Botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) have been used as therapeutic agents in the clinical treatment of a wide array of neuromuscular and autonomic neuronal transmission disorders. These toxins contain three ...functional domains that mediate highly specific neuronal cell binding, internalization and cytosolic delivery of proteolytic enzymes that cleave proteins integral to the exocytosis of neurotransmitters. The exceptional cellular specificity, potency and persistence within the neuron that make BoNTs such effective toxins, also make them attractive models for derivatives that have modified properties that could potentially expand their therapeutic repertoire. Advances in molecular biology techniques and rapid DNA synthesis have allowed a wide variety of novel BoNTs with alternative functions to be assessed as potential new classes of therapeutic drugs. This review examines how the BoNTs have been engineered in an effort to produce new classes of therapeutic molecules to address a wide array of disorders.
We examine the price discovery performance of China's crude oil futures traded on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) for the spot prices of 19 types of deliverable and nondeliverable ...Asian crude oil. We find evidence for the INE crude oil futures price discovery function even at the early stage for almost all the deliverable crudes and some nondeliverable crudes. Both the INE crude oil futures price and the spot price significantly contribute to the price discovery process, with substantially time‐varying informational roles. While the price discovery performance was severely damaged around the period of COVID‐19 pandemic shock intensification in China with the temporary cancellation of nighttime trading, it improved to some extent after China started the recovery from the shock. But such improvement deteriorated drastically and disappeared since early 2021. Further analysis reveals that both economic fundamentals (e.g., the warehouse inventory) and trading‐related characteristics of the futures market are significant determinants of the price discovery performance. The overall findings imply that the INE crude oil futures market has evolved into a useful and important information source in pricing Asian crudes, and is on the path to emerge as an Asian benchmark.
Early studies of oil stocks focus exclusively on the average relationship between oil price changes and individual stock returns. In this paper, we examine how the tail behavior of risk factors ...affects the tail behavior of individual oil stock returns. We consider a total of 25 widely-used risk factors from the asset pricing literature. These risk factors include 14 stock market factors, three bond market factors, and eight commodity market factors. We find that the excess stock market return, the change in CBOE aggregate market volatility index, the commodity market index return, the change in the prices of oil futures contracts, and the change in CBOE oil ETF volatility index have the largest impact in moving oil stocks tail returns.
•We examine how the tail behavior of various risk factors affects the tail behavior of individual oil stock returns.•We find that the excess stock market return, the change in CBOE aggregate market volatility index, the commodity market index return, the change in the prices of oil futures contracts, and the change in CBOE oil ETF volatility index have the largest impact in moving oil stocks tail returns.
This study investigates the association between overnight and daytime-trading session returns in U.S. equity markets over the last 14 years and interprets it using the overreaction hypothesis. To ...identify the effects of overnight overreactions on daytime trading sessions, we control for daily investor sentiment, firms' fundamental variables, and risk factors. Our results suggest that investors tend to overreact overnight and react more dispassionately during daytime trading sessions. Investors' reactions differ across sectors, and the degree of overreaction is greater in cyclical industries than in defensive industries. Additionally, we analyze the impacts of overnight reactions on daytime trading sessions focusing on recession periods. The impacts differ by subperiods and are pronounced during the Global Financial Crisis and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors' reactions to overnight news events also respond differently to demand and supply shock-induced recessions.
•Overnight events affect asset price movements during daytime trading sessions.•The overreaction hypothesis explains the relationship between overnight events and subsequent stock return behavior.•The overreaction to overnight news is more apparent in cyclical industries.•The market reaction to overnight events is more pronounced during recessions.•Investors' reactions differ in demand and supply shock-induced recessions.
This study examines whether the composition of market participants contributes to shaping market liquidity around central bank announcements. By analyzing transaction‐level data from a stock index ...futures market, we find that the roles of foreign and domestic institutional investors in taking or providing liquidity, respectively, are switched following the news announcements. The participation of domestic (foreign) institutions is negatively (positively) associated with liquidity provision shortly after the announcements, whereas they provide (consume) liquidity in general. The change in domestic institutions' roles is attributed to their advantages in processing local news as it is pronounced when they actively participate. Domestic individuals remain largely noisy and unresponsive. Overall, the results support the existence of adverse selection costs in the order‐driven context and imply that institutional investors may trade with the wind when they have information superiority.
The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice focuses on the growing worldwide movement aimed at decolonizing state policies and practices, and various disciplinary knowledges ...including criminology, social work and law. The collection of original chapters brings together cutting-edge, politically engaged work from a diverse group of writers who take as a starting point an analysis founded in a decolonizing, decolonial and/or Indigenous standpoint. Centering the perspectives of Black, First Nations and other racialized and minoritized peoples, the book makes an internationally significant contribution to the literature. The chapters include analyses of specific decolonization policies and interventions instigated by communities to enhance jurisdictional self-determination; theoretical approaches to decolonization; the importance of research and research ethics as a key foundation of the decolonization process; crucial contemporary issues including deaths in custody, state crime, reparations, and transitional justice; and critical analysis of key institutions of control, including police, courts, corrections, child protection systems and other forms of carcerality. The handbook is divided into five sections which reflect the breadth of the decolonizing literature: • Why decolonization? From the personal to the global • State terror and violence • Abolishing the carceral • Transforming and decolonizing justice • Disrupting epistemic violence This book offers a comprehensive and timely resource for activists, students, academics, and those with an interest in Indigenous studies, decolonial and post-colonial studies, criminal legal institutions and criminology. It provides critical commentary and analyses of the major issues for enhancing social justice internationally. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This study examines how the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) affects consumers' payment instrument choices, asset allocation decisions, and the profitability of financial ...intermediaries. Specifically, we advance a theoretical model in which introducing an interest-bearing CBDC expands market participants' payment and investment options but also poses a potential threat to financial intermediaries if it raises their borrowing costs significantly. The existence of a network externality further complicates the analysis by affecting consumers' choice of payment mechanism. Our results suggest that the issuance of a CBDC is a double-edged sword for an economy. Although it provides additional payment and investment options for market participants, it increases competition and weakens financial intermediaries' margins.
•We analyze the functions of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as a means of both payment and value storage.•The interbank offered and CBDC rates affect commercial banks' lending and deposit sectors, respectively.•Changes in the CBDC rate can affect consumers' allocations among cash, the CBDC, and bank deposits.•The crowding-out effect accelerates when the CBDC rate exceeds a certain level.
This study constructs an extended value-at-risk model that incorporates all microstructural liquidity components using a high-quality tick-by-tick index options market dataset. Out-of-sample ...backtesting and mean-difference analyses suggest that the traditional value-at-risk measure significantly underestimates investors' potential losses relative to our new liquidity-adjusted measure. Logistic regressions reveal that ex-ante market illiquidity increases violations of liquidity-adjusted value-at-risk and that these violations are often driven by foreign institutional investors.
This study uses an endogenous Markov-switching framework to examine the interrelatedness of the volatility dynamics of the US and Korean markets. Previous literature assumes that the US market ...implied volatility index is exogenous to the Korean implied volatility index. Here, we allow for correlations between the US and Korean variables and suggest two types of endogeneity, namely endogeneity in the regressors and in the regime-switching probabilities. The estimation results show that both types of endogeneity are present in the US variables and that the parameter estimates are quite different when endogeneity is considered, indicating a serious endogeneity bias in the parameter estimates. The results of the endogeneity test for the regressors show that the effects of global shocks are often persistent and may last for as long as six periods. Sub-period analyses indicate that the degrees of endogeneity were especially strong during the global financial crisis.
Bitcoin users compete with one another over the timing of the settlement of their on-blockchain transactions. Earlier settlement is valuable. Bitcoin users can accelerate the confirmation of the ...settlement of their transactions in the cryptocurrency by voluntarily bidding transaction fees with a user's optimal fee level dependent upon his or her impatience. We characterize this transaction competition as a contest with a rank-order allocation of prizes. Under this characterization, we derive the fee-bidding strategy at the symmetric equilibrium. Based on this equilibrium, we discuss the Bitcoin network and highlight the impacts of changes in different factors related to the mining industry. We find that fee–security feedback can amplify the impacts of these events.
•We derive a fee-bidding strategy in an on-chain Bitcoin transaction at the equilibrium.•Bitcoin blockchain security strengthened by a higher hash rate increases the transaction fee.•The fee-security feedback loop within the Bitcoin network amplifies the impacts of mining factors.
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