Methods and compositions for stimulating T-lymphocytes

Disclosed are methods, compositions, antibodies, and therapeutic kits for use in stimulating cytotoxic T-lymphocytes and generating immune responses against epitopes of protooncogenes. Novel peptides are described which have been shown to stimulate cytotoxic T-lymphocytes, and act as antigens in generation of oncogenic epitope-recognizing antibodies. Methods are disclosed for use in treating various proliferative disorders, and diagnosing HER-2/neu-containing cells; also disclosed are therapeutic kits useful in the treatment of cancer and production of potential anti-cancer vaccines.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Interactive Property Valuations

This paper develops a model of housing decisions which allows for social interactions within residential neighborhoods to impact homeowners' valuation of their own properties. The model is used to structure an empirical investigation with data from the American Housing Survey for 1985 and 1989. It explores in great detail a relatively neglected feature of the data, namely the availability of data of neighborhood clusters for standard metropolitan areas in the United States. This feature of the data allows us to model empirically the effects of social interactions at the immediate residential neighborhood level, with neighborhoods consisting of a dwelling unit and its ten nearest neighbors. Most previous work on neighborhoods has used contextual information associated with the census tract where a unit of observation belongs. It identifies the effect of endogenous social interactions and find that the impact of social interactions is much more important then the dynamic (autoregressive) structure of the model when both variables are present (but both are significant). The findings provide empirical support for the notion, common in the real estate world, of the importance of neighborhood characteristics in property valuations.neighborhood effects, housing, social interactions, property valuations

Topologies of Social Interactions

The paper adapts to richer social structures the Brock-Durlauf model of interactive discrete choice, where individuals’ decisions are influenced by the decisions of others. Social structure is modelled by a description of who interacts with whom, by means of a graph, with individuals as vertices and interaction between individuals as edges. The paper extends the mean field case to such alternative stylized interaction topologies as when individuals are connected through a common intermediary, the graph topology of interactions is a cycle or an one-dimensional lattice. Some results are qualitatively similar to the mean field case, but a richer class of anisotropic equilibria is also explored, for the case of the cycle and one-dimensional lattice. Social equilibria are also explored under the condition that individuals’ behavior is affected by the actual behavior of their neighbors and links are made with the econometric theory of systems of simultaneous equations modelling discrete decisions. The paper studies the role of interaction topology for the dynamics of adjustment towards isotropic equilibria. It compares circular interaction along a one-dimensional lattice with and without closure and shows that both lead to endogenous and generally transient spatial oscillations. However, closure of the social structure is responsible for relative persistence.interactions, dynamics, spatial oscillations, interactive discrete choice, neighborhood effects, Ising model, random fields

Intercity Trade and Convergent versus Divergent Urban Growth

The paper studies intercity trade and growth in an overlapping-generations economy where tradeable goods are produced using a composite of capital, raw labor and intermediates, and are combined in each city to produce a composite. The composite is used for consumption and investment. Tax-financed investment that affects commuting costs endogenizes city size. A combination of weak (strong) diminishing returns and strong (weak) market size effects can lead to increasing (decreasing) returns to scale. Autarkic urban growth may be parallel or divergent. Capital growth in the integrated economy has the same dynamic properties as its counterpart for an economy with autarkic cities but leads to national constant returns to scale.

Full Solution of an Endogenous Sorting Model with Contextual and Income Effects

The paper solves themselves into neighborhoods because they value average schooling among adults in the neighborhood. The paper extends results by Nesheim (2002) but with the addition of income effects on neighborhood choice. Individuals value housing, non-housing consumption, and expected schooling of their children. The latter depends on parental schooling, on a child's ability, and on average schooling in the neighborhood. Neighborhood choice trades off non-housing consumption with children's expected schooling. Individuals choose neighborhoods recongnizing that their neighbors' characteristics are correlated with their own. The equilibrium housing price is associated with endogenous sorting and also allows computation of a neighborhood distributions of income, schooling and other variables of interest.

Cross Sectional Evolution of the US City Size Distribution

We report nonparametrically estimated stochastic transition kernels for the evolution of the distribution of US metropolitan area populations, for the period 1900 to 1990. These suggest a fair amount of uniformity in the patterns of mobility during the study period. The distribution of city sizes is predominantly character-sed by persistence. Additional kernel estimates do not reveal any stark differences in intra-region mobility patterns. We characterise the nature of intra-size distribution dynamics by means of measures that do not require discretisation of the city size distribution. We employ these measures to study the degree of mobility within the US city size distribution and, separately, within regional and urban subsystems. We find that different regions show different degrees of intra-distribution mobility. Second-tier cities show more mobility than top-tier cities.City size distribution, cross-sectional evolution, intradistribution mobility

FRS17 and the Sterling Doubles A Corporate Yield Curve

The skewness in physical distributions of equity index returns and the implied volatility skew in the risk-neutral measure are subjects of extensive academic research. Much attention is now being focused on models that are able to capture time-varying conditional skewness and kurtosis. For this reason normal mixture GARCH(1,1) models have become very popular in financial econometrics. We introduce further asymmetries into this class of models by modifying the GARCH(1,1) variance processes to skewed variance processes with leverage effects. These asymmetric normal mixture GARCH models can differentiate between two different sources of asymmetry: a persistent asymmetry due to the different means in the conditional normal mixture distributions, and a dynamic asymmetry (the leverage effect) due to the skewed GARCH processes. Empirical results on five major equity indices first employ many statistical criteria to determine whether asymmetric (GJR and AGARCH) normal mixture GARCH models can improve on asymmetric normal and Student’s-t GARCH specifications. These models were also used to simulate implied volatility smiles for the S&P index, and we find that much the most realistic skews are obtained from a GARCH model with a mixture of two GJR variance components.Corporate Yield Curves, valuation of defined benefit liabilities

Income Mixing and Housing in U.S. Cities: Evidence from Neighborhood Clusters of the American Housing Survey

The paper describes within-neighborhood economic segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas in 1985 and 1993. It uses the neighborhood clusters of the American Housing Survey, standardized by metropolitan area income and household size, to explore income distribution within neighborhoods at a scale much smaller than the census tract (a representative sample of households or ‘kernels’ and their ten closest neighbors). Joint and conditional distributions portray neighbors’ characteristics conditional on the kernel’s housing tenure, race and income. The paper documents both significant income mixing in the majority of US urban micro neighborhoods and the extent of income mixing within neighborhoods of concentrated poverty.

Spatial Evolution of the US Urban System

We test implications of economic geography models for location, size and growth of cities with US Census data for 1900 û 1990. Our tests involve non-parametric estimations of stochastic kernels for the distributions of city sizes and growth rates, conditional on various measures of market potential and on features sizes of neighbors. We show that while these relationships change during the twentieth century, by 1990 they stabilize such that the size distribution of cities conditional on a range of spatial variables are all roughly independent of these conditioning variables. In contrast, similar results suggest that there is a spatial element to the city wage distribution. Our parametric estimations for growth rates against market potential, entry of neighbors, and own lagged population imply a negative effect of market potential on growth rates, unless own lagged population is also included, in which case market potential has a positive effect and own lagged population a negative one. Cities grow faster when they are small relative to their market potential. In total, our results support some theoretical predictions, but also provide a number of interesting puzzles.Urban growth, spatial evolution, economic geography

Neighbors’ Income Distribution: Economic Segregation and Mixing in US Urban Neighborhoods

The paper describes within-neighborhood economic segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas in 1985 and 1993. It uses the neighborhood clusters of the American Housing Survey, standardized by metropolitan area income and household size, to explore income distribution within neighborhoods at a scale much smaller than the census tract (a representative sample of households or ‘kernels’ and their ten closest neighbors). Joint and conditional distributions portray neighbors’ characteristics conditional on the kernel’s housing tenure, race and income. The paper documents both significant income mixing in the majority of US urban micro neighborhoods and the extent of income mixing within neighborhoods of concentrated poverty.income distribution, neighborhood effects, neighborhood income distribution, economic segregation, income sorting and mixing, mixed income housing, housing policy.