Using a sample of commodity spot price indexes over the period 1947-2010, we examine predictability of commodity returns at the monthly, quarterly, and annual horizons. We establish out-of-sample predictability by means of variables such as bond spreads, growth in money supply and industrial production. Predictability is strongest for raw industrials and metals indexes and weakest for foods and...

We introduce The Economic Complexity Observatory, a tool for helping users understand the evolution of countries’ productive structures and trade partners. Here we bridge the gap of harnessing the raw computational power of cycling through thousands of entries of data with the analytical, decision making qualities of the human mind through the use of information visualization “apps”. These allo...

c onsidering the normative nature of the theories of justice, a distinguished theory of justice could be formulated based on the fundamental teachings of islam. hence a new set of indexes are required to put this new concept to test. through detailed study of the islamic teachings, the research seeks to formulate a comprehensive theory on economic justice (based on various economic rights). in...

Service trade is an important force of influencing economic development. A review on the related literatures is done firstly. Then through the construction of a Diamond Model, the main factors which influence the competitiveness of Chinese service trade are determined. With three competitiveness indexes served as the reference series respectively, the influencing factors served as the comparabl...

this study was designed to determine the effects of dietary replacement of fish oil with canola oil ongrowth performance, feed efficiency of body and economic indices of experimental diets of juvenilecommon carp (cyprinus carpio). during the experiment 270 juvenile fish with an average initialweight of 16.24 ± 0.10g were randomly distributed in 18 well aerated cylindrical polyethylene tanks(15 ...

drought is the one of the repeating phenomenon in all areas with high rainfall and low rainfall climates and is known as a natural disaster. iran is one of the countries those involved with this phenomenon in different parts of it especially in river basins. tehran province due to its importance in terms of social and political faced with growing population that it would contributes to the redu...

microcerotermes diversus (silvestri) (isoptera: termitidae), an important wood pest in ahwaz (khuzestan, iran), causes serious economic damage to cellulosic products in buildings. to investigate the genetic diversity of this pest, 13 populations from different areas of khuzestan province as well as two samples from khark island and bandar abbas were collected. following dna extraction a fragmen...

BACKGROUND Childhood overweight and obesity is a growing health challenge in Japan and might be associated with childhood poverty. We aimed to investigate the association between low economic status and body mass index (BMI) and to reveal the mediators of this association among junior high school students in Japan. METHODS Junior high school students (N = 2968) from two cities in Shizuoka, Ja...