New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase (NDM) represents a serious challenge for treatment and public health. A carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli clinical strain WCHEC13-8 was subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility tests, whole genome sequencing and conjugation experiments. It was resistant to imipenem (MIC, >256 μg/ml) and meropenem (MIC, 128 μg/ml) and belonged to ST3835. bla NDM-1 was the only ...

In this paper we make use of the uncovered interest rate parity (UIRP) relationship to examine the extent that the liberalization of emerging financial markets has resulted in the integration of developing countries’ currency markets into the international capital market. Previous tests of the impact of liberalization on the integration of emerging markets capital markets into world financial m...

Can financial integration, particularly the cross-border investments of multinational firms, help explain the synchronization of business cycles? This paper presents evidence on the comovement of returns and investment within U.S. multinational firms to address this question. These firms constitute significant fractions of economic output and investment in most large economies, suggesting that ...

Sudden stops have been linked to a number of financial crises in emerging market countries. While a large literature has developed emphasizing the importance of institutions and governance in reducing economic volatility, this paper finds that the effect of government quality on the incidence of sudden stops is non-linear. Initial improvements in governance actually increase the incidence of co...

Analyses of the political economy of exchange rate policy posit that firms and individuals in different sectors of the economy have distinct policy attitudes toward the level and stability of the exchange rate. Most such approaches hypothesize that internationally exposed firms prefer more stable currencies and that producers of tradables prefer a relatively depreciated real exchange rate. As s...

In this paper we evaluate the feasibility of a common Asian Currency Unit (ACU) involving countries of East and South Asia. We analyze the various properties of an ACU and calculate it’s value using weighted averages of the values of Asian currencies. Looking at the movement of individual Asian currencies vis-á-vis the ACU, we find that there have been severe misalignments among the Asian curre...

Recent studies have conjectured that there may be a link between financial liberalization and financial instability in emerging economies. Most of these studies, however, do not investigate whether emerging economies are becoming structurally more vulnerable to currency and banking crises. In this paper, we argue that emerging economies are systematically becoming more susceptible to both curre...

This paper investigates the nature of information leadership of the US and Japan in the advanced Asia-Pacific stock markets. Instead of just relying on return and return volatility spillovers from major markets, specific and disaggregated news events are also utilized. In particular, the aim is to examine the nature of spillover effects of scheduled announcements of the US and Japanese macroeco...

A Financial Stability Fund set by a union of sovereign countries (e.g. the European Stability Mechanism) can improve countries’ ability to share risks, borrow and lend, with respect to the standard instrument: sovereign debt financing. Efficiency gains arise from the ability of the fund to offer long-term contingent financial contracts, subject to limited enforcement and moral hazard constraint...

In light of the longstanding vision of economic and monetary integration in the ASEAN region and the importance of coordinating monetary policies to achieve it, the objective of this paper is to the assess the monetary policy synchronization among the founding members of the ASEAN, i.e., Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Due to the importance of exchange rate movements t...