Macroeconomic Stabilization of Economies in Transition: Recent Experiences, Preliminary Results and Some Lessons

This Working Paper is a summary of the Workshop on "Macroeconomic Stabilization of Economies in Transition" held in Prague, Czech Republic on 22-24 April 1993. The workshop was organized by the Economic Transition and Integration Project of IIASA and the Institute for Economic Policy affiliated to the Ministry of Economy of the Czech Republic. The purpose of the workshop was to assemble responsible policy makers, interested scholars from Central and Eastern European countries, as well as western experts to thoroughly discuss the accumulated experience with macroeconomic stabilization during economic reforms in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech and Slovak Republics (the former CSFR as well), Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the Ukraine. Those who presented papers and those who commented on them aimed at drawing attention to problems that are now explicit and pressing in countries which started with reforms sooner and are very likely to emerge in countries that started later. The organizers of the workshop firmly believed that the dissemination of experience from the more advanced reform countries could contribute to a better understanding of burdensome stabilization tasks and to a future improvement and refinement of stabilization policies and tools. Undoubtedly, a smoother and more successful transition will benefit not only the less advanced countries but to the region as a whole. In retrospect we may now conclude that a good basis for a fruitful exchange of views and stimulating discussions was provided at the workshop

Modeling and control of a dynamic information flow tracking system

This thesis introduces and details the effort of modeling and control design of an information tracking system for computer security purposes. It is called Dynamic Information Flow Tracking (DIFT) system. The DIFT system is developed at the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico, works by tagging data and tracking it to measure the information flow throughout the system. DIFT can be used for several security applications such as securing sensor networks and honeypot - which is a trap set to detect, deflect, or counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems. Existing DIFT systems cannot track address and control dependencies, therefore, their applicability is currently very limited because important information flow dependencies are not tracked for stability reasons. A new approach is taken, aimed at stabilizing DIFT systems and enabling it to detect control dependencies at the assembly-level, through control theory. Modern control has been used to model several cyber-physical, computing, networking, economical... systems. In an effort to model a computing system using control theory, this thesis introduces a general hybrid systems framework to model the flow of information in DIFT when control dependencies are encountered. Information flow in DIFT is represented by a numeric vector called taint vector . The model suggested benefits from the characteristics of hybrid systems and its ability to represent continuous variables and discrete events occurring. The system is stabilized by making sure that the taint vectors represent the true information flow in control dependencies. This problem is solved by designing a PID and model predictive controller which guarantee that system does not over taint, while allowing information to flow properly. The modeling framework is validated by comparing simulations of the hybrid models against. This research provides a new approach to solve the DIFT over-tainting problems through modeling it as a hybrid system and forcing the constraints to be obeyed by the taint values.\u2

A economia política do pleno emplego

Orientador: Paulo Sérgio FracalanzaDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de EconomiaResumo: A questão em discussão neste estudo foi sobre a possibilidade de alcançar e manter o emprego na economia capitalista. A persistência do desemprego situa-se no coração do mal-estar econômico na grande maioria das sociedades modernas. É um fenômeno socioeconômico muito complexo, que poderia ser analisado em diferentes níveis. Neste trabalho foi feita uma investigação quanto aos aspectos políticos e econômicos do desemprego. No primeiro capítulo, o objetivo foi fornecer uma visão geral das explicações teóricas dos fenômenos de desemprego em economias capitalistas modernas. Foram propostas as seguintes periodizações das teorias de desemprego: a teoria clássica, Revolução de Keynes e a era pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial. No segundo capítulo investigaram-se alguns aspectos políticos do pleno emprego. Em primeiro lugar, são apresentadas recomendações de política econômica de Keynes que foram adotadas pela maioria das nações desenvolvidas após a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Em segundo lugar, tentou-se responder à pergunta de por que as políticas econômicas keynesianas foram abandonadas pelos países mais desenvolvidos na década de 1970, apesar de seu aparente sucesso. Conclui-se que o conceito de ciclo de negócios política, desenvolvido pelo economista polonês Micha? Kalecki oferece pelo menos uma resposta parcial a esta pergunta. Para Kalecki, a eliminação do desemprego é perfeitamente possível, desde que o governo siga prescrições de Keynes. Este autor afirmou que os limites reais ao pleno emprego não são econômicos, mas sim políticos: um governo comprometido com o pleno emprego, necessariamente, enfrenta oposição política da comunidade empresarial. No terceiro capítulo foi discutido o desenvolvimento de uma relativamente nova escola de pensamento econômico que poderia ser considerada como um dos subgrupos da ampla corrente de Pós keynesianismo - a Teoria Moderna do Dinheiro e sua principal recomendação de política econômica, ou seja, empregador de última instância ou programa de garantia de trabalhoAbstract: The question under discussion in this study was the possibility of achieving and maintaining the employment in capitalist economy. Persistent unemployment lies at the heart of economic malaise in vast majority of modern societies. It is a very complex socio-economic phenomenon that could be analysed on different levels. In my work I choose to investigate both political and economic aspects of unemployment. In the first chapter my aim was to provide an overview of theoretical explanations of unemployment phenomena in modern capitalist economies. I proposed the following periodisation of the theories of unemployment : the classical theory, Keynes¿s Revolution and the Post¿World War II era. In the second chapter I investigated some political aspects of full employment. Firstly, I have presented Keynes¿s economic policy recommendations that were adopted by most of the developed nations after World War II. Secondly, I tried to respond to the question why, in spite of their apparent success, Keynesian economic policies have been abandoned by most developed countries in the 1970s. I have come to the conclusion that the concept of political business cycle, developed by the Polish economist Micha? Kalecki offers at least a partial response to this question. For Kalecki, elimination of unemployment is entirely possible, provided that government follows Keynes¿s prescriptions. He claimed that real limits to full employment are not economical, but rather political: a government committed to full employment will necessarily face political opposition of the business community. In the third chapter I discussed the development of a relatively new school of economic thought that could be considered as one of subgroups of the broad tent of Post Keynesianism ¿ the Modern Money Theory and its main economic policy recommendation, i.e. Employer of Last Resort or Job Guarantee programMestradoEconomia Social e do TrabalhoMestre em Desenvolvimento Econômic

Scaling full seismic waveform inversions

The main goal of this research study is to scale full seismic waveform inversions using the adjoint-state method to the data volumes that are nowadays available in seismology. Practical issues hinder the routine application of this, to a certain extent theoretically well understood, method. To a large part this comes down to outdated or flat out missing tools and ways to automate the highly iterative procedure in a reliable way. This thesis tackles these issues in three successive stages. It first introduces a modern and properly designed data processing framework sitting at the very core of all the consecutive developments. The ObsPy toolkit is a Python library providing a bridge for seismology into the scientific Python ecosystem and bestowing seismologists with effortless I/O and a powerful signal processing library, amongst other things. The following chapter deals with a framework designed to handle the specific data management and organization issues arising in full seismic waveform inversions, the Large-scale Seismic Inversion Framework. It has been created to orchestrate the various pieces of data accruing in the course of an iterative waveform inversion. Then, the Adaptable Seismic Data Format, a new, self-describing, and scalable data format for seismology is introduced along with the rationale why it is needed for full waveform inversions in particular and seismology in general. Finally, these developments are put into service to construct a novel full seismic waveform inversion model for elastic subsurface structure beneath the North American continent and the Northern Atlantic well into Europe. The spectral element method is used for the forward and adjoint simulations coupled with windowed time-frequency phase misfit measurements. Later iterations use 72 events, all happening after the USArray project has commenced, resulting in approximately 150`000 three components recordings that are inverted for. 20 L-BFGS iterations yield a model that can produce complete seismograms at a period range between 30 and 120 seconds while comparing favorably to observed data

Methods in Computational Biology

Modern biology is rapidly becoming a study of large sets of data. Understanding these data sets is a major challenge for most life sciences, including the medical, environmental, and bioprocess fields. Computational biology approaches are essential for leveraging this ongoing revolution in omics data. A primary goal of this Special Issue, entitled “Methods in Computational Biology”, is the communication of computational biology methods, which can extract biological design principles from complex data sets, described in enough detail to permit the reproduction of the results. This issue integrates interdisciplinary researchers such as biologists, computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to advance biological systems analysis. The Special Issue contains the following sections:•Reviews of Computational Methods•Computational Analysis of Biological Dynamics: From Molecular to Cellular to Tissue/Consortia Levels•The Interface of Biotic and Abiotic Processes•Processing of Large Data Sets for Enhanced Analysis•Parameter Optimization and Measuremen

Corn, Carbon, and Conservation: Rethinking U.S. Agricultural Policy in a Changing Global Environment

This Article explores a range of issues related to both the regulatory and incentive-based federal programs that affect the crops we grow, the manner in which they are grown, and the human and environmental impacts of such programs. The Article evaluates the 2008 Farm Bill and describes how the policies contained in it influence virtually every aspect of agriculture, from the decision to grow certain crops, the amount of crops grown, the industrial manner. This Article focuses on one particular commodity, corn, which while ubiquitous and seemingly pedestrian, is perhaps one of the major environmental offenders, and for which the development of a modernized agriculture policy could transform U.S. agriculture

Women in Science 2014

Women in Science 2014 summarizes research done by Smith College’s Summer Research Fellowship (SURF) Program participants. Ever since its 1967 start, SURF has been a cornerstone of Smith’s science education. In 2014, 150 students participated in SURF (141 hosted on campus and nearby eld sites), supervised by 61 faculty mentor-advisors drawn from the Clark Science Center and connected to its eighteen science, mathematics, and engineering departments and programs and associated centers and units. At summer’s end, SURF participants were asked to summarize their research experiences for this publication.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/clark_womeninscience/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Application of Reflectance Spectroscopy to Chert Provenance of Mississippian Symbolic Weaponry

Determination of the source of chert artifacts ties past peoples to specific locations on the landscape either through direct or indirect procurement strategies allowing researchers to visualize interactions with both resources and people. However, due to inherent variability accurate provenance data often remains elusive. The reliance upon chert provenance data obtained through macroscopic techniques is problematic and emphasizes the importance of continued research and development of analytical methods whose aim is the objective characterization of source for archaeological materials manufactured from chert. The following thesis is organized around three primary objectives. The first objective is the investigation of the non-destructive provenance application of two reflectance spectroscopy techniques (VNIR, FTIR) in differentiating Dover and Fort Payne chert. The second objective is to test the ‘single-source theory’ which stipulates that the chert used to manufacture Mississippian sword-form bifaces was solely acquired from deposits of Lower St. Louis “Dover” chert located near the town of Dover, Tennessee. The final objective is to place the sword provenance data into a cultural framework in order to explain the function of the swords within Middle Mississippi Stage polities. The ‘single source’ theory has implications for the socio-economic and political reconstruction of Mississippian polities. The presence of ‘Dover’ chert swords in Mississippian contexts from Oklahoma to Georgia implies long distance procurement, acquisition via exchange networks or political alliances. However, the outcropping of visually similar Fort Payne chert over much of the Southeastern and portions of the Mid-western United States makes the single source hypothesis uncertain. The results highlight the significant application of reflectance spectroscopy techniques within chert provenance studies. Provenance data for the sample of Mississippian sword-form bifaces refutes the single source theory by showing that variation in resource selection decisions existed. Ethnographic and iconography data clarifies the role that the sword-form bifaces had in Mississippian societies. The provenance data supports the conclusion that the ‘exoticness’ of the material was not an important component in the symbolic cultural meaning of the sword-form bifaces. The results contribute to a growing body of research focusing on the acquisition and use of exotic goods in Mississippian polities

Archaeological Watercraft: A Review and Critical Analysis of the Practice

Vestiges of humankind’s long-term interaction with the earth’s rivers, lakes, oceans and seas lie beneath water, sand, soils and sediments in the form of archaeological waterlogged wooden ships and boats. These quintessential maritime artifacts, and the connections formed between humans and watercraft create an extensive artifact biography revealing a host of physical and metaphysical meanings. Over a span of the last nine millennium watercraft have acted as containers, vessels, a means of conveyance, a bridge, a home, a factory, a prison, a fortress or a life boat. They are emblematic of individuals and nations. Deep seated in many cultural beliefs, they are integral aspects of birth or renewal, and often a critical component for reaching the afterlife. All of these factors motivate individuals to save archaeological watercraft when discovered in the course of academic search and survey, or a civil/commercial excavation. Although attempts by professional conservators to stabilize waterlogged wooden watercraft first occurred in the early 1860s with the finds from Nydam Bog (Denmark), there was little change in methodological and philosophical approaches from then until after World War II. Following the war, a combination of new products, dissatisfaction with previously tried methods, and a shift in attitudes towards preserving representations of the past, ushered in a new era in the conservation of antiquities, and in particular watercraft. Over the last 60 years, incremental advancements have taken place concerning the conservation techniques applied to waterlogged archaeological wood and wooden structures. Investigations that focused primarily on methods that maintained the dimensional stabilization of the object are now beginning to share considerably more time with inquiries about the state of artifacts once stabilized and in storage or on display. The archaeological remains of one watercraft, La Belle discovered in the shallow waters of Matagorda Bay, Texas in 1995 provides a case study in this dissertation to address some of the issues surrounding the conservation of waterlogged ships and boats