<p>Since the 1980s China had different exchange rate regimes. For example, in 1981, a dual-exchange rate system was introduced, with the official exchange rate applying to non-trade-related foreign exchange transactions and the depreciated internal settlement rate (ISR) applying to trade related transactions. This system was discontinued in 1985, but after the establishment of special economic zones to boost the country&rsquo / s export performance, the dual-exchange rate system was reintroduced in 1986. In 1994 the country informed the IMF that it will be switching to a managed floating exchange rate system and this was the official policy for almost ten years. However, de facto, the country chose to peg its currency to the USD during all these years (whilst Japan was the most important trading partner).</p> <p><br /> The report provides a descriptive analytical overview of how China in this era of globalization and with the importance of the World Trade Agreement, managed to keep its currency pegged to the USD over such a long period of time. The most important factors explaining this choice were identified as the desire to stimulate export-let economic growth, the risk related to capital mobility, financial sector liberalization, relative price level stability, dollarization and politics.</p>

A recently developed therapy for treatment of acute respiratory failure requires that the patient's metabolic carbon dioxide production be eliminated by a membrane oxygenator operated in an extracorporeal blood circuit. In conjunction with peripheral cannulation, the oxygenator should be optimised for CO₂ removal at low blood flow rates of 1.5 ℓ/min or less for adults. An extensive literature survey revealed that very few publications dealt with oxygenator CO₂ performance at low flow rates. Two commercial devices, the Terumo CAPIOX II (1.6 m² and 3.3 m² membrane areas) hollow fibre oxygenator and the Travenol TMO (2.25 m² membrane area) parallel-plate oxygenator were evaluated in relation to the new therapy. A theoretical model describing carbon dioxide transfer in membrane oxygenators was used to correlate the experimental data. The Terumo CAPIOX II 3.3 m² unit was the only device capable of satisfying the carbon dioxide removal requirements necessary for the new therapy at the low blood flow rates stipulated. Effects of blood and gas flow maldistribution were also studied in the TMO and CAPIOX II units respectively. Non-uniform blood flow was not a major factor contributing to the decline in CO₂ transfer performance compared with theory. This was confirmed in experiments with a modified TMO unit. Comparison with theory indicated that the membrane resistance was the controlling factor for CO₂ transfer in the CAPIOX II device. A method was developed to assess the CO₂ transmission rate (Gco₂) through oxygenator membranes under gas-membrane-liquid contact conditions. This forms the basis for the selection of suitable membrane materials for oxygenators. Although the GCO₂ values for homogeneous silicone rubber membranes were consistent with the results of previous workers, significantly higher values were obtained for microporous polypropylene membranes. For microporous membranes under liquid contact conditions a 5-fold reduction in GCO₂ is obtained in this study compared to gas-membrane-gas tests, indicating that micropore wetting imposes a significant resistance to CO₂ transfer.

In this work, the principal concern will be with the coupling reaction and it is anticipated that the other reactions referred to above will be considered further when products of the RX-R'Li reactions are discussed.

Ion exchange resins have been used for retrieving radiocaesium from aqueous waste streams since the earliest days of the nuclear power industry. The physical and chemical properties of Lewatit DN ion exchange resins encapsulated in silica fume (SF)-blended cement were investigated with the aim of producing a stable solid wasteform for possible future disposal in an underground repository. Expansive reactions involving resin swelling in the high pH pore fluid and Ca(OH)2 formation around the resin particles can be suppressed by the addition of 50-75% SF at w/c ratios of 1.400-1.71. The basis of this suppression is the pozzolanic reaction between Ca(OH)2 and SF which consumes Ca(OH)2 and lowers the pH of the pore fluid to less than 10. The total heat evolution of blended cements is similar to that of a neat Portland cement, demonstrating the exothermic nature of the pozzolanic reaction. The use of high w/c ratios in cements containing 50% SF increases the permeability of the matrix. Porosity measurements indicate that this is due to the high free water content of the paste and the relatively high porosity of SF agglomerates. Elevated curing temperatures (up to 85oC) also increase the permeability as a result of coarsening of the microstructure. Despite the inferior physical immobilisation of caesium in high SF-content cements, leach tests, sorption measurements and pore fluid analysis show that chemical retention of caesium is enhanced by blending, more so in blends containing a permanent excess of SF, due to the formation of highly sorptive silica gel and low ratio C-S-H (Ca/Si as low as 0.80). On the other hand, SF-blended cements are more susceptible to physiochemical degradation in simulated groundwater's containing MgSO4. Chemical attack by MgSO4 converts C-S-H gel and silica gel to a non-cementitious magnesium silicate hydrate (identified as sepiolite) in 50-75% SF pastes, resulting in extensive deterioration of the attacked zone.

M.Com. (Economics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This dissertation empirically and theoretically investigates three interrelated issues of market anomalies in interest rates derivatives and foreign exchange rates. The first essay models the spot exchange rate as a decomposition of permanent and transitory components. Unlike extant analysis, the transitory component could be stationary or explosive. The second essay examines the market efficiency hypothesis in the foreign exchange markets and relates the rejection of forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis to the existence of risk premium not to the failure of rational expectation. The third essay examines the behavior of short-term riskless rate and models the risk free rate as a nonlinear trend stationary process. While addressing these issues, these essays account for: (1) finite sample bias; (2) Unit root and other nonstationary behaviors; (3) the role of nonlinear trend; and (4) the interrelations between different behaviors. Several new results have been gleaned from our analysis; we find that: (1) the spot exchange rates display a very slow mean aversion behavior, which implies the failure of the purchasing power parity; (2) there are positive autocorrelations across the long horizons overlapping returns increases overtime and then begin to decline at a very long horizon period; (3) the short-term riskless rate displays a nonlinear trend stationary process which is closer to driftless random walk behavior; (4) modifying the mean reverting shortterm interest rates models to a nonlinear trend stationary shows an extreme improvement and outperforms all suggested models; (5) the traditional tests for rational expectations and market efficiency in the foreign exchange markets are subject to size distortions; (6) we relate the rejection of market efficiency in the foreign exchange markets documented across most currencies to the existence of risk premium not to the rejection of rational expectation hypothesis.

Most asset pricing theories suggest that asset prices are forward looking and reflect market expectations of future earnings. By aggregating across companies, aggregate market prices may then be used as leading indicators of future Real GDP, Real Industrial Production and the level of Inflation. A Hodrick & Prescott (1981) filter is used to detrend the data, which is compiled on an annual and quarterly basis from the JSE, to test whether stock returns are in fact useful for indicating economic activity. An autoregressive model is constructed, yielding strong evidence of significance, in the first four quarters on a quarterly basis, and two years on an annual basis, for Real Stock Prices. Therefore, in terms of a South African context, the Cycle of Real Stock Prices are a leading indicator on the JSE.

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 1978 / The breakdown of the system of fixed exchange rates, which occurred in the western world in the early 1970s, has exerted marked effects upon the exchange rate policies adopted by South Africa. In particular, it has resulted in the local monetary authorities practising a more active policy concerning the exchange rate value of the rand. The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the exchange rate policies of the Renublic during the period from 1971 to 1977, and to offer recommendations For change. The research procedure followed involved extensive gathering of information from published literature, together with confidential information disclosed to the writer by the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank. The thesis is divided into four sections. Section A reviews the traditional exchange rate policy adopted by the South African authorities, and their long-standing support for fixed but adjustable exchange rates in the international monetary system. Section B incorporates on historical review and analysis of changes in the exchange rate for the rand which have materialised since 1971. Section C focuses attention upon the attitudes of the local authorities over the issue of reform of the exchange rate regime in the international monetary system in the past few years. Section D is devoted to an analysis of specific policy issues which have arisen in the conduct of exchange rate policy in South Africa, and highlights areas where improvements could be made. All four chapters in this Section were submitted as evidence to the current Commission of Inquiry into the Monetary System and Monetary Policy in South Africa. One important conclusion of the study is that the more flexible exchange rate policy adopted in South Africa has had very limited success in affecting positively the current account of the balance of payments. Conversely exchange rate policy appears to have been more successful in improving the position on tht capital account. (iv) Another conclusion concerns deficiencies which exist in the provision of foreign exchange facilities, and particularly in regard to forward exchange. In some respects South African policy is characterized by exchange rates and facilities which bear little relation to market conditions. It is recommended that j mor># competitive market in foreign exchange should be established in both spot and forward transactions.

One of the fundamental tenets of finance is the relationship between risk and return. This research report contributes to the debate by testing the conditional risk-return relationship of shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) for the period 2001 to 2011. More specifically, the extent to which beta, standard deviation, semi-deviation and value-at-risk (VaR) are individually able to explain total share return, taking into account the conditional framework of up and down markets and sub-periods, is investigated. Portfolios based on these risk measures have been tracked and regressed. The robustness of the relationships are tested by using value and equal weighted portfolios. The study indicates that standard deviation was able to explain the risk-return relationship across all scenarios (overall, up/down markets and sub-periods), while beta proved to be an ineffective measure of risk under all scenarios. The testing of downside risk measures revealed that semi-deviation produced weak results under all scenarios, while value-at-risk proved to be an effective measure of risk both during poor market conditions and on an overall basis.

Thesis advisor: Fabio Ghironi / My doctoral dissertation studies the interaction between financial development, exchange rate regimes and productivity growth. The first chapter provides a microfounded, quantitative model that rationalizes recent empirical evidence by Aghion et al (2009), who find that fixed exchange rate regimes lead to higher long-run productivity growth in countries with low financial development, while the effect in financially developed countries is insignificant. The channel that explains this evidence in my model is the following: A fixed exchange rate regime leads to lower inflation when the money growth is otherwise high. In turn, lower inflation results in higher long-run productivity growth since financial intermediaries hold a fraction of deposits as reserves, whose return is lower than the market rate and, thus, is affected by inflation. The lower return paid on reserves drives a wedge between the return paid on deposits and the return paid on loans by reducing the former and increasing the latter. In turn, this reduces entry of new innovators in the economy and, consequently, productivity growth. I show that the negative effect of flexible exchange rate regimes on growth is larger for countries with lower levels of financial development because inflation and the fraction of deposits held as reserves are higher in these countries. In the second chapter, I perform panel-data analysis to find how much of the effect of exchange rate regimes on productivity growth, documented previously by Aghion et al. (2009), can be accounted for by the channel proposed in the first chapter of my dissertation. I use data for 83 countries over the period 1960-2000. The data comes from the Penn World Table, World Development Indicators, International Financial Statistics, and the Reinhart and Rogoff classification of exchange rate regimes. I use the GMM system estimator and regress productivity growth on financial development, a variable describing the exchange rate regime, growth controls, as well as bank reserve ratios. I find that when the interaction effect of inflation and financial development or the interaction of the reserve ratio and financial development are added to the regression used by Aghion et al. (2009), the exchange rate regime effect on productivity growth in less financially developed countries is no longer significant. This implies that the channel proposed in the first chapter of my dissertation can explain most of the initial empirical results. The third chapter explores the short-run effect of exchange rate regimes on the macroeconomic performance of a small open economy with endogenous productivity growth and underdeveloped financial markets when the home economy is subject to shocks. I use the model introduced in the first chapter, add nominal price rigidities, and calculate impulse responses, given a productivity shock and a shock to the foreign nominal interest rate. I also calculate second moments implied by the model and compare them to empirical second moments. The results show that after a positive exogenous productivity shock, productivity growth, output and consumption increase more under the flexible exchange rate regime. However, given an increase in the foreign nominal interest rate, productivity growth falls but the reduction in productivity growth is smaller under the fixed exchange rate regime. In addition, output and consumption fall after the shock, however, the reduction of consumption and output is higher under the fixed exchange rate regime. I also find that after both shocks analyzed here, welfare is higher under the fixed exchange rate regime. The model is also able to match some features of business cycles in developing countries. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.