Determinants of Interest Spread in Pakistan

Interest spread of Pakistan s banking industry has been on the rise for the last two years. The increase in interest spread discourages savings and investments, on the one hand, and raises concerns about the effectiveness of the bank-lending channels of monetary policy, on the other. This study examines the determinants of interest spread in Pakistan using panel data of 29 banks. The results show that the share of interest-insensitive deposits in total bank deposits is a key determinant of interest spread, whereas industry concentration has no significant impact on interest spread. Furthermore, the ongoing merger wave in the banking industry will limit the options for the savers, with adverse implications for the interest spread. We argue that to maintain a reasonably competitive environment, merger proposals may be subjected to review by an anti-trust authority.Banks, Determination of Interest Rates, Mergers, Acquisitions

On Order Statistics for GS-Distributions

In this article, a class of distributions is used to establish several recurrence relations satisfied by single and product moments of order statistics and progressive Type-II right censoring. The recurrence relations for moments of some specific distributions including uniform (a;b); exponential (λ); generalized exponential (α;λ;ν); beta (1;b); beta (b;1); logistic (α;β) and other distributions from order statistics and progressive Type-II right censoring can be obtained as special cases. A short explanation of GS-distribution can be found in reference [27]. As an example, means, variances and covariances for standard exponential distribution of progressive Type-II right censored order statistics are computed. Various characterizations of the recently introduced GS-distributions are presented. These characterizations are based on a simple relationship between two truncated moments ; on hazard function ; and on functions of order statistics. A characterization of the GS-distributions based on conditional moment of order statistics is extended to truncated moment of order statistics

Data-Discriminants of Likelihood Equations

Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is a fundamental computational problem in statistics. The problem is to maximize the likelihood function with respect to given data on a statistical model. An algebraic approach to this problem is to solve a very structured parameterized polynomial system called likelihood equations. For general choices of data, the number of complex solutions to the likelihood equations is finite and called the ML-degree of the model. The only solutions to the likelihood equations that are statistically meaningful are the real/positive solutions. However, the number of real/positive solutions is not characterized by the ML-degree. We use discriminants to classify data according to the number of real/positive solutions of the likelihood equations. We call these discriminants data-discriminants (DD). We develop a probabilistic algorithm for computing DDs. Experimental results show that, for the benchmarks we have tried, the probabilistic algorithm is more efficient than the standard elimination algorithm. Based on the computational results, we discuss the real root classification problem for the 3 by 3 symmetric matrix~model.Comment: 2 table

Hygrothermal performance of building envelopes in the tropics under operative conditions : condensation and mould growth risk appraisal

Poor indoor hygrothermal performance increases the risk of indoor moisture problems and deterioration due to mould growth, corrosion and damage to archival materials. Hence, proper control of indoor thermohygric intensity abates indoor moisture and its associated problems. This paper presents the results of envelopes hygrothermal performance assessments in a hot and humid climate building with varying operational profile between adjacent spaces. The case-studied building runs on 24hrs cooling mode in one part against natural and/or mechanical supply-exhaust fan means on the other. In-situ experiments were combined with hygrothermal analytical methods to assess the envelope thermal quality together with the operative conditions against condensation and mould growth risks. The results show that the building is overcooled leading to poor envelope hygrothermal performance with associated condensation and mould growth problems on non-airconditioned sides of the envelopes

M-GEAR: Gateway-Based Energy-Aware Multi-Hop Routing Protocol for WSNs

In this research work, we advise gateway based energy-efficient routing protocol (M-GEAR) for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). We divide the sensor nodes into four logical regions on the basis of their location in the sensing field. We install Base Station (BS) out of the sensing area and a gateway node at the centre of the sensing area. If the distance of a sensor node from BS or gateway is less than predefined distance threshold, the node uses direct communication. We divide the rest of nodes into two equal regions whose distance is beyond the threshold distance. We select cluster heads (CHs)in each region which are independent of the other region. These CHs are selected on the basis of a probability. We compare performance of our protocol with LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy). Performance analysis and compared statistic results show that our proposed protocol perform well in terms of energy consumption and network lifetime.Comment: IEEE 8th International Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA'13), Compiegne, Franc

Islam and the New Indonesian Democracy

Streaming video requires RealPlayer to view.The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Din Syamsuddin is a key player in both social affairs and politics in Indonesia. As president of Muhammadiyah, the country's largest modernist Muslim social and educational organization, he is directly involved in debates over the relationship between Islam and politics. In the case of Indonesia, Syamsuddin said, moderate and modernist Islamic organizations like Muhammadiyah are in a much better position than an outside power to reach out to extremist groups in the Muslim community and push them toward becoming peaceful and moderate players.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent webpage, streaming video, photos, and lecture summar