The study investigates the effect of economic and non-economic factors on natural gas demand in Ghana at the aggregate and disaggregates levels. The structural time series model is employed as it has the ability of capturing exogenous non-economic factors. The findings suggest that both...

A model for world crude oil and natural gas markets is estimated. It confirms low price and high income elasticities of demand for both crude oil and natural gas, which explains the market power of oil producers and price volatility following shocks. The paper establishes a relationship between...

Amid increased size and complexity of the banking industry, operational risk has a greater potential to transpire in more harmful ways than many other sources of risk. This paper provides a succinct overview of the current regulatory framework of operational risk under the New Basel Capital...

This paper investigates the generalized parametric measurement methods of aggregate operational risk in compliance with the regulatory capital standards for operational risk in the New Basel Capital Accord ("Basel II"). Operational risk is commonly defined as the risk of loss resulting from...

Using the between-sector variation in income as a new measure of economic uncertainty, this paper proposes simple models and supportive empirical evidence for the causal relations between economic uncertainty and government size in the open economy setting. Key empirical findings include: (1) a...

This paper develops a simple model of foreign debt portfolio management. The model suggests that, under mild conditions, the currency composition of a country's foreign debt portfolio is responsive to exchange rate movements. Empirical evidence is provided for a panel of 14 emerging economies in...

The Houthakker-Magee effect implies that a country facing unfavorable income elasticities in trade must either grow at a slower rate than its trading partners or experience a trend worsening of its current account and/or depreciation of its real exchange rate. Krugman (1989) first documented the...

Thermal efficiency improvement of a water heater was investigated numerically and experimentally in response to presence of a baffle, particularly designed for modifying the flow field within the water reservoir and enhancing heat transfer extracted into the water tank. A residential natural...

Energy usage can constitute a substantial operational expense for corporations. To reduce expenses, corporations may seek out decentralized solutions for generating electricity, based on sustainable energy or on conventional energy resources. The main goal of this research is to resolve an...

In this paper we apply statistical inference techniques to build neural network models which are able to explain the prices of call options written on the German stock index DAX. By testing for the explanatory power of several input variables serving as network inputs, some insight into the...