure among FIIs in individual stock of energy sector post turmoil period. Further, run test was employed to check the persistency in herding and multivariate distributed lag to investigate the relationship with the market determinant.FindingsThe result indicates the existence of herding in most of the companies and strong persistence in all the companies. The intensity of buy side herding is higher than sell side. Herding and individual return both are significant driving forces of FIIs herding, while trading volume and market volatility in few companies exhibit inverse relationship.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited to investigation of energy sector stock.Social implicationsStock market is significantly influenced by FIIs and their propensity to herd may generate instability in the stock market. Therefore, regulatory authority should continuously monitor the flow of fund by FIIs.Originality/valueHerding in the individual stock of the energy sector was not previously performed.

Crisis Poison Pills*

We show that a large number of firms adopt poison pills during periods of market turmoil. Specifically, during the coronavirus pandemic, many firms adopted poison pills following declines in valuations, and stock prices increased upon the announcement of firms’ poison pill adoption. Stock price increases are driven by (1) firms in which activist shareholders acquire ownership stakes and (2) firms in industries that had high exposure to the crisis. Likewise, we find a positive reaction to pills with provisions directed at stalling activists’ interventions. Our results suggest that crisis pills that target potentially disruptive ownership changes may benefit current shareholders.

Islamic Stock Markets Integration and Contagion Effect of China’s Economic Slowdown

This study investigated the existence of the Islamic stock markets integration among Asian countries and the contagion effect caused by the economics slowdown in China. The data of this study are the daily closing price of islamic stock index in Indonesia (MIID), Malaysia (MIMY), and China (MICN). The period of analysis is divided into tranquil period (August 30, 2007 - June 11, 2015) and turmoil period (June 12, 2015 - September 1, 2016). Meanwhile, there are 2351 observational datas used in this study. The Johansen Cointegration test, Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), and Granger Causality test are used as the research methods.The results showed that in both periods,the islamic stock market of three countries are integrated with each other. However, there is no evidence of contagion effect during the economics slowdown in China. In addition, there is a bidirectional causality relationship between the Malaysia and China Islamic stock markets.

Financial Integration and Business Cycle Synchronization: Evidence from U.S. States

We analyze the effect of the geographic expansion of banks across U.S. states on the co-movement of economic activity between states. To identify the causal effect of financial integration on business cycle synchronization, we exploit the staggered timing of the removal of restrictions to interstate banking to construct time-varying instrumental variables at the state-pair level. We find a strong positive effect of bilateral banking integration on the synchronization of economic activity between states, conditional on national shocks and state pair heterogeneity. This effect is stronger for states experiencing periods of financial turmoil and for industries that rely more on external financing. Furthermore, we find that integration increases the similarity of fluctuations in bank lending between states. Our findings are consistent with theories highlighting the role of banks in transmitting financial shocks across regions, and show that integration has increased output synchronization between U.S. states.

Resilienz und Konstruktion von Sicherheit

Abstract Prospero Balbo, the head of a leading Piedmontese noble family, followed a career path similar to that of the versatile French statesman Talleyrand. In the aftermath of 1789, Balbo served under four different regimes: the Old Regime monarchy, the Russian provisional administration of Piedmont in 1799, the Napoleonic empire, and the restored Savoy monarchy. After the short-lived revolutionary movement of 1821 in Sardinia-Piedmont, Prospero lost his job as interior minister and his son, Cesare, was forced into exile. The revolutionary waves of 1820–1821 were the most recent of numerous disruptive events and regime changes that jeopardized Europe and the Atlantic world between the late 1770 s and the early 1820 s. These five decades of revolutionary upheavals, wars, and persistent insecurity forced the traditional elites to mobilize their material, cultural, and social resources to preserve their prestige and power. Based on extensive archival research, this article examines the resilience-strengthening resources and strategies implemented by members of the Balbo family during periods of political turmoil. In doing so, the article aims to develop an analytical and conceptual framework to describe historical processes in terms of resilience and vulnerability. This new approach enables us to look afresh at elite transformations and at the dynamics of political change and continuity in early nineteenth-century Europe.

Modeling Tail Index With Autoregressive Conditional Pareto Model

We propose an autoregressive conditional Pareto (AcP) model based on the dynamic peaks over threshold method to model a dynamic tail index in the financial markets. Unlike the score-based approach which is widely used in many articles, we use an exponential function to model the tail index process for its intuitiveness and interpretability. Probabilistic properties of the AcP model and the statistical properties of its parameter estimators of maximum likelihood are studied in this article. Real data are used to show the advantages of AcP, especially, compared to the estimation volatility of GARCH model, the result of AcP is more sensitive to turmoil. The estimated tail index of AcP can accurately reflect the risk of the stock and may even play an early warning role to the turmoil of stock market. We also calculate the tail connectedness based on the estimated tail index of AcP and show that tail connectedness increases during period of turmoil, which is consistent with the result of the score-based approach.

Cost-sensitive ensemble methods for bankruptcy prediction in a highly imbalanced data distribution: a real case from the Spanish market

Bankruptcy is an issue of interest in the business world since decades. It is a crucial endeavor for survival to predict this phenomenon in periods of economic turmoil and recession. In fact, bankruptcy modeling is challenging due to the complexity of contributing factors and the highly imbalanced distribution of available data sets. This work aims at improving the prediction power of bankruptcy modeling, by applying cost-sensitive ensemble methods on a real-world Spanish bankruptcy data set to generate prediction models. The performance of the prediction models is highly competitive in comparison with the related research in the field. Cost-sensitive random forests over-performed other approaches in predicting bankruptcy, achieving a geometric mean of 90.7%, 0.094 and 0.088 type I & type II errors, respectively.

Quo Vadis English? The Post-Brexit Position of English as a Working Language of the EU

“Brexit” as a word entered the European language’s scene eight years ago as a term describing what seemed as a surrealistic scenario for the British. Since then, it has become the ‘political word of 2016,’ paved its way to the Oxford English Dictionary, and globally into the computer dictionaries which no longer underline it in red as an unknown term. ‘Brexit,’ as a political campaign motto, has also transformed into a realistic political strategy and eventually into a complicated, exhausting, dividing, yet finalized process. By the time it was accomplished, everyone in Europe was tired of it, but tiredness did not change the fact that Brexit was an historical period of turmoil of an unprecedented nature. Brexit occurred on a multitude of dimensions, including the EU language policy dimension. For the past 20 years, English has been by far the most commonly used language in the Union, not only as one of the 24 official languages of the Member States, but as a working language of all the institutions, all negotiations, and all political debates. This contribution aims to analyse the legal status and the practical dimension of the European Union working languages and to explore the position of the English language among them—both presently and with possible scenarios in the future Union, without the United Kingdom as the biggest English-speaking Member State. The initial assumption states that the geopolitical weight of the English language will diminish even if the Irish and Maltese will hold the language’s position as an official language of the Union. In mathematical terms, there will be more native speakers in Hungarian or Slovak than in English. In political terms, Germany and France will have a chance to improve their influences by advocating for more efficient use of their languages. ‘Quo vadis English?’ seems a timely question to ask.

Political Humor in Ibn Mammātī'sKitāb al-Fāshūsh fi Aḥkām Qarâqûsh (The Decisions of Qarâqûsh)

AbstractThis study is an attempt to investigate medieval humor in the Ayyubid period (1171–1250). In a period of constant wars, terrible plagues, and turmoil, Ibn Mammātī wrote a pamphlet entitledKitāb al-Fāshūsh fi Aḥkām Qarâqûsh (stupidity, or the decisions of Qarâqûsh). It is a small volume which contains words and actions that Qarâqûsh could have said or done. The book is written as an attempt to ridicule one of the most important political leaders of the Ayyubid state Emir Qarâqûsh Ibn ‘Abd Allāh al-Asadī (surnamed as Bah’āaddīn Qarâqûsh) (n.d. – April 1201). The book is so influential that historical facts are overshadowed, and overwhelmed by the humorous anecdotes that branded Qarâqûsh forever as a symbol of a lunatic tyrant. This manuscript, however, is believed to be one of the oldest books on political humor in the Egyptian history (Al-Najjār 1978: 56). Therefore, using a critical discourse analysis perspective, the study seeks to examine and analyze humor and jokes in selected anecdotes from Ibn Mammātī’s book. I have drawn upon the three-dimensional model of discourse analysis developed by Norman Fairclough (1992a, 1995a, 1995b, 2001, 2003). The study aims to prove that this pamphlet has been used in the entire Islamic world in different epochs as a defense mechanism against all the ruthless sultans, kings, rulers, and presidents. I claim that these jokes have served as a sort of recreation for the people, as a means of peaceful protest, and as a silent cry against oppression and tyranny.

Stock returns, quantile autocorrelation, and volatility forecasting

We examine stock return autocorrelation at various quantiles of the returns' distribution and use it to forecast stock return volatility. Our empirical results show that the strength of the autoregression varies across the quantiles of the returns' distribution in terms of both magnitude and persistence. Specifically, the autoregression order and magnitude of the coefficients is lower in the left tail in comparison with the right tail. Additionally, we show that the quantile autoregressive (QAR) framework proposed in this study improves out-of-sample volatility forecasting performance compared to the generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH)-type models and other quantile-based models. We also observe greater outperformance in QAR estimates during periods of financial turmoil. Moreover, the QAR method also explains the stylized ‘leverage effect’ associated with asset returns in the presence of volatility asymmetry.

Troubles in Tuva: Patterns of perimortem trauma in a nomadic community from Southern Siberia (second to fourth c. CE).

Warfare is assumed to be one of the defining cultural characteristics of steppe nomads in Eastern Eurasia. For the first-centuries CE, a period of political turmoil in Northern China and Southern Siberia, relatively few data are, however, available about the degree and variability of violence in these communities. Here, we provide new data on violence among steppe nomads during the first-centuries CE by analyzing the type, anatomical distribution, and demographic distribution of perimortem trauma at Tunnug1 (Tuva, Southern Siberia-second to fourth c. CE). Perimortem traumas were assessed on 87 individuals representing both sexes and different age classes. The timing of the lesions was assessed based on morphological criteria, including the absence and presence of bone reactive processes and the relative plasticity of the bone at the moment of impact. The distribution by age, sex, and anatomical location of trauma was analyzed by means of logistic models, Fisher's exact tests, and 3D visualizations. A total of 130 perimortem traumas, including chop marks, slice marks, penetrating lesions, and blunt traumas were identified on 22 individuals. Chop marks were mostly at the level of the skull and vertebrae and were likely caused by bladed weapons. Slice marks were found on the cervical vertebrae and cranium and may be the result of throat slitting and scalping by means of smaller bladed implements. Traumas were more frequent in males, and their presence is not correlated with age. This study adds new data to the few available regarding violence among steppe nomadic cultures and provides new insights about the effects of political instability on the life of the people inhabiting Eastern Eurasia during the early centuries CE.

Volatility Transmission from Equity, Bulk Shipping, and Commodity Markets to Oil ETF and Energy Fund—A GARCH-MIDAS Model

Oil continues to be a major source of world energy, but oil prices and funds have experienced high volatility over the last decade. This study applies the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity-mixed-data sampling (GARCH-MIDAS) model on data spanning 1 July 2014 to 30 April 2020 to examine volatility transmission from the equity, bulk shipping, commodity, currency, and crude oil markets to the United States Oil Fund (USO) and BlackRock World Energy Fund A2 (BGF). By dividing the sample into two subsamples, we find a significant volatility transmission from the equity market to the oil ETF and energy fund both before and after the 2018 U.S.–China trade war. The volatility transmission from the bulk shipping, commodity, and crude oil markets turns significant for the oil ETF and energy fund after the 2018 U.S.–China trade war, extending into the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. The results suggest that investors can use the equity market to predict the movement of oil and energy funds during both tranquil and turmoil periods. Moreover, investors can use bulk shipping, commodity, and crude oil markets in addition to the equity market to forecast oil and energy funds’ volatility during the turmoil periods. This paper benefits investors against the high volatility of the energy funds.