Accounting for Growth in Post-Soviet Russia

In pursuit of its transition from a command to a market economy, post-Soviet Russia has witnessed enormous regional differences in economic growth rates. Moreover, the economic reforms implemented under this transition, while initiated at the federal level, have also differed markedly across regions, as regional governments have had considerable discretion over the implementation of reform policies in their jurisdictions. We exploit these differences in analyzing whether regional differences in reform policies can account for regional differences in growth rates, and conclude that to a considerable degree, they can. Most notably, we find that local-government privatization initiatives and regional-government initiatives to gain control over their capital stock (e.g. plants, equipment, machinery and social infrastructure) exhibit close correspondence with the formation of new legal enterprises, which in turn exhibits close correspondence with economic growth.optimal taxation, tax evasion, organized crime

Overview of the Global Sanitation Problem

human development, water, sanitation

Time-Varying Liquidity in Foreign Exchange

This paper addresses whether currency trades have greater price impact during periods of rapid public information flow. Central bankers often suggest that expectations are at times “ripe” for coordinated adjustment, and that periods of rapid information flow are such a time. We develop an optimizing model to account for the joint behavior of order flow and returns around announcements. Using transaction data made available by electronic trading, we estimate the price impact of trades in the DM/$ market precisely. We then test whether trades during periods with macroeconomic announcements have higher price impact. They do. We also test for dependence of liquidity on trading volume and return volatility (two other prominent state variables in the literature on liquidity variation). We do not find any evidence that liquidity depends on these variables. The findings provide policy-makers with guidance for the timing and magnitude intervention.

Meditation Matters: Replies to the Anti-McMindfulness Bandwagon!

A critical reply to the anti-mindfulness critics in the collection, who oppose the popular secularized adoption of mindfulness on various grounds (it is not Buddhism, it is Buddhism, it is a tool of neo-capitalist exploitation, etc.), I argue that mindfulness is a quality of consciousness, opposite mindlessness, that may be cultivated through practice, and is almost always beneficial to those who cultivate it

The Boston MPO Planning Process and Low-Income Suburban-to-Suburban Transportation Needs

The rapid evolution in the Boston MPO transportation planning process is discussed as well as its particular application to the suburban-suburban transportation needs of low income individuals. The results of two experiments designed to improve access to transportation for low income suburban individuals are discussed and policy suggestions are made for improving such access.Massachusetts, Transportation Demand,Congestion, Regional Development

The Role of National Human Rights Institutions in State Strategies

human development, human rights

"Euler Equation Branching"

Some macroeconomic models exhibit a type of global indeterminacy known as Euler equation branching (e.g., the one-sector growth model with a production externality). The dynamics in such models are governed by a differential inclusion. In this paper, we show that in models with Euler equation branching there are multiple equilibria and that the dynamics are chaotic. In particular, we provide sufficient conditions for a dynamical system on the plane with Euler equation branching to be chaotic and show analytically that in a neighborhood of a steady state, these sufficient conditions will typically be satisfied. We also extend the results of Christiano and Harrison (JME, 1999) for the one-sector growth model with a production externality. In a more general setting, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for Euler equation branching in this model. We show that chaotic and cyclic equilibria are possible and that this behavior is not dependent on the steady state being "locally" determinate or indeterminate.global indeterminacy, Euler equation branching, multiple equilibria, cycles,chaos, increasing returns to scale, externality, regime switching

Classical BI: Its Semantics and Proof Theory

We present Classical BI (CBI), a new addition to the family of bunched logics which originates in O'Hearn and Pym's logic of bunched implications BI. CBI differs from existing bunched logics in that its multiplicative connectives behave classically rather than intuitionistically (including in particular a multiplicative version of classical negation). At the semantic level, CBI-formulas have the normal bunched logic reading as declarative statements about resources, but its resource models necessarily feature more structure than those for other bunched logics; principally, they satisfy the requirement that every resource has a unique dual. At the proof-theoretic level, a very natural formalism for CBI is provided by a display calculus \`a la Belnap, which can be seen as a generalisation of the bunched sequent calculus for BI. In this paper we formulate the aforementioned model theory and proof theory for CBI, and prove some fundamental results about the logic, most notably completeness of the proof theory with respect to the semantics.Comment: 42 pages, 8 figure