Second thoughts on second moments : panel evidence on asset-based models of currency crises

The literature on speculative attacks has been given new impetus by the collapse of the European currency arrangements beginning in 1992, by the Mexican peso crisis and after-effects in 1994, and most recently by speculative attacks across Asia. One stand of this literature stresses the importance of imbalances in stocks of monetary and financial aggregates rather than traditional"flow"factors, arguing that massive, volatile capital flows have become a dominant feature of the global landscape, and that exchange-rate levels and current accounts have not proved convincing as proximate causes of crises. The authors test two popular asset-based models of speculative attacks -- Krugman and Rotemberg (1992) and Calvo and Mendoza (1995) -- especially their emphasis on the second moments of monetary aggregates. Analyzing monthly panels of appropriate countries in three regions, they find evidence for the importance of money/reserve ratios predicted by both models, and their variance as predicted by Calvo and Mendoza. But the variance of velocity does not appear to be important, casting some doubt on the Krugman-Rotemberg target zone framework and the interpretation of the Calvo-Mendoza results.Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Theory&Research,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Macroeconomic Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Stabilization

Timber roof structure for outdoor auditorium in Parque Paraiso, San Blas (Madrid)

p. 468-475A timber shell structure is designed to provide covering for an outdoor auditorium in Madrid (Spain). The covering comprises five independent overlapped marquees with similar shape but diverse dimensions. The surface geometry of each marquee is defined by a hyperbolic paraboloid, with its boundaries delimited by elliptical curves in horizontal projection. Structural section for the timber shell is a composite section with several staggered layers of straight sawn timber planks, arranged in two orthogonal directions following the straight skew lines of the hyperbolic paraboloid. Over them two continuous top layers are arranged which provides bracing for the structure and support for the waterproofing material. Each layer is laid over the previous one, bolted and glued with polyurethane adhesive. Special characteristics of the design analysis and detailed erection process are described. The designed solution provides lightweight roofing with a powerful and original image, short construction time and reasonable budget.Anton, A.; Meijide, AG.; Corbal, JJ. (2009). Timber roof structure for outdoor auditorium in Parque Paraiso, San Blas (Madrid). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/653

Optimizing stellarators for large flows

Plasma flow is damped in stellarators because they are not intrinsically ambipolar, unlike tokamaks, in which the flux-surface averaged radial electric current vanishes for any value of the radial electric field. Only quasisymmetric stellarators are intrinsically ambipolar, but exact quasisymmetry is impossible to achieve in non-axisymmetric toroidal configurations. By calculating the violation of intrinsic ambipolarity due to deviations from quasisymmetry, one can derive criteria to assess when a stellarator can be considered quasisymmetric in practice, i.e. when the flow damping is weak enough. Let us denote by $\alpha$ a small parameter that controls the size of a perturbation to an exactly quasisymmetric magnetic field. Recently, it has been shown that if the gradient of the perturbation is sufficiently small, the flux-surface averaged radial electric current scales as $\alpha^2$ for any value of the collisionality. It was also argued that when the gradient of the perturbation is large, the quadratic scaling is replaced by a more unfavorable one. In this paper, perturbations with large gradients are rigorously treated. In particular, it is proven that for low collisionality a perturbation with large gradient yields, at best, an $O(|\alpha|)$ deviation from quasisymmetry. Heuristic estimations in the literature incorrectly predicted an $O(|\alpha|^{3/2})$ deviation.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusio

Flow damping in stellarators close to quasisymmetry

Quasisymmetric stellarators are a type of optimized stellarators for which flows are undamped to lowest order in an expansion in the normalized Larmor radius. However, perfect quasisymmetry is impossible. Since large flows may be desirable as a means to reduce turbulent transport, it is important to know when a stellarator can be considered to be sufficiently close to quasisymmetry. The answer to this question depends strongly on the size of the spatial gradients of the deviation from quasisymmetry and on the collisionality regime. Recently, formal criteria for closeness to quasisymmetry have been derived in a variety of situations. In particular, the case of deviations with large gradients was solved in the $1/\nu$ regime. Denoting by $\alpha$ a parameter that gives the size of the deviation from quasisymmetry, it was proven that particle fluxes do not scale with $\alpha^{3/2}$, as typically claimed, but with $\alpha$. It was also shown that ripple wells are not necessarily the main cause of transport. This paper reviews those works and presents a new result in another collisionality regime, in which particles trapped in ripple wells are collisional and the rest are collisionless.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusio

The effect of tangential drifts on neoclassical transport in stellarators close to omnigeneity

In general, the orbit-averaged radial magnetic drift of trapped particles in stellarators is non-zero due to the three-dimensional nature of the magnetic field. Stellarators in which the orbit-averaged radial magnetic drift vanishes are called omnigeneous, and they exhibit neoclassical transport levels comparable to those of axisymmetric tokamaks. However, the effect of deviations from omnigeneity cannot be neglected in practice. For sufficiently low collision frequencies (below the values that define the $1/\nu$ regime), the components of the drifts tangential to the flux surface become relevant. This article focuses on the study of such collisionality regimes in stellarators close to omnigeneity when the gradient of the non-omnigeneous perturbation is small. First, it is proven that closeness to omnigeneity is required to preserve radial locality in the drift-kinetic equation for collisionalities below the $1/\nu$ regime. Then, it is shown that neoclassical transport is determined by two layers in phase space. One of the layers corresponds to the $\sqrt{\nu}$ regime and the other to the superbanana-plateau regime. The importance of the superbanana-plateau layer for the calculation of the tangential electric field is emphasized, as well as the relevance of the latter for neoclassical transport in the collisionality regimes considered in this paper. In particular, the tangential electric field is essential for the emergence of a new subregime of superbanana-plateau transport when the radial electric field is small. A formula for the ion energy flux that includes the $\sqrt{\nu}$ regime and the superbanana-plateau regime is given. The energy flux scales with the square of the size of the deviation from omnigeneity. Finally, it is explained why below a certain collisionality value the formulation presented in this article ceases to be valid.Comment: 36 pages. Version to be published in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusio