Dr. Smile Dube, Economics, had a paper accepted in the Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, Vol. 9, no. 1, 2019, 1-25 ISSN: 1792-6580. The paper examines the nature of Brazilian, Russian, Indian, Chinese and South African (BRICS) volatility of currency returns. Under the classical normal assumptions, the disturbance term in a model assumes constant variance both unconditionally and conditionally. In finance and macroeconomics, the disturbance term is hardly ever constant. The paper, titled “GARCH Modelling of Conditional Correlations and Volatility of Exchange Rates in BRICS Countries,” provides empirical measures of volatility in the currencies of these countries. The paper initially considers a multivariate normal-DCC model and shows that it cannot adequately capture the fat tails prevalent in financial time series data such as exchange rates. Next, the paper considers a multivariate t- version of the Gaussian dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) to measure the extent of volatility of currency returns. A major result is that the t-DCC model (dynamic conditional correlation based on the t-distribution) outperforms the normal-DCC model. The result is important for currency traders, investors and policymakers in these emerging markets.

Dr. Jamie Kneitel, Biological Sciences, published the article "Livestock disturbances in Mediterranean temporary ponds: A mesocosm experiment with sheep manure and simulated trampling" in Freshwater Biology. This was a collaboration with researchers from Morocco, Belgium, and France.  This work was conducted while Dr. Kneitel was on sabbatical and supported by the Fulbright Scholar Program, United States-Israel Educational Foundation, and a Fulbright Regional Travel Program.

Dr. Lindy Valdez, Kinesiology and Health Science, presented “The Risks And The Rewards Of Online Publications” and the presentation was also published in the conference proceedings for the International Conference on Education (ICE) held from 01/01/2019 through 01/05/2019 in Lahaina, Hawaii.