Wai-Man Liu

• BComm, Pgrad Dip Finance, MCom(Hons), MChD, PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Australian National University

Background Clinicians are frequently asked ‘how long’ questions at end-of-life by patients and those important to them, yet predicting timeframes to death remains uncertain, even in the last weeks and days of life. Patients and families wish to know so they can ask questions, plan, make decisions, have time to visit and say their goodbyes, and have...

Background Symptoms of emotional and physical stress near death may be related to previous experiences of trauma. Objective To investigate current evidence regarding the following: (1) Is previous trauma identified in people who are dying, and if so, how? (2) How is previous trauma associated with the experience of death/dying in people with or wi...

Concerns around delayed emergence and opioid-induced ventilatory impairment in bariatric surgery can lead to intraoperative reliance on short-acting opioids and avoidance of long-acting analgesics with potential sedative effects. Nevertheless, an overly-conservative intraoperative analgesic strategy may result in significant pain at emergence and h...

Background: Cardiothoracic anesthesiology training presents learners with unique challenges, procedural skills, and the management of high-intensity critical scenarios. An effective relationship between educator and learner can serve as the backbone for effective learning, which is crucial for the development of budding anesthesiologists. Strengthe...

Background Predicting length of time to death once the person is unresponsive and deemed to be dying remains uncertain. Knowing approximately how many hours or days dying loved ones have left is crucial for families and clinicians to guide decision-making and plan end-of-life care. Aim To determine the length of time between becoming unresponsive...

The main purpose of this study is to explore the outcomes of patients found to have gallbladder cancer during investigation and diagnosis of acute cholecystitis. The incidence of primary gallbladder cancer co-existing in acute cholecystitis is not well defined in the literature, with anecdotal reports suggesting that they experience worse outcomes...

The main purpose of this study is to explore the outcomes of patients with found to have gallbladder cancer after emergency cholecystectomy for acute cholecystitis versus those found incidentally. The true incidence of primary gallbladder cancer co-existing in acute cholecystitis is not defined especially in the Western population with high inciden...

Background Multiple tools exist to aid prognosis at end of life, yet predicting the length of time to death once the person is unresponsive and deemed to be ‘imminently dying’ remains fraught with uncertainty. Knowing approximately how many hours or days their dying loved one has left is crucial for both families and clinicians to guide decision ma...

Objectives: To identify the incidence and factors impacting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at 6 months, 2 and 7 years following the 2005 Eyre Peninsula bushfires in South Australia. Methods: A questionnaire was used to assess symptoms. Design and setting: A longitudinal follow-up study with responses collected from a self-report booklet...

This study examines the informational role of home media for foreign equity investment. Using a large sample of 38 host countries, we document a positive association between U.S. mutual fund ownership in a local stock and the coverage of U.S. major news providers on that stock. In addition to the conventional information dissemination and attention...

This study examines the interaction between dynamic limit order placement activities and market quality around the two system upgrades by the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) which aims at reducing the latency of trades. We show that after the 2006 system upgrade from Stock Exchange Automated Trading System to Integrated Trading System, liquidi...

This study examines the informational role of home media for foreign equity investment. Using a large sample of 38 host countries, we document a positive association between U.S. mutual fund ownership in a local stock and the coverage of U.S. major news providers on that stock. In addition to the conventional information dissemination and attention...

Background Improving quality of palliative and end of life care in older people’s care homes is essential. Increasing numbers of people die in these settings, yet access to high quality palliative care is not routinely provided. While evidence for models of care are growing, there remains little insight regarding how to translate evidence-based mod...

Whether high‐flow vs. low‐flow nasal oxygen reduces hypoxaemia for sedation during endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography is currently unknown. In this multicentre trial, 132 patients ASA physical status 3 or higher, BMI > 30 kg.m‐2 or with known or suspected obstructive sleep apnoea were randomly allocated to high‐flow nasal oxygen up to 6...

We examine the nature of state blockholding across publicly listed firms in East Asia by assembling a unique dataset spanning 16 years and 9 economies. Our newly compiled data identifies ultimate owners for each firm annually between 1997 and 2012, totaling 2984 firm-year observations. Three findings stand out. First, large changes (>5%) to state b...

This study investigates the multiple events that occur in the life of each limit order by utilising a survival analysis methodology with a multiple-spell duration model. The estimates suggest that the hazard rates of limit order event transitions are determined by a number of factors and their impacts depend on whether the initial order event is a...

Background Ketamine and magnesium are antagonists of the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor, and are valuable adjuvants for multimodal analgesia and opioid sparing. Data are limited regarding the opioid sparing efficacy of the combined intraoperative application of these agents in laparoscopic bariatric surgery. The objective of this study was to compar...

Older people living in care homes deserve access to specialist palliative care in their last months of life, and this has never been more important than during a global pandemic. Palliative Care Needs Rounds facilitated by nurse practitioners are cost-effective, reduce avoidable hospital transfers, improve quality of death and dying, and increase t...

This study examines dynamic order placement strategies in a low-latency environment together with limit orders' aggressiveness by a new approach which utilises survival analysis with a multiple-spell duration model. Two samples are considered, including the period immediately followed Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)’s migration to Integrated T...

Objective: This study examined the impact of introducing Palliative Care Needs Rounds (hereafter Needs Rounds) into residential aged care on hospitalisations (emergency department presentations, admissions and length of stay) and documentation of advance care plans. Design: A quasi-experimental study. Setting: Two residential aged care facilit...

Do people “vote with their feet” in response to a lack of political competition? Since political competition is associated with higher growth and welfare, with the free movement of labour, we argue that it should also encourage inward migration. We test this hypothesis by using data from the US and find a strong positive relation between political...

Background Care home residents are frequently transferred to hospital, rather than provided with appropriate and timely specialist care in the care home. Aim To determine whether a model of care providing specialist palliative care in care homes, called Specialist Palliative Care Needs Rounds, could reduce length of stay in hospital. Design Stepp...

New approaches are needed to assist residential aged care (RAC) staff increase their skills and confidence in identifying when residents are nearing the dying phase and managing symptoms. One new evidence-based approach to improve palliative and end-of-life care in RAC is outreach Specialist Palliative Care Needs Rounds (monthly triage and risk str...

Objectives: Mortality in care homes is high, but care of dying residents is often suboptimal, and many services do not have easy access to specialist palliative care. This study examined the impact of providing specialist palliative care on residents' quality of death and dying. Design: Using a stepped wedge randomized control trial, care homes...

Category Regional anesthesia for foot and ankle surgery Introduction/Purpose Regional anesthesia has resulted in significant improvements in patient outcomes including reduced postoperative pain, opioid consumption, opioid-related adverse effects, and decreased postoperative length of stay. Saphenous nerve blocks provide distal analgesia while min...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214838.].

This paper reports the impact of a major life event–death–on the physical, psychological and social well-being of the deceased’s close friends. We utilised data from a large longitudinal survey covering a period of 14 years (2002–2015) consisting a cohort of 26,515 individuals in Australia, of whom 9,586 had experienced the death of at least one cl...

Regional anaesthesia is often helpful in improving respiratory function and analgesia following multiple rib fractures. The erector spinae plane block has become the technique of choice in our institution due to its relative simplicity and purported safety. The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to determine its effectiveness in improving r...

We show that contracts for difference (CFDs) may be viable substitutes for forward contracts and may have some features that are preferable to futures contracts. We develop parity relations between CFDs, forwards, and futures contracts using simple cost-of-carry arguments. We use these parity relations to consider whether exchange listed stock inde...

The 'torsadogenic' property of a drug is linked to its ability to increase the transmural dispersion of repolarisation, represented by the interval between the peak of, and the end of, the T-wave (Tp-e interval) in an electrocardiogram. Reports have consistently shown that sevoflurane does not increase the Tp-e interval. Type 2 diabetes is a risk f...

This study models and tests empirically the role of public news arrivals in the quote matching across single-stock futures and underlying stock markets—a trading strategy often adopted by algorithmic traders. Our model suggests that quote return correlation across these two markets breaks down when the news uncertainty is sufficiently large and fut...

This study models and tests empirically the role of public news arrivals in the quote matching across single stock futures and underlying stock markets - a trading strategy often adopted by algorithmic traders. Our model suggests that quote return correlation across these two markets breaks down when the news uncertainty is sufficiently large and f...

Objectives Palliative care needs rounds are triage meetings that have been introduced in residential care for older adults to help identify and prioritise care for people most at risk for unplanned dying with inadequately controlled symptoms. This study sought to generate an evidence-based checklist in order to support specialist palliative care cl...

Background and Aims: Ultrasound (US)-guided infraclavicular approach for axillary vein (AXV) cannulation has gained popularity in the last decade. Material and Methods: In this manikin study, we evaluated the feasibility of a training model for teaching AXV cannulation. The learning pattern with this technique was assessed among attending anesthesi...

Background and Aims: Ultrasound (US)-guided infraclavicular approach for axillary vein (AXV) cannulation has gained popularity in the last decade. Material and Methods: In this manikin study, we evaluated the feasibility of a training model for teaching AXV cannulation. The learning pattern with this technique was assessed among attending anesthesi...

Background: The rate of hospital-based acute care (defined as hospital transfer at discharge, emergency department [ED] visit, or subsequent inpatient hospital [IP] admission) after outpatient procedure is gaining momentum as a quality metric for ambulatory surgery. However, the incidence and reasons for hospital-based acute care after arthroscopi...

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a new learning tool for needle insertion accuracy skills during a simulated ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia procedure. Methods: Thirty participants were included in this randomized controlled study. After viewing a prerecorded video of a single, discreet, ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia tas...

Objectives Specialist palliative care is not a standardised component of service delivery in nursing home care in Australia. Specialist palliative care services can increase rates of advance care planning, decrease hospital admissions and improve symptom management in such facilities. New approaches are required to support nursing home residents in...

Background Improving access to palliative care for older adults living in residential care is recognised internationally as a pressing clinical need. The integration of specialist palliative care in residential care for older adults is not yet standard practice. Objective This study aimed to understand the experience and impact of integrating a sp...

This paper analyzes the effects of news and its sentiment on the idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) — expected return relation. We postulate that the perceived negative IVOL-expected return relation could be the artifact of the confounding effect of public news arrivals. Using the stock return data from the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP...

Using computational linguistic analysis of intraday firm-level news releases, this study models the relation between public information flows and stock volatility under different regimes. We analyze how the hourly return volatility of S&P100 stocks from 2000 to 2010 are linked to the various linguistics-based sentiment scores of the news releases,...

Background: Higher body mass index (BMI) has been associated with postoperative complications in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and total hip arthroplasty (THA). However, the association of incremental increases of BMI and its effects on postoperative complications has not been well studied. We hypothesize that there is a BMI cutoff at which there...

We use high frequency data to better characterise price dynamics in global crude oil markets. Initially, we provide much-needed quantitative evidence on interactions between physical and financial layers of the Brent market, highlighting the ICE Brent futures contract as the overwhelming source of price discovery in this market. Thereafter, we quan...

We exploit exogenous variation in the scheduling of gubernatorial elections to study the timing of bank failure in the US. Using hazard analysis, we show that bank failure is about 45% less likely in the year leading up to an election. Political control (i.e., lack of competition) can explain all of this average election year fall in the hazard rat...

We document that firms are 80% more likely to issue non-earnings press releases during the earnings announcement period when delivering extremely negative earnings news. Non-earnings press releases are insufficient to improve negative announcement returns in isolation. However, if the media covers the non-earnings press release, announcement return...

How do governments manage their ownership of large, publicly-listed enterprises? In contrast to existing work that finds state ownership to be either unchanging or temporary, as with staggered privatizations or nationalizations following a crisis, we show that it exhibits considerable variability. With a unique dataset spanning 16 years and 9 East...

This study investigates the impact of strategic order activities during the pre-opening session of trading halts on post-halt return and volatility. Strategic orders are non-binding, aggressive limit orders that are placed in the pre-opening phase but subsequently cancelled or revised shortly before the market re-opens. We develop a model which sho...

In this paper, we develop a general equilibrium model that examines the emergence of non-exclusive franchise contracts in the presence of the franchisor hold‐up problem. Our model of an endogenous franchising network underscores the trade‐off between the cost associated with specifying and enforcing the contractual terms and the cost associated wit...

This research monograph provides systematic and comprehensive materials for applying inframarginal analysis to study a wide range of economic phenomena. The analysis is based on a new overarching framework to resurrect the classical notion of division of labor and specialization, which is an essential source of increasing a nation’s wealth. The fra...

This paper empirically examines limit order revisions and cancellations which contribute to a significant portion of the order activity in many order-driven markets. We document that limit orders are more likely to be revised or cancelled if they are large and near the bid-ask quote. We show that order revisions generate net economic benefits to tr...

This paper empirically examines limit order revisions and cancellations which contribute to a significant portion of the order activity in many order-driven markets. We document that limit orders are more likely to be revised or cancelled if they are large and near the bid-ask quote. We show that order revisions generate net economic benefits to tr...

We investigate whether the submission of aggressive limit orders that are subsequently cancelled just before the opening of an open call auction can influence price discovery. Our Bayesian Nash equilibrium model predicts that the likelihood and price impact of such strategic orders increase with (1) the level of information asymmetry and (2) the le...

This paper presents a formal analysis of the relation between monitoring and limit order submission risk. With heterogeneous information, limit order traders face two types of risk. First, they may be "picked off" when prices change unexpectedly after the limit order is entered (known as free trading option risk). Second, they face the possibility...

This study investigates where liquidity and informed trading takes place following the introduction of single stock futures (SSF) contracts on the OneChicago futures exchange. Specifically, we analyze the size and composition of proportional spreads for two sets of stocks, those that have single stock futures contracts and a matched control sample...

This paper has two objectives. First, it presents a survey of the literature surrounding the relation between political monopoly and economic development. Second, it offers an analysis of how commoners' high degree of tolerance towards unfair inequality of income distribution between theirs and the monopolizing ruling elites leads to poor economic...

This study investigates where liquidity and informed trading takes place following the introduction of single stock futures (SSF) contracts on the OneChicago futures exchange. Specifically, we analyze the size and composition of proportional spreads for two sets of stocks, those that have single stock futures contracts and a matched control sample...

This study employs firm-specific announcements as a proxy for information flows and investigates the information–volatility relation using high-frequency data from the Australian Stock Exchange. Our analysis reveals a positive and significant impact of the arrival rate of the selected news variable on the conditional variance of stock returns, even...

Salmon prices exhibit substantial volatility. An understanding of the structure of volatility is of great interest since this is a major contributor to economic risk in the salmon industry. The volatility process in salmon prices was analysed based on weekly price data from 1995 to 2007. The Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity...

This study represents an empirical analysis of free trading options (FTOs), options that arise due to the arrival of adverse information. The analysis purports to measure three characteristics of these options: (i) the probability of the option ending in-the-money as a consequence of adverse information arrival, (ii) the value of the free trading o...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model to simultaneously endogenize the level of division of labor, the extent of the market, the degree of inequality of income distribution, and aggregate productivity. It shows that good capitalism with free markets for all goods including government services generates equal income distribution, which ent...

Limit order cancellation and revision are common activities in most order-driven markets.

We document that limit order revisions and cancellations increase with order size, and price-order priority, but decrease with order aggressiveness. Our regression results reveal strong links between these activities and limit order submission risks using proxies such as change in order book depth, bid-ask spread and volatility. We also find that b...