"Prices for Paintings by African American Artists and Their Contemporaries: Does Race Matter? (Revision of Working Paper No. 2006-06)"

This paper investigates the extent that economic markets have incorporated mainstream artistic acceptance of African American art. Price levels and movements for paintings by African American artists versus their white contemporaries are compared using auction data from 1972 to 2004. Means in the aggregate as well as individually are found to be significantly lower for African American artists in almost every case. Hedonic regressions are used to refine the statistical analysis by controlling for factors characterizing the painting and auction environment. In the regressions significant differences persist between the two groups with African American artists experiencing lower price levels but higher price appreciation throughout the period. The price gap thus appears to be narrowing indicating a possible convergence of economic reality and artistic appreciation. In addition, the higher investment returns for paintings by African American artists made them a relatively profitable art niche in recent years and possibly for the future since economic values have not completely converged for the two groups.Economics of Art, Painting Prices, African American Painters, Hedonic Regression

Quasar Lenses and Galactic Streams: Outlier Selection and GAIA Multiplet Detection

I describe two novel techniques originally devised to select strongly lensed quasar candidates in wide-field surveys. The first relies on outlier selection in optical and mid-infrared magnitude space; the second combines mid-infrared colour selection with GAIA spatial resolution, to identify multiplets of objects with quasar-like colours. Both methods have already been applied successfully to the SDSS, ATLAS and DES footprints: besides recovering known lenses from previous searches, they have led to new discoveries, including quadruply lensed quasars, which are rare within the rare-object class of quasar lenses. As a serendipitous by-product, at least four candidate Galactic streams in the South have been identified among foreground contaminants. There is considerable scope for tailoring the WISE-GAIA multiplet search to stellar-like objects, instead of quasar-like, and to automatically detect Galactic streams.Comment: MNRAS subm. 21/04, revised version after referee report. 10 pages, 5 figure

Discretionary Fiscal Policies over the Cycle: New Evidence based on the ESCB Disaggregated Approach

This paper explores how discretionary fiscal policies on the revenue side of the government budget have reacted to economic fluctuations in European Union countries. For this purpose, it uses data on legislated revenue changes and structural indicators provided twice per year by National Central Banks of European Union countries in the ESCB framework for analysing fiscal policy. The analysis is based on the estimation of fiscal policy rules linking these measures of legislated fiscal policy changes to the output gap and other control variables. Then, baseline results are compared with regression estimates where variations of cyclically-adjusted indicators are used as proxy for discretionary fiscal policies, as conventionally proposed in the empirical literature on fiscal policy. Results suggest that, overall, legislated changes in taxes and social security contributions have responded in a strongly pro-cyclical way to the business cycle, while commonly-used cyclical-adjustment methods point to a-cyclicality. JEL Classification: E62, E65, H20cyclical sensitivity, Discretionary fiscal policies, ESCB disaggregated framework, government revenues, legislation changes, narrative approach

Optical properties of Ge-oxygen defect center embedded in silica films

The photo-luminescence features of Ge-oxygen defect centers in a 100nm thick Ge-doped silica film on a pure silica substrate were investigated by looking at the emission spectra and time decay detected under synchrotron radiation excitation in the 10-300 K temperature range. This center exhibits two luminescence bands centered at 4.3eV and 3.2eV associated with its de-excitation from singlet (S1) and triplet (T1) states, respectively, that are linked by an intersystem crossing process. The comparison with results obtained from a bulk Ge-doped silica sample evidences that the efficiency of the intersystem crossing rate depends on the properties of the matrix embedding the Ge-oxygen defect centers, being more effective in the film than in the bulk counterpart.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, in press on J. Non cryst. solids (2007

How do Banking Crises Impact on Income Inequality?

We show that banking crises have an important effect on income distribution: inequality increases before banking crisis episodes and sharply decline afterwards. We also find that,while a large government size does not per se seem to reduce inequality, a rise in financial depth (i.e. better access to credit provided by the banking sector) contributes to a more equal distribution of income.Inequality, banking crisis, financial depth, government size.

Fiscal Consolidation and Income Inequality

In this paper, we assess the impact of fiscal consolidation on income inequality. Using a panel of 18 industrialized countries from 1970 to 2010, we find that income inequality significantly rises both during periods of fiscal consolidation and in the aftermath of such adjustments. In addition, fiscal authority that is driven by spending cuts seems to be more detrimental for income distribution than in the case of tax hikes. Considering the linkages between banking crises and fiscal consolidation, we show that the impact on the income gap is amplified when fiscal adjustments take place after the resolution of such financial turmoils. Our results also provide support for the Kuznets relationship and corroborate the idea that trade can lead to a more unequal distribution of income.Fiscal consolidation, income inequality, Kuznets curve

The core size of the Fornax dwarf Spheroidal

We exploit the detection of three distinct stellar subpopulations in the red giant branch of the Fornax dwarf Spheroidal to probe its density distribution. This allows us to resolve directly the evolution with radius of the dark matter mass profile. We find that a cored dark matter halo provides a perfect fit to the data, being consistent with all three stellar populations well within 1-sigma, and for the first time we are able to put constraints on the core size of such a halo. With respect to previous work, we do not strengthen the statistical exclusion of a dark matter cusp in Fornax, but we find that Navarro-Frenk-White haloes would be required to have unrealistically large scale radii in order to be compatible with the data, hence low values of the concentration parameter. We are then forced to conclude that the Fornax dwarf Spheroidal sits within a dark matter halo having a constant density core, with a core size of between 0.6 and 1.8 kpc.Comment: MNRAS Letters, submitte