Explaining Africa’s public consumption procyclicality : revisiting old evidence

This paper compiles a novel dataset of time-varying measures of government consumption cyclicality for a panel of 46 African economies between 1960 and 2014. Government consumption has, generally, been highly procyclical over time in this group of countries. However, sample averages hide serious heterogeneity across countries with the majority of them showing procyclical behavior despite some positive signs of graduation from the “procyclicality trap” in a few cases. By means of weighted least squares regressions, we find that more developed African economies tend to have a smaller degree of government consumption procyclicality. Countries with higher social fragmentation and those are more reliant on foreign aid inflows tend to have a more procyclical government consumption policy. Better governance promotes counter- cyclical fiscal policy whileincreased democracy dampens it. Finally, some fiscal rules are important in curbing the procyclical behavior of government consumption.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Central Bank Policies and Income and Wealth Inequality:A Survey

This paper reviews recent research on the relationship between central bank policies and inequality. A new paradigm which integrates sticky-prices, incomplete markets, and heterogeneity among households is emerging, which allows for the joint study of how inequality shapes macroeconomic aggregates and how macroeconomic shocks and policies affect inequality. The new paradigm features multiple distributional channels of monetary policy. Most empirical studies, however, analyze each potential channel of redistribution in isolation. Our review suggests that empirical research on the effects of conventional monetary policy on income and wealth inequality yields mixed findings, although there seems to be a consensus that higher inflation, at least above some threshold, increases inequality. In contrast to common wisdom, conclusions concerning the impact of unconventional monetary policies on inequality are also not clear cut. To better understand policy effects on inequality, future research should focus on the estimation of General Equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents

International demands for austerity: examining the impact of the IMF on the public sector

What effects do International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans have on borrow-ing countries? Even after decades of research, no consensus exists. We offer a straight-forward explanation for the seemingly mixed effects of IMF loans. We argue thatdifferent loans have different effects because of the varied conditions attached to IMFfinancing. To demonstrate this point, we investigate IMF loans with and withoutconditions that require public sector reforms in exchange for financing. We find thatthe addition of a public sector reform condition to a country’s IMF program signifi-cantly reduces government spending on the public sector wage bill. This evidencesuggest that conditions are a key mechanism linking IMF lending to policy outcomes.Although IMF loans with public sector conditions prompt cuts to the wage bill in theshort-term, these cuts do not persist in the longer-term. Borrowers backslide oninternationally mandated spending cuts in response to domestic political pressures

Výzkum možností aplikace norem DIN 18915-20 (Technologie vegetačních úprav v krajině) do systému norem ČSN

Soubor sedmi německých norem DIN 18915-20:2002, které byly přeloženy do češtiny, odborně upraveny a opatřeny národními poznámkami pro podmínky ČR. Tyto návrhy jsou dále technicky upraveny podle pokynů ČSNI Praha tak, aby mohly být po schválení převzaty jako ČSN DIN 1891. tyto normy řeší okruh technologií vegetačních úprav v krajině počítaje v to i sídla. Konkrétně standardizují práce s půdou, rostliny a jejich výsadby, zakládání trávníku, zajišťování terénu biotechnickými metodami, rozvojovou a údržbovou péčí o vegetaci, a také ochranu vegetace a ploch pro vegetaci při stavebních činnostech

Peculiarities of high electric field conduction in p-type diamond

International audienceThe electrical properties of chemical vapour deposited p-type epitaxial diamond layers are studied in high electric field conditions. The quasi-static current-voltage characteristics have been measured using transmission-line pulse method with 100 ns pulses. Reproducible impurity impact ioni-zation avalanche breakdown occurs at a critical electrical field in the range of 100–200 kV cm À1 depending on the acceptor concentration and temperature, leading to complete ionisation of neutral impurities. The current-voltage characteristics exhibit an S-shape with the bi-stable conduction characteristic of impurity impact ionisation. Published by AIP Publishing. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4946853] Due to their high ionisation energy, dopants in diamond are only partially ionised at room temperature, e.g., less than 0.1% of boron impurities are ionised in a low-doped p-type diamond. As a matter of fact, the temperature range of incomplete ionisation of boron acceptor, i.e., the freeze out region, extends up to about 1000 K. The consequent high re-sistivity severely limits potential applications of diamond as semiconductor. 1,2 In the freeze out regime, the conductivity can be increased by excitation of free carriers bounded to the neutral impurity centres to conduction/valence band by (1) thermal ionisation rising the temperature, (2) optical ionisa-tion with light irradiation of suitable wavelength, and finally (3) impact ionization of neutral centres by the free carriers under a sufficiently high electric field. Under a high electric field, the free carriers can gain enough energy to be able to ionise neutral impurities by inelastic collisions leading to free carrier multiplication. This process results in nonlinear current voltage characteristics.

The Short-Run Macroeconomic Impact of Foreign Aid to Small States: An Agnostic Time Series Analysis

This paper investigates the short-run macroeconomic impact of aid in small developing countries (SDCs) by using a vector auto regression (VAR) model to study the impact of aid on net import (absorption) and domestic demand (spending). We focus on average country effects within two country sub-groups, and find substantial differences between 'aid-dependent' SDCs and other SDCs that are more dependent on natural resources, tourism or financial services. In aid-dependent SDCs, aid absorption more or less equals spending, although only half of the aid flow is absorbed and spent. In the non-aid-dependent group, aid does not seem to be absorbed or spent in any systematic fashion.