"The Extended Panda's Thumb and a New Global Financial Architecture"

An evolutionary theory of international financial institutions is developed and two broad types of possible (evolutionary) equilibrium Global Financial Architectures(GFAs) are identified. The first is called an overarching type, exemplified by the classical gold standard and the defunct Bretton Woods system. The second is called a hybrid form that allows for the existence and coevolution of some Regional Financial Architectures(RFAs) as well. The changing roles of the IMF and national economic policies are examined within these two possible financial architectures under globalization It is found that from an evolutionary perspective, a hybrid form with a reformed IMF and regional cooperation through appropriately designed RFAs can create the best possible institutional and policy environment for financial stability and sustained growth .An evolutionary argument, called "the extended panda's thumb", is advanced to establish the possibility of adapting many existing institutions including the IMF, for creating a hybrid GFA. The tentative steps taken towards regional cooperation in Asia after the financial crisis are discussed to illustrate the opportunities and challenges posed by the need to evolve towards a hybrid GFA.

Intergenerational Transmission of Inflation Aversion: Theory and Evidence

We study the evolution of inflation aversion preferences across generations. In the theoretical part of the paper, we analyze the dynamics of such preferences in an overlapping-generations model with heterogenous mature agents characterized by different degrees of inflation aversion. We show how the stability of a society’s degree of inflation aversion depends on the strength and speed of changes in the structure of the population. The empirical part then proposes two applications in support of the theoretical results. We first link demographic structures to inflation aversion, and then proceed by looking at the relations between income (in)equality and measures of inflation aversion.Intergenerational transmission, evolving preferences, inflation aversion, central bank independence, demographic change, income inequality

Decision-making and problem-solving methods in automation technology

The state of the art in the automation of decision making and problem solving is reviewed. The information upon which the report is based was derived from literature searches, visits to university and government laboratories performing basic research in the area, and a 1980 Langley Research Center sponsored conferences on the subject. It is the contention of the authors that the technology in this area is being generated by research primarily in the three disciplines of Artificial Intelligence, Control Theory, and Operations Research. Under the assumption that the state of the art in decision making and problem solving is reflected in the problems being solved, specific problems and methods of their solution are often discussed to elucidate particular aspects of the subject. Synopses of the following major topic areas comprise most of the report: (1) detection and recognition; (2) planning; and scheduling; (3) learning; (4) theorem proving; (5) distributed systems; (6) knowledge bases; (7) search; (8) heuristics; and (9) evolutionary programming

Quick and energy-efficient Bayesian computing of binocular disparity using stochastic digital signals

Reconstruction of the tridimensional geometry of a visual scene using the binocular disparity information is an important issue in computer vision and mobile robotics, which can be formulated as a Bayesian inference problem. However, computation of the full disparity distribution with an advanced Bayesian model is usually an intractable problem, and proves computationally challenging even with a simple model. In this paper, we show how probabilistic hardware using distributed memory and alternate representation of data as stochastic bitstreams can solve that problem with high performance and energy efficiency. We put forward a way to express discrete probability distributions using stochastic data representations and perform Bayesian fusion using those representations, and show how that approach can be applied to diparity computation. We evaluate the system using a simulated stochastic implementation and discuss possible hardware implementations of such architectures and their potential for sensorimotor processing and robotics.Comment: Preprint of article submitted for publication in International Journal of Approximate Reasoning and accepted pending minor revision

Liquidity Risk, Economic Development, and the Effects of Monetary Policy

Empirical evidence indicates that monetary policy is not super-neutral in many countries. In particular, in high in?ation economies, in?ation is negatively related to economic activity. By comparison, in?ation may be positively correlated with output in low in?ation countries. We present a neoclassical growth model with money in which the incidence of liquid- ity risk is inversely related to aggregate capital formation. Interestingly, there may be multiple monetary steady-states where the e¤ects of mon- etary policy vary. In poor economies, the ?nancial system is highly dis- torted and higher rates of money growth are associated with less capital formation. In contrast, in advanced economies, a Tobin e¤ect is observed. Since in?ation exacerbates distortions from a coordination failure in the low capital steady-state, individuals become much more exposed to liq- uidity risk. Consequently, optimal monetary policy depends on the level of development.Economic Development, Banks, Monetary Policy

A Wikipedia Literature Review

This paper was originally designed as a literature review for a doctoral dissertation focusing on Wikipedia. This exposition gives the structure of Wikipedia and the latest trends in Wikipedia research