The α/β-hydrolases KAI2 and D14 are paralogous receptors for karrikins and strigolactones, two classes of plant growth regulators with butenolide moieties. KAI2 and D14 act in parallel signaling pathways that share a requirement for the F-box protein MAX2, but produce distinct growth responses by regulating different members of the SMAX1-LIKE/D53 family. kai2 and max2 mutants share seed germina...

We say that a consumer is wary if she overlooks gains but not losses in remote sets of dates or states. We formulate this by requiring preferences to be upper but not lower Mackey semi-continuous and Bewley’s result on existence of Arrow-Debreu equilibrium whose prices are not necessarily countably additive holds. We relate wariness to some concepts studied in decision theory like lack of myopi...

We explore sell-side debt analysts’ contributions to the efficiency of securities markets. We document that debt returns lag equity returns less when debt research coverage exists, consistent with debt analysts facilitating the process by which available information is impounded in debt prices. The effect is incremental to, but comparable in magnitude to, hedge fund ownership’s effect. No such ...

Models that admit only equilibrium solutions are prevalent in neoclassical economics and modern finance. Such solutions lack path dependence and evolve only in reaction to exogenous changes but, worryingly, the stability of these solutions and the nature of any non-equilibrium alternatives are rarely considered. We describe how such equilibrium solutions, and the modeling assumptions underpinni...

Recent financial studies often assume agents have Epstein and Zin (1989) preferences, preferences which require agents to care about when uncertainty is resolved. Under this “recursive-preference” framework, the preference for uncertainty resolution is entirely determined by an agent’s preferences for risk and intertemporal substitution. To test the implications of this model, this paper presen...

The issue of nonanalytic corrections to the Fermi-liquid behavior is revisited. Previous studies have indicated that the corrections to the Fermi-liquid forms of the specific heat and the static spin susceptibility (C}T , xs 5const) are nonanalytic in D<3 and scale as dC(T)}T, xs(T)}T , and xs(Q)}Q , with extra logarithms in D53 and 1. It is shown that these nonanalytic corrections originate fr...

The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment Flows to the Federal Region of Kurdistan The flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) has increased dramatically in the last two decades. However, the distribution of FDI is highly unequal and the competition among countries to attract foreign investors is fierce. This report investigates the determinants of FDI inflows to developing countries in gen...

This paper studies the impact of ambiguity and ambiguity aversion on equilibrium asset prices and portfolio holdings in competitive financial markets. It argues that attitudes toward ambiguity are heterogeneous across the population, just as attitudes toward risk are heterogeneous across the population, but that heterogeneity of attitudes toward ambiguity has different implications than heterog...

We use a novel framework that integrates standard asset pricing and microstructure models to study how asymmetric information, imperfect competition among market makers, and risk aversion affect equilibrium illiquidity and asset pricing. All the main results are obtained in closed-form. In our model, market power, asymmetric information, and market-making cost drive market illiquidity. This mod...

We conducted a global study of the long-term issuer ratings of nonfinancial firms from Standard and Poor's Ratings Services (S&P) for the period 1998–2003. Specifically, we focused on the solicited versus unsolicited ratings and sample-selection bias in the analysis. Unlike the literature, we adopted an improved method using Wooldridge’s instrumentalvariable approach to mitigate the concern of ...