Persistence and the Role of Exchange Rate and Interest Rate Inertia in Monetary Policy

In a general equilibrium model, this paper investigates the importance of the exchange rate and the interpretation of the observed inertia in the policy interest rate. We derive an optimizing macroeconomic model that features habit formation in the consumer's utility function and uses a hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve with inflation inertia. As a consequence, aggregate demand and supply shocks will have a persistent effect on output and inflation. In this framework, we assess the performance of simple, and perhaps non-optimal, interest rate rules under different degrees of habit formation and inflation persistence. We conclude that a policy rule that responds to expected inflation, as well as to output and the exchange rate, is able to reduce output and inflation volatility in the face of aggregate demand and foreign inflation shocks. This result must be interpreted with caution, because, as is found in other studies, i) the reduction in volatility is marginal and ii) the Taylor-type policy rule assessed here may be a restrictive one and, as mentioned before, non-optimal. On the other hand, the gains from adopting an inertial interest rate rule are directly related to the degree of inflation persistence in the model. In particular, when the degree of inflation persistence is high, an inertial policy rule attenuates the impacts that supply shocks have on inflation and the interest rate.

Orbital contribution to the magnetic properties of nanowires: Is the orbital polarization ansatz justified?

We show that considerable orbital magnetic moments and magneto-crystalline anisotropy energies are obtained for a Fe monatomic wire described in a tight-binding method with intra-atomic electronic interactions treated in a full Hartree Fock (HF) decoupling scheme. Even-though the use of the orbital polarization ansatz with simplified Hamiltonians leads to fairly good results when the spin magnetization is saturated this is not the case of unsaturated systems. We conclude that the full HF scheme is necessary to investigate low dimensional systems

Crossing the race divide : interracial sex in antebellum Savannah

This article explores the social significance of inter-racial sexual contact in an antebellum Southern city. How did inter-racial sex challenge the established social hierarchy in Savannah? Was it a controversial issue, viewed as a threat to the social order, or was it accepted as an inevitable evil resulting from a mixed population residing in close proximity

Intermolecular interactions in the chiral and racemic forms of 3-hydroxy-2-(1-oxoisoindolin-2-yl)butanoic acid derived from threonine

The title compounds, C₁₂H₁₃NO₄, are derived from L-threonine and DL-threonine, respectively. Hydrogen bonding in the chiral derivative, (2S/3R)-3-hydroxy-2-(1-oxoisoindolin-2-yl)butanoic acid, consists of O-Hacid...Oalkyl-H...O=Cindole chains [O...O 2.659 (3) and 2.718 (3) Å], Csp³-H...O and three C-H...πarene interactions. In the (2R,3S/2S,3R) racemate, conventional carboxylic acid hydrogen bonding as cyclical (O-H...O=C)₂ [graph set R₂²(8)] is present, with Oalkyl-H...O=Cindole, Csp³-H...O and C-H...πarene interactions. The COOH group geometry differs between the two forms, with C-O, C=O, C-C-O and C-C=O bond lengths and angles of 1.322 (3) and 1.193 (3) Å, and 109.7 (2) and 125.4 (3)°, respectively, in the chiral structure, and 1.2961 (17) and 1.2210 (18) Å, and 113.29 (12) and 122.63 (13)°, respectively, in the racemate structure. The O-C=O angles of 124.9 (3) and 124.05 (14)° are similar. The differences arise from the contrasting COOH hydrogen-bonding environments in the two structures

Worsening of cerebral hyperemia by the administration of terlipressin in acute liver failure with severe hepatic encephalopathy

There is increasing evidence that terlipressin is useful in patients with cirrhosis and hepatorenal syndrome, but there are no data of its use in patients with acute liver failure (ALF) in whom hepatorenal syndrome is common. Although terlipressin produces systemic vasoconstriction, it produces cerebral vasodilatation and may increase cerebral blood flow (CBF). Increased CBF contributes to intracranial hypertension in patients with ALF. The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety of terlipressin in patients with ALF with respect to cerebral haemodynamics. Six successive patients with ALF were electively ventilated for grade IV hepatic encephalopathy. Patients were monitored invasively and CBF was measured (Kety- Schmidt technique). Measurements were made before, at 1, 3 hour and 5 hours after intravenous (single bolus) administration of terlipressin (0.005 mg/kg) )intravenously (single bolus), median 0.25mg (range 0.2-0.3). There was no significant change in heart rate, mean arterial pressure or cardiac output. CBF and jugular venous oxygen saturation both increased significantly at 1 hour (p<0.0=0.016) respectively. Intracranial pressure increased significantly at 21 hours (p<0=.0.031), returning back to baseline values at 42 hours. This study shows that administration of terlipressin, at a dose that did not alter systemic haemodynamicshemodynamics, resulted in worsening of cerebral hyperemia and intracranial hypertension in patients with ALF and severe hepatic encephalopathy. These data suggest the need to exercise extreme caution in the use of terlipressin in these patients in view of its potentially deleterious consequences on cerebral haemodynamics

Optical annular resonators based on radial Bragg and photonic crystal reflectors

A ring resonator based on Bragg reflection is studied in detail. Closed form expressions for the field and dispersion curves for radial Bragg gratings and photonic crystals based resonators are derived and compared to FDTD simulations. For strong confinement, the required gratings exhibit a chirped period and a varying index profile. Small bending radii and low radiation losses are shown to be possible due to the Bragg confinement. The sensitivity of the resonator characteristics to fabrication errors is analyzed quantitatively. A mixed confinement configuration utilizing both Bragg reflection and total internal reflection is also suggested and analyzed

Building distributed heterogeneous smart phone Java applications an evaluation from a development perspective

The advances in mobile phone technology have enabled such devices to be programmed to run general-purpose applications using a special edition of the Java programming language. Java is designed to be a heterogeneous programming language targeting different platforms. Such ability when coupled with the provision of high-speed mobile Internet access would open the door for a new breed of distributed mobile applications. This paper explores the capabilities and limitations of this technology and addresses the considerations that must be taken when designing and developing such distributed applications. Our findings are verified by building a test client-server system where the clients in this system are mobile phones behaving as active processing elements not just mere service requesters

The existence and asymptotic properties of a backfitting projection algorithm under weak conditions.

We derive the asymptotic distribution of a new backfitting procedure for estimating the closest additive approximation to a nonparametric regression function. The procedure employs a recent projection interpretation of popular kernel estimators provided by Mammen, Marron, Turlach and Wand and the asymptotic theory of our estimators is derived using the theory of additive projections reviewed in Bickel, Klaassen, Ritov and Wellner. Our procedure achieves the same bias and variance as the oracle estimator based on knowing the other components, and in this sense improves on the method analyzed in Opsomer and Ruppert. We provide ‘‘high level’’ conditions independent of the sampling scheme. We then verify that these conditions are satisfied in a regression and a time series autoregression under weak conditions.