In this dissertation was examined the hydraulic pattern of media-priming effects by looking into Granger causality (a statistical test to determine if one time series is useful in forecasting another) between media coverage and the importance of issues people perceive. The hydraulic pattern hypothesis, an argument that increase in the importance of an issue is accompanied by decrease in a similar amount of importance, is embedded in most media-effect theories but has rarely been tested. To test the causality with media coverage, time series of six issues and six candidate variables were created. This research is distinct from previous studies of priming in that it tests aggregate-level influence of media coverage on popular evaluation of political-campaign candidate in a long-term setting. In the findings, media coverage of issues induced changes in the Granger-caused issue-weight of the issue that it covered, confirming the main effects of priming. The hydraulic pattern was also confirmed. Active media coverage of an issue, induced Granger-caused changes in five other issue-weights. It was found that it takes 7–8 days after the media coverage to establish a causal relationship of priming effects. vii In another finding, the result showed that the time-lag of the hydraulic pattern preceded the main priming effects. As regards the debated relationship of priming effects with political knowledge, this research found that high knowledge groups are more susceptible to the main priming effects. However, the impact of political knowledge on the hydraulic pattern was the opposite. This means that less knowledgeable people may be more vulnerable; that is, they are more likely to lose sight of other issues when the media primes a certain issue. In the test of attribute priming, the causality of the hydraulic pattern was also established to a lesser degree. Especially, personality-related candidate attributes like trustworthiness were robust regarding the hydraulic-pattern effects. In all of these analyses, the measurement of optimal time-lag was utilized instead of the durability concept used in previous studies. With this study design and new measurements, this research contributes to the literature by providing new insight into the theoretical conundrums related to priming theory. One of such insight is that the priming effects that matter at the poll, are relatively slow and deliberative processes, and are differentiated from the temperamental daily effects of news. / text

This paper examines the relationship between the development of the aggregate bond markets and real GDP in 13 highly developed economies. The recent interest in the ties between the real and the financial sector has usually been on the banking sector and the stock markets, rather ignoring the bond markets as a third essential source of external finance. We fill this gap by providing empirical evidence for causality patterns supporting the supply-leading approach in the USA, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Spain over the 1950 to 2000 period. In the cases of Japan, Finland and Italy we find evidence of interdependence between bond market capitalization growth and real output growth. Granger causality test and co-integration approach are employed to support this conjecture. (author's abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

This thesis investigates the relationship between Tobin’s Q and regional housing investment in Sweden for the time period of 1998-2012. The relationship is tested through estimation of two models for time-series analysis, a vector error correction model (VECM) and an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. Depending on which model that is used, I find some evidence of positive correlation between Tobin’s Q and regional housing investment in the long run while the short run dynamics of investment does not seem to be explained by Tobin’s Q. By transforming the regional data into a panel data set and running a fixed effects model, I examine the gain in explanatory power of Tobin’s Q from using disaggregated data rather than aggregated. My findings suggest that using disaggregated data improves the explanatory power of Tobin’s Q on investment. However, the Granger Causality test indicates two-way causality between Tobin’s Q and investment, causing endogeneity problem in the estimated equations.

Traditional demonstration of price fluctuation in the wheat market, by the theory of supply and demand is not comprehensive enough. With limited understanding of macroeconomic effects on the wheat market, accurate prediction of wheat price is impossible. Given the Chinese self—sustainable food policy, grain imports is a sensitive topic which may incur fierce argument. In this paper, however, I emphasize effect of exchange rate on nominal wheat price. By application of the cointegration theory, CPI shows slight negative correlation with nominal wheat price, yet GDP and population move in the same direction as the wheat price. The cointegration study of exchange rate implies, with appreciating Chinese RMB, domestic buyers incline to purchase wheat from the cheaper foreign market. According to the Granger causality test, the whole package of variables suggests significant causal relation with the wheat price.

This research paper investigates the causality issue between economic growth rate (GDP) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) investment in Sweden by applying modern time series techniques. It mainly covers time series analyses of 30 years of Sweden data (1980-2009). During that period, development in Information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure of Sweden was an evolutionary process based on innovation and technological knowledge. Telecommunication revolution which occurred and developed on the basic idea that economic change can be explained as co-evolution of technologies, institutions and development blocks (such as investment). The other way of describing it as an analysis of a long wave based on telecommunication technological revolution and key factor involved the share of investment in it. Standard tests of Unit roots, Cointegration and Granger Causality tests are presented. The main reason of such study is the assessment of ICT investment influence directly on economic growth. The results provide an interesting aspect that ICT investment share can possibly be a contributing factor to telecommunications infrastructure development but it cannot be as a whole sufficient enough for stimulating economic growth (GDP).It is found that one way causality running from ICT investment to economic growth (GDP) but only at one year lagged values not at other higher lagged values. The lack of long run relationship may be due to the inadequacy in reflecting the full effect of ICT investment in other complementary segments. The other complementary factors of ICT 's infrastructure are quite essential as well in describing economic growth and development level.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1937. / At head of title: Catholic university of America. School of social work. Bibliography: p. 177-183.

Τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες η υψηλή μεταβλητότητα που παρατηρείται στις χρηματοοικονομικές μεταβλητές, έχει δημιουργήσει έντονη την ανάγκη για αποτελεσματική διαχείριση του κινδύνου. Τα παράγωγα χρηματοοικονομικά προϊόντα παρέχουν τα μέσα για αντιστάθμιση του κινδύνου. Προς αυτή την κατεύθυνση έχει κατασκευασθεί ένας δείκτης που αντιπροσωπεύει την τεκμαρτή μεταβλητότητα των παραγώγων χρηματοοικονομικών προϊόντων, ο δείκτης VIX. Σκοπός της εργασίας είναι η διερεύνηση της σχέσης του δείκτη VIX με την αγορά του S&P500 και η σχέση συνολοκλήρωσης τεκμαρτής και δεσμευμένης μεταβλητότητας του S&P500. / --

Researchers tend to disagree on the direction of the relation among R&D and economic growth, suggesting that if economic performance determines R&D investments countries might overinvest in their R&D expenditure. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to shed new light to this question by first establishing a relation among the variables and thereafter investigate the Granger causality between them. This paper is based on a panel study consisting of 60 countries, with various levels of income during the period 1996-2015. Using a fixed effects model, we can establish a positive relation between growth in R&D expenditure and GDP growth and using Granger causality tests and the Toda-Yamamoto augmented Granger causality tests, we can conclude that the growth of R&D expenditure determines economic performance in the short-run for countries in all income levels, however no conclusions can be made regarding the direction of Granger causality in the long-run. Hence, our results show that R&D investments stimulate economic growth and should, to some extent, be favoured by policy regardless of a nation's level of development.

Background: In 2008, the financial crisis led to the deterioration of the global economy. The financial industry suffered severe setbacks. On the one hand, regulators strengthened their supervision over financial institutions and raised capital requirements. On the other hand, publics’ confidence in financial institutions declined. At the same time, the fintech industry has rapidly developed during this decade, they use technology to make financial innovation and pose a threat to the traditional financial industry. Purpose: This paper aims to study the linkage between U.S. fintech and the traditional financial sector, trying to figure out which industry's stock price changes will affect the stock price changes in another industry. In particular, it also considers whether the global financial crisis will affect this relationship. Method: We first perform the Granger causality test under the VAR framework for several selected indices sequences, and then use the Toda Yamamoto version of Granger causality approach to verify the reliability of the above tests. Testing is divided into different time intervals in order to detect the impact of financial crisis on the relationship between time series. Conclusion: The empirical analysis results show that the correlation between the index in the long-term and short-term is inconsistent, and also shows that the correlation between the index will be affected by the financial crisis, or say, it will change as time varying.

Previous work has linked the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) to changes in the Default Mode Network (DMN), including greater atrophy within the hippocampus (HC) as well as diminished functional connectivity and effective connectivity between anatomical DMN structures. Animal models have described the HC as a primary region of interest in studying the effects of exercise on adult neurogenesis and memory performance. Human studies have demonstrated that aerobic exercise leads to greater cardiorespiratory fitness and improved functional connectivity in the DMN for healthy adults. The goal of this study is to go beyond the predictions of human and animal studies to investigate how cardiorespiratory fitness may be used to estimate effective connectivity between the HC and the other DMN structures for young adults using resting state fMRI. Due to the data driven nature of this study, no hypothesis has been formulated. To investigate, data from 25 sedentary young adults was analyzed. Data included a resting state fMRI procedure and a cardiorespiratory fitness test, each taken from part of a larger ongoing clinical trial in the Brain Plasticity and Neuroimaging (BPN) Lab at Boston University (BU). We utilized group independent component analysis (GICA) to identify the regions that define the DMN and Conditional Granger Causality Analysis (CGCA) to determine effective connectivity between these regions. GICA indicated 9 structural regions in the DMN, consistent with previous work. This resulted in 72 possible instances of effective connectivity. The difference of causal influence between regions was calculated for each pair of DMN regions for CGCA, resulting in 36 possible instances of causal connectivity. Linear regression models were created to analyze the effect of cardiorespiratory fitness on effective connectivity between DMN regions and found 11 linear models which exhibited a significant (p > 0.05) relationship. Eight of eleven models involved the left or right hippocampus, showing that greater cardiorespiratory fitness is correlated with changes effective connectivity between the HC and the PCC, MPFC, or LTC. These results provide proof of concept that cardiorespiratory fitness in young adults is associated with changes DMN effective connectivity, particularly involving the hippocampus. This adds to the literature suggesting extended aerobic exercise, which is known to increase cardiorespiratory fitness and has been shown to increase the volume of the HC in older adults, may be neuroprotective of the HC across the lifespan. Further investigation is required to explore how effective connectivity in the DMN changes following an aerobic exercise intervention.