How useful are monetary policy rules to deal with inflation: The Spanish case.

The role of monetary policy rules to explain the behaviour of central banks has received an increasing attention during the last few years. The Spanish case could be of interest given that, with an inflation above the European average, was able to conduct its monetary policy and to control the inflation in order to join the European monetary union. But after the adoption of the European Central Bank’s monetary policy in January 1999, a higher inflation can be observed. In this paper we explore whether the monetary policy performed by the Bank of Spain would have follow a monetary policy rule, and to which extent monetary rules contribute to achieve the goal of inflation.Monetary policy rules, inflation.

Detection of irrigation inhomogeneities in an olive grove using the NDRE vegetation index obtained from UAV images

We have developed a simple photogrammetric method to identify heterogeneous areas of irrigated olive groves and vineyard crops using a commercial multispectral camera mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). By comparing NDVI, GNDVI, SAVI, and NDRE vegetation indices, we find that the latter shows irrigation irregularities in an olive grove not discernible with the other indices. This may render the NDRE as particularly useful to identify growth inhomogeneities in crops. Given the fact that few satellite detectors are sensible in the red-edge (RE) band and none with the spatial resolution offered by UAVs, this finding has the potential of turning UAVs into a local farmer’s favourite aid tool.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Monetary unions under financial shocks: do fiscal rules matter?

The recent problems generated by the economic and financial crisis have led to some debate on the role of economic policies. The question is to which extent a specific monetary policy regime would impose a restriction to policymakers. In particular, the cost of losing independence in the use of the exchange rate and monetary policy, and the restrictions derived from the fiscal discipline required for supporting monetary agreements. As an example we can think on the expected success of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), related to the benefits of the single currency, the higher degree of integration of financial markets, and also to the sound public finances guaranteed by the set of fiscal rules provided by EMU. When signing the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), Member States committed themselves to reach a medium-term budgetary position close to balance. The Maastricht Treaty stresses as basic that the Member States of the EMU should avoid excessive deficits, and the reference values for deficit-to-GDP and debt-to GDP ratios have worked in fact as an explicit fiscal rule. But, in practice, the policy orientation of the SGP has not been fully satisfied. This has opened a debate about the utility and effectiveness of fiscal rules in EMU, and on their complementarities with discretionary fiscal policy measures and automatic stabilisers to deal with short-run fluctuations. The aim of this paper is to investigate how to deal with monetary (financial) shocks in a monetary union following fiscal rules. In particular, we will analyse the interaction among those members showing a relatively high level of public debt and those that seem to follow a more strict fiscal discipline

Presentación del monográfico: las sociedades cooperativas construyen un mundo mejor

Presentación del monográfico: las sociedades cooperativas construyen un mundo mejo

Hybrid Optimal Control Approach to Commercial Aircraft Trayectory Planning

This work is partially supported by the Spanish Government through the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, the Comunidad de Madrid, and the project i-Math Ingenio Mathematica. This work has been carried out within the framework of the Atlantida project, partially funded by the Spanish Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial, in which the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos is collaborating with GVM Aerospace and Defence.Publicad

En-Route Optimal Flight Planning Constrained to Pass Through Waypoints using MINLP

Abstract: In this paper we study the en-route strategic flight planning of a commercial aircraft constrained to pass through a set of waypoints whose sequence is not predefined. This problem has been solved as an hybrid optimal control problem in which, given the dynamic model of the aircraft, the initial and final states, the path constraints constituting the envelope of flight, and a set of waypoints in the European air space, one has to find the control inputs, the switching times, the optimal sequence of waypoints and the corresponding trajectory of the aircraft that minimize the direct operating cost during the flight. The complete layout of waypoints in the European airspace is reduced and waypoints are gathered into a small number of clusters. The aircraft is constrained to pass through one waypoint inside every cluster of waypoints. The presence of multi point constraints makes the optimal control problem particularly difficult to solve. The hybrid optimal control problem is converted into a mixed integer non linear programming problem first making the unknown switching times part of the state, then introducing binary variable to enforce the constraint of passing through one waypoint inside every cluster, and finally applying a direct collocation method. The resulting mixed integer non linear programming problem has been solved using a branch and bound algorithm. The cases studied and the numerical results show the effectiveness, efficiency and applicability of this method for enroute strategic flight plans definition

Framework for Aircraft Trajectory Planning Towards an Efficient Air Traffic Management

This work is partially supported by the Spanish Government through the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, the Comunidad de Madrid, the project i-Math Ingenio Mathematica, and the project Optimización en Computación en Paralelo de Planificación bajo Incertidumbre under grant no. MTM2009-14087-C04-01. This work has been carried out within the framework of the Atlantida project, partially funded by the Spanish Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial, in which the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos collaborated with GMVAerospace and Defence S.A.Publicad