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- Hou, Yongzhou, 1970-
(författare)
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Urban Housing Markets in China
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on problems of prices and risks in the housing markets of urban China. What drives the dynamics of housing prices across regions is not only of great interest for academic researchers but also of first importance for policy makers. It is also interesting to pay attention to the issue of housing bubbles at a city level and risk allocations from an institutional view. To address the issues, the thesis applies both qualitative and econometric approaches in analyzing the urban housing markets of China. The first paper reviews articles mainly published in Chinese core journals. The existing studies are mainly concerned with such six topics as institutions, policy, land, finance, price and market. The first three topics involve the public housing allocation system reform, such fiscal and monetary tools as tax and interest rate, and the land reserve system. The housing finance treats such subjects of mortgages, bubbles and financial systems, while housing prices explore factors such as land prices, construction cost and exogenous forces like income. Finally, the housing market addresses housing circles and the relationship between housing demand and supply.In paper 2, the housing price dynamics is investigated at a national level and across regions by using the panel data with 30 provinces over 7 years (2001-2007). The empirical results suggest that the estimates for the fundamentals of income, user cost, housing stock and employment are robust at a national level, implying that there exists a stationary equilibrium relation in the long run between the housing price and the fundamentals above. The speed of price adjustment varies considerably across regions in the East, Midland and West.Then the housing markets in Beijing and Shanghai are examined in Paper 3 to quantify possible existence of a bubble in the two metropolitan areas. This article uses an integrated strategy involved with such fundamentals as interest rates, rent, income and GDP. The results show that Beijing might have been on the way of forming a housing price bubble between 2005 and 2008, and that there possibly existed a bubble in Shanghai from 2003 to 2004.By comparing the risk allocation in China with that in Sweden, Paper 4 explores the difference of actual risks taken by various actors. The banks and governments appear to take more risks in China, especially as the Chinese developers have a weaker financial situation than in Sweden. Households have more choices to reduce the risk by purchasing various kinds of insurance products and also by binding the interest rate.
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| 3. |
- Larsson, Karin, 1978-
(författare)
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Generation and characterization of antibodies for proteomics research
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Specific antibodies are invaluable tools for proteomics research. The availability of thoroughly validated antibodies will help to improve our understanding of protein expression, localization and function; fundamental processes and features of all living organisms. The objectives of the studies in this thesis were to develop high-throughput methods to facilitate the generation and purification of monospecific antibodies, and to address problems associated with antigen selection for difficult target proteins and subsequent validation issues. In the first of the studies, it was demonstrated that antibodies specific to human proteins could be generated in a high-throughput manner using protein epitope signature tags (PrESTs) as both antigens and affinity ligands. A previously developed purification process was adapted to a high-throughput format and this, in combination with the development of a protein microarray assay, resulted in monospecific antibodies that were used for profiling protein expression in 48 human tissues. Data obtained in these analyses suggest that a complete Human Protein Atlas should be attainable within the next ten years. In order to reduce the number of animals needed for such a massive project, and improve the cost-efficiency of antibody generation, a multiplex immunization strategy was developed in a further study. Antisera from rabbits immunized with mixtures of two, three, five and up to ten different PrESTs were successfully purified and analyzed for specificity using protein arrays. Almost 80% of the animals immunized with up to three PrESTs yielded antibodies towards all the PrESTs administered, and they yielded comparable immunohistochemical staining patterns (of consecutive human tissue sections) to those of antibodies obtained from traditional single PrEST immunizations. Proteins with highly similar sequences to other proteins present a major challenge for the proteome-wide generation of antibodies. In another study, Cytokeratin-17 which displays high sequence similarity to closely related members of the intermediate filament family, was used as a model and the specificity and cross-reactivity of antibodies generated against this target were investigated using epitope mapping in combination with comparative IHC analyses. Antibodies identified by epitope mapping as binding to the most unique parts of the Cytokeratin-17 PrESTs also showed the most Cytokeratin-17-like staining pattern, thus further supporting the strategy of using sequence identity scores as the main criteria for PrEST design. An alternative antigen design strategy was investigated for use in raising antibodies towards G-proteincoupled receptors (GPCRs). The extracellular loops and N-terminus of each of three selected GPCRs were assembled to form single antigens and the resulting antibodies were analyzed by flow cytometric and confocal microscopic analyses of cell lines over-expressing the respective receptors. The results from both flow cytometric and immunofluorescence analyses showed that the antibodies were able to bind to their targets. In addition, the antibodies were used successfully for the in situ analysis of human brain and pancreatic islet cells.
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| 4. |
- Song, Han-Suck, 1968-
(författare)
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Essays on risk and housing
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- There is a series of different types of risk on the housing market and related industries. The six papers in this doctoral dissertation are about a number of the many dimensions of risk management on the housing market. The main message of this thesis is that it should be possible for different actors in the housing market to improve risk management. Indeed, the last years’ financial turmoil has revealed that it should not only be possible, but also necessary, to improve risk management at all levels of the economy: at household, corporate, regional, national and international level. Although the complexity of the environment in which we live and act makes it very difficult to predict and quantify risk, the development of risk management techniques should make it possible to better indentify, and reduce risk. The first paper provides a systematic overview of a wide selection of methods or strategies used in different countries to expand but also to maintain home ownership among low income households. The second paper further discusses mortgage and home equity insurance instruments discussed in the first paper. This paper also discusses how a rental insurance policy, as an alternative to traditional rent regulation, may be constructed. Paper 3 develops a formula that might be used in order to value the rental insurance option discussed in paper 2. The fourth paper focuses on the housing building sector by discussing potential benefits of strategic alliances that the different actors in the housing construction market may establish in order to pool resources and manage development risks. The challenge of constructing reliable home price indexes has attracted scholars for many years. Paper 5 develops monthly quality-adjusted price indexes for condominiums (housing cooperative apartments) based on a unique dataset covering sales in the whole of Stockholm municipality from January 2005 to June 2009. Finally paper 6 pays attention to the large increase in housing cooperative conversions sine the 1990s, by deriving a closed-form valuation formula that might be used to value the embedded option an owner of a multi-family rental property has to sell it to a housing cooperative.
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