Trade and Synchronization in a Multi-Country Economy

Substantial evidence suggests that countries or regions with stronger trade linkages tend to have business cycles that are more synchronized. The standard international business cycle framework cannot replicate this nding. In this paper, we study a multi-country model of international trade with vertical trade linkages, imperfect competition, and variable markups. We embed it in a real business cycle framework by including aggregate technology shocks and allowing for a variable labor supply. A carefully calibrated version of the theoretical economy that ts the model to data on the bilateral trade volume between 210 distinct country-pairs explains between 20 and 41 percent of the relation between trade intensity and business cycle synchronization. We provide empirical evidence supporting the model's predictions for the association between trade costs and business cycle synchronization, and exchange rate volatility and business cycle synchronization.Trade Integration, Business Cycle Synchronization

On the gradient estimates for evolution operators associated to Kolmogorov operators

We determine sufficient conditions for the occurrence of a pointwise gradient estimate for the evolution operators associated to nonautonomous second order parabolic operators with (possibly) unbounded coefficients. Moreover we exhibit a class of operators which satisfy our conditions

The art of tropical travel, 1768-1830

Book synopsis: Georgian Geographies provides an innovative interdisciplinary examination of the geographical nature of culture and society in eighteenth-century Britain and the British world. The book's introduction identifies the key areas of study as the geographical constitution of empire, the Enlightenment and the public sphere. These themes are explored by examining the connections between space, place and landscape in the eighteenth century in relation to the emergent empire in the Caribbean and north-west America, and in Britain itself. The topics considered include landscape painting, London's art world, geography's book, mapping, the geography of erotic fiction, provincial science, and the production of domestic space in the early English novel. It will be an essential contribution to eighteenth-century studies for research and teaching staff, postgraduates and advanced undergraduate students in geography, history, literary studies, the history of art, postcolonial studies and the history of science

UNASUR: Developments in the Defense Area

The article summarizes the last developments in South America towards a common defense area, referring to the history and origins of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).Fil: Gil, Luciana Victoria. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Star flows: a characterization via Lyapunov functions

We say that a differentiable flow or vector field $X$ is star on a compact invariant set $\Lambda$ of the Riemannian manifold M if there exist neighborhoods $\mathcal{U} \in \mathfrak{X}^1(M)$ of $X$ and $U \subset M$ of $\Lambda$ for which every closed orbit in $U$ of every vector field $Y$ in $\mathcal{U}$ is hyperbolic. In this work, it is presented a characterization of star condition for flows based on Lyapunov functions. It is obtained conditions to strong homogeneity for singular sets for a $C^1$ flow by using the notion of infinitesimal Lyapunov functions. As an application we obtain some results related to singular hyperbolic sets for flows.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure. It were done many changes in the text and included more details into the proof of a main theorem. Proposition 4.3 stated to linear cocycles. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1611.04072, arXiv:1201.255

Sources of exchange rate fluctuations: are they real or nominal?

I analyze the role of real and monetary shocks on the exchange rate behavior using a structural vector autoregressive model of the US vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The shocks are identified using sign restrictions on the responses of the variables to orthogonal disturbances. These restrictions are derived from the predictions of a two-country DSGE model. I find that monetary shocks are unimportant in explaining exchange rate fluctuations. By contrast, demand shocks explain between 23% and 38% of exchange rate variance at 4-quarter and 20-quarter horizons, respectively. The contribution of demand shocks plays an important role but not of the order of magnitude sometimes found in earlier studies. My results, however, support the recent focus of the literature on real shocks to match the empirical properties of real exchange rates.Foreign exchange rates ; Vector autoregression

Asset prices and their effect on the U.S. trade balance

Pronounced cycles and booms in asset prices have usually accompanied widening trade deficits.Asset pricing ; Balance of trade