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Understanding the nature of systemic risk is key to understanding the occurrence and propagation of financial crises. The term usually refers to a situation where many (if not all) financial institutions fail as a result of a common shock or a contagion process. Herring and Wachter (2001) and Reinhart and Rogoff (2009) find evidence that a collapse of residential or commercial real estate values is the main cause for system wide failures of financial institutions during many financial crises.

There is no straightforward relationship between obesity and ethnicity, with a complex interplay of factors affecting health in minority ethnic communities in the UK. Apart from Health Survey for England (HSE) data from 2004, there is little nationally representative data on obesity prevalence in adults from minority ethnic groups in the UK. Data are scarce or non-existent for many smaller ethnic groups and only a few qualitative studies have focused on these communities.

Obesity and relapse after dieting pose a significant threat to an increasing number of adults in this country. Resistance to treatment and high relapse rates make this problem frustrating for patients and practitioners. There is limited research on relapse causation; research on social and life circumstance factors is uncommon. Given the limitations of existing research, the purpose of this study was to investigate the natural course of obesity relapse.

Why is a well-developed fi nancial sector important and what eff ect does it have on the risk in an economy? According to the development literature, financial development leads to economic growth because it allows intermediaries to carry out tasks such as reducing investment costs or pooling capital more efficiently. However, in this view of financial development there is no channel for intermediaries either to avert or to create systemic risk. By contrast, in the banking literature, the fundamental role of intermediaries is to transform risk. Specifically, intermediaries have the expertise to reallocate investment capital, and so they provide a link between capital owners and entrepreneurs, allowing both to achieve the optimal mix of risk and returns.

Private equity plays an essential role for financing innovative companies and business sectors in the economy. These funds not only constitute an important source of financial funding but also represent a key monitoring device for young growth companies. Although research interest in private equity has increased remarkably during the last years, little is still known about the performance characteristics of private equity as an asset class. This paper attempts to fill this gap.

The theory of international finance is based on differences between the residents of different countries in opportunity sets, tastes, and information. Such differences may lead to systematic differences between the portfolios held by investors in different countries,as well as to different trading behavior. Differences in opportunity sets may arise because of cross border frictions and barriers such as taxes and capital controls (Black (1974), Stulz (1981)).

This study explores perceptions of healthy/unhealthy eating, and perceptions of various socializing agents encouraging healthy eating, amongst Chinese adolescents. A survey was conducted of 152 seven, eighth and ninth grade Hong Kong students. Results showed that respondents frequently ate out with friends and frequently consumed a range of relatively unhealthy food (candies, chips, and soft drinks). They perceived that a balanced diet and eating at a regular time were the most important attributes of healthy eating.

Most people are aware that a healthy diet is vital in order to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other common physical problems. Recent evidence also suggests that good nutrition may be just as important for our mental health and that a number of conditions, including depression, may be infl uenced by dietary factors.

The money demand literature has a long and checkered history. The breakdown of previously stable relationships has led to re-specification of models throughout the post-war period. Notable examples are the “case of the missing money” in the 1970s and the under-prediction of money in the 1980s. Nevertheless, policy makers continue to pay attention to monetary aggregates and the charter of the European Central Bank lists money as one of the pillars of its monetary policy.

XML Publisher enables customers to utilize a set of familiar desktop tools to create and maintain their own report formats based on XML data extracts from their existing Oracle Applications concurrent request programs. At runtime, XML Publisher merges the custom templates with the concurrent request data extracts to generate output in PDF, HTML, RTF, EXCEL (HTML), or even text for use with EFT and EDI transmissions.

It is well known that production-based models face a greater challenge in explaining the fluctuations in asset returns due to endogenous consumption and dividend smoothing. Researchers have long realized that relaxing the assumption of perfect rationality is a potential way to explain patterns observed in both macroeconomic and financial time series. Recently, Fuster, Laibson, and Mendel (2011) argue that quasirational models deserve greater attention.

In the last three decades several developed and developing countries have moved towards liberalization of their financial system. Countries eased or lifted bank interest rate ceilings, lowered compulsory reserve requirements and entry barriers, reduced government interference in credit allocation decisions, and privatized many banks and insurance companies. Also, some countries actively promoted the development of local stock markets, and encouraged entry of foreign financial intermediaries.

Analysts’ earnings forecasts serve as an important benchmark for investors in evaluating firm performance (Brown 2001, Brown and Caylor 2005). It is well known that stock returns are significantly related to contemporaneous earnings forecast errors and future forecast revisions. Recent evidence also suggests that the mere act of beating (missing) analyst forecasts evokes a favorable (unfavorable) market response at the time of the earnings announcement after controlling for the magnitude of the forecast error (Lopez and Rees 2002, Bartov, Givoly, and Hayn 2002).

Significant progress has been made in adapting modern macroeconomic models for use in policy analysis. Monetary economists have recently focused on determining the optimal monetary policy in New Keynesian models. This paper shows that optimal monetary policy in New Keynesian models produces a great deal of uncertainty about inflation at medium to long horizons.

Obesity has been evident in the human record for over 20 000 years and affected numerous aspects of human life and society (Bray, 2007a; Bray, 2007b). This introductory chapter describes the early history of human obesity, and then reviews how understanding has developed in the basic biology of obesity, its defi nitions and measurement, the complications of the disease, and fi nally its management. Some of the major scientifi c and medical milestones in the history of obesity are shown in Table 1.1.