Recognition of tRNA by the cognate aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase during translation is crucial to ensure the correct expression of the genetic code. To understand tRNA(Leu) recognition sets and their evolution, the recognition of tRNA(Leu) by the leucyl-tRNA synthetase (LeuRS) from the primitive hyperthermophilic bacterium Aquifex aeolicus was studied by RNA probing and mutagenesis. The results sho...

This article examines how the number of stochastic drivers and their associated volatility structures affect pricing accuracy and hedging performance in the swaption market. In spite of the fact that low dimensional one and two-factor models do not reflect historical correlations that exist among forward rates, we show that they are capable of accurately pricing swaptions as well as higher orde...

Like many financial contracts, derivatives are subject to default risk. A very popular mechanism in derivatives markets to mitigate the risk of non-performance on contracts is margining. By attaching collateral to a contract, margining supposedly reduces default risk. The broader impacts of the different types of margins are more ambiguous, however. In this paper we develop both, a theoretical ...

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of credit default swap (CDS) spread for the Japanese market, which is one of the major CDS markets in the world. Our assessment of literature indicates that there is a lack of related empirical research using data from the Japanese market. By analyzing data from 2001 to 2004, the empirical results show that the theoretical determinants, including l...

The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 11Ac1-5 on November 15, 2000. The rule requires market centers to make monthly electronic disclosures of basic information regarding execution quality. The rule is intended to empower market forces with the means to achieve a more competitive and efficient national market system by increasing the visibility of execution quality. We find that t...

We examine the pricing and hedging performance of interest rate option pricing models using daily data on US dollar cap and floor prices across both strike rates and maturities. Our results show that fitting the skew of the underlying interest rate probability distribution provides accurate pricing results within a one-factor framework. However, for hedging performance, introducing a second sto...

We show that abnormal trading activity increases in the days before earnings announcements, especially for stocks with high dispersion of opinions. Consistent with the theory of Miller (1977) and other disagreement models, for stocks that are also short sale constrained, this increased speculative trading is dominated by net buyer-initiated trading activity. This evidence helps to explain why s...