Project acronym ARYLATOR
Project New Catalytic Reactions and Exchange Pathways: Delivering Versatile and Reliable Arylation
Researcher (PI) Guy Charles Lloyd-Jones
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE5, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary This proposal details the mechanism-based discovery of ground-breaking new catalyst systems for a broad range of arylation processes that will be of immediate and long-lasting utility to the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and materials chemistry industries. These industries have become highly dependent on coupling technologies employing homogeneous late transition metal catalysis and this reliance will grow further, particularly if the substrate scope can be broadened, the economics, in terms of reagents and catalyst, made more favourable, the reliability at scale-up improved, and the generation of side-products, of particular importance for optical and electronic properties of materials, minimized or eliminated.
This proposal addresses these issues by conducting a detailed and comprehensive mechanistic investigation of direct arylation, so that a substantial expansion of the reaction scope can be achieved. At present, the regioselectivity can be very high, however catalyst turnover rates are moderate, and the arene is required to be in a fairly narrow window of activity. Specific aspects to be addressed in terms of mechanistic study are: catalyst speciation and pathways for deactivation; pathways for homocoupling; influence of anions and dummy ligands; protodemetalloidation pathways. Areas proposed for mechanism-informed development are: expansion of metalloid tolerance; expansion of arene scope; use of traceless activators and directors, new couplings via ligand exchange, the evolution of simpler / cheaper and more selective / active catalysts; expansion to oxidative double arylations (Ar-H + Ar’-H) with control, and without resort to super-stoichiometric bias.
The long-term legacy of these studies will be detailed insight for current and emerging systems, as well as readily extrapolated information for the design of new, more efficient catalyst systems in academia, and their scaleable application in industry
Summary
This proposal details the mechanism-based discovery of ground-breaking new catalyst systems for a broad range of arylation processes that will be of immediate and long-lasting utility to the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and materials chemistry industries. These industries have become highly dependent on coupling technologies employing homogeneous late transition metal catalysis and this reliance will grow further, particularly if the substrate scope can be broadened, the economics, in terms of reagents and catalyst, made more favourable, the reliability at scale-up improved, and the generation of side-products, of particular importance for optical and electronic properties of materials, minimized or eliminated.
This proposal addresses these issues by conducting a detailed and comprehensive mechanistic investigation of direct arylation, so that a substantial expansion of the reaction scope can be achieved. At present, the regioselectivity can be very high, however catalyst turnover rates are moderate, and the arene is required to be in a fairly narrow window of activity. Specific aspects to be addressed in terms of mechanistic study are: catalyst speciation and pathways for deactivation; pathways for homocoupling; influence of anions and dummy ligands; protodemetalloidation pathways. Areas proposed for mechanism-informed development are: expansion of metalloid tolerance; expansion of arene scope; use of traceless activators and directors, new couplings via ligand exchange, the evolution of simpler / cheaper and more selective / active catalysts; expansion to oxidative double arylations (Ar-H + Ar’-H) with control, and without resort to super-stoichiometric bias.
The long-term legacy of these studies will be detailed insight for current and emerging systems, as well as readily extrapolated information for the design of new, more efficient catalyst systems in academia, and their scaleable application in industry
Max ERC Funding
2 114 223 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2019-01-31
Project acronym BESTDECISION
Project "Behavioural Economics and Strategic Decision Making: Theory, Empirics, and Experiments"
Researcher (PI) Vincent Paul Crawford
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH1, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary "I will study questions of central microeconomic importance via interwoven theoretical, empirical, and experimental analyses, from a behavioural perspective combining standard methods with assumptions that better reflect evidence on behaviour and psychological insights. The contributions of behavioural economics have been widely recognized, but the benefits of its insights are far from fully realized. I propose four lines of inquiry that focus on how institutions interact with cognition and behaviour, chosen for their potential to reshape our understanding of important questions and their synergies across lines.
The first line will study nonparametric identification and estimation of reference-dependent versions of the standard microeconomic model of consumer demand or labour supply, the subject of hundreds of empirical studies and perhaps the single most important model in microeconomics. It will allow such studies to consider relevant behavioural factors without imposing structural assumptions as in previous work.
The second line will analyze history-dependent learning in financial crises theoretically and experimentally, with the goal of quantifying how market structure influences the likelihood of a crisis.
The third line will study strategic thinking experimentally, using a powerful new design that links subjects’ searches for hidden payoff information (“eye-movements”) much more directly to thinking.
The fourth line will significantly advance Myerson and Satterthwaite’s analyses of optimal design of bargaining rules and auctions, which first went beyond the analysis of given institutions to study what is possible by designing new institutions, replacing their equilibrium assumption with a nonequilibrium model that is well supported by experiments.
The synergies among these four lines’ theoretical analyses, empirical methods, and data analyses will accelerate progress on each line well beyond what would be possible in a piecemeal approach."
Summary
"I will study questions of central microeconomic importance via interwoven theoretical, empirical, and experimental analyses, from a behavioural perspective combining standard methods with assumptions that better reflect evidence on behaviour and psychological insights. The contributions of behavioural economics have been widely recognized, but the benefits of its insights are far from fully realized. I propose four lines of inquiry that focus on how institutions interact with cognition and behaviour, chosen for their potential to reshape our understanding of important questions and their synergies across lines.
The first line will study nonparametric identification and estimation of reference-dependent versions of the standard microeconomic model of consumer demand or labour supply, the subject of hundreds of empirical studies and perhaps the single most important model in microeconomics. It will allow such studies to consider relevant behavioural factors without imposing structural assumptions as in previous work.
The second line will analyze history-dependent learning in financial crises theoretically and experimentally, with the goal of quantifying how market structure influences the likelihood of a crisis.
The third line will study strategic thinking experimentally, using a powerful new design that links subjects’ searches for hidden payoff information (“eye-movements”) much more directly to thinking.
The fourth line will significantly advance Myerson and Satterthwaite’s analyses of optimal design of bargaining rules and auctions, which first went beyond the analysis of given institutions to study what is possible by designing new institutions, replacing their equilibrium assumption with a nonequilibrium model that is well supported by experiments.
The synergies among these four lines’ theoretical analyses, empirical methods, and data analyses will accelerate progress on each line well beyond what would be possible in a piecemeal approach."
Max ERC Funding
1 985 373 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-04-01, End date: 2019-03-31
Project acronym CoSuN
Project Cooperative Phenomena in Supramolecular Nanostructures
Researcher (PI) Harry Laurence Anderson
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE5, ERC-2012-ADG_20120216
Summary Many of the remarkable properties of molecular nanostructures are cooperative effects. A system is described as cooperative when it behaves differently from expectations based on the properties of its individual components. Multivalent cooperativity is crucial for biological molecular recognition, yet the factors determining the magnitude of this effect are poorly understood. Excitonic cooperativity is exploited in sensitive detectors for explosives, and is the basis of photosynthetic light harvesting. Electronic cooperativity is illustrated on the molecular scale by the phenomenon of aromaticity, and on a larger scale by metallic conductivity. Magnetic properties provide many examples of cooperativity. The magnitude of cooperative effects increases with the strength of coupling between the individual components, and with the number of coupled components. Cooperative systems exhibit sharp changes in behavior in response to small changes in conditions, such as transitions from free to bound, fluorescent to non-fluorescent, or conductive to insulating. The tendency towards an “all-or-nothing” response is often useful; in the limit of a very large ensemble, it leads to phase transitions. The CoSuN project will extend methodology developed in Oxford to create large monodisperse supramolecular nanostructures which are uniquely suited for exploring multivalent, excitonic and electronic cooperativity. The template-directed synthesis of these nanostructures is made possible by strong multivalent cooperativity, while the electronic coupling between the individual subunits results in other cooperative phenomena. This project will clarify understanding of cooperative molecular recognition. It will also help to solve some of the mysteries of photosynthesis and reveal the first molecular manifestations of coherent quantum mechanical phenomena, such as Aharonov-Bohm effects.
Summary
Many of the remarkable properties of molecular nanostructures are cooperative effects. A system is described as cooperative when it behaves differently from expectations based on the properties of its individual components. Multivalent cooperativity is crucial for biological molecular recognition, yet the factors determining the magnitude of this effect are poorly understood. Excitonic cooperativity is exploited in sensitive detectors for explosives, and is the basis of photosynthetic light harvesting. Electronic cooperativity is illustrated on the molecular scale by the phenomenon of aromaticity, and on a larger scale by metallic conductivity. Magnetic properties provide many examples of cooperativity. The magnitude of cooperative effects increases with the strength of coupling between the individual components, and with the number of coupled components. Cooperative systems exhibit sharp changes in behavior in response to small changes in conditions, such as transitions from free to bound, fluorescent to non-fluorescent, or conductive to insulating. The tendency towards an “all-or-nothing” response is often useful; in the limit of a very large ensemble, it leads to phase transitions. The CoSuN project will extend methodology developed in Oxford to create large monodisperse supramolecular nanostructures which are uniquely suited for exploring multivalent, excitonic and electronic cooperativity. The template-directed synthesis of these nanostructures is made possible by strong multivalent cooperativity, while the electronic coupling between the individual subunits results in other cooperative phenomena. This project will clarify understanding of cooperative molecular recognition. It will also help to solve some of the mysteries of photosynthesis and reveal the first molecular manifestations of coherent quantum mechanical phenomena, such as Aharonov-Bohm effects.
Max ERC Funding
2 452 688 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-05-01, End date: 2018-04-30
Project acronym CytoChem
Project A Chemical Approach to Understanding Cell Division
Researcher (PI) Ulrike Sophie Eggert
Host Institution (HI) KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE5, ERC-2012-StG_20111012
Summary Many mechanisms underlying cytokinesis, the final step in cell division, remain poorly understood. The goal of my laboratory is to use chemical biology approaches to address some of the unanswered mechanistic questions by studying cytokinesis at the process, pathway and protein levels. I aim to discover small molecules that specifically target cytokinesis by different mechanisms because they are important tools to study the biology of cell division and could catalyze the discovery of therapeutics.
I am proposing here to use small molecules we discovered to study how the Rho pathway regulates cytokinesis. We will synthesize focused libraries around selected compounds to optimize their properties and to identify sites for affinity tags. I am proposing to identify our small molecules’ cellular targets using a combination of approaches, including a new strategy I designed that takes advantage of the fact that they target a discrete signalling pathway.
Rho signalling is involved in every step of cytokinesis, but there are many outstanding questions about how this occurs and which proteins are involved. We have completed a genome-wide RNAi screen that has revealed the identity of new proteins connected to Rho signalling. We will combine functional investigations into how these proteins participate in cytokinesis with our newly discovered small molecules. With this array of tools in hand, we expect to use imaging and other cell-based assays to gain of comprehensive understanding of the role of Rho signalling during cytokinesis and other Rho-dependent processes.
Summary
Many mechanisms underlying cytokinesis, the final step in cell division, remain poorly understood. The goal of my laboratory is to use chemical biology approaches to address some of the unanswered mechanistic questions by studying cytokinesis at the process, pathway and protein levels. I aim to discover small molecules that specifically target cytokinesis by different mechanisms because they are important tools to study the biology of cell division and could catalyze the discovery of therapeutics.
I am proposing here to use small molecules we discovered to study how the Rho pathway regulates cytokinesis. We will synthesize focused libraries around selected compounds to optimize their properties and to identify sites for affinity tags. I am proposing to identify our small molecules’ cellular targets using a combination of approaches, including a new strategy I designed that takes advantage of the fact that they target a discrete signalling pathway.
Rho signalling is involved in every step of cytokinesis, but there are many outstanding questions about how this occurs and which proteins are involved. We have completed a genome-wide RNAi screen that has revealed the identity of new proteins connected to Rho signalling. We will combine functional investigations into how these proteins participate in cytokinesis with our newly discovered small molecules. With this array of tools in hand, we expect to use imaging and other cell-based assays to gain of comprehensive understanding of the role of Rho signalling during cytokinesis and other Rho-dependent processes.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 080 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-10-01, End date: 2017-09-30
Project acronym DMEA
Project The Dynamics of Migration and Economic Adjustment
Researcher (PI) Christian Dustmann
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH1, ERC-2012-ADG_20120411
Summary The research proposed here is concerned with the dynamics of immigrant impacts and the process of economic adaptation in receiving societies. The immigration process is inherently dynamic: many new immigrants return home within a short time; and those that remain undergo a long term series of investments and behavioural changes that gradually alter the way that they interact with the economy of the receiving country. Moreover, in the longer run the presence of immigrants affects the choices of firms over new technology investments, and the choices of native workers over schooling and occupations. Thus simple static frameworks provide an incomplete and even potentially misleading perspective for understanding modern immigration patterns. The point of departure for this proposed research is the recognition that we need to reformulate the analysis of immigrant impacts in a fully dynamic framework, acknowledging the inter-temporal choices of immigrants, firms, and native workers and the ways that these three groups of agents interact over a longer horizon. Our approach involves treating immigration as a dynamic shock, where the dynamics relates to the different agents involved: immigrants, who change their position in the native skill distribution over time as a result of their life-cycle decisions; firms, who react by adjusting their technologies, product mix, and their involvement with institutions and regulatory environment; and native workers, who adjust by changing their career plans. Our work will combine highly innovative theoretical perspectives with state-of-the-art empirical analyses exploiting unique policy experiments and exceptional data sources, merging longitudinal administrative population data with data from firm and individual surveys. This agenda will enable us to construct a comprehensive picture of the adjustment process in response to immigration and open new horizons for future research on the impact of immigration in a dynamic framework.
Summary
The research proposed here is concerned with the dynamics of immigrant impacts and the process of economic adaptation in receiving societies. The immigration process is inherently dynamic: many new immigrants return home within a short time; and those that remain undergo a long term series of investments and behavioural changes that gradually alter the way that they interact with the economy of the receiving country. Moreover, in the longer run the presence of immigrants affects the choices of firms over new technology investments, and the choices of native workers over schooling and occupations. Thus simple static frameworks provide an incomplete and even potentially misleading perspective for understanding modern immigration patterns. The point of departure for this proposed research is the recognition that we need to reformulate the analysis of immigrant impacts in a fully dynamic framework, acknowledging the inter-temporal choices of immigrants, firms, and native workers and the ways that these three groups of agents interact over a longer horizon. Our approach involves treating immigration as a dynamic shock, where the dynamics relates to the different agents involved: immigrants, who change their position in the native skill distribution over time as a result of their life-cycle decisions; firms, who react by adjusting their technologies, product mix, and their involvement with institutions and regulatory environment; and native workers, who adjust by changing their career plans. Our work will combine highly innovative theoretical perspectives with state-of-the-art empirical analyses exploiting unique policy experiments and exceptional data sources, merging longitudinal administrative population data with data from firm and individual surveys. This agenda will enable us to construct a comprehensive picture of the adjustment process in response to immigration and open new horizons for future research on the impact of immigration in a dynamic framework.
Max ERC Funding
1 129 428 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31
Project acronym DUPLEX
Project Programmable Plastics
Researcher (PI) Christopher Alexander Hunter
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE5, ERC-2012-ADG_20120216
Summary The unique properties of nucleic acids have made them the material of choice for complex nanofabrication. High fidelity formation of duplexes via non-covalent interactions between complementary sequences provides a straightforward approach to molecular programming of multicomponent self-assembly processes. The structure of the nucleic acid backbone and bases can be changed without destroying these properties, suggesting that there are all kinds of unexplored polymeric structures that will also show sequence selective duplex formation. This proposal investigates this rich new area at the interface of supramolecular, biological and polymer chemistry. The appeal of nucleic acids is that we can dial up any desired sequence via chemical solid phase synthesis or via biological template synthesis. With recent advances in polymerisation processes, which proceed under mild conditions compatible with non-covalent chemistry, we are now in a position to develop comparable processes for synthetic polymers. This proposal explores a ground-breaking approach to the synthesis of polymeric systems equipped with defined sequences of recognition sites. The aim is to establish protocols for routine solid phase synthesis of one class of oligomer, which can be used to template the synthesis of different classes of oligomer. This template chemistry will provide tools for polymerisation of conventional monomers using templates to determine the sequence of recognition sites and hence incorporate the selective recognition properties of nucleic acids into bulk polymers like polystyrene. The ability to program polymers with recognition information will open the way to new materials of unprecedented complexity and functionality with applications in all areas of nanotechnology where precise control over macromolecular structure and supramolecular organisation will be used to program mechanical, photochemical and electronic properties into sophisticated assemblies that rival biology.
Summary
The unique properties of nucleic acids have made them the material of choice for complex nanofabrication. High fidelity formation of duplexes via non-covalent interactions between complementary sequences provides a straightforward approach to molecular programming of multicomponent self-assembly processes. The structure of the nucleic acid backbone and bases can be changed without destroying these properties, suggesting that there are all kinds of unexplored polymeric structures that will also show sequence selective duplex formation. This proposal investigates this rich new area at the interface of supramolecular, biological and polymer chemistry. The appeal of nucleic acids is that we can dial up any desired sequence via chemical solid phase synthesis or via biological template synthesis. With recent advances in polymerisation processes, which proceed under mild conditions compatible with non-covalent chemistry, we are now in a position to develop comparable processes for synthetic polymers. This proposal explores a ground-breaking approach to the synthesis of polymeric systems equipped with defined sequences of recognition sites. The aim is to establish protocols for routine solid phase synthesis of one class of oligomer, which can be used to template the synthesis of different classes of oligomer. This template chemistry will provide tools for polymerisation of conventional monomers using templates to determine the sequence of recognition sites and hence incorporate the selective recognition properties of nucleic acids into bulk polymers like polystyrene. The ability to program polymers with recognition information will open the way to new materials of unprecedented complexity and functionality with applications in all areas of nanotechnology where precise control over macromolecular structure and supramolecular organisation will be used to program mechanical, photochemical and electronic properties into sophisticated assemblies that rival biology.
Max ERC Funding
2 457 947 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym EMF-FEIM
Project Empirical Macro-Finance and the Financial Economics of Insurance Markets
Researcher (PI) Ralph Koijen
Host Institution (HI) LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2013-StG
Summary "My project consists of two lines of work. 1.Empirical Macro-Finance: Asset prices are informative about the macro-economic risks that matter to investors and about the welfare costs of economic fluctuations. However, recent empirical evidence suggests that leading asset pricing models cannot explain how risks are priced across maturities in equity markets, which is a key input to measuring the costs of business cycles. An analysis of what leading models miss will vastly improve our understanding of how the real economy and asset prices are related. Also, by expanding our empirical evidence about the term structure of equity to the firm-level, I plan to study how investment decisions relate to asset prices. My goal is to measure the firms' incentives to invest and how this impacts economic growth more broadly.
2.Financial Economics of Insurance Markets: Households in Europe and the US can choose from a wide variety of insurance products that insure health and mortality risks. Choosing between these products is no easy task and the costs from sub-optimal insurance choices are estimated to be large. My plan is to develop a comprehensive life-cycle theory of insurance choice that accounts for family structure, risk factors such as labor income and housing, and different institutional settings across countries. I also plan to study the supply side of insurance markets. The traditional view is that insurance prices are driven by life-cycle demand or informational frictions. However, as is clear from evidence during the financial crisis, insurance companies are in fact financial institutions. If financial constraints bind, it may affect insurance prices and ultimately consumers' welfare. My goal is to understand how financial frictions affect insurance companies. A policy implication of my research may be that the private supply of insurance is an imperfect substitute for public supply as insurance companies face different incentives and constraints than the government."
Summary
"My project consists of two lines of work. 1.Empirical Macro-Finance: Asset prices are informative about the macro-economic risks that matter to investors and about the welfare costs of economic fluctuations. However, recent empirical evidence suggests that leading asset pricing models cannot explain how risks are priced across maturities in equity markets, which is a key input to measuring the costs of business cycles. An analysis of what leading models miss will vastly improve our understanding of how the real economy and asset prices are related. Also, by expanding our empirical evidence about the term structure of equity to the firm-level, I plan to study how investment decisions relate to asset prices. My goal is to measure the firms' incentives to invest and how this impacts economic growth more broadly.
2.Financial Economics of Insurance Markets: Households in Europe and the US can choose from a wide variety of insurance products that insure health and mortality risks. Choosing between these products is no easy task and the costs from sub-optimal insurance choices are estimated to be large. My plan is to develop a comprehensive life-cycle theory of insurance choice that accounts for family structure, risk factors such as labor income and housing, and different institutional settings across countries. I also plan to study the supply side of insurance markets. The traditional view is that insurance prices are driven by life-cycle demand or informational frictions. However, as is clear from evidence during the financial crisis, insurance companies are in fact financial institutions. If financial constraints bind, it may affect insurance prices and ultimately consumers' welfare. My goal is to understand how financial frictions affect insurance companies. A policy implication of my research may be that the private supply of insurance is an imperfect substitute for public supply as insurance companies face different incentives and constraints than the government."
Max ERC Funding
1 077 765 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-10-01, End date: 2018-09-30
Project acronym FRICTIONS
Project Financial Frictions
Researcher (PI) Lasse Heje Pedersen
Host Institution (HI) COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary "Financial economics is at a crossroads: Academics are struggling to redefine the theory of finance and practitioners and regulators to restructure the financial industry. The current financial crisis will have significant impact on how we regulate financial markets and how we manage risk in companies and financial institutions. It will continue to inspire an intense discussion and research agenda over the next decade in academics, in industry, and among financial regulators and a central focus will be the role of frictions in financial markets. Nowhere are these issues more pertinent than in Europe right now.
To take up the challenge presented by this crossroad of financial economics, my research project seeks to contribute to the knowledge of financial frictions and what to do about them. FRICTIONS will explore how financial frictions affect asset prices and the economy, and the implications of frictions for financial risk management, the optimal regulation, and the conduct of monetary policy.
Whereas economists have traditionally focused on the assumption of perfect markets, a growing body of evidence is leading to a widespread recognition that markets are plagued by significant financial frictions. FRICTIONS will model key financial frictions such as leverage constraints, margin requirements, transaction costs, liquidity risk, and short sale constraints. The objective is to develop theories of the origins of these frictions, study how these frictions change over time and across markets, and, importantly, how they affect the required return on assets and the economy.
The project will test these theories using data from global equity, bond, and derivative markets. In particular, the project will measure these frictions empirically and study the empirical effect of frictions on asset returns and economic dynamics. The end result is an empirically-validated model of economic behavior subject to financial frictions that yields qualitative and quantitative insights."
Summary
"Financial economics is at a crossroads: Academics are struggling to redefine the theory of finance and practitioners and regulators to restructure the financial industry. The current financial crisis will have significant impact on how we regulate financial markets and how we manage risk in companies and financial institutions. It will continue to inspire an intense discussion and research agenda over the next decade in academics, in industry, and among financial regulators and a central focus will be the role of frictions in financial markets. Nowhere are these issues more pertinent than in Europe right now.
To take up the challenge presented by this crossroad of financial economics, my research project seeks to contribute to the knowledge of financial frictions and what to do about them. FRICTIONS will explore how financial frictions affect asset prices and the economy, and the implications of frictions for financial risk management, the optimal regulation, and the conduct of monetary policy.
Whereas economists have traditionally focused on the assumption of perfect markets, a growing body of evidence is leading to a widespread recognition that markets are plagued by significant financial frictions. FRICTIONS will model key financial frictions such as leverage constraints, margin requirements, transaction costs, liquidity risk, and short sale constraints. The objective is to develop theories of the origins of these frictions, study how these frictions change over time and across markets, and, importantly, how they affect the required return on assets and the economy.
The project will test these theories using data from global equity, bond, and derivative markets. In particular, the project will measure these frictions empirically and study the empirical effect of frictions on asset returns and economic dynamics. The end result is an empirically-validated model of economic behavior subject to financial frictions that yields qualitative and quantitative insights."
Max ERC Funding
1 307 160 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31
Project acronym FRICTIONS
Project Frictions in the Financial System
Researcher (PI) Péter Kondor
Host Institution (HI) LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2013-StG
Summary "The financial crisis, since its start in 2008 has exposed enormous fractures both in the financial architecture and in the structure of the global economy. Although with some notable exceptions, the magnitude of the events caught the finance profession largely by surprise. Clearly, we have to understand better the institutional mechanism channeling savings towards the best uses of capital, and to what extent this mechanism can sometimes fail. The projects in this proposal will push the boundaries of our knowledge in this direction.
I suggest a dual approach to achieve this goal. First, we have to improve our understanding of which frictions are the crucial impediments of the efficient functioning of markets. As this approach focuses on particular markets in isolation, I call this the micro approach. I propose three projects within this approach: trading and information diffusion in OTC markets, the crowdedness in limits-to-arbitrage, and the interaction of political uncertainty and sovereign bond prices.
Second, from the frictions emerging from the micro approach, we have to select the ones which determine the aggregate liquidity fluctuations in the economy. I use this concept in a broad sense; referring to the changing efficiency with which the financial system allocates resources across investment opportunities. As this approach focuses on the functionality of the financial system as a whole, I call this the macro approach. I propose two projects within this approach. The first project focuses on the determinants of the differences in the financial architecture of different economies. It builds a novel framework to study the dynamics of the financial sector of an economy. The second project studies the role of shadow banking in the fluctuation of aggregate liquidity. In particular, this project concentrates on the fluctuation of the efficiency of private liquidity creation as the state of the economy changes."
Summary
"The financial crisis, since its start in 2008 has exposed enormous fractures both in the financial architecture and in the structure of the global economy. Although with some notable exceptions, the magnitude of the events caught the finance profession largely by surprise. Clearly, we have to understand better the institutional mechanism channeling savings towards the best uses of capital, and to what extent this mechanism can sometimes fail. The projects in this proposal will push the boundaries of our knowledge in this direction.
I suggest a dual approach to achieve this goal. First, we have to improve our understanding of which frictions are the crucial impediments of the efficient functioning of markets. As this approach focuses on particular markets in isolation, I call this the micro approach. I propose three projects within this approach: trading and information diffusion in OTC markets, the crowdedness in limits-to-arbitrage, and the interaction of political uncertainty and sovereign bond prices.
Second, from the frictions emerging from the micro approach, we have to select the ones which determine the aggregate liquidity fluctuations in the economy. I use this concept in a broad sense; referring to the changing efficiency with which the financial system allocates resources across investment opportunities. As this approach focuses on the functionality of the financial system as a whole, I call this the macro approach. I propose two projects within this approach. The first project focuses on the determinants of the differences in the financial architecture of different economies. It builds a novel framework to study the dynamics of the financial sector of an economy. The second project studies the role of shadow banking in the fluctuation of aggregate liquidity. In particular, this project concentrates on the fluctuation of the efficiency of private liquidity creation as the state of the economy changes."
Max ERC Funding
1 122 883 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-12-01, End date: 2018-11-30
Project acronym GCGXC
Project GenoChemetics: Gene eXpression enabling selective Chemical functionalisation of natural products
Researcher (PI) Rebecca Jane Miriam Goss
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE5, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "We aim to consolidate a trans-disciplinary research programme in which synthetic biology is harnessed to enable synthetic chemistry. We will utilise this approach to expeditiously access series of previously intractable natural product analogues.
There is an urgent need for the discovery and development of new drugs and in particular new antibiotics. More than 13 million lives worldwide are currently claimed each year due to infectious diseases. Natural products provide an unparalleled starting point for drug discovery, with over 60% of anticancer agents and over 70% of antibiotics entering clinical trials in the last three decades being based on such compounds. In order to gain a full understanding as to how a drug works and in order to be able to generate compounds with improved biological activity and physicochemical properties the generation of analogues is essential. In recent years pharmaceutical industries have shied away from natural products due to the perceived synthetic intractability of libraries of natural product analogues and the misperception that it is not possible to carry out thorough structure activity relationship (SAR) assessment on such compounds. As a result of largely abandoning natural products, industries’ drug discovery pipelines are beginning to run dry; this is a particular concern when faced with the need to combat the ever-increasing problem of drug resistance and infectious disease.
We aim to challenge the misperception that natural products are not “med chemable” We are developing a new approach to natural product analogue synthesis. By introducing a gene from a foreign organism to complement existing natural product biosynthetic machinery we are able to introduce a chemically orthogonal, reactive and selectably chemically functionalisable handle into the natural product (the antithesis of a protecting group) - this reactive handle will enable us to carry out chemical modifications only at the site at which it is located."
Summary
"We aim to consolidate a trans-disciplinary research programme in which synthetic biology is harnessed to enable synthetic chemistry. We will utilise this approach to expeditiously access series of previously intractable natural product analogues.
There is an urgent need for the discovery and development of new drugs and in particular new antibiotics. More than 13 million lives worldwide are currently claimed each year due to infectious diseases. Natural products provide an unparalleled starting point for drug discovery, with over 60% of anticancer agents and over 70% of antibiotics entering clinical trials in the last three decades being based on such compounds. In order to gain a full understanding as to how a drug works and in order to be able to generate compounds with improved biological activity and physicochemical properties the generation of analogues is essential. In recent years pharmaceutical industries have shied away from natural products due to the perceived synthetic intractability of libraries of natural product analogues and the misperception that it is not possible to carry out thorough structure activity relationship (SAR) assessment on such compounds. As a result of largely abandoning natural products, industries’ drug discovery pipelines are beginning to run dry; this is a particular concern when faced with the need to combat the ever-increasing problem of drug resistance and infectious disease.
We aim to challenge the misperception that natural products are not “med chemable” We are developing a new approach to natural product analogue synthesis. By introducing a gene from a foreign organism to complement existing natural product biosynthetic machinery we are able to introduce a chemically orthogonal, reactive and selectably chemically functionalisable handle into the natural product (the antithesis of a protecting group) - this reactive handle will enable us to carry out chemical modifications only at the site at which it is located."
Max ERC Funding
1 981 272 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-06-01, End date: 2019-05-31
