Business Cycles in Emerging Economies: The Role of Interest Rates

We find that in a sample of emerging economies business cycles are more volatile than in developed ones, real interest rates are countercyclical and lead the cycle, consumption is more volatile than output and net exports are strongly countercyclical. We present a model of a small open economy, where the real interest rate is decomposed in an international rate and a country risk component. Country risk is affected by fundamental shocks but, through the presence of working capital, also amplifies the effects of those shocks. The model generates business cycles consistent with Argentine data. Eliminating country risk lowers Argentine output volatility by 27% while stabilizing international rates lowers it by less than 3%.

Inflation and seigniorage in Argentina

Argentina, where increases in inflation appear to be closely linked to government attempts to raise seigniorage, was chosen for this study because of its persistent high rates of inflation and its fiscal imbalance. Monetization of fiscal deficits becomes a major force for creating money and inflation in countries with limited access to domestic and foreign credit. The authors found that inflation in Argentina played an important role in generating public sector revenues. The authors found that at the revenue maximizing rate of inflation, the government can get seigniorage of about 7.5 % of GDP in steady state. Between June 1978 and April 1985, there was a clear, positive relation between inflation and the inflation tax for rates of inflation below 18 %. At the 20 % range, the inflation tax ranged from 7 to 10 % of GDP. Increases in inflation above 20 % do not give the government more inflation tax revenues. The direct implication of this situation is that any serious stabilization effort requires finding an alternative source of revenue to replace the inflation tax.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Fiscal&Monetary Policy

A low-delay 8 Kb/s backward-adaptive CELP coder

Code excited linear prediction coding is an efficient technique for compressing speech sequences. Communications quality of speech can be obtained at bit rates below 8 Kb/s. However, relatively large coding delays are necessary to buffer the input speech in order to perform the LPC analysis. A low delay 8 Kb/s CELP coder is introduced in which the short term predictor is based on past synthesized speech. A new distortion measure that improves the tracking of the formant filter is discussed. Formal listening tests showed that the performance of the backward adaptive coder is almost as good as the conventional CELP coder

Business Cycles in Emerging Economies:The Role of Interest Rates

This paper documents the empirical relation between the interest rates that emerging economies face in international capital markets and their business cycles. The dataset used in the study includes quarterly data for Argentina during 1983-2000 and for Brazil, Mexico, Korea, and Philippines, during 1994-2000. In this sample, interest rates are very volatile, strongly countercyclical, and strongly positively correlated with net exports. Output is very volatile and consumption is more volatile than output. These regularities are common to all emerging economies in the sample, but are not observed in a developed economy such as Canada. The paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy, in which (i) firms have to pay for a fraction of the input bill before production takes place, and in which (ii) the labor supply is independent of consumption. Using a version of the model calibrated to Argentina’s economy, we find that interest rate shocks alone can explain 50% of output fluctuations and can generate business cycle patterns consistent with the regularities described above and with the major booms and recessions in Argentina in the last two decades. We conclude that interest rates are an important factor for explaining business cycles in emerging economies and further research should be devoted to fully understand their determination

Interventions to facilitate return to work in adults with adjustment disorders

BACKGROUND: Adjustment disorders are a frequent cause of sick leave and various interventions have been developed to expedite the return to work (RTW) of individuals on sick leave due to adjustment disorders. OBJECTIVES: To assess the effects of interventions facilitating RTW for workers with acute or chronic adjustment disorders. SEARCH METHODS: We searched the Cochrane Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Review Group's Specialised Register (CCDANCTR) to October 2011; the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) to Issue 4, 2011; MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO and ISI Web of Science, all years to February 2011; the WHO trials portal (ICTRP) and ClinicalTrials.gov in March 2011. We also screened reference lists of included studies and relevant reviews. SELECTION CRITERIA: We selected randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to facilitate RTW of workers with adjustment disorders compared to no or other treatment. Eligible interventions were pharmacological interventions, psychological interventions (such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and problem solving therapy), relaxation techniques, exercise programmes, employee assistance programmes or combinations of these interventions. The primary outcomes were time to partial and time to full RTW, and secondary outcomes were severity of symptoms of adjustment disorder, work functioning, generic functional status (i.e. the overall functional capabilities of an individual, such as physical functioning, social function, general mental health) and quality of life. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two authors independently selected studies, assessed risk of bias and extracted data. We pooled studies that we deemed sufficiently clinically homogeneous in different comparison groups, and assessed the overall quality of the evidence using the GRADE approach. MAIN RESULTS: We included nine studies reporting on 10 psychological interventions and one combined intervention. The studies included 1546 participants. No RCTs were found of pharmacological interventions, exercise programmes or employee assistance programmes. We assessed seven studies as having low risk of bias and the studies that were pooled together were comparable. For those who received no treatment, compared with CBT, the assumed time to partial and full RTW was 88 and 252 days respectively. Based on two studies with a total of 159 participants, moderate-quality evidence showed that CBT had similar results for time (measured in days) until partial RTW compared to no treatment at one-year follow-up (mean difference (MD) -8.78, 95% confidence interval (CI) -23.26 to 5.71). We found low-quality evidence of similar results for CBT and no treatment on the reduction of days until full RTW at one-year follow-up (MD -35.73, 95% CI -113.15 to 41.69) (one study with 105 participants included in the analysis). Based on moderate-quality evidence, problem solving therapy (PST) significantly reduced time until partial RTW at one-year follow-up compared to non-guideline based care (MD -17.00, 95% CI -26.48 to -7.52) (one study with 192 participants clustered among 33 treatment providers included in the analysis), but we found moderate-quality evidence of no significant effect on reducing days until full RTW at one-year follow-up (MD -17.73, 95% CI -37.35 to 1.90) (two studies with 342 participants included in the analysis). AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: We found moderate-quality evidence that CBT did not significantly reduce time until partial RTW and low-quality evidence that it did not significantly reduce time to full RTW compared with no treatment. Moderate-quality evidence showed that PST significantly enhanced partial RTW at one-year follow-up compared to non-guideline based care but did not significantly enhance time to full RTW at one-year follow-up. An important limitation was the small number of studies included in the meta-analyses and the small number of participants, which lowered the power of the analyses

Uncovering the affective turmoil during opportunity recognition and exploitation: a nonlinear approach

This study explores the affective turmoil experienced by nascent entrepreneurs during opportunity recognition and exploitation. Based on the affect circumplex model, we employed nonlinear methods to identify configurations of affect that emerge during these early stages of the entrepreneurial journey. We analyzed data from 50 nascent entrepreneurs using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) trained with twenty affect dimensions as input variables and opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation as outcomes. Results show that nascent entrepreneurs experience different affect configurations during opportunity recognition and exploitation. While four configurations of affect emerged associated with opportunity recognition and exploitation, their nature and importance to the experienced event are significantly different. Specifically, “active screening” is the most important configuration of affect during opportunity recognition, while “vigilant” is the most important during opportunity exploitation. We posit that nonlinear methods can help to uncover the affective turmoil experienced by entrepreneurs during a particular event. These findings provide new insights on how affect associates differently with cognition during the early stages of entrepreneurship.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Inter-species variation in colour perception

Inter-species variation in colour perception poses a serious problem for the view that colours are mind-independent properties. Given that colour perception varies so drastically across species, which species perceives colours as they really are? In this paper, I argue that all do. Specifically, I argue that members of different species perceive properties that are determinates of different, mutually compatible, determinables. This is an instance of a general selectionist strategy for dealing with cases of perceptual variation. According to selectionist views, objects simultaneously instantiate a plurality of colours, all of them genuinely mind-independent, and subjects select from amongst this plurality which colours they perceive. I contrast selectionist views with relationalist views that deny the mind-independence of colour, and consider some general objections to this strategy

Designed Azolopyridinium Salts Block Protective Antigen Pores In Vitro and Protect Cells from Anthrax Toxin

Background:Several intracellular acting bacterial protein toxins of the AB-type, which are known to enter cells by endocytosis, are shown to produce channels. This holds true for protective antigen (PA), the binding component of the tripartite anthrax-toxin of Bacillus anthracis. Evidence has been presented that translocation of the enzymatic components of anthrax-toxin across the endosomal membrane of target cells and channel formation by the heptameric/octameric PA63 binding/translocation component are related phenomena. Chloroquine and some 4-aminoquinolones, known as potent drugs against Plasmodium falciparium infection of humans, block efficiently the PA63-channel in a dose dependent way.Methodology/Principal Findings:Here we demonstrate that related positively charged heterocyclic azolopyridinium salts block the PA63-channel in the μM range, when both, inhibitor and PA63 are added to the same side of the membrane, the cis-side, which corresponds to the lumen of acidified endosomal vesicles of target cells. Noise-analysis allowed the study of the kinetics of the plug formation by the heterocycles. In vivo experiments using J774A.1 macrophages demonstrated that the inhibitors of PA63-channel function also efficiently block intoxication of the cells by the combination lethal factor and PA63 in the same concentration range as they block the channels in vitro.Conclusions/Significance:These results strongly argue in favor of a transport of lethal factor through the PA63-channel and suggest that the heterocycles used in this study could represent attractive candidates for development of novel therapeutic strategies against anthrax. © 2013 Beitzinger et al